“I am too,” Celia replied. She cocked her head, as she often did and smiled more. “As I see it we were bound to find common ground, don’t you think? I like to believe in destiny.”
“So do I,” Jeni returned. If the opportunity was offered, she would go to bed with her at the end of the night. But first, there was a concert to attend that they didn’t want to miss.
Celia checked her watch. “It’s time to go.”
Neither was all that anxious to leave the Bistro and the lovely mood behind, but Jeni sighed and scooted off her chair, heading toward the door with Celia following close.
The exhilarating voice of the lyric soprano rising to the ceiling of the tiny jewel box Sainte Chapelle lifted the audience into rapture. For an hour and a half, they sat mesmerized amid tall panels of elaborate stained glass windows that surrounded the entire church. Thoughts of worldly matters were pushed aside, while within that tiny space in time they enjoyed a present moment so exquisite that it brought tears to Jeni’s eyes – not to mention most of the company around her. For Jeni these were silent, private tears. Her past love was present, inside and all around her, bringing on tears of remembrance, and tears that soothed the brokenness she carried. She had hope – what she had not had the year before – and she held on to it tightly now. For that hour and a half of enchantment, as the lyric soprano sung prayers to heaven, thoughts of Jack and all he meant to her were absent. She let the beautiful moment speak. Never had she felt so alive, so human, so filled with emotion and lust and longing as she did then. Although the feelings were bittersweet as she reflected on the past, she was filled with expectant wonder as she gazed into the unwritten future.
And Jack’s next email:
“So where does sub end and slave begin. I think that the gray area is so broad that only the participants can determine. Do we decide to call you a slave or will we decide on sub? There really is no test to determine that, only what we decide. Let’s just play it cool, you’ll get your ass whipped soon enough. As far as the other stuff we can decide all that later.
I’m not worried about loss of the Internet, I’ll be here when you get it back.
Stained glass from the 13th century. I wonder if it is the original. When I think of the way they let things rot around here, then tear it down…it’s sad. It’s hard to imagine anything as fragile as stained glass lasting so many centuries.
I’d love to visit all the places you mentioned, maybe at some point I’ll make it back to France. I sit here now and wonder where you’re visiting tomorrow. Jack.”
“Hi Jack! Slept well to start then restlessly from five on, which is why I’m up early enough to email you now. Lost my clit ring in the night. Panicked. I found all but one bead. I guess I’ll go without until I get home. Feels very weird, though.
Ready to leave Paris as soon as breakfast is over. Must finish packing and move on. Til later. Jeni. PS stained glass is original.”
Chapter Four
Provence, France
Jeni flew out of Paris on a high speed train, disembarking the fast-flying missile in Avignon, on her way to the ancient city Arles. The first thing she noticed was how easy it was to find the sky. No dizziness from staring upward because in every direction, 360 degrees around her, there was open sky and a horizon, not the tall half-timbered buildings of Rouen and their great cathedral casting shadows over the city. Nor were there massive boulevards of 19th century architecture, historic monuments, grand museums firmly planted in Paris soil, blocking the sun and the horizon in at least one direction, if not all. Her vision had narrowed in the crowded cities where there were no big vistas, just the heavy weight of history on every street corner and down every block. It was hard not to love Paris. It was a city that owned it all and was unflinchingly proud of being the wealthy repository of the world’s great culture and its finest art.
Provence was none of that. It was azure skies and all the fresh air Jeni could breathe in, sunshine and heat and a landscape so beautiful it needed no adornment, no grand displays, no showy architecture. So soothing to weary eyes. Jeni took a moment to rest hers on the far horizon and drink in this new place. Like she’d come home – though she was not home at all – and quickly reminded of that fact as soon as her feet hit the streets of the solid, substantial town of Arles. This may have been French soil, but it was a piece of Roman history, born in the first century B.C. as if it literally sprung from the earth.
Alone now in her room at the Hotel Forum – her roommate had already unpacked her things and gone – Jeni lay back on her bed exhausted by the travel and the many steps it took to tour Arles on foot. It had been a pleasant afternoon, as was the chance to rest now. The room was large and bright with tall ceilings and yellow walls. A green stenciled vine served as a border around the room, while beneath it hung framed black and white photographs from the 1940’s. Like the rest of the town, the architecture of the old hotel was boxy, substantial and fierce – like the Romans who’d built the city. The window beside her bed looked out to the sky, to puffy white clouds, whitewashed walls of the nearby buildings and birds darting across the blue. She could have died that moment and been happy and content. Never had she felt so wide open to the world and herself. She had escaped Paris intact and landed in heaven. Not that she hadn’t loved Paris. She had. Loved every minute, some minutes more than others, but she loved Provence more. The city of Paris had given her a thousand exquisite memories to savor, but she knew that Provence would always draw her back to France. It would urge her to return because the longing for this open feeling was something she hadn’t recalled ever feeling before…not in all her memory banks could she dig out a feeling as beautiful as this one of freedom and release.
She took several deep breaths, floating for a moment in the present feeling that was so much like bliss; then she got up to dress for dinner.
After dinner, back in that beautiful room, she opened her email and found a brief message from Jack.
“I just read my horoscope, made me laugh. It said I would be negotiating gray areas today.”
She laughed too, feeling a wave of sexual pleasure rise up through her body. Gray areas. Master/slave. Dom/sub. These were the gray areas of kink negotiation where aching hearts and hungry crotches yearned for something they couldn’t quite understand but knew they had to have. Would their desires find places of agreement? It really wasn’t much of a question; she already knew they would find a good deal of common ground. They seemed fated to share their lust and details weren’t important. Small items on their lists of possible kinks didn’t matter – in fact, she wasn’t sure there was much left to negotiate at this point, not that she was ready to confess that to Jack. It was still too soon to count on anything with a man she’d not met. But she knew where her heart was headed and was certain where her body would take her.
“Now you are making me laugh!” she replied to the email, smiling as she typed. “Landed in Arles and took a walking tour of town. Very Roman. Still fighting bulls in the old area. I love it. (though not the bull-fighting) Blue skies, fresh air, in the country. And such food – even better than what I ate in Paris.
Your message was here when I arrived. How about that? You are like a touchstone for me, Jack. A happy and very erotic reminder of home. Must tell you about this hotel. Til later, Sir. Jeni”
***
Jeni wandered up the broad trail into the hills at the base of La Montagne Saint-Victoire, along the Rhone River, into the wilderness far from any city, with terrain as familiar to her as places in Arizona with pine trees, craggy rocks and a deep, red, rusty-colored earth. In that quiet place, voices were hushed and respectful, while tired eyes rested on the pristine beauty around them. With less to clutter her thoughts and few pressing demands, her head seemed to clear during that easy stroll up the winding mountain valley.
Celia came upon her from behind and put an arm around Jeni’s waist in a gesture of sisterly affection. At dinner the night before, Celia had talked about her latest love affair a
nd the trip to Italy she and her lover were planning for the fall. She was lust-filled and dreamy, the whole nine yards of romantically titillated evident in her expressive eyes and the way she smiled, and the words she used to talk about this man. This was the first Jeni had heard about a man in her life, although she wasn’t surprised to discover that Celia was deeply involved with a handsome medical doctor. The fact that she and Celia had grown close as friends was obvious, but few would suspect after Celia’s tittering discussion of the man in her life, that she and Jeni were flirting with an affair of their own.
Later that evening the two shared a drink in Van Gogh’s Café La Nuit, just across from their hotel in the Place du Forum. The evening was like a dream. For once Jeni could sit back and not think about a thing but the gentle inebriation taking her mind to no place special. Just being in Provence was enough. Just being in this historic café in this historic town was enough to dwell on.
But there were other things to think about, plenty of them, like the way that Celia looked at her and smiled with such affection. The way she placed a hand over hers and felt its comforting warmth. The gesture brought back the feelings she had for Celia all through Paris. Their mutual attraction had not ended with the nightclub, although Jeni couldn’t decide what she felt about Celia, her natural eroticism, and the way that the redhead still clung to her with some ulterior motive that Jeni took no measures to discourage. Their days in France were growing short in number, and if there were time for something more than eye contact, holding hands, and an arm around her waist from time to time, it would be now, here in Arles, where there was space enough in their tiny world to act on the feelings they shared.
How odd was it that Jeni had lost the Wi-Fi connection to her phone that day and there were no emails from Jack to divert her attention? Her wide open libido was suddenly in Celia’s hands. Had she no shame? Was she so easy that losing the Internet and her connection with Jack would send her running to the other object of her sexual desire?
She smiled to herself, reminded that she was really quite a slut when it came to her sexual attractions. Maybe the lost Internet was a sign that a benevolent God wanted her to enjoy without guilt the company of a female lover after being denied the opportunity during so many years of fidelity to one man.
Even Jack, to whom she owed no fidelity, had given her permission to act on her desire. All he wanted was details. Though he didn’t seem all that interested in details either, given that he’d asked nothing further about her night out in Paris.
I’m not worried about loss of the Internet, I’ll be here when you get it back.
I’ll be here when you get back…
The words of his email from days before lingered in her thoughts. He felt it too. Something had already been cemented in their relationship; it would be waiting for her return.
And Celia?
Nothing in particular happened between them that night. After the Van Gogh Café they returned to the Hotel, parted ways, and headed for their rooms. The next day, they were fast friends again.
They toured Roman ruins, strolling the paths of an ancient village nestled in a small valley ringed with trees. Streets, aqueducts, stone foundations of houses where people lived and worked, the remnants of temples still rising above it all. The place was sacred, not for religious reasons, but because so many had lived and died and were buried on that soil. The enormity of history was in that valley; and when Jeni rested against one of the low stone walls, she felt that history work its way inside her bones. It made her solemn but not unhappy. She wondered if Celia, sitting next to her, felt that, too.
Even to rest her hand against those aged blocks of granite felt like a sacred act.
All things have their expiration date, was a built-in fact of everything human and everything of the earth. Everything is vulnerable, everything fragile…Celia, Jack, love, relationships – the ones that ride in on a storm and the ones that grow over a number of years – all meet the same fate, gone in the twinkling of an eye.
The solemn silence of the ruins ended that afternoon in the bustling village of Aix en Provence. Once Jeni set her feet on the old street, history receded. She plunged into the open air market looking for treasures, scarves and pottery, trinkets for home. She and Celia agreed to meet on the hour at a bistro they’d spotted in a tiny alleyway bordered on either side by tall stone walls. Here they drank wine and ordered fancy crepes and a salad. Later they ate a large scoop of gelato on a sugary cone, carefully licking the delicious ice cream from the side of the cones, which was melting in the heat of the day.
By the time they arrived at Saint Remy later in the afternoon, there was a layer of perspiration on Jeni’s brow and across her chest. Celia was glowing, too. It was lovely to watch the gentle sway of the redhead’s small behind as she walked a few steps in front of her. This time, it was Jeni’s arm that went around Celia’s waist when she caught up with her friend.
Immediately awakened from whatever stupor that held her attention in its grip, Celia looked at her with a dreamy smile, “I was just thinking of you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“And what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that maybe tonight we should take a bottle of wine to my room, and order something from one of the restaurants in the Forum. Sit and talk. I could use a little downtime, some girl talk. Enough of these men. I certainly don’t want another cheery meal discussing someone’s next trip to the Maldives, or what they did on their last visit to Shanghai.”
“I’d like to be shanghaied to somewhere,” Jeni said, sighing.
“By someone special?” Celia’s brows lifted with interest.
Jeni shrugged. “Maybe.” She was thinking of Jack, though it felt a little soon to confess that he was even in her life.
When their tour guide interrupted the conversation to outline plans for the remainder of the afternoon, Jeni’s arm dropped. She and Celia went in opposite directions as they explored the asylum where van Gogh had been taken during one of his crazy periods.
Jeni viewed the tall Plane trees, the lavender fields not yet in bloom, the scattered red poppies and hot pink roses. If being incarcerated in an asylum meant living in surroundings as lovely as these, she’d be happy to sleep on a cot in one of Saint Remy’s tiny rooms just to wake under the spell of all this beauty.
Her senses were awakened again from their idle lethargy, and hearing Celia’s plans for their night made her crotch warm and her mind fill with graphic thoughts of lying in bed with the sensuous redhead. Even if Celia didn’t speak of it directly, there was little doubt about what she had in mind. And Jeni – she was ready for whatever unfolded.
When they returned to Arles that evening, Celia went in search of a bottle of wine while Jeni found a platter of cheese, bread and fruit at one of the cafés that they could take up to Celia’s room for dinner.
The first bottle of wine went down fast. The second bottle, and the food, remained on the table while they shared the first kiss. Jeni’s head was swimming and her inhibitions were falling away, so that when Celia reached for a breast and laid her warm fondling hand against the softness there, she smiled. “You have no idea how I’ve imagined this,” Celia purred as she pushed her back against the mattress.
“Oh, I think I do…” Jeni said, as she looked into the woman’s eyes.
“And we could talk all around the subject, couldn’t we?”
“But let’s not.” She put her hands on Celia’s face and brought her lips to hers. They kissed lightly, with the soft, sensuous female kisses deepening as the moment lingered and the sweet taste of lust grew more intense.
Celia’s hands began to strip away the pink silk tank that Jeni had bought earlier that day. She watched her naked tits come into view, then put her head between them and kissed the fragrant surface. She nibbled her there while listening to Jeni’s murmuring response. Then she sucked on her nipples, moving back and forth from one to the other, until the buds were firm. W
hen she blew on them, they tightened into hard little knots.
When Celia finally sat back, Jeni’s hands rushed in and lifted the tee-shirt from the redhead’s torso, exposing her lightly bronzed skin and her small breasts. Her dark brown nipples lured her in until Jeni’s teeth sank deep enough into her flesh to cause a squeal of pleasure from Celia’s lips. She resisted the impulse to bite down even harder. Instead, she sucked the small buds, loving the taste of her skin. The redhead moaned with her arousal gaining momentum, then she dropped against the mattress beside Jeni. They pushed their pants down and their underwear aside and were laying naked, with their legs open wide and their crotches pressed together. Jeni felt the warm pulse of Celia’s pussy against her own. As she writhed against her, her body seemed to explode into spasms.
“Horny girl, aren’t you?” Celia’s eyes lit with a devilish glow.
“Aren’t you?” Jeni returned. “I’m not sure horny ever really stops for me.”
“Which is why you have me right now.” Celia stroked her hair, pushed it off her face, then leaned in and kissed her hard against the mouth. “You are such a horny slut.”
Jeni thought the same of her friend, and would have said so, but they were busy kissing, their hands groping private places that had been denied too long. When Celia’s hand moved between Jeni’s legs, she grazed her clitoris with her fingers, and with a swiftness that surprised them both, Jeni came, her chest rising in an erotic swoon, voice hissing quietly. “Oh my, yessssss!”
“That was quick!” Celia pulled away and looked down at her, eyes wide. “But you’re not done yet.”
“No I’m not,” Jeni agreed. She’d hardly begun to cum. A year’s worth of pent-up libido would certainly take more than one orgasm to satisfy.
Celia moved back in and kissed her mouth again, while her hand moved back between Jeni’s parted thighs. She pushed her middle finger deeper than it had been before, generating an even stronger reaction, until Jeni’s body clenched again. Celia’s hands were all over her now, moving from cunt to tits to ass, where she gave a fleshy cheek a good squeeze. Every place she touched turned on lights that had been snuffed out two years before.
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