by Radclyffe
“They’ll be fine. If any of them need me, they’ll text me.”
Mari didn’t argue. Glenn would never slough off a responsibility, and if she wasn’t worried about Flann and the others, Mari wasn’t either.
“Don’t worry.” Glenn’s voice was low and husky.
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
Glenn drove at the speed limit, but it felt to Mari as if they were crawling. She pressed close to Glenn again, even though there was plenty of room in the cab now, and this time she gave in to her urge and put her hand on Glenn’s leg. She needed the contact, needed to know Glenn was real, needed to believe the untamed energy swirling between them was real. Glenn dropped a hand over hers and pressed Mari’s fingers into her thigh.
Mari squeezed and hard muscles flexed beneath her fingers. The quick hitch in Glenn’s breath cut through her like a scalpel slash, sharp and swift and terrifyingly wonderful. She immediately wanted to feel the rush of erotic power again. Pressing closer into Glenn’s lean form, her breast against Glenn’s arm, she swept her palm up and down the length of Glenn’s thigh. Glenn twitched as if she’d been shocked.
“Fuck,” Glenn whispered. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
“No, tell me.”
Glenn shot her a swift glance and then cut her gaze back to the road. Her mouth had been tight, the smoldering fire in her eyes leaping into flames. “You’re making me so crazy I can’t think.”
“Neither can I.” Mari wanted things she’d never imagined wanting. Her secret fantasies had been nothing like this. “I’ve never felt this way.”
Something in her voice must have betrayed her uncertainty.
Glenn looked at her again, the fire banked, tempered by concern. “Are you afraid?”
“No, no.” Mari gripped Glenn’s leg tighter than she intended and Glenn’s hips flexed. Heat flared between Mari’s thighs. “Never afraid of you.”
“Then you don’t have to think.”
Glenn swung the truck down a narrow alley and pulled in behind a building. Mari finally focused on their surroundings and recognized the rear of Glenn’s apartment building. She caught her breath.
“All right?” Glenn murmured as she turned to her, her fingers tracing the edge of Mari’s jaw.
Mari swallowed. If she went inside, what was she saying? What did she want? She still didn’t know, but she wanted to find out. She nodded.
Glenn cut the engine, jumped out, and ran around the front of the truck. She jerked open Mari’s door and reached for her hand. “Come on.”
Mari slid over and started to climb out. Glenn’s hands grasped her waist, and she was lifted to the ground. When her feet touched the earth, Mari wrapped her arms around Glenn’s shoulders and, cleaving to her, pressed her mouth to Glenn’s throat. She tasted salt and heat and desire. “You have a beautiful throat. You are beautiful.”
With a faint groan, Glenn tilted her head back, offering herself. She buried her fingers in Mari’s hair and pressed Mari’s mouth closer. “If you keep that up, I won’t get up the stairs.”
Mari touched the tip of her tongue to the delicate skin over Glenn’s racing pulse. Glenn trembled, a fine shudder rippling through her body. Mari’s heart leapt and a fierce thrill raced through her. Mari laughed. “Then we should go upstairs now, because I want to do that again.”
With a low growl, Glenn grabbed Mari’s hand and tugged her up the winding staircase, across the narrow deck outside her door, and into a small, neat apartment.
Glenn stopped just inside the door and framed Mari’s face with both hands. She kissed her softly. “Bedroom?”
“I…yes,” Mari whispered. What should she say…what could she say? I’ve never done this before, I don’t know what I want, I want everything and so much more? “But I’m not sure…”
“It’s okay, I just really, really need to kiss you again. Whenever you want to stop, you just tell me.” Glenn’s jaw tightened, the hands cradling Mari’s jaw flexing as if holding back a storm. “Please, I need you.”
Mari nodded. She couldn’t imagine wanting to stop, not when she’d never felt as alive as she did in that instant. “Yes. Show me.”
Wordlessly, Glenn took her hand again and led her through the small neat kitchen, across an equally neat but sparsely furnished living room, and into a bedroom with a single bed against one wall, a dresser with a row of precisely arranged bottles and other objects, and a slatted wooden chair beside it. Sunlight slanted through a single window across the foot of the bed, and hazy air blanketed the room. Glenn kicked off her boots and sat on the side of the bed, drawing Mari between her spread thighs. She wrapped both arms around Mari’s waist and pressed her cheek to Mari’s stomach. “We’ll go as slow as you want.”
Mari stroked the back of Glenn’s neck and shoulders. “I don’t know what I want, except I want to feel you.”
“Go ahead.”
Mari edged closer between Glenn’s thighs and caressed the length of Glenn’s back, tracing the tight muscles along her spine and between her shoulders. She slid her hands inside Glenn’s collar and dipped her fingertips into the delicate hollows above her collarbones.
Quivering, her insides in knots, Glenn stayed as still as she could, letting Mari explore her, every muscle so tight she felt as if they might shred from her bones. When Mari lowered her head and kissed the angle of her jaw, Glenn’s vision wavered.
“Can we lie down?” Mari asked almost dreamily.
Glenn couldn’t refuse her, as dangerous as that would be. She could never remember need so powerful her insides hurt. She swung around, guided Mari down to the bed, and stretched out beside her. Turning on her side, she rested her hand on Mari’s hip. Mari inched nearer, her lips flushed and swollen from their kisses, her eyes wide and dark and moist. Glenn kissed her.
“You’re beautiful, Mari.”
Mari gripped Glenn’s shirt, her hips rocking insistently against Glenn’s. “Do that some more.”
Laughing softly, Glenn followed orders.
Kissing Mari was like discovering water in the desert and greedily filling the barren places inside that had lain parched and empty after the wastelands of the world had drained her dry. Mari arched against her with a moan, and Glenn’s body came alive with a jolt. She eased on top of her, her thigh between Mari’s, her weight resting on her elbows. She kissed Mari’s mouth, the tip of her chin, the hollow at the base of her throat. Mari’s hands scattered over her back, exploring, restless and demanding, setting Glenn’s flesh aflame.
Mari tugged Glenn’s shirt from the waistband of her jeans and found skin. When she skimmed her fingers over the hollow at the base of Glenn’s spine, Glenn stiffened.
“Easy,” she murmured. “You’ll make me forget my promise to just kiss.”
“I don’t care,” Mari gasped. She loved the weight of Glenn’s body over hers, the feel of their legs entwining, the ache that pounded in the pulse between her thighs. “It feels so good. I want you to touch me. Will you touch me?”
Glenn eased a hand under the bottom of Mari’s top, caressed her middle, thumb brushing just below her navel. “Tell me what you like.”
“I…I don’t know. Whatever you’re doing. It’s wonderful. I never thought it would be like this.”
Glenn stilled, her palm pressed to the bare skin of Mari’s stomach. Something clawed at the surface of her addled brain, a warning bell, clear and sharp. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“God, I just want you to make it stop—whatever, anything, I don’t care.” Mari bent one leg over Glenn’s, lifted her hips, pressed full-length against her. God, she couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t stand the churning fire between her thighs another second. “Anything.”
“This isn’t the first time?”
Mari struggled to make sense of words while drowning in sensation. “What? Oh. Yes.”
“Ever?”
Clarity rushed in, doused the fire melting Mari’s reason. She
pulled back, read worry in the lines in Glenn’s brow. “Does it matter?”
“Hell, yes.” Glenn pushed herself off, leaned up on an elbow, and studied Mari’s face. “You were the one who said no involvement, no intimacies.”
“What difference does it make if I’m a virgin?”
“Because this is pretty damned intimate, especially if you’ve never done it before. Why now? What’s changed?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, neither do I.” Glenn didn’t know what she’d been hoping to hear—that Mari had changed her mind, that she’d discarded her self-imposed exile until she was sure she would remain disease free? Maybe, if she was honest with herself, she’d been hoping to hear Mari wanted her enough to say Fuck waiting. But Mari hadn’t changed her mind, she hadn’t even been aware of where they were headed, and she’d be damned if she’d take advantage of the heat of the moment. Not when Mari was likely to regret it before morning. “But I know you ought to think about what you’re doing.”
Mari sat up, anger and hurt twisting in her middle. “Don’t you mean you need to think?”
Glenn frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Mari drew her knees up and folded her arms around them. “You were willing to have sex a minute ago.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Glenn ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe I was, but I thought…I don’t know what the hell I thought.” Only what she’d hoped. She stood up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you. Shouldn’t have started this.”
Mari jumped up on the other side of the bed and straightened her clothes with as much dignity as she could manage after being so soundly rejected. “Apparently I misread things. No need to apologize.”
“Mari, I didn’t mean—”
“Let’s not embarrass each other anymore. It was just a kiss, after all.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Glenn left Flann’s truck at the end of one of the back rows near the fairgrounds exit and texted Carrie and Abby with the location so they could find it when they were ready to leave. After locking up and sliding the keys between the front wheel and the wheel well, where they always stashed the keys, she cut across the dusty lot and threaded her way through the crowd. The celebration was in full swing and every few steps someone would call out her name. She waved and kept going, making a beeline for the big Future Farmers of America tent. The smell of grilling hamburgers hung over the crowd along with the almost palpable sense of good cheer. Neither penetrated the careful lock she kept on her thoughts and feelings. Her mind was a blank, her body registering neither hunger nor the heat of a mid-July afternoon. She spoke to no one as she stood in the line that slowly inched forward, and something about her air of indifference must have reached those around her. No one attempted conversation, and finally she reached the counter.
“I’ll have a beer,” she said to the balding, heavyset EMT she saw on average three times a week in the ER. When he wasn’t on shift with the local emergency response unit, he was a volunteer with the local FFA chapter. An all-around good guy.
“Hey, Glenn. Coming right up.”
A shoulder bumped hers. “Make that two, Jimmy.”
His smile broadened. “Sure thing, Doc.”
Glenn glanced at Flann. She didn’t believe in coincidences.
Flann grinned, not even bothering to pretend she’d shown up by accident. “Abby said she got a text from you and you ditched your designated driver status. I figured I’d catch you here.”
“Uh-huh.” Glenn took her beer and turned to go.
Flann grabbed hers and fell into step. “You just get here?”
Maybe if she ignored her, she’d go away. Glenn grunted.
“Big crowd.”
Glenn saw no reason to comment on the obvious. All the hospital gatherings drew big crowds. More than half the people in town either worked there, had friends who did, or came out to support what was essentially a fundraising event for the place.
“Where’s Mari?”
“She’s got a shift tonight and decided not to come.” Glenn didn’t have any better explanation, at least not one she intended to share. She’d offered to drive Mari home, but Mari had insisted she’d wanted to walk. She couldn’t object and had stood by wordlessly while Mari gathered her things and left with a hasty and abrupt good-bye. The silence had been cutting, but what could she say? She couldn’t apologize for the kiss, pretend it hadn’t mattered. She also couldn’t ask Mari to change what she wanted, and didn’t want, in her life. Both of them had been riding a wave of insanity, fueled by passion and finally beached by reason. They worked together, they were already friends, more than friends, and jumping into bed together would be a huge mistake. Mari didn’t want a relationship, didn’t even want any kind of intimacy that might lead to one, and neither did she. There’d been nothing else to say.
“You know what we haven’t done for a while?” Flann said conversationally after they’d walked in silence and ditched their empty plastic cups in a recycling bin.
“What?”
“Gone one-on-one. Let’s go shoot some hoops.”
Glenn stopped and stared at her. “Now? In the middle of the hospital barbecue?”
Flann lifted a shoulder. “I said my hellos to just about everybody, Abby’s hanging with Carrie and the others, and I had my two obligatory cups of lukewarm beer.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think so.”
“Out of practice, I guess.”
Glenn cut her a glance. “When’s the last time you played?”
“I kicked Margie’s ass just a couple days ago.”
Glenn snorted. “Yeah, right.”
Everyone knew Margie had a wicked jump shot, and even though she was a couple inches shorter than all the other Rivers sisters—and Glenn, for that matter—she was whippet fast and had hands of gold. “That’ll be the day.”
“Come on. Two out of three.”
The night stretched endlessly before her. Mari was working nights all week, which meant she couldn’t drop by the ER and hang around at night. She had nothing to look forward to for the rest of the weekend. Hell, for the week, when it came to it. She caved. An hour of sweating and listening to Flann taunt her about how slow she was getting might chase some of the dark from her head. Maybe. Worth trying anyhow, since the prospect of drinking lukewarm, weak beer for the rest of the night held no appeal. “Sure. Why not.”
“Lend me some clothes?” Flann added.
Glenn nodded, Flann texted Abby she was leaving, and fifteen minutes later Glenn pulled around behind the high school where the Rivers siblings had all gone to school. The basketball courts adjacent to the parking lot were empty. The whole place was empty. Everyone was at the fairgrounds. They piled out and silently strode to the court.
Flann played basketball the way she did everything else, with an arrogant flair that sometimes appeared like recklessness but rarely was. She drove hard, took unanticipated shots, and often managed to win by doing the unexpected. Glenn was a precision player, feinting, cutting right and left, picking the percentage positions from which to shoot. Over the dozens, hundreds of games they’d played, they were almost dead even.
Flann sank a basket and backpedaled as Glenn retrieved the ball and dribbled.
“You’re off your mark today,” Flann called, the merest taunting tone in her voice.
Glenn ignored her, dropped her shoulder as Flann made a lunge for the ball, pivoted away, turned, and lofted a long jumper. It hit the rim, teetered, and fell back to the court without going through. Any other day she would have made that shot.
Flann scooped up the rebound, sped back out to half court, and one-handed an impossible shot that hit the backboard, angled down, and swirled around the rim before dropping through. Luck, nothing else, riding on the wings of supreme confidence and innate skill.
“So what happened with Mari?” Flann called as Glenn went for the ball.
Glenn ignored her, dribbling, driving, shooting. Sweat dripped into h
er eyes and stung, the burning oddly welcome.
“You two having problems working together in the ER?”
“No. Mari’s good. Fits right in.”
“Abby said the same thing.” Flann muscled Glenn from inside, shot out an elbow and caught her in the chest, stole the ball. She circled, dribbling casually, making no move toward the basket. “I didn’t think that would bother you. Her being strong.”
“Why would it?”
Flann shrugged, picked up speed, drove to the basket and hit a layup. “It’s pretty much been your show for a long time.”
“I’m not you.”
“True.” Flann grinned. “There can only be one captain, and we all know who that is.”
Glenn reflexively caught the ball Flann shot at her before it struck her in the chest. Ass. She dribbled, took a halfhearted shot that didn’t go in, and stalked toward the side of the court. “I’m done.”
Flann took one more lofting overhand shot, sank it, and retrieved the ball. She caught up with Glenn halfway to the truck.
“What’s Mari’s story, do you know?” Flann asked casually.
“What do you mean?” A prickling sensation started between Glenn’s shoulder blades, half itch, half irritation. She should have passed on the B-ball. Flann’s competitive streak never annoyed her, but then she wasn’t usually in such a black mood.
“Single, girlfriend, boyfriend, you know. A couple of people were asking.”
Glenn stopped, studied Flann’s face. Flann might have been baiting her, but her eyes said she was telling the truth too. And why not. Mari was beautiful, new in town, and everyone always welcomed the possibility that newcomers offered.
“If anybody wants to know, they should ask her themselves.”
“I kind of got the idea you were thinking along those lines yourself.”
“Let it go.” Glenn yanked the cab door open, tossed the ball into the narrow space behind the seats, and jumped in.