Emily gives Delphine’s cunt a final stroke and then a farewell sort of pat. “This is the kind of submissive I dream of having,” she says. There’s no mistaking the desire stamped all over her face as she looks down at Delphine on the bed. “I could play with you for years and still want more, sweetheart. You’re the kind of doll a girl decides to marry.”
She bends down and gives Delphine a deep, searching kiss. Delphine finds herself chasing it as Emily pulls away, that last word like a hook in her chest.
Marry.
Of course she doesn’t want to marry Emily—she hardly knows her—but to have someone look at her naked body and not only want to fuck her, but marry her, keep her, love her, and display that love to the world . . .
She’s never felt this before, this shimmering blade of possibility. These reachable, beckoning futures where she’s desired and claimed.
Auden loved the girl he grew up with. Rebecca enjoys having her around for sex and companionship. But someone looking at the woman she is now and saying mine forever—it would be incredible. Heady. If it were even an ounce of what she’s feeling now in the wake of Emily’s words, it would be worth dying for.
“Pet,” Rebecca says after Emily’s gone. “Do you want to keep going?”
“Yes,” Delphine answers.
There’s a ferocious glimmer in Rebecca’s eyes. Maybe she didn’t like that Emily took such liberties with her. Maybe she’s jealous of the kiss. But she can’t really regret either thing when Rebecca bends down and gives one of Delphine’s nipples a hard suck.
And when she looks up at Delphine, Delphine sees in her face the same desperation she saw all those weeks ago before the gala. A look like she’s about to fly apart atom by trembling atom if she doesn’t devour Delphine right now.
“Anything you want,” she whispers. “Anything. You can do it to me.”
Rebecca needs no further invitation, she’s already mounting the bed and crawling over Delphine. Long fingers find her hair, Rebecca’s jacket moves over her tits and stomach in a whisper of leather and zipper teeth, and then Rebecca settles her pelvis against Delphine’s. The long ridge of her cock lines up with Delphine’s sex, and she gives a soft, ragged groan.
“Pretty pet,” Rebecca murmurs, kissing Delphine with quick, fierce kisses. “Spoiled kitten.”
“Fuck me,” Delphine blurts, and then bites her lip. It’s not her place to demand things, not when they’re in a scene, but it feels so good to have Rebecca there, it feels better than good. For a moment, she feels like a teenager, horny and innocent, just chasing what feels delicious.
And Rebecca’s cock nudging at her pussy feels better than delicious. It feels like she’s being kissed on every nerve ending. It feels like she’s being turned inside out.
Rebecca meets her gaze, and Delphine sees she’s too aroused to argue. “Say your safeword if it gets to be too much,” she says, and then her hand drops down to her fly. One-handed, she frees the pink length and adjusts the harness so the shaft can jut out at the angle she wants.
The sight of the cock pushing through Rebecca’s jeans has Delphine’s toes curling. And when Rebecca fists it to drag it through Delphine’s slick furrow, Delphine thinks she might die. She never thought—she didn’t know—how can something that gets her so worked up have been a secret to herself? How did she not know how badly she would want this? How hard she would pant for it?
“Ready,” Rebecca murmurs, and Delphine can’t tell if it’s a question or just Rebecca talking to herself like she does sometimes when she’s really worked up, and then she starts to push in.
The pressure of it bows Delphine’s back, pressing her stomach and tits to the leather-clad woman above her. Rebecca dips her head to kiss Delphine on the lips, on the soft skin between her breasts, on the pebbled flesh of her areolae, back and forth between them until Delphine is wordless, mindless, trying to spread her legs even farther apart, and failing because her ankles are still cuffed to the bed.
“That’s it,” Rebecca says with a smoldering look. She gives Delphine’s nipple a wet, sloppy kiss, her hips starting to churn faster and faster between Delphine’s thighs. “That’s it, sweet kitten. Do it for me. Feel it for me.”
The pressure—it’s so much more than usual, so much deeper—but it’s not pain, not quite. Delphine’s not sure how it feels, except that every second when she thinks ouch is matched by a following second when she thinks ooh.
Rebecca reaches down to press a firm thumb against Delphine’s clit. “How is it?” she whispers, smiling again as she watches Delphine’s head thrash slowly from side to side. “Good?”
“Yes but—I think, oh God, I think I might need to wee—”
“You won’t,” Rebecca soothes. Her dick doesn’t stop, her thumb doesn’t stop. Everything below Delphine’s navel feels strung so tight that she’s almost scared she’ll snap in half. “I promise.”
“But—”
“Look down, pet. Look at what I’m doing to you.”
She looks down. Over the swell of her stomach she can see the dick moving in and out, shining and slick. She can see how depraved this looks, her spread naked and wanton for a Mistress’s taking, and she can see how much Rebecca likes it. She can see the breathless part of Rebecca’s mouth, the quivering clench of the lean muscles in her belly as she thrusts. And Rebecca is fucking her so hard that one high heel falls away from her foot and clatters to the ground, and she keeps going, keeps fucking with that relentless, insatiable cock.
And her eyes . . . Delphine doesn’t think she’s ever seen eyes like this. Dark as onyx in the low club light, molten as they pore over her. Those eyes are promising so much right now, and Delphine lets herself imagine those promises are real as the pressure between her legs resolves into a rolling, thundering tide and sweeps her out to sea.
“Sweet kitten,” Rebecca says hoarsely, watching Delphine whimper and arch against the advancing pleasure. “Just let it happen. Let it, let it—”
The pleasure breaks, and Delphine’s scream reverberates up to the girders. It takes hold of her—cunt, thighs, belly—pulling everything into its toothy, delirious grip and shaking her in it, like a cat with a toy. She feels at its mercy, she has no choice but to succumb to the sharpness of it and the strength of it, and she thinks she could laugh with joy even as she’s still screaming like she’s being mauled alive.
Rebecca doesn’t let up, she ruts into Delphine until Delphine sinks back into the bed, limp and dizzy, her temples wet with tears she didn’t even realize she’d cried.
“There, there, darling pet,” Rebecca’s murmuring to her, kissing the tears away. There’s some hurried wriggling—Rebecca’s pulling her jeans down past her backside, down to her knees, and Delphine thinks of horny teenagers again, so desperate to fuck they do it in the backseats of cars, in night-shadowed parks, and behind school buildings. And indeed, Rebecca is desperate now—she unfastens the harness until it’s slipped down to her knees and then fumbles with the dildo until it’s free of its moorings. Still wet with Delphine, the dildo slides into Rebecca easily and she holds it in place with her left hand as her right finds her clit and strokes.
It takes less than a minute. A laughing shiver moves through her, and she rides the toy as eagerly as she rode Delphine just a second ago, the leather of her jacket creaking and her thighs tensing and her breath coming in short, happy pants.
Seeing Rebecca come is better than anything. Better than Prosecco, better than a new tube of lipstick still perfectly curved and pointed, better than a good bra, a swimsuit that fits, waking up with good light and clear skin. It’s better even than coming herself.
Spent and breathless, Rebecca falls to her side next to Delphine and slowly pulls the toy free.
Delphine can’t help but enjoy the moment. Rebecca so rarely cuddles, and even when it does happen, it’s usually when she thinks Delphine is asleep.
“That was proper good,” Rebecca says, kissing Delphine’s shoulder. Her hand rests on Delphi
ne’s belly and it’s still wet from her climax.
“Brilliant,” Delphine agrees. Rebecca kisses her shoulder again, and then nuzzles her neck, and Delphine thinks she couldn’t be happier, that life couldn’t be better.
“You could do this more, you know,” Delphine says without thinking.
“Fuck you with my dick? Yes, please.”
“No,” Delphine laughs. “The snuggling. The nuzzling. I like being nuzzled.”
Rebecca sits up with a sigh, bending over her lap to work the toy cock out of its harness. “I’m not that person, Delph. You know that.”
Auden was.
Emily might be.
The disloyal thoughts rip through her so fast she can’t stop them. She blinks up at the ceiling. “Do you think—could you be that person?”
Rebecca’s silence stretches into eternity, and then she asks, carefully, “Do you want me to be?”
Delphine doesn’t know. She wants her to be Rebecca, no one else. She also doesn’t know how much longer she can love someone who doesn’t love her back.
Toy cock freed, Rebecca stands up and zips up her jeans. She sticks the toy in her back pocket while she sets to work freeing Delphine’s wrists and ankles from the cuffs. She looks like a rebel from the 1950s—jeans, leather jacket, moody scowl—but instead of a comb in her back pocket, she has a dildo. A random, demented part of Delphine’s brain thinks it would make a hilarious Instagram story.
“I’m not asking you to love me,” Delphine finally says, after she’s completely freed. Rebecca handed her a glass bottle of water and then retreated to the corner, where she’s sitting on a spanking bench and putting her fallen shoe back on her foot. At the word love, she lifts her head, like a deer scenting a wolf.
“Delph . . .”
“I just—I don’t want to be the fat girl you boff and then nothing else. Sometimes I’m scared that I’m like a novelty for you, just another kind of girl on the checklist, and that you’re already sick of me, and I know even just saying this out loud is going to upset you, but I can’t help it. I have to know—could you ever love me?”
Rebecca’s eyes are no longer hot. They are cold. So very cold.
“This is the scene talking,” she says, standing up. “Hormones. You’ll feel better in an hour or so.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Delph, enough.”
Delphine stands up too and ducks quickly for her clothes before Rebecca can see her face. She doesn’t want Rebecca to see her cry. Not these kinds of tears at least, the unsexy kind.
Rebecca seems to realize that her tone was too sharp and walks over to her submissive. “Pet, look—”
“It’s fine,” Delphine says. Her hair is a curtain around her face as she scoops her things off the floor. She reminds herself that she chose this with her eyes wide open. She chose the woman who used to have a new submissive every night.
She wanted to be easy, right? Why can’t she just be easy?
Be easy.
“It’s fine,” Delphine says again, keeping her voice lifted and as cheery as she can. She straightens up and tries for a smile. “We should probably get back to the house though. The funeral is so early in the morning.”
Rebecca takes a step toward her. Stops. “Do you—do you want help getting dressed?”
“Actually,” Delphine says, her throat already clenching shut and her eyes burning. Be easy, be easy. “Maybe you could ask Emily what we need to do to clean up? Just to hasten our exit?”
Rebecca is a good Domme, and so Delphine can tell she’s reluctant to leave. But she’s too polite—and maybe too relieved—to fight Delphine on this. With a nod, she pulls the curtain aside and steps outside their stall. And the minute she leaves, Delphine sinks down to the floor and cries, alone and as silently as she possibly can.
Midsummer
Rebecca
She’s not really paying attention to the funeral until her dad walks in.
Until that moment, it’s a standard Catholic service as far as she can make out. Lots of white people standing in silence, sitting in silence, kneeling in silence, lots of droning hymns and restrained chants. But the priest keeps it moving at a steady clip—enough so that Rebecca imagines they’ll be done in under an hour—and there is no collection plate passed around, so the situation is mostly bearable. The worst part is how much she wants to touch Delphine, how much she needs to, and can’t. She doesn’t care one jot about offending the priest; she spent enough weeks in Accra being dragged to church and listening to preachers rail against homosexuality before going home to their extramarital mistresses that she’s lost all fucks to give when it comes to protecting the sensibilities of holy men.
But she doesn’t know this place, and if she doesn’t know it, she can’t be sure Delphine will be safe. And that, more than her own safety, keeps her hands cautiously wrapped around the hymnal, even as they itch to find Delphine and pull her close.
It’s after Proserpina gets to the lectern and begins reading, that Rebecca hears the door to the sanctuary open, in the quiet way of someone trying to sneak in unnoticed. And they would have gone unnoticed too, but Proserpina pauses in her reading of Psalm 121—
I lift my eyes to the hills . . .
From where will my help come?—
And then looks over at Rebecca, eyes wide. Rebecca turns and looks over her shoulder herself, and her hands go loose around the hymnal.
Samson Quartey is here. In Kansas.
And she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it has nothing to do with her.
The potluck after the service is subdued and soulless. There’s not much Rebecca misses about Ghanaian church, but she finds she misses the funerals. The wailers, the extravagant coffins, the drinking—there’s something visceral about it, like it turns grief into something that can be seen and heard and tasted. But there’s no taste to this, no sound.
The grief here is wet cement. It sits heavy in the room, it pulls at everyone’s shoes, and they all do their best to walk around it, to pretend it’s not there. No one says Adelina’s name. No one is raising toasts to her, crying for her. In fact, Poe and her father are doing their very best not to cry, their very best to keep a polite, unemotional facade.
Unemotional! At a funeral.
Rebecca is the least emotional person in the world, and even she knows a funeral is a time for feelings.
“Why are you making a face?” Saint asks, tipping a bottle of beer to his lips. He’s the only one drinking except for Poe, who mutely accepted a glass of whisky Auden had sourced from somewhere, and Delphine, who is chatting with Becket and Emily Genovese near the door. The way Emily keeps looking at Delphine—like Delphine is her future ex-wife—is also making Rebecca feel very sour.
Rebecca immediately stops making the face. “I’m not making a face.”
“You were,” Saint says. “But it was a subtle one. I think only your friends would be able to tell, and maybe your dad.”
Her dad. Here.
Jesus Lord, as her mother would say.
“I didn’t know he was going to come.”
“He and David Markham seem friendly.”
She looks over at her supposed friend. “I’m only just starting to like you. Tread lightly.”
His eyes smile at that, even if his mouth doesn’t quite. He’s wearing a slightly nicer pair of jeans and a black button-up shirt undoubtedly borrowed from Auden. Same boots as usual. “I think it’s nice.”
Rebecca looks across the room, to where her father and David stand talking in low voices to one another. They haven’t done anything remotely inappropriate in the context of the funeral—no embrace, no hands touching, nothing except for long looks and exclusive conversation—but it’s written all over them. It was written on David’s face when the funeral ended and he finally turned to see Samson there. Twelve years of longing. A love that didn’t die, even when the people around it did.
Is that nice?
She doesn’t actually know the answ
er. Because seeing her dad’s eyes bright and animated for David Markham . . . seeing the way his body is angled toward him, the way he keeps shoving his hand in his suit pocket, as if he has to keep himself from reaching for his former lover . . .
It should be nice, it should be sweet.
Instead, Rebecca is remembering every hard thing there is to remember about her parents’ marriage, about her father, about her mother, about being a bisexual teenager locked in a flat with an unfeeling parent who never made her feel good enough.
Instead, she feels bitter.
Why does he get to be in love? After all these years of treating love like an invasive species. A tulip tree with branches covered in beautiful lies?
Her phone buzzes in the pocket of her black jumpsuit, and she pulls it out and sighs at the screen.
“Your mother again?” Saint asks. Her mother has been calling since last night.
Rebecca lets it go to voicemail, as she has been for the last twelve hours, and nods. Then grabs Saint’s beer from him and takes a drink. “They’re still married, you know,” Rebecca says and passes the beer back. “They’ve lived apart since I was eight, and yet . . . I don’t know.”
Saint isn’t like Poe—he doesn’t push for answers, not really. He just dips his chin in acknowledgement. And for some reason, it makes Rebecca open up more.
“It’s not common back home. Divorce. It can happen, it can be done, and if Daddy ever hit Ma, Ma’s family would be the first to help her pack up her things—but divorce for the reason of not loving each other anymore? For not being compatible? Even for infidelity on the husband’s part? It’s rare. There’d be fallout. She’d have to deal with the whispers, and the faces—”
“The faces?” Saint asks.
“The faces,” Rebecca emphasizes. “The faces they’ll make when she goes to visit his family, and she will have to keep visiting his family. The faces her own family might make—the aunties especially, they will have all the faces whenever she walks into a room. And it will be like that for years.”
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 24