by Heidi Lowe
She spread my legs open and bore down on my sex with her mouth.
What followed I knew, no matter what became of us, I would remember forever. Remember the way it felt the moment her tongue first connected with my bean, after swimming through every corner of my sex. Remember the way I moaned and whimpered incessantly.
I thrashed about like a fish out of water, almost broke free from her hold of my thighs.
She never stopped sucking, licking, and stroking my nub with her tongue, slurping me up like I was a sweet beverage. Nor my cries of ecstasy nor my violent writhing stopped her. Only when I expired, trembling as the spasms tore through me, did she let up.
I hadn't survived very long, I knew that much. She'd worked me up too much beforehand, and her tongue had been relentless in its assault on my bean. I didn't stand a chance. I came screaming her name... The best way to climax.
I felt like I'd been exorcised, rid of a demon, at the end of it. I lay there on her bed, spent, hardly any energy left to even keep my eyes open to look at her when she came up to meet me.
"Hey," she said. Her lips were moist with my sap. She licked it off while I watched her, and I let out a tired laugh. "Yummy."
"I hope I wasn't too much of an amateur for you," I said as she stroked my face lovingly.
"You were great. I knew you would be."
ELEVEN
"You know you have exactly the same body parts as I do?" She giggled but didn't move, didn't push my hand away.
We lay in her bed facing each other, the bed sheet only coming up to our thighs. My fingers had been slowly caressing all the grooves and curves of her body – her breasts, her stomach, her thighs – for several minutes. I didn't think I would ever tire of touching her.
"They're better on you," I said.
"I don't think so. I love them on you, Mrs. Thomas." She arched closer and kissed me. That was another thing that would never get old. When she kissed me I felt like all the bad in the world disappeared.
We'd been like this for an hour or more, I'd lost track of time. Not saying much, just happy touching and kissing.
"What's put that smile on your face?" she asked.
"You, of course. I'm happy." It was such a simple thing to say but it meant so much, more than she would ever know. Saying it only made me realize how unhappy I'd been all those years. It had taken one night – albeit an amazing, mind-blowing one – with a woman to show me that.
"So am I."
"You were happy before you met me though. That's the difference."
"I was content before I met you. What I'm feeling now, that's something else." She sounded so sure, so convinced of this, that I didn't want to argue with her. But her constantly happy persona was one of the things that attracted me to her...along with everything else, of course. She was like a breath of fresh air in my miserable, mundane life. Getting through another day living under the same roof as Dominic was made infinitely easier knowing that I would get to see her.
"I hope I'm not dreaming," I said, still tracing my fingers along her flesh. I loved looking at her naked form; perfect in every way, but mostly because I got to enjoy it, and I continued to enjoy it.
"You're not dreaming," she whispered. "This is real. We're real."
I didn't know what that last bit meant, but it made me smile to hear it.
But I knew it all had to come to an end. Because there was another reality that I had to get back to: my son, my marriage, my home.
I intertwined my fingers with hers. She smiled back at me. It had been a long time since someone had looked at me like that.
"It's so late already. I'll have to leave soon."
"I know. You have a life to get back to. I hate letting you go."
This honesty was so new to me. She didn't feel the need to hold back, suppress her true feelings. Was it always this easy to be open with female lovers? I'd been missing out big style.
"I don't feel good about going."
"I wish you were coming with me to Bolivia."
"I can't, Ava."
"I know. Will you promise me one thing?"
I was ready to promise her anything, no matter what it was. Those blue eyes made me want to do her bidding.
"What?"
"Will you think about me while I'm away?"
I gave a little laugh. "Every day." Didn't she know I would be unable to think of little else? Almost two weeks with the memory of our love-making. The wait for her return would be agonizing.
"These are going to be the longest two weeks of my life." I hesitated for a moment before I said my next line, aware how awful it would sound if it came out wrong. But we were being so honest, I wanted her to know exactly how I felt. "Please don't hate me for saying this, but I'm kind of hoping you hate it out there so you don't stay there for good. I have this fear that once you get there, you won't want to come back. With all those beautiful Latina women walking around you..."
She laughed, and without asking climbed on top of me. It was amazing how used to the feel of a naked woman between my thighs, against my flesh, I had gotten; but more surprising still, how much I craved that feeling. She was so soft, her touches so gentle.
She peppered my face with light kisses. "Why on earth would you think that?"
"Because I'm too happy, and I don't think it will last." I had to swallow back the tears that were threatening to erupt from me, tears I hadn't realized I'd been holding in. I didn't know whether I was tearful due to my happiness, or the thought of losing it.
"What has he done to you?" she said, her face registering her ire. "He's made you think you don't deserve to be happy."
She kissed me, kissed all my pain away, and said nothing more about Dominic.
"I'm coming back, I promise. There's so much to come back for."
I hoped I was one of those things.
"And while I'm gone," she started, pinning my arms down and sinking her chest lower onto mine so that our breasts met, "I want you to think about all the naughty things you want me to do to you when I return."
I giggled giddily as she kissed my face and neck. "That's a given."
The kisses inevitably led her down south once more, where she gobbled up my sex all over again, this orgasm much more paralyzing than the last. I didn't leave her house until three in the morning, and grinned all the way home in the car.
I tried to make as little noise as possible when I let myself in that morning, and crept upstairs in darkness. I started across the landing to my room when I heard giggling and whispering coming from Dominic's room. Two voices, one distinctly female.
I froze in my tracks, a cold sensation spreading over my body.
In our house, while our son was sleeping! And knowing I would be home eventually. He'd gone too far. He truly was a scumbag of the highest order. Disrespectful, tactless, vile.
My blood boiled while I stood there. It was all part of his game to be as disrespectful as he could, in his goal to hurt me. Whatever remaining respect I had for him disappeared that night, never to be seen again.
The woman of choice didn't matter. Nor did the length and extent of their affair. As far as I was concerned, he could stick his disgusting manhood in anything, as long as he kept it away from me and our family. Up until then he'd managed to adhere to that. My being out so late, on what he assumed was a date, must have really eaten at him. Driven him crazy to imagine his wife with another man. He probably had built an image in his head of what this tall, dark and handsome stranger looked like, just as I used to when his affairs bothered me.
That was the thought that settled me that night, stopped me storming into his room and exposing them both – him and his current whore of choice. In my outrage I'd almost forgotten the amazing night I'd just had, with the most amazing human being I'd met in a long time.
I carried on to my room, calmed down. What did I care that he was so blatantly screwing another woman in our home? Who was really coming out ahead between the two of us? Whatever he had with these other women would
never be as pure or real as what Ava and I shared.
As I lay down to sleep that night, my body still tingled from her touch. It was magical. When I shut my eyes I could remember the intense way she looked at me as we made love. It wasn't merely slotting pieces in and only caring about her own release. No, she was a considerate lover, taking her time, making sure that we connected on multiple levels. The sort of sex I could only have dreamed of.
Except, she wasn't a dream. She was one hundred percent real, and she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.
Dominic came out of the bathroom just as I was going in. It was just after seven, and I'd been woken by my hyperactive son bounding into my room and demanding his breakfast.
"I didn't hear you come in last night," my husband said.
I rolled my eyes. "No? What about the woman in your bed? Did she hear me?" Of course he'd heard. He'd probably prompted her to laugh especially so that I could hear.
His poker face needed work. "There you go again, Danielle, making things up. What must it look like in that head of yours?"
"Whatever, Dominic." I went in and slammed the door in his face, because it looked as though he wanted to come in with me. Those days were long gone.
But he was still hovering outside when I finished.
I sighed heavily. "Don't you have anything better to do? Some stocks to buy? Women to hound?"
He laughed. "I don't hound women. If anything it's the other way around. I mean, come on, you should know better than anyone how it goes. You stalked me for months until I knocked you up and you forced me to marry you."
I narrowed my eyes at him. If looks could kill the slimy worm would have been dead years ago. This wasn't the first time he'd said something like this, and I was sure it wouldn't be the last. He liked to remind me, whilst embellishing, that I had been the one to pursue him. But I resented his making it out that I'd somehow tricked him into getting me pregnant, and marrying me. Yes, I'd been foolish, naive, head over heels in love with a bad boy, having convinced myself I would be the one to change him. So many women had, my story wasn't unique. But he'd taken advantage of my naivety. It had given me my son, and for that I would always be grateful, but it didn't change the fact that I'd screwed up.
And now I was suffering heavily for it. Though that suffering, thanks to Ava's entry into my life, had been made all the more bearable.
"Just get out of my way," I said, shoving past him.
"Who were you with? That teacher again?"
"What's it to you?"
"I don't know if I'm comfortable with you spending so much time with her. I don't want her putting any ideas into your head. This coming home late nonsense, when you have a young son. She's obviously a bad influence on you. I might have to have a word with her."
"Don't you dare! What I do with her has nothing to do with you," I hissed. I could have clawed his eyes out. So typical, trying to take away this wonderful thing from me.
He laughed wickedly. "Wow, you need this friendship more than I thought. You know that once she's found friends her own age, hot young women who haven't started going gray, and whose bodies aren't forever tarnished by childbirth, she'll ditch you, don't you?"
He always knew how to get to me. Knew all the right buttons to push in order to sink my confidence into the ground.
"You're the worst human being I've ever met," I said to him and dashed to my room. My attempts at suppressing the tears were in vain, and they dropped quietly while I tried to regain my composure.
It was all so ridiculous. Okay, so my body wasn't as svelte as it once was, but it was in no way disgusting. And the gray hair he'd spoken of, I'd found only a couple, that was it. No big deal. I knew all of this deep down, yet I still let him get to me. Only a few hours earlier I'd been in bed with a woman who'd told me I was beautiful all night, and had kissed me everywhere, touched me everywhere, and wanted more. I should have known better.
It would take time to get him completely out of my head. Something I had to work on. Something Ava would help me with.
I just had to survive the next two weeks.
TWELVE
Her text came in just before eleven the Sunday before the new semester was set to start. But I saw it the Monday morning, when I woke up to get Chester ready for school.
Ten days without a word from her had been tough. I'd known beforehand that she was going to be living out of cellphone range, in the hills in South America, but it didn't make it any less frustrating.
So the arrival of her message brought relief and joy. Relief because it meant she was back on North American soil. Joy because it meant I was still on her mind.
She'd stuck to her promise and returned. None of it had been a lie. Her message said she missed me, that she was counting down the hours until she saw me again. I'd worried for nothing, having convinced myself that I would never see her again. That maybe her plane would go down over the Andes. Or any number of things that would keep us apart forever.
Chester and I met up with Beth on the way to school that morning. Beth looked the worse for wear.
"I'm glad that vacation is over and that the little demon has gone back to school. I thought it would never happen!"
"Was Oklahoma really that bad? You usually love it out there," I asked. Her parents had moved out there four years ago, sold up one day and bought a place by the lake.
"Jack was a little shit all week! I don't know what got into him. It didn't help that my parents spoiled him rotten, gave him everything he asked for, even after I told them not to," she groaned. "I thought about leaving him on the highway multiple times on the drive back."
I chuckled. "That's not a very motherly thing to say."
"Ach, what do you know? Your son's an angel."
I certainly had been blessed. Although Chester did have his little tantrums, he was a well-behaved kid, mature and polite ninety-five percent of the time. The other five percent I attributed to his father's genes dominating.
"But enough about me. You're in high spirits today. Relieved to be getting your days back, huh?"
"That too," I said, a coy smile settling on my face. I'd been smiling like that ever since reading Ava's text.
Beth gave me an intrigued look. "Oh? What aren't you telling me? What's got you grinning like that?"
"Gosh, you sound just as bad as Dominic. Can't I smile because it's good to be alive?"
"No, I know you, Danielle. Something's going on with you. You've been like this for a while. Whatever it is, I could do with some myself."
I laughed. The cause of my elation was something I didn't ever want to share. And somehow I didn't think Beth would have gone for it anyway. Well, four months ago I wouldn't have imagined myself sleeping with a woman. Now I couldn't imagine not doing it!
A nauseous feeling swirled in my stomach – the type of pang you get when you're about to go on stage in front of a bunch of people. But this was more nervous excitement than simple nervousness. It started as we approached the school gates.
My eyes scanned the crowded playground, expecting to see her among the parents. But she was nowhere. I left Beth and the kids in the playground, and headed inside to find her. I couldn't wait any longer to see her; I'd just about survived ten days.
There were still ten minutes till school started. The classroom door was closed, but I saw her through the window. The blood rushed to my head.
"Come in," she called when I tapped the door.
Moment of truth.
She was fixing the books in the reading corner, and when she turned around, her face lit up. God, she was more beautiful than ever. Maybe because I'd missed her so much. But I think it had something to do with the new tan she now sported. Golden, sun-kissed skin complemented her blonde hair perfectly. She looked as Hollywood as it got, except there was no airbrushing here.
It was all I could do not to run up to her and kiss her. My mind went racing back to the last time I'd seen her, how naked she'd been, and all the things we'd done together. It almo
st seemed wrong to think about them in the classroom, but I couldn't help it.
"Hey," she said. "I was hoping you would come find me."
"You look great." Now that we were reunited, I didn't know what to say. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, however.
She made her way to me until only a few feet separated us. Any less than that and it would have looked suspicious if anyone were to walk in. "I missed you."
"I missed you too." I held back from telling her never to leave again, because that would have been coming on too strong. Heck, we'd only spent one night together. Getting attached this quickly wasn't healthy. "How was your trip?"
"Very unglamorous and tiring. So, in other words, amazing! I can't wait to go back. They've invited me back in summer."
"For the whole summer?" I asked, unable to hide the worry in my voice. I'd barely managed a week and a half. What would I do for six?
"Yeah. Maybe you should think about coming with me this time."
"That sounds a lot like blackmail to me," I joked.
She laughed. "Perhaps it is." Then she touched my hand with the back of hers, her fingers stroking mine as discreetly as she could manage. "I really missed you," she said again.
The touch was everything. We were like forbidden lovers, like something out of a 1950's film.
"I want to kiss you," I said.
"It's killing me to see you right now and not be able to do that...and more."
I felt my cheeks heat up. It didn't matter that I'd been thinking the same thing, hearing her say it made it all real.
"I know you're probably jet-lagged and want to rest tonight–"
"No, I want to see you," she jumped in before I could finish. She squeezed my hand. "I want to see you every night."
I couldn't believe this was happening. Someone who wanted me as much as I wanted her, and who wasn't afraid to make it known. Had I walked into an alternate universe where I got everything I ever wanted all the time? It sure felt that way.