by Radclyffe
My pussy throbbed. I couldn’t hold back much longer. I’d subordinated my own needs for too long already. I began to touch my breasts, alternately flicking and tugging on the nipples until they stood proud and rigid, then I moved lower to part my lips and circle my clit. I dipped one finger into my juices and slicked my clit.
Helena’s eyes widened and her breathing faltered. She was clearly as excited by seeing me pleasure myself as I was from doing it. The tip of her tongue snaked out to circle her lips and she moaned softly. I repeated the process, driving my finger deeper into my pussy each time, fucking myself and watching her excitement mount with each stroke of my finger, until the first stirring of my climax developed into an unstoppable tide.
I slid my hands under her ass and lifted her to me, rubbing my engorged clit against her soft mound until I felt her shudder. Her reaction drove me on. I moved faster, slamming against her, seeking the elusive pinnacle of satisfaction.
Our slick bodies moved in unison with one aim and our mouths met in a hot exchange of breath and tongues. “Yes! Fuck me!” Helena’s commands were little more than a hoarse whisper against my mouth. Then she raked her fingernails down my back. The searing pain unleashed an instantaneous surge of pressure that moved like a tsunami though my body. I heard her scream my name as her own orgasm hit and a second later, my dam burst.
We clung to each other, just sharing kisses and that intimate, postclimactic oneness, with nothing but our ragged breathing to disturb the silence. Irrationally, I wanted this moment to last forever so we’d never have to say good-bye.
A burst of hysterical laughter bubbled in my throat. This was no story, where a kind fairy godmother arrived at the crucial moment, waved her magic wand and performed a miracle. No way! Come Monday I’d have no option but to stand helplessly by and watch her walk out of my life.
Sunday passed in a blur of hot sex followed by sweet climaxes and short catnaps with the occasional foray into my well-stocked refrigerator for sustenance.
Late in the evening, we sat cross-legged on the rumpled bed, a tray of snacks between us. I broke off a small chunk of rye bread, dipped it into a dish of guacamole, popped a shrimp on top and handed it to Helena. “I wish you didn’t have to go tomorrow.”
“Me too…” Helena popped the offering into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “But I have to be back in Paris for a meeting on Wednesday.” She licked her fingers, her eyes suddenly alive with a mischievous sparkle. “You could always come with me.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, darling. Even if there were a seat available on the plane, which I doubt, I couldn’t afford the fare or the other expenses.”
“That’s no problem; there are always spare seats available for special passengers.” Helena shot my argument down in flames. “I’ll pay your fare and you wouldn’t have to spend a cent on accommodation either; my apartment is plenty big enough for two.”
“No… Much as I’d love to come with you, I can’t just take an extended vacation without proper notice. I’d lose my job for sure and then there’s this place.” My rented house was nothing much, a converted two-room shack but it was home, the only one I’d ever had—being in care from the time I was a baby meant I valued my home more than most.
“Are you saying that your job and home are more important than our happiness?” Helena glanced around the bedroom, a frown creasing her brow. “I don’t get it. What’s so special about living here?”
I shook my head. How could I possibly explain the importance of security to somebody who’d never had to worry about money or a roof over her head?
“Would it make you happier if I paid six months rent for you, and then we can take it from there?”
She had an answer for everything, and this particular one I liked less than all the others combined. “No! I don’t fancy being a kept woman.”
“Why are you turning me down?” She glared at me. “I thought we had something special here.”
“We have.” I hastened to placate her. “I want to come but—”
“Then come… Come live with me and be my love.”
“And we will all the pleasures prove.” I quoted back. How could I possibly refuse when she asked so nicely?
Helena laughed and clapped her hands. “Wow! You know Marlowe too. That’s something else we have in common.”
Was it enough? Could I stake everything I held dear on our joint taste in food, music and poetry, plus a couple of nights of hot sex?
“Come on, Dan, where’s your sense of adventure.”
Hell! She had me there. I could never resist a challenge.
“Will you help me pack?”
“Do you have to ask?” Helena grinned and we leapt off the bed sending our supper flying in our haste to get started.
By agreeing to leave with her, I’d burnt my bridges but what the heck. Saying good-bye would have broken my heart.
Summer 2008
We sat on the patio of our converted farmhouse enjoying a leisurely aperitif, as was our custom on most fine days, shaded from the strong sun by a canopy of purple bougainvillea. The Pyrénées, dividing France from Spain, were little more than a blue haze in the distance.
Strains of “Unchained Melody” drifted out onto the patio from the DVD player inside. Helena smiled and held out her hand. “May I have this dance?”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
I took her hand, helped her to stand, and then wrapped my arms around her. We swayed in time to the music as we’d done so many times in the past, then she gave a ragged sigh and her head rested against my shoulder.
My heart missed a beat. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye, it was too soon—it would always be too soon. I helped her back into the chair, stroked her hair, and kissed her lips.
What better way to celebrate fifty years of love and devotion than with a last dance?
ALL IN
Radclyffe
Dr. Saxon Sinclair contemplated her scotch rocks and watched the third man in five minutes try to pick up the blonde sitting opposite her at the horseshoe-shaped bar that occupied one corner of the Palace casino lounge. She didn’t ordinarily spend her nights in a bar, at least she hadn’t for the last five years. But she couldn’t sleep and her suite felt claustrophobic. She wondered briefly if the blonde, a fellow trauma surgeon she’d seen at the meeting just that morning, was having similar difficulties. The woman obviously wasn’t there to find company for the night, because she quickly dispatched anyone who seemed to be interested. It was possible, Sax supposed, that she and the blonde were both sitting alone at three in the morning for exactly the same reason. A kind of loneliness that went deeper than any physical diversion could assuage.
“No, really, I’d rather just sit here and relax.” The blonde’s low, musical voice carried surprisingly well despite the cacophony of bells and whistles and constant rumble of voices coming from the gaming floor just beyond the lounge.
Sax narrowed her eyes as a heavyset middle-aged man in an expensive suit put his arm around the blonde’s shoulders and leaned down to say something else, crowding her at the same time as he made it difficult for her to move away. Again, she murmured no and shook her head, her expression one of forced pleasantness. Sax imagined the woman was trying to avoid a scene. She knew the man, another surgeon. She had met his wife earlier that week at one of the trauma conference social functions that she hadn’t been able to get out of, and remembered him mentioning that his son was a surgical resident somewhere in California. When the blonde signaled no for the third time, Sax felt a surge of anger that brought her to her feet. A woman shouldn’t have to say no even once just because she was sitting alone at a bar. She certainly shouldn’t have to say no three times. Just as Sax took a step forward, one of the Palace’s security guards, recognizable from her understated uniform of dark blazer, white shirt, and dark trousers, as well as by the name tag over her breast pocket and the radio receiver clipped to her ear, appeared as if
by magic and tapped the aggressive surgeon on the shoulder. Whatever she said brought a flush to the man’s face and he rapidly strode away. As Sax reclaimed her bar stool, she saw the guard murmur a word to the blonde, who fleetingly touched her arm, allowing her fingers to linger for just a moment on the sleeve of the blue blazer. Then the guard, too, disappeared. The exchange had been so brief, Sax doubted anyone would have noticed, but to her, the connection was unmistakable. Her chest tightened and she ached for just a simple touch, just a few seconds of feeling as if she weren’t hopelessly, helplessly adrift.
“Hey,” a deep voice said as a hand dropped heavily onto Sax’s shoulder. “I called your room and you didn’t answer. Listen, I have to go home.”
Sax glanced up at her friend and former resident, Quinn Maguire. Some people said they looked alike, but Sax couldn’t see it. They both had black hair and blue eyes, sure, but Quinn was an inch or so shorter and more muscular. And more importantly, Quinn always had an air of calm, steady focus about her that Sax rarely managed, especially lately. Right now though, Quinn appeared anything but calm—her cotton button-down collar shirt was rumpled and untucked, hanging out over her jeans. She wore loafers with no socks and had an expression Sax had never seen on her before. Panic.
“What’s the matter?” Sax asked.
“Nothing,” Quinn exclaimed. “Nothing. Honor called.” Quinn’s face widened into an enormous grin. “She’s in labor. Two weeks early. I gotta go. Sorry to leave you hanging with the panel tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Sax stood to give Quinn a quick squeeze on the arm. “Give Honor my love and call me with an update, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. I will.” Quinn turned to go, then looked back, her expression unexpectedly serious. “You’re okay, right?”
Sax worked up a smile. “Sure, I’m okay. Jesus, you think I can’t get through a twenty-minute presentation without you?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Quinn said quietly.
“I know what you meant.” Sax knew she sounded gruff, but it suddenly felt like she was pushing her words out through ground glass. “Just go, already.”
“You’ll call me too, with any news, right?”
Sax nodded.
“She’s okay, you know,” Quinn said.
“Yeah,” Sax said roughly. “Sure.”
Then Quinn was gone and Sax was alone again. Even the blonde was gone. She sat back down, drained her scotch, and signaled for another. Three weeks. She hadn’t heard from Jude in three weeks. It wasn’t unusual for her to go days, sometimes a week or even a little longer, without hearing from her, but this was the longest it had ever been. If she knew where she was, or even where to start looking, she would have flown to Iraq four days ago instead of Las Vegas. She knew where Jude had been eleven weeks earlier when she’d started out from Fallujah as one of three embedded journalists with a mobile division of the Second Marines. After that, Jude’s emails had been brief and sporadic and absent of any detail. After five years of being married to a documentary filmmaker, Sax recognized Jude’s attempts to play down just how bad whatever particular natural disaster or human horror she was investigating really was. She was used to Jude being gone, too, sometimes for weeks at a time. This time it was different. This time she felt their connection, which was always so strong no matter where in the world Jude was, grow thinner and thinner until she feared it had snapped. And as the ties to Jude slid through her fingers like so many infinitesimal grains of sand that she tried so desperately to hold in her closed fists, she watched the world around her fade to a gray unreality, as if she were watching life on the screen of an old black-and-white television. She knew Jude would be pissed at her for losing her grip, so she tried to pretend that life went on. She was at the damn conference, wasn’t she?
She rubbed the back of her neck, tired and so damn lost.
“Here, why don’t you let me do that?” a husky voice said from behind her as Sax’s hand was replaced by two smaller ones.
Sax gripped the rounded edges of the shiny black bar top with both hands, struggling for balance. Her head felt as if a bomb had burst inside it. Her voice came out barely a whisper. “Jude?”
“For your sake, it better be.” Jude’s breasts pressed against Sax’s back as she leaned down and kissed her just below her ear. “Because I’d find out otherwise, and you’d be dead meat, Sinclair.”
“How?”
“I saw Quinn grabbing a cab out front. She told me where you were.”
Sax hadn’t yet glanced behind her, too afraid to discover that she might be hallucinating. Still, when she reached back she grasped a warm hand, rougher than she remembered, but just as strong.
“No, I mean, how are you here?”
“Military transport. I got lucky and there was an extra seat at the last second. It was either get on the plane without calling you, or miss it altogether. I’ve been traveling about two days.”
Finally, Sax swiveled on the seat and faced her lover. Right before she left, Jude had cut her shoulder-length red hair short. It was shaggy and needed a cut now, falling just above her collar in thick waves. She wore a tan T-shirt and faded khaki camos, and even in the low light of the bar, Sax could tell her pale skin had tanned in the unrelenting desert sun. Clearly exhausted, Jude appeared wraithlike, and Sax saw the haunted expression her lover tried to hide with a welcoming smile.
“Hi, baby,” Jude Castle said, leaning in between Sax’s spread legs and slipping both arms around Sax’s neck. She kissed her firmly, but far too briefly, and then leaned back. “I know you hate these conferences, so I thought I’d drop in and distract you.”
“Working pretty good so far.” Sax rose and slid her arm around Jude’s waist. “Let’s head upstairs. You look a little tired.”
Jude laughed shortly. “I look like hell.” She frowned as they started to walk. “You look a little thin, too. And what are you doing up at almost four in the morning?”
“Hoping to get lucky,” Sax murmured, kissing Jude’s temple.
“Did you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Once upstairs, Sax stripped, lowered the room lights, and turned down the bed while Jude took a quick shower. When Jude walked naked out of the bathroom toweling her hair, Sax’s only thought was to get her into bed and hold her. Hold her where she could rest and be safe. Then she registered the scar on Jude’s abdomen, immediately assessing in her surgeon’s mind the barely healed wound. She was across the room in three long strides.
“What is this?” Sax demanded, unable to keep her fear from translating into anger. A seven-inch-long, angry red ridge wrapped around Jude’s left flank just below her ribs “You didn’t tell me you’d been injured.”
For a second, Jude seemed confused, then she reflexively covered the area with her hand. “God, I’m so tired I forgot about it. It wasn’t anything much. Just a glancing—”
Sax spun around and stalked to the far side of the room, which suddenly felt even smaller than it had hours before, when it held only her loneliness. Now there wasn’t enough space to contain her rage, but it wasn’t Jude she wanted to lash out at. With her back still turned, she snarled, “That’s a bullet wound. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know if the trajectory had been slightly different you’d be dead right now? Jesus Christ, how could you not tell me?”
“I knew you’d worry, and I knew I would be all right,” Jude said softly, suddenly right behind Sax. “Baby, you’re shaking.”
Sax pulled her shoulder away when Jude caressed her. “Don’t. Just…” Her hand was shaking as she swiped the tears that had come out of nowhere too fast for her to stop. Every lost and desolate moment of the last three weeks crashed down on her, and she had a soul-destroying image of what life would be if Jude had not come back. “I’m sorry. I can’t…just get in bed. You need to sleep.”
Jude wrapped her arms around Sax’s body from behind, pressing her breasts to Sax’s back and her cheek to Sax’s shoulder. “Th
at’s not what I need. That’s not what I traveled around the world for. Turn around.”
Sax had never been able to say no to Jude, and she couldn’t now either. But she didn’t want her to see what must be in her eyes. Desperation, and devastation. Not quite looking at her, Sax grasped Jude’s hand and led her to the bed. Then she drew her down and pulled the covers to their waists as they faced each other. Stroking wet strands of red hair back from Jude’s cheek, she whispered, “Close your eyes. Sleep will be good for you.”
“When I first got…hurt,” Jude said, her eyes wide and never leaving Sax’s, “the first thing I thought was that I was still alive, and there were others near me who weren’t. I was glad, glad it was them and not me, and part of me knew that was wrong.”
“No,” Sax said, the agony of imagining Jude wounded making her voice sound harsh. “There is no such thing as justice in war. You were lucky, and it’s okay to be glad.”
“And then for a while I didn’t have time to think at all.” As she went on, Jude caressed Sax’s face and Sax gently stroked Jude’s body, taking care not to disturb the freshly healed wound. “When I got my turn with the medic and he was stitching me up, I thought of all the times I’d filmed you doing the same thing. Saving lives. I missed you so much right then.”
“I would’ve come over there, if I’d known you were hurt.”
Jude smiled and traced her fingertips over Sax’s mouth. “I know. But I really wasn’t in danger. After a few days, I wasn’t even sore. It just looks bad.”
“You forget who I am,” Sax grumbled, capturing Jude’s hand and rubbing it against her cheek. “Don’t try to snow me.”
“Baby, I’ll never forget who you are.” Jude shifted closer, pressing her breasts to Sax’s and tilting her hips until their lower bodies melded. “I’m sorry you were scared.”