by Fiona Zedde
Rémi’s breath jerked in her chest. “Later. Take a message.”
“Umm—”
“You might want to take that,” Claudia murmured. “It could be important.” She pulled away, wiping at her lipstick.
Yvette glanced at them, making sure that Rémi was going to get the phone, then disappeared from the doorway.
“Don’t move,” Rémi said. She smoothed trembling fingers over Claudia’s thigh then reached for the phone near the bed.
“Kelia. This really isn’t a good time.”
Before her, Claudia’s eyelashes fluttered in surprise. Rémi turned away to pay better attention to her mother. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry I reacted badly the other day to the news about Yvette being with you.”
Even now, it was still a shock to hear her mother’s voice. Almost two years ago, the low words over the phone telling her Auguste was dead had rocked Rémi where she stood. Her brief stay in Maine during her father’s funeral hadn’t lessened the impact of the voice that had comforted her through childhood. The voice she’d relied on to keep her safe.
“I’m sorry too,” Rémi said. “I would have preferred another reaction. She’s too young to have your indifference.”
A flinching silence. “That’s not fair of you to say.”
“Life isn’t fair. Isn’t that what Auguste used to say? Sometimes you get what you want, but most times you get shit.”
“Don’t quote your father to me. The last thing I want to hear is one of his cynicisms.” Kelia’s voice bristled with impatience. Rémi imagined her leaning over the desk in the office, irritably brushing aside an innocent bit of paper, another one of those “to-do” lists that she was so fond of making. “The reason I called was to talk about Yvette. I agree that she needs to come home, but I don’t want her to come back to the way things were when she left.”
“Then change how you interact with her.”
“I’ve tried.” Kelia sighed. “She’s furious with me, and with your father, for the way things turned out with you.”
“Why, after all these years?”
“I don’t know. I—” Paper rustled in the background. “Please tell her that your life hasn’t been that bad. That you don’t hate us like she does.”
“I don’t want to lie to her.”
An explosive gasp came from the other end of the line. “Rémi!”
She waited.
“I took care of you. I made sure you didn’t starve. You were better off after I left than when I was with you down in that awful city.”
“Do you really think that?”
The silence spoke for itself.
“Listen, Kelia. I have to go. Yvette and I will talk and I’ll let you know how things go.” Before her mother could say anything, Rémi hung up the phone.
She breathed the tightness out of her chest then turned back to Claudia. “I think it’s safe to say that the mood has been broken.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She nibbled on the inside of her cheek. “Maybe.” Rémi glanced around her bed at the darkness, and Claudia stretched out like an engraved invitation in her bed. “I’m going to take a shower. Stay, please, until I get back.”
“Okay.”
After a quick shower, Rémi came back into the bedroom modestly dressed in a robe, toweling her hair dry, but Claudia wasn’t there. She grabbed her cell phone.
“I thought you were going to stay?” she asked when Claudia picked up.
“I was, but then I thought better of it.” A gentle rush of sound came through the line as if Claudia brushed her hand over her face. She lowered her voice. “You’re naked now.” Rémi didn’t bother to correct her. “I’m not ready to see you like that.”
“You saw me ‘like that’ earlier.” Rémi briskly moved the towel through her hair one last time then dropped it to the bed.
“But that was a surprise. The next time I want it to be on purpose and very intentional on both our parts.”
Rémi tongued her lower lip, paused reaching for her closet door. “I’m very much filled with intent right now.”
Claudia laughed outright. “Just come downstairs when you’re ready. Yvette and I are getting to know each other while you labor over your beauty regimen.”
So Claudia didn’t want to play. “You’re no fun.”
Downstairs she found them sitting around the kitchen island over a platter of fresh-cut vegetables and iced tea.
“Yvette is making me feel at home,” Claudia said, chewing on a sliver of red bell pepper. Her eyes lingered on Rémi. The faded jeans and vintage T-shirt advertising the virtues of cow roping. Her bare feet. The smile widened. “You look nice. I feel like I haven’t seen you in casual clothes since college. They suit you.” Then she blushed, looking sideways at Yvette as if she’d said something too intimate in front of a child.
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.” Rémi walked past her sister and lightly squeezed her shoulder. A breath of cool hit her as she opened the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of iced tea.
“Claudia was telling me that you two just started dating.”
Tea from the pitcher missed the cup and splashed over Rémi’s hand and the speckled granite surface of the kitchen island. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Yvette looked at them. “No offense, Claudia, but I didn’t think Rémi was the type to go out with older women.”
“No offense taken.”
Yvette fingered a slice of red pepper. “I’ve never met an older lesbian before.”
“Claudia isn’t—”
“Well now you have,” Claudia said.
Their eyes met over Yvette’s head, and Rémi swallowed in the face of Claudia’s certainty. This was going to be interesting.
Claudia left an hour later, but not before asking Rémi out to dinner. The older woman had smiled her pleasure when Rémi accepted her invitation, throwing a flirtatious wave as she sailed out the door.
Yvette bounced out of the kitchen. “Whoa! She is hot. Where did you find her?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Rémi grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat on the couch.
“I probably would. She looks so classy. What does she want with you?”
“My luscious body?” Rémi’s eyebrow rose, making the words a question.
“It looks like she wants more.” Yvette sat beside Rémi, knees curled under her chin, arms wrapped around her legs. Her nosy pose.
“You think so?” Rémi looked at the door as if she could still see Claudia standing there in her elegant white fitted capri pants and matching light jacket with the peeking lace camisole that made Rémi’s fingers long to wander.
“Duh.” Yvette rolled her eyes.
Chapter 14
One knock and she came in. Frosted hair gleaming even in the faint darkness, dressed in her university clothes that somehow in the dim light looked tighter. The white button-down shirt clung to her slim torso, the cuffs like razors below her wrists. Black pencil skirt. Black high heels. High, high heels.
“You’re in bed awfully late,” she murmured, her voice a low purr that Rémi almost had to sit up in bed to hear.
Under the white sheet she was naked. Nothing new since she rarely slept in clothes. But Claudia’s presence in her bedroom made her want to clutch the sheet to her chest like a Victorian virgin. She didn’t. Instead she adjusted the pillow under her head and turned on her side, allowing the white cotton to fall naturally at her waist. In the doorway, Claudia’s eyebrow rose.
“It is late,” Rémi agreed. “Are you going to discipline me for my laziness?”
“That’s an idea.” A smile cut across Claudia’s face.
She left the door open and came all the way into the bedroom. Her eyes seemed to miss nothing. Not the tightly drawn shades, or the way Rémi’s nipples tightened. Certainly not the clothes that Rémi had carelessly left on the floor last night before falling into bed. Claudia bent and picked up the bla
ck slacks, not taking her eyes off Rémi. She slowly pulled the black leather belt from its loops. The rasp of leather against cotton was loud in Rémi’s ears.
“Turn over. Onto your stomach.”
The whip of command in her voice instantly dried Rémi’s mouth. She stared at the other woman, disbelieving.
“Don’t make me say it again.”
Rémi turned over.
“You have a lovely ass.” Fabric whispered against flesh as she came closer. “I’ve always admired it. Don’t think I don’t notice how you flaunt it in front of me. In your slacks. Tight jeans. The way you cock it up in the air on your motorcycle.”
Claudia came closer until her low voice breathed against the back of Rémi’s neck. She flinched when she felt the other woman reach out. But it was only to rip the sheet, with the sound of a caress, from her body.
“Don’t tense up, love. I like it when you’re relaxed. Yes, like that. Now there’s my beautiful ass. Relax. I’m not going to do anything that you won’t enjoy.”
Rémi’s heart thudded heavily in her ears. Sweat prickled beneath her underarms, but the sheet under her breasts, belly, and thighs felt cool.
“You look perfect like this. This sumptuous body of yours tame and waiting for me to do whatever I please.”
Rémi felt Claudia’s gaze over every inch of her flesh, sending a prickling sensation over her back, ass, thighs. Even the soles of her feet tingled from the visual caress. As if she were staking a claim. A cool touch glided over her ass, trailing the dividing line between the cheeks, and she flinched.
Claudia chuckled. “And I haven’t even gotten started yet.”
The mattress dipped as she crouched next to Rémi. The skirt was pulled taut against her thighs, and from that position Rémi could smell the interested heat of Claudia’s pussy. The creeping wetness between her lower lips.
Leather whistled through the air. And only tapped at Rémi’s skin. Her calf responded to the unexpected gentleness with small hairs prickling up, wanting more. A breath of relief exploded from her mouth. It was nothing. But that nothing thought came too soon. The next slap of leather wasn’t so light. Nor was the next. Or the next after that. The leather against her calves, the backs of her legs. Her ass. The soles of her feet. Stinging heat and slap! The smell of the leather. An awareness of sweat, Claudia’s, as she wielded the leather with growing firmness, arm swinging over Rémi, biting pain into her back. Her shoulders. Her arms. Sweet heat burning over her skin. Slap! Her own hissing breath. Claudia’s deepening breathing.
Each stroke of the leather against her flesh brought heat seeping beneath Rémi’s skin. It sank into her muscles, which she felt rippling with arousal across her back. The thick mounds of her ass. Down into the skin, into her pussy. Her fingers clenched around the scrolled ironwork headboard. Between her legs, her clit throbbed. It pressed into the bed, a groaning, aching need, with each lash of the belt. Her pussy felt thick with wet.
The leather belt stopped.
“You’re such a good girl. Not moving. Not saying a word. I should have done this long before now.” Breath kissed the back of Rémi’s neck again. And she couldn’t help it. She really couldn’t. She pushed her aching clit into the mattress, hunting for relief.
“Don’t worry, darling. I’m not finished yet.”
The leather landed again. Pain began to fall down on her again. Slaps on top of slaps. Hurt on top of hurt. Her mind swam in it, then beyond to a place of glowing gold edges, a sharpening and dulling of sensation at once. Until all of Rémi’s body was a pulsing mass of heat, most of it focused between her thighs.
“Open your legs.”
Claudia’s fingers teased her dripping slit, and Rémi made the first sound. A gasp of near relief. Spreading her. Baring her hole to the cool air. Something thick, not fingers this time, probed at the entrance to her pussy. This was not something she wanted. Rémi’s mind squirmed away from the penetration but her cunt knew something she didn’t. It opened. Widened. Ass tilted up to receive whatever Claudia had to give.
“Good girl,” Claudia murmured and sank the dildo deep into Rémi.
It glided thickly into her, sliding inch by inch inside her tight pussy. The tightness was unfamiliar. She hadn’t felt such fullness in a long time. A long time. But it felt good. Especially with the fingers on her clit as the dildo moved wetly in and out. Fucking her. Stroking her deeply on the inside, pushing pleasure irrevocably into her body until a scream hovered at the back of her throat. Waiting.
“I know you want to make noise, my darling. I know you want to come.”
The dildo glided inside her. Massaging. Pressing. Fucking. The angle was perfect. Perfect.
“You have my permission.”
Rémi loosened her howl. Her body broke apart, abruptly. Shattering in painful, precious pieces all over the bed and Claudia’s hand. Her eyes flew open.
And Rémi woke up. She blinked at the ceiling, panting. Sweat dripped into her eyes and her mouth. Her pussy felt thick enough to burst. Between her legs was a still-dripping fountain that added to the wet spot under her ass. For the first time in her life, she had come in her sleep.
Chapter 15
This time she kept it light. No flirtation. This was no ridiculously romantic place where all she would be able to think about was creeping up under the table to nuzzle under Claudia’s skirt and staying there until the waiter brought the check. Claudia looked beautiful in black slacks and a pale blue silk blouse that shimmered over her breasts as she moved. Beyond the terrace where they sat, water lapped gracefully at the sand, winking in the silver and dark of the distant half-moon.
Despite her exhaustion from a long night at the club and a restless day of not-quite-sleep, Rémi was glad to be out. The dream from this morning lay heavily on her mind and between her legs, but she tried not to let it distract her. Be calm. Be cool. Claudia wanted to try this thing with them, and it probably wouldn’t get Rémi very far to invite her to a quiet corner so they could fuck each other’s brains out. She tried to think of the least sexy thing she knew of.
“Remember the other evening when I came to your barbeque?” Rémi cleared her throat.
The gold bangles on Claudia’s wrist tinkled as she reached for her chocolate martini and sipped. “How could I forget? You had some trouble with someone that night. That’s all you said about it.”
Rémi nodded then looked away from the face across the table, suddenly uncertain. She’d managed to push aside her worry about Anderson for so long. Did she really want to bring him up now? Her eyes floated around the room.
The restaurant, attached to a five-star hotel on Miami Beach, had a vague country club feel to it with its efficient but available looking waitstaff, cream and gold furnishings, and embossed napkins and cutlery. Muted conversation and the noise of sedately handled knives and forks rang through the nearly full restaurant. The food, Claudia had assured her earlier, was amazing.
Rémi faced Claudia again. “Yeah, there’s this guy, un cochon, trying to take away my business. That night before I came to see you, he threatened me.”
“Oh my god! Are you—is everything okay?” Claudia abandoned her drink and reached across the table for Rémi’s hand.
“Everything’s fine. There hasn’t been any sign of Anderson or his dirty tricks for weeks now.”
“Why don’t you call the police? I’m sure they could do something to protect you.”
Rémi shrugged. “I think his threat against me was just a bluff. Something to do. What he really wants is Gillespie’s, and there’s no restraining order I can take out for that.”
“That’s true.” Claudia’s voice trailed off, brow wrinkling in concern as she squeezed Rémi’s hand.
“I didn’t tell you this to worry you. Just to share. Understand?” Rémi lightly grasped her companion’s fingers, looked meaningfully into her eyes. “I can handle this asshole by myself.”
“Can you?” Claudia’s look was doubtful.
“Yes. I
just wanted to let you know what’s happening with me. Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person I can talk to about important things.”
Rémi realized that she had wanted to tell Claudia about this for days now. Her shoulders immediately felt lighter, as if she’d shrugged off some great weight.
“I’m glad that you trust me. Just promise if things get worse with this Anderson character, you’ll go to the authorities. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Rémi nodded and offered a smile. “I’ll make sure to get the professionals involved.”
Claudia pulled her hand away, frowning. “Why do I feel you’re just saying that so I can feel better?”
“I’m not.” Rémi’s drew the slender fingers back between hers, brushed their knuckles with her thumb, then her lips. “I’m not.”
A reluctant smile claimed Claudia’s mouth. She shook her head. The serious mood at their table collapsed into dust and blew away on the scented ocean breeze beyond the terrace.
“You’re just too good at this,” Claudia said, her lashes low as she watched Rémi.
“At what?”
“This.” She indicated her fingers still clasped in Rémi’s hand. The way she leaned in close on the table, chin propped up on her fist as if she didn’t want to miss a word of what would pass Rémi’s lips. “Have you seduced many virgins before?”
Rémi dipped her head to answer her question, then slowly released the fingers that had begun to scratch delicate hieroglyphics in her palm. This morning’s dream was beginning to come back to her again. “Seduced? I wouldn’t say that. But I’ve had my share.”
“I mean virgins to being with women, you know. Not to sex.”
Rémi loved it that Claudia didn’t lower her voice and duck her head as if they were talking about something dirty. “Like I said”—she smiled, allowing the tease to show—“I’ve had my share.”
Claudia took a sip of her martini, but not before Rémi saw her answering smile. There was still something surreal about being in this place with the woman she’d wanted for as long as she knew what want was.