by Fiona Zedde
“There’s someone who wants to fuck you,” Rémi breathed to Claudia. “Should I let him?”
Her lover jumped at the pronoun, the motion of her mouth stopping for a naked moment. Then she nodded.
Etienne came closer, holding the long length of his dick in hands, stroking himself to Claudia’s dark-clad form crouched between Rémi’s legs. He was someone Rémi had shared with in the past and didn’t mind too much. He was bi, trans, and very good. Her nostrils flared.
Rémi looked up at Etienne and nodded too. Quickly, he rolled on a condom and came toward Claudia.
“She likes to have her pussy eaten first. Do it slow. And then you can fuck her.” Her voice rumbled deeply in her chest.
“Can we play too?” Two of the girls from the floor stood close, their naked bodies scented with desire and cum.
Her eyes moved over them. “Yes.”
On either side of Rémi, they immediately leaned down to take her nipples in their hot mouths. Claudia ate her pussy with a rhythmic ease, but Rémi could sense the tension in her, a vibrating readiness, a waiting as Etienne settled in on his knees behind her. Rémi felt when his mouth touched Claudia. Her lover’s mouth froze on her for a moment, then opened wider. Soft sounds of pleasure pulsed against Rémi as the tongue sought deeper entrance and the hands tightened on her thighs.
“Yes,” Rémi murmured, watching the pale head move between her thighs. “That’s good. Very good. You really know what you’re do—” A gasp sucked away the rest of her words.
The girls’ mouths on her breasts, Claudia ravenously eating her pussy, combined to push Rémi closer and closer to the edge, but she forced herself under control. One steadying breath. Then two. When the fingers began to sink even deeper into her skin, Rémi signaled Etienne with a movement of her head. He glided up and sank himself smoothly into Claudia’s cunt. Her lover groaned against her flesh. His entrance into Claudia was like the click of the final piece of a puzzle.
Etienne’s long hair brushed against his shoulders as he fucked Claudia, slowly, then built to a sawing rhythm that threw her mouth hard against Rémi’s skin, raising groans and grunts from both women’s mouths.
“Isn’t she sweet, Etienne?” Rémi murmured as Claudia lapped at her pussy, as the girls sucked at her breasts and fucked themselves with their fingers. Their hair brushed over Rémi’s chest. Thick dreads tumbled over her chest as the long-haired one jerked from the force of her own attentions.
“Yes,” he said, clearly almost beyond speech. “So tight. So fresh.” His hands gripped Claudia’s hips. His thighs slapped against her ass. “She’s so hot inside. She’s burning me up.” The muscles in his belly clenched as he worked at pleasing Claudia. “Sweet,” he hissed past clenched teeth. “She’s sweet.”
“Oh yes.” A gasp tore itself from Rémi’s throat.
A scream of release muffled itself in Rémi’s pussy. Behind Claudia, Etienne gave a hoarse shout, his face ugly with orgasm. After too many panting moments, he pulled limply from her, stripped off the condom, and stumbled back to lean his forehead against the wall next to his redheaded friend. She had finished too, fingers still in her unzipped jeans, eyes watching. Claudia panted, the breath rushing from her parted lips, hands quivering on Rémi’s thighs. When she leaned in again to finish what she started, Rémi put a hand in her hair, shook her head. Her body was a tightly coiled spring. It wanted to come. But not this way.
With an equally gentle hand, she pushed away the women nibbling on her breasts. A hiss cleared her teeth. Tomorrow, she knew, her nipples would be sore from such concentrated attention. The women looked at her askance, then shrugged, going off to rejoin their friend on the rug.
Claudia looked up at her, eyes wide and unfocused, mouth wet with Rémi’s juices. Rémi stroked her lover’s jaw with her thumb, feeling the slight tremor in the muscles beneath her palm.
“How do you feel?”
When she didn’t get an answer, Rémi reached down to pull Claudia’s pants back up and her lover into her lap. She asked the question again, and instead of answering, Claudia crawled closer to rest her cheek against Rémi’s chest. Tears streaked from between tightly closed eyelids, staining soft cheeks, quaking lips.
“I’m sorry,” Rémi whispered, shutting out the moans of the three women fucking on the floor. Their noises now seemed obscene to her. Intrusive. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
But Claudia shook her head. “I’m not sorry for this,” she finally said.
Her tears continued to rain down. They stained Rémi’s shirt and burned her skin like acid.
They slipped out of Odette’s just before midnight, barely avoiding being locked in the oceanside pleasure palace for the night. Claudia held tightly to Rémi’s back as they rode back up Highway 1 toward the Miami Beach condo. Aside from those few words spoken in the comfort of Rémi’s arms, Claudia had said nothing else, only clutched at Rémi as if she would never let go.
Once they got into the condo, she headed straight upstairs for the bedroom. By the time Rémi had put aside her jacket and helmet to join her, Claudia lay naked against the sheets, her pale hair and dark body only a vague impression of beauty in the womb-like darkness of the room.
“Thank you for taking me there tonight.”
The words stopped Rémi’s silent and penitent progress across the hardwood. Her jackhammer heartbeat seemed to slow. “You don’t hate me for making you go through that?”
A hiss of surprise came from the bed. “No. Never that.” The sheets rustled as Claudia moved against them. “Come to bed. I want to feel you.”
Rémi quickly discarded her clothes and climbed into the bed, slipping close to her lover until they lay breast to breast, belly to belly, feet tangled together. The pulse thundered in her throat.
“What you did for me tonight was perfect. I wanted to be desired and I was. I needed to feel safe and you gave me that.” Claudia shivered as if remembering the sensations from Odette’s. “It’s a form of therapy that I highly recommend.” Rémi felt more than saw her smile in the darkness.
“I’m glad because I wouldn’t—I didn’t want to do anything that you weren’t ready for. Anything that you’d regret.”
“The only thing I regret is that I let Warrick’s mean-spirited words affect me that much.” Claudia’s sigh fluttered against Rémi’s throat. Her fingers clutched. “I still have some insecurities about loving you. He found them easily.”
No, don’t be insecure. This was meant to be. She wanted to say those words and wipe all her lover’s fears away. She wanted to have the other woman dive courageously into their relationship and not worry about what others would think or how they would react. But from the conversation she’d overheard between Claudia and her friend Eden, Rémi knew that wasn’t possible. She smoothed her fingers through Claudia’s pale hair and down the back of her neck.
She had to ask. “Is there anything I can do to make those insecurities go away?”
“Just keep loving me. That’s all I need right now.”
“I can.” Rémi kissed the warm mouth, the gentle slope of her jaw. “I will.” The body beneath her hands sighed into her embrace and fingers tightened at the back of her neck. “I do.”
The sheets whispered languidly as their flesh came together. In the darkness, velvety sighs began, gentle notes of passion rose and fell, continuing like music until the sun rose, finally, and burned the shadows away.
Chapter 35
“I like Rémi,” Claudia said, playing with the straw in her glass of clear liquid. Probably a gin and tonic.
Eden looked at her from across the table, apparently waiting.
“And not as a friend, or Dez’s playmate.”
Staring at the monitor with the framed images of the two women, Rémi fidgeted. The sudden silence between the two friends made her hand tense against the desk. Claudia looked suddenly miserable, while her friend’s mouth hung open in shock.
“Are you joking?” Eden finally asked.
“No, I’m not. I’m being honest.” Whatever she saw in her friend’s face made Claudia look down, fiddle with a curl of calamari on her plate before looking up again. “From the last time we talked, it seemed you already knew. I don’t—I don’t know why you’re acting like this now.”
“Then it was my paranoid delusions of you getting ass from someone besides yourself. Now, this is—” Eden made a vague gesture in the air, her fingers shaking like agitated leaves as she struggled for the right words.
“She’s over twenty-one,” Claudia said quietly.
“But you knew her when she was in high school. You practically babysat her.” Eden sat back in her chair. “And she is a she!”
“Thanks for stating the obvious, Eden, because you know none of these things occurred to me before.”
“Claudia, even you have to admit this is strange.”
“It is unusual. But she makes me happy and some days I feel like she’s everything I ever wanted.”
Eden sipped her apple martini, wedding rings clicking against the glass.
“There was a time when I would have been ashamed to admit my feelings for Rémi.”
“You mean like last month when I asked if you were involved with her?”
Claudia looked down at her plate again, but this time a small smile played with her mouth. “Then I wasn’t ready to tell you. Now, I am.”
Rémi pressed the mute button on the remote control, suppressing the voices at Claudia and Eden’s table, but she kept the camera focused there, watching Claudia’s mouth move, her friend’s eventual nod of acceptance, the waiter bringing more drinks as the hours wore on. She told Eden the truth. Rémi leaned back in her chair, feeling the tension loosen in her chest. Claudia was really ready to be with her. On the monitor, Claudia laughed at something Eden said. Not her usual unrestrained laughter, but still a sign that said she was all right. And that everything else would be.
Whistling beneath her breath, Rémi switched on her desk lamp in her darkening office and turned her attention to the new sample menu that Rochelle had left for her the day before.
Chapter 36
“So, how was your trip up north to see the family? Same as last time?” Sage reached for another beer in the fridge and swung back to face Rémi.
At the bar, Rémi leaned onto her forearms and sipped her beer. “Not quite the same. Better.” The satisfaction in that truth made her smile.
“That’s surprising. But cool.”
“I know, right?”
“Hey, handsome!” Nuria’s throaty voice joined them in the kitchen before she did. Barely covered in a tight white tube dress, she radiated contentment that Rémi hadn’t seen in a while.
“Who are you fucking? You look too good for this all to be from your own natural well-being.”
“Oh, thanks.” Nuria’s sarcasm didn’t faze Sage one bit. The muscular Jamaican leaned closer as if Nuria had agreed to tell who her latest fling was.
“I’m not telling you a damn thing.” She kissed Rémi lightly on the mouth. “I brought you a present from my birthday party.”
“Shouldn’t it go the other way around?”
“You already gave me prezzies, I’m just returning the favor.” She slid a DVD case on the bar. “Watch it at your leisure.” She winked.
“Is it something to be enjoyed alone?”
“Or with a friend. Depends on what you’re into these days.”
“You know me,” Rémi murmured, waggling her eyebrows. “I’m into everything.”
“Whatever!” Nuria laughed, labret stud flashing under the lights.
She paused at the counter, taking in the various platters of hors d’oeuvres that the caterer had dropped off barely half an hour before. Phillida chose that moment to come into the kitchen from her trip on the roof to soak solo in the Jacuzzi. Her shapely form in a red bikini and matching swim cap attracted her girlfriend’s admiring wolf whistle.
Nuria rolled her eyes. “Hey, where are the casabes?” She plucked a sliver of fried ripe plantain from the platter and bit into it.
Rémi hopped down from the barstool to put her empty beer bottle in the recycling bin under the sink. “They didn’t have cassava anything at that place. I found out too late. Sorry.”
“No problem.” Nuria flashed a smile. “At least you tried.”
“I do try to take care of my girls.” As Rémi passed by the marble-topped kitchen island for the living room, she slapped Nuria’s white-clad ass.
Her friend wiggled her pert backside and laughed. “Yes you do, baby.”
Rémi smiled. It felt good to have her friends at her side now. The week in Maine had laid her open in ways she never thought possible. And the trip with Claudia to the sex club.... She shook her head. Being with the girls rejuvenated her bruised soul, reminded her that even separate from Claudia, there were people out there who cared for her.
Nuria followed her into the living room, sitting close enough on the couch to tickle Rémi’s nose with her dark perfume. “You look distracted.” Nuria crossed her legs and draped a hand across her knee.
“Do I?” Rémi took her friend’s hand in hers, smoothed the long bones under dark pecan skin. “Maybe it’s because your intoxicating presence is just too close to me.”
“Bullshit. Even I’m not going to buy that load of caca.” Nuria’s hair tumbled around her shoulders as she shook her head and tugged her hand back. Rémi chuckled ruefully. She wasn’t about to lie to her friend. Not when she had so obviously given her so much support, so much love, even in the midst of her various crises.
“Having flashbacks. Missing someone.”
“You? Missing someone? It must have really been a good fuck.”
Leaning across the kitchen island, Sage teased Phillida with a cold shrimp, painting her lover’s mouth with the cocktail sauce then pulling the pink and white flesh away from her at the last minute, before her lips could claim them.
“It was. She is.”
“So you’re heading the way that Dez did, then? Happily ever after and all that?”
Rémi winced at her friend’s name. “It’s not going to be that easy.”
“It’s always that easy if that’s what makes you happy. The alternative is just too boring.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
The alternative to being with Claudia was misery. Rémi looked at Nuria, saw for the first time the light of real experience in her eyes, beyond the casual fucking and sometimes dangerous hedonism she invited into her life.
Nuria touched Rémi’s knee. “The last few weeks I’ve realized that you have to go after what you want. Even if it hurts.”
“Even if it hurts other people?”
“But would anyone really be hurt by your happiness? Or is it another emotion entirely they feel?”
Like pain. Rémi could feel the hurt already waiting just under the skin the way her desire for Claudia always sat. Waiting and never sated. She swallowed. Smiled. Nodded. “Who knows, really? Sometimes even we don’t know how we feel.”
Nuria made a sympathetic noise. “You must have it real bad, baby. If you weren’t so precious to me I’d invite you into my parlor and make you forget all about that other broad.”
Rémi laughed weakly. “Thanks. I think.”
Nuria patted her knee then stood up, walking toward the kitchen to join Phil and Sage’s game.
Although her friend didn’t understand it, Rémi was glad to not be able to forget about Claudia. The fact that the older woman still sang in her bones even now made her restless and glad. There had never been anyone else in that place. Never. Suddenly Rémi had to see her.
She got to her feet. “I uh . . . I have to go. Stay if you want, just lock up if you leave.”
“How are you going to step out on your own party?” Sage walked out of the kitchen, hands on her hips.
But Nuria only dipped her finger in the bowl of cocktail sauce and licked it. “Okay. Be careful on the road.”
Between Rémi’s late nights at the club and Claudia’s increased commitments at the university, they hadn’t seen each other much since the night at Odette’s. They’d only managed to spend a few nights together, but they spoke on the phone every day, several times a day. The night of abandon at the sex club had given Claudia the courage to call her ex-husband and curse him viciously for the things he’d said that drove her to Rémi’s arms in tears. Rémi had taken particular pleasure in lying in her lover’s bed and watching as Claudia paced naked, the phone pressed to her ear, as she told her ex-husband in no uncertain terms that he no longer had the right to interfere in or pass judgment on her life. Then she advised him to go fuck himself before slamming the cell phone shut. Their sex had been especially explosive that night, with Claudia riding Rémi to happy exhaustion until sunlight peeked past the curtains to flood over the rumpled bed and their sweat-soaked bodies.
“Did you know it was me or do you always answer the door in sexy outfits?” Rémi asked, smiling, when her lover appeared in the doorway.
Claudia grinned and tilted her pale head. The floor-length silk nightgown slithered over her skin. “I’m grading papers, so I need all the sexy I can get.”
“Care to share some of that sexy with me?”
“Of course.” The press of a warm mouth, bare of lipstick and sweet, licked an instant fire in Rémi.
She had come to Claudia’s door simply wanting to see her lover, but now she just wanted to come. Claudia’s nipples crested perfectly under the light blue silk. She turned and the rear view was no less inspiring. Hips swinging like a dinner bell. Rippling silk over the taut curves of her backside. The tide of long legs moving under the floor-length material as she walked away.