Heart of Change

by Roxy Harte

  Our gazes remain locked as her lips tease a path from my breast to my navel. I lick my lips when she asks, “Am I too late?”

  But no words are forthcoming. What am I supposed to say to that? She knows Simon and I have been intimate, and there were the others I used to try to erase Simon from my mind. Once I would have argued that Simon made love to me, but being here with Geri now, feeling the heavy desire for her that I feel…I’d be less apt to call what Simon and I shared love merely because I now have a different reference point.

  I shrug.

  She snickers, her mouth suppressing a grin. “Your eyes tell me I’m not. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to make love to you now and I’m going to take my sweet time about it.”

  My lips part, gasping as her mouth finds the sensitive dent beside my pelvic bone. She licks and sucks, tickling, making me writhe beneath her as my stomach, and every muscle between her mouth and my womb, tightens. She makes me ache, needy to be filled and quite unsure whether it is pleasure or torture that she plans to use to fulfill her threat. True to her word, she takes her time, seeming to kiss, lick, nip every exposed inch of flesh above and below my lace panties, landing finally at the juncture of my thighs.

  Her tongue teases around the elastic leg band and I think surely she will rip my panties off now…but she doesn’t. Her mouth moves to cover my mons and her breath exhales in a hot, steamy tease over my covered clit. I shiver and she hums with pleasure at my response. Her tongue dips out to lick my needy flesh through the sheer lace, finding the sensitive tip of my clit without any effort at all. The sensation blows me through the roof. My fingers dig into the sheets as I try to stay connected to the bed. “Oh! Christ! Some warning would be good,” I say as I try to squirm away from her searing tongue.

  She growls or chuckles. I’m not sure what sound it is that comes from her throat, but it is obvious she isn’t letting go. She laves me with her tongue through the lace and the sensation is pure ecstasy…and pure torture. I scream, I pant. The thought runs through my mind that this is too intense for foreplay, because isn’t foreplay a warm-up?

  I am surprised by her level of expertise, knowing just how to touch, just where to touch to make certain that she draws my agony to an excruciating summit.

  “Please, Geri!” I cry out. “Is this where you want me to beg? Because I’ll beg.”

  Geri chuckles and this time I am certain she is laughing at me.

  Her breath is warm through the lace as she asks, “Is this want you want?” and pushes the edge of my panties aside with gentle fingers. She exposes me fully to the heat of her breath, then just a soft flicker of tongue over my clit that makes my back arch and hips lift in answer. I hiss, “Yes.”

  Her mouth comes away from me and she sits back, looking at me—at all of my female parts at the juncture between my legs—that look is enough to send me over the edge.

  “Geri?” I growl.

  Her liquid amber gaze meets mine and her smile is pure evil when she says, “It’s too early to beg.” She dips her head and runs her tongue the length of my labia, ending with a quick, hard flick of tongue against my clit. Pleasure? Pain? My brain can’t decide because she is licking the length of me again. This time she flicks my clit twice. “Oh God, Geri!” I demand desperately. “Please!”

  I elbow up, half sitting, half reclining, watching as she does it again…so intent on pleasuring me, torturing me.

  “I need you,” I say, but I don’t have a clue what I need. She isn’t a man…no dick in sight…but I know for a fact that, if she can get me this worked up, she can finish me, and that’s exactly what I demand. “Finish me!”

  Her eyes roll up and she smiles. She doesn’t stop licking, doesn’t stop teasing, but manages to smile just the same.

  I squeeze my eyes tightly closed, trying to be silent. I don’t want to beg, even though just seconds ago, I promised I would. Begging is what I do at work, that high, keening pitch that makes me want to puke because it is so false, such a lie. Usually, I’m not even close to orgasm when the cue to beg is given, but the men buying my movies eat it up, loving it, wanting more of that pathetic sound to come from the back of my throat.

  For Geri, I whimper and moan. Strangely, I don’t hate it that I do.

  She shifts her weight and I am surprised to find her pushing her fingers inside the leg of my panties. I feel the slide as her fingers find the dampness sloshing from inside of me. I cannot remember ever being this wet without lube. Lots and lots of faux fluid is always flowing on set.

  There is nothing fake in my reaction to Geri. This fluid is mine, she did this to me.

  I watch as she draws a damp finger to her mouth to taste. She moans with pleasure, like she is tasting the sweetest, most expensive chocolate ever created and the sound breaks something inside of me. I swear I hear it pop, like an explosion of breaking bone, and then tears are falling over my cheeks as emotion from somewhere deep inside me, hidden and secret and lost, crashes over and through me, wrecking me.

  Her fingers slide slowly through my wetness as she watches my face. My eyes close, hiding me from her gaze. I can’t watch her watching me. I’m embarrassed that tears are falling over my cheeks. I push into the solidness of her fingers as they slide over my labia. It seems she is enjoying teasing me, because she giggles softly. I really don’t want to beg. My lungs feel like a million pounds in my chest, a lump in my throat bigger than my fist, as I ask, not beg, “Put your fingers inside of me. I want to be filled by you.”

  I feel her acquiesce, sliding a finger in, maybe two.

  I look at her through squinted eyes. As much as I needed to hide a moment ago, I now need to see her, and so I watch her through my fringe of lashes. She is fuzzy and distorted, but also so beautiful, I can’t take my eyes off her.

  Her fingers enter me…one, two, three. I seem to swell around her as she thrusts in then massages the exact spot over my g-spot that is guaranteed to make me explode. How did she know?

  Her mouth sucks my clit with the same rhythm that she uses to knead me on the inside, drawing my pleasure to a tight point, but not letting me fall, not yet. She stretches and thrusts, massages and twists, wrapping my insides in thick pleasure, bliss too substantial to ever find release from. I gasp and cry out, my hips bucking, needing her fingers deeper, needing something for my clit to grind into, more solid than her tongue, which she keeps flicking over my clit with precisely spaced taps. She pulls me higher and higher. I am screaming when I fall. Screaming as I fragment and shatter into what feels like a million pieces…

  I keep my eyes closed as I listen to her move around the room. The bathroom light is turned on, she pees, running water and the lights are turned off. I must be alive, I must be, but I am not certain how I ever survived the orgasm she gave me. I feel like a bomb exploded deep inside of me, leaving me traumatized, but not in a bad way—this was good. This was amazing.

  Unexpectedly, she brings me a glass of water and I sit up, accepting it, pleasured by her thoughtfulness. “Thank you.”

  She sits beside me as I drink and pulls her fingers down a tendril of my hair, saying, “Thank you,” as she drops a kiss on my shoulder. Our eyes meet over the glass and the moment feels like it could go awkward quickly. I lower the glass to look at her fully. She is still completely dressed, minus shoes.

  “Am I going to get to see you naked now?”

  She tilts her head and I can see she is uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

  I frown. “I don’t understand. What we just shared was amazing. Did I—?”

  She puts her fingertips to my lips, to silence my insecurity. Her fingers smell of soap…and faintly of me. She kneels in front of me, taking my hands.

  I watch her face as she struggles with what she wants to say until she finally says, “This is the hard part for me. I’m not very good at relationships because I have a hard time sharing parts of myself.”

  I bite my lip, listening, not interrupting. “I don’t relate very w
ell to my body and that has caused me to have a lot of issues. It usually takes me so long to share the weird bits of myself that whoever I am dating loses interest before we get to the part where we’re equally naked.”

  I do interrupt. “But we’re friends. And I think you are beautiful…I don’t see any weird bits.”

  “Ah.” She smiles, but it is sad, or forced, or a combination of the two that makes me feel a strange sadness, watching her struggle. She taps her head. “The odd bits are in here. I have a few self-esteem issues that tend to ruin relationships for me.”

  “You fooled me,” I say. “I see a very confident, very sexy Geri when I look at you.”

  “You didn’t say woman.” She looks at me and there seems to be a glimmer in her eyes that wasn’t there a second prior. “You said Geri…a very sexy Geri…instead of a very sexy woman. Why?”

  I sigh, thinking that maybe I screwed up. I have no idea what I’m saying or thinking. “You feel very masculine to me, sitting here, like this. I keep thinking that I should be able to reach between your legs and find a dick. So, yes, you are sexy as hell, but woman didn’t quite fit…and I didn’t want to say that you appear to be a very sexy, confident man.”

  She smiles. “Geri is okay.”

  Standing, she pulls my hand to her crotch. I am surprised by the heat rising from her center.

  “It feels that way to me too. Sometimes, I think that I should have a dick. Sometimes, not often, I’ll pack. I didn’t tonight, because you’re such a sweet, straight girl and I didn’t want to freak you out.”

  I would have thought I would have noticed that over the years.

  “If I was going out with a girl who could accept that sometimes when I go out on dates I enjoy a little gender play, someone who can accept me as the big, bad dyke that I am,” she says sarcastically, laughing at herself and thereby making the moment a lighter one, “I would wear a harness and a strap-on.”

  I bite my lip to keep from interrupting, it seems her confession is hard enough without my comment. With her head ducked down, like she’s embarrassed, she sits beside me. She doesn’t look at me, but does tease her fingers over my thigh. “Strapped on, I would use her like a man would—if it would increase her enjoyment as well—and most of the time I can orgasm that way because the harness rubs my clit just enough while I’m thrusting, and of course there’s the mental part too.”

  Blushing, she finally meets my gaze.

  “I wouldn’t have been freaked out,” I say. “I’m not an innocent. I work in the porn industry. I’ve seen it all.”

  “Maybe next time then.” She winks.

  “I’ll expect it,” I say, making her laugh, and just that quickly the awkwardness dissipates.

  Readjusting to lie on the bed beside me, she ends up stretching out, curling onto her side to face me. I fidget around to mirror her. Her hand caresses my arm. “Just the same, I didn’t want to use you tonight. I wanted to make love to you.”

  “Mission accomplished.” My lips twitch. “But now it’s my turn to make love to you.”

  She tenses.

  “Just a little?” I ask, rubbing my hand over her jeans. “I’ve never been with a girl before. I just want to explore you a little.”

  She looks unsure, but she doesn’t stop me when I slide my hands under her shirt to feel her silky smooth skin. She is so not male but I don’t say so. She trembles when I run my hands over her ribcage. I want to see her.

  I lean over her, kissing her the way that she kissed me. My kisses follow the trail of my fingers as they seek upward, pushing the edge of her shirt as they travel. I reveal one inch of her beautiful flesh at a time. I look at her face to make sure that this is okay and I see that her eyes are closed. It makes me wonder if they’re closed with pleasure or whether she’s hiding from me. The shirt is pushed above the sports bra that hides all of her femininity from the world. I kiss the line of flesh at the edge of the elastic band, making her shiver. Slowly, hoping she won’t stop me, I lift the edge of her bra above her breasts, letting them spill out, such small, perfect breasts, barely rounded at all, but rounded enough for me to kiss the soft swell of them. Her nipples are large, larger than mine, and I can’t deny the lure of them, so I take one of her nipples into my mouth, swirling my tongue around it, sucking lightly. I bite her softly and I hear her sharp intake of breath in response.

  “Is this okay?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she whispers, swallowing hard.

  I go to her other breast, giving it the same treatment, drawing a soft moan from her throat that makes my insides do a happy dance.

  “Exploring you is fun,” I announce with a giggle.

  “You do realize you are killing me?” she says, opening one golden eye to look at me.

  “Good,” I say. “Because you destroyed me.”

  She tugs at the hem of her shirt. “That’s enough exploring for one night.”

  “I want to explore all of you.”

  She shakes her head. “Next time.”

  I curl around her, happy with the promise of next time. “Snuggling is okay?”

  She nods. “That I can do.”

  I’m not surprised when she leaves the bed long enough to turn off all the lights. In the dark, I hear her undressing. I hear her shirt slide over her head and then the zipper of her jeans. When she slides under the sheets, her bare legs rub against mine, leaving me wide awake and totally turned on. I want her. I want to touch her and kiss her and lick her. I want her to scream out my name, but I settle for spooning against her, feeling that she has left both her bra and panties on. I decide morning will be soon enough to challenge her boundaries.

  Morning brings a new disaster.

  She is awake, showered and dressed before I even realize it is morning. She sits on the bed and kisses my cheek. “I hate to do this, but I have to go.”

  “Go?”

  “Business. In British Columbia, to be exact. It’s fairly urgent, or I’d put it off…” She kisses me on the cheek quickly and opens the door to go. She’s really leaving. Why didn’t she mention this last night?

  “No, it’s okay,” I say. “I understand.”

  But, left alone in the hotel room, I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. I had sex with Geri. I had sex with a girl.

  Chapter Eight

  I close my eyes against the beautiful azure of the Sea of Cortez. This is my hiding place, my villa on the sea, although I keep telling myself that I’m not hiding. I’m reevaluating. That sounds so much better, to be here taking account of my life to this point. Certainly not pouting because I went from the sexiest woman in America to a dried-up, washed-out, over-the-hill porn star in the space of a conversation. And definitely not because I had sex with a girl and it confused the hell out of me.

  I am not old!

  I am not a lesbian.

  So here I am, in Cabo San Lucas, baking in the sun, thinking too much, and mourning my loss of self because I don’t know what else to call it. Without even looking, I spray oily passion-fruit-and-coconut-scented SPF 30 over my skin.

  I’m not hiding.

  I might be a mental breakdown waiting to happen though.

  It might be easier if Simon weren’t calling me every hour on the hour. I think he must be desperate for the money. It’s merely inconvenient for my brain that his every message says the same thing or a variation of the same thing. I love you. I’m falling apart here, not knowing if I am ever going to see you again. Each message ending with the plea, “Call me.”

  I’ve wanted him for so long—and there have been a few almosts—but then he always backs away…and I can’t trust him to not back away again. I’d be crazy to call him.

  Geri.

  Now, that’s a ridiculous thought and one I keep having over and over. It’s probably best she left when she did, the way she did. Abrupt, but it saved so much awkwardness. What isn’t good is the fact I can still smell her, taste her, feel the way it felt to have her lips pressed against mine. It makes no se
nse that I want her as desperately as I do…I am not a lesbian!

  I think about the first time I saw her, sitting with the girls, and the instant attraction. I wanted her. For a second, I mused on the question, “Does this mean I’m bi?” But the thought flitted away and I haven’t considered it much since. I guess the question deserves a second look, because obviously, I’m attracted to Geri…

  I close my eyes, thinking about all of the women I’ve ever talked to, all of the women who I’ve had the thought my God, she’s gorgeous. I’ve never considered approaching any of them. So why Geri?

  Why now?

  A sudden breeze ruffles the leaves of a clump of palms far to the right, startling a dozen small sea birds from their roost. And I open my eyes to watch their flight over the gently lapping waves. I replay yesterday morning in my mind again and again. I know I’m not in love with Geri, but I feel like I’m falling in love with Geri. I’m intelligent, smart enough to know that it’s just projection. Because I am acutely aware of the years I have wasted believing that if Simon continued having sex with me, it meant on some deeper emotional level that he was in love with me. I am such an idiot. Wouldn’t you think that being a porn star for twenty years would convince me that sex and love have absolutely nothing in common? Sex is sex. I try to remember love. What did it feel like before Simon got in my head and messed things up?

  I keep hearing my grandmother’s voice asking me, “Is the money worth it? Is the man worth it?”

  I snort. Gran didn’t think any man was worth anything. She barely tolerated my father and he was her son. She definitely wouldn’t understand that, if Simon loved me, yes, any amount of pain or heartbreak would be worth it. How can you explain to someone that love would be worth everything?

  On the teak side table, my cell phone rings and I jump, grabbing it quickly to read the Caller ID and hating how far my disappointment drags me under when I see that it isn’t Geri but Simon. Why did I even look? Why am I upset that Geri hasn’t called…and even more upset because Simon won’t stop calling?