I love our hidden alcove that allows me to have the best of both worlds – Beth and the music.
I sigh and one of her hands moves up to caress the side of my breast. I am quickly turning into a throbbing pillar of wetness and want.
My hand finds Beth’s around my waist and I intertwine my fingers with hers. My other hand moves down to grip her thigh.
Beth moves her hand from my breast southwards. She slides her down and caresses my ass. She slips her hand under my skirt and realises I am going commando. She squeezes my bare butt not bothering to tamp down her excitement. I push my hips towards her. She runs her finger along my ass crack and pushes in to circle the puckered flesh around my anus. She applies a little pressure and she is in. Circling around inside, she is in up to her first knuckle and it is all fucking erotic. I moan again.
Betha raises her head from my neck. I turn towards her. She looks into my eyes with a question in hers. I nod mutely.
She kisses me as I spread my legs. She moves lower and she is fingering my pussy. Our shoe-balanced heights makes this an easy access and pleasurable for both of us.
I am getting uncontrollably wet. She enters me. First with one finger and then two of her fingers are inside me pumping slowly.
I throw my head back on her shoulder inviting her to my neck. She doesn’t disappoint.
Her fingers are moving a little harder.
I can’t help it…my hand moves from her thigh to my clit and I am rubbing myself.
I move her other arm from my waist to my breast.
We’re going at it with abandon now. EDM is not exactly sex music, but damn! If this isn’t fucking sexy. The music. The almost illicitness of the place.
I come hard.
Beth brings me down gently. I am breathing hard. Almost gasping. I look at her, my eyes shining. Hers are hooded with desire. We kiss. A glorious just-had-great-sex kiss. She starts pulling out of me.
“Stay,” I whisper. She raises her eyebrow but slides her fingers back inside me. She has her other arm around my waist again but positioned in such a way that her upper arm is pressing down my breast. I fall back rather bonelessly into her and continue playing with my clit. It feels erotic and sexily debauched and licentious.
Best. Birthday. Ever.
******
“Princess, will you come to New York on Saturday?” Beth has called me from work with barely contained excitement. She sounds beyond thrilled. Betha is not very demonstrative in her tones and body language. So for her to be sounding like this, it must be something massive.
She is going to New York for a company-wide meeting on Monday. All the heads of various departments will be there taking everyone else in the organisation through what they have done during the last six months and the next things that they are working on. I think this is such a great way to have everyone in the colossal organisation up to speed about the whole behemoth. This bi-annual meeting that they have must surely give a sense of connection to everyone.
It is like a huge extended family that meets and exchanges the minutiae of their lives with each other so that everyone is aware and involved.
The best part is that this is not limited to only products, the administrative departments, the support functions and other tertiary departments like graphics, training, accounts – everyone is a part of this meeting.
It’s like the organisation is sending a message that no part is either more or less important than any other. It is wonderful.
The meeting is going to last for five days, given the size of Translink, so she’ll be gone for the whole week. (I am already feeling unspeakably bereft at the thought).
Beth has had a breakthrough in her 3D recognition software. While it is not realised to the full potential that she is striving for, she has managed to create what she calls, a base version.
In the current version, she has created practically unbreakable locks. She has modified a fingerprint recognition gadget into something that actually matches DNA when the finger touches the sensor. This makes it way more sophisticated than any available. She had also enhanced it to include saliva matching. To keep the yuckiness out of repeated licks, the saliva matching part of the gadget is a small robotic arm that holds a disposable swab that automatically changes after every test. The arm has a methodology by which it will only take the swab from a person’s mouth. The third layer is a tiny blood sample. Much like the one used in glucometers, except that this one also maps DNA. The lock opens only when the DNA from all three tests match.
This technology gives a degree of security so far not achieved by any other means. Over a hundred and fifty governments worldwide and all government agencies of those countries have shifted to Beth’s locks. And this is just the beginning.
Translink has outpaced all its competitors by many leagues because of Beth’s latest work.
I am so bloody proud of her.
“Of course,” I answer her question without needing to think about it.
“Won’t you ask me why?” she is practically begging me to prod. There are these times when Bethy is adorably childlike. When she is dying to tell me something but wants me to ask. Wants me into leading her to say what she is bursting to tell me. It is so cute…and it gets my heart a little bit more each time she does it.
Now that I think about it, everything she is and that she does, gets my heart a little bit more. It is like I fall in love with her more and more every day and the more I love her, the more my capacity to love her increases. My heart seems to be expanding exponentially with love for her.
“Why do you want me to come to New York with you, Betha?” I ask, smiling into the receiver, making eye contact with the panda that Bethy has made for me and blowing a kiss back to the black-and-white piece of adorability when it blows one at me. I love you too my heart silently answers the love Betha is sending me via the kissing panda.
“Radhika has invited me for dinner on Saturday after the meeting concludes of Friday. She has asked me to get friends, family, partner…whoever I would like with an open invitation to bring as many people as I want. There is only one person I want with me.” Beth is telling me that I am her family and all the family that she really wants. That I am her world.
It is not really any different for me. If I could make the world my oyster, I am the kind of person who would always, always make my oyster the world.
It is the most beautiful feeling that the person I want to make my world feels exactly the same way about me. That she too wants to make only me her world.
I know this is a big…no huge…deal for Betha. It is a momentous occasion for her. She is totally in awe of Radhika and being invited to her house is a rare, rare thing. This is the first time Beth has been invited. I am as excited as Beth to meet this Radhika who is something of a legend even beyond just the business world.
******
Bethy is away for five days…the whole working week…and I am going completely crazy. I drown myself in work as much as I can so that it keeps me from thinking about her.
I literally feel that I am out of my skin and beside myself with missing her. I am restless, irritable and mopey – all at the same time.
When I speak to her each night and every morning, I know she is feeling much the same.
If either of us is going to be doing much travelling, the other assuredly needs to change their job so that we can be together because I don’t think this craving is going to abate anytime soon.
And I don’t want it to.
Though agnostic, I pray to all creation…to all universe…that it doesn’t.
I am perfectly willing to leave my job and follow her around to the ends of the earth just to be with her or even around her all the time.
Maybe I should seriously think of this one because Beth does travel frequently. Maybe I can be an independent analyst and take projects that I can handle with tele-commute. Maybe it can all work out. But these are just random possibilities churning in my head. They are distant thoughts born out o
f unbearable missing.
Though I am putting in all hours at work, I am not too productive. I have to go over everything I have done repeatedly. Each time I review my work I find mistakes that I have made. Many of them obvious mistakes. Many rookie errors.
It’s taking me almost three times the time it otherwise takes me. I have never been so inefficient. Thankfully, I review my work repeatedly before sending it forward so the only person wise to the stupid mistakes I am making is me.
I’ve built a solid reputation over the years and I don’t want that tarnished in any way. Plus, I’ve been in line for a promotion for about three years now, and it has so far eluded me. With my brilliant streak ever since Betha, there is no doubt that this year I’ll be made Senior Partner.
Honestly, I am not too sure about how I feel about this promotion which is almost a done deal. That I have been bypassed for three years rankles like hell.
I don’t think I’ll be particularly happy when I finally make it up the ladder. Women have purportedly made all sorts of strides in the world, but I feel those strides are merely baby steps. Women don’t make it into the top management easily.
And in the world of finance it is even worse. It is like your gender defines your abilities, not your mind.
In fact, it is frankly rather sickening to see the men licking ass, cutting others down, taking shortcuts, bonding over being buddies to get ahead and play all sorts of other politics. I hate politics.
Given my penchant for saying it as it is, I don’t even get politics. I know there are hidden jabs being made at me, but I never catch them because I am so oblivious.
This whole thing is a thorn on my side but I am not the kind who easily rocks the boat. I am assertive, but I don’t pick skirmishes…I take a stand only for real battles.
Also, I am not particularly ambitious. I have no great need to make it to the top in Franklin. I enjoy my work and that is enough for me. The hours are fine and the pay is plenty.
So, if I break it down and get to the bare bones, what really bothers me is the fact about this whole delay in my promotion is that my work, integrity and ethic are not acknowledged.
Acknowledgement – that is all I really seek, not scrambling up the corporate ladder. I am genuinely not a part of the rat race.
The only thing that truly matters to me is my partner. My love. The woman I will be seeing on Saturday…which is way too far.
I count days and hours to Saturday. Then I am counting minutes to my flight time.
I’m taking an early flight. Very early. I don’t sleep the night because I am so excited at the prospect of seeing Betha again. Of touching her. Of hearing her. Of feeling her.
I reach the airport at least an hour early because I cannot bear to not get moving any more. At the airport, I pace around restlessly. Crazy in love much?
And here I had myself believing that I wasn’t the head-over-heels kind of girl. I just needed the right person to trigger and let loose the romantic in me. It is a blessing that Bethy is the same way.
When I finally reach New York, Betha is waiting at the gate, looking as out-of-her mind with missing me as I have been feeling.
We don’t even wait to get out of the airport. We head straight for the restrooms and have the first taste of our reunion there. What a delicious taste that is!
When we reach the hotel, Betha goes at me like she is a starving person and I am the last and only morsel of food ever going to be available. She wrings me dry and after a nap we’re at it again. We collapse exhausted and twenty winks revive us.
We don’t leave bed the whole day…we don’t even eat. We only finally get up when it is time to start getting ready for dinner.
******
“Do I look okay?” I ask Beth. We are getting ready for dinner with Radhika and I am nervous. Bethy is even more nervous. Not only is Radhika her boss, Betha is also totally and completely drowned in admiration of the lady. After all, Radhika was the one who discovered and reached out to Beth.
Reeth is the founder of Translink, but has increasingly taken the back seat and for at least five years now, Radhika has been driving the company.
Radhika has taken Translink to new heights and it has far outpaced its competitors. She has led Translink to be the business version of ‘Eclipse is first and the rest nowhere’.
She is the kind of legend that other speak about in hushed, reverent whispers. Naturally, we are both nervous about spending the evening with such a luminary.
“So besides us, who will be there?” I ask fixing my earrings.
“Reeth will definitely be there. I don’t know who else,” she says, applying her mascara carefully.
“Are Radhika and Reeth together?”
“Married for eleven years. They have two daughters.”
“Really? Adopted?”
“No, Radhika is the birth mother.”
Huh? But she’s married to Reeth, right. And Reeth is a woman, right? Huh (again?
I must have looked confused. Beth eyes me affectionately. “Artificial insemination,” she says with amusement.
I blush a little at my naiveté. Of course. I can’t believe how bloody clueless and innocent I still am about the world of lesbianism. I think I only know everything about great sex. That too only after starting my absolutely rocking life with Betha. But I will learn everything else.
Beth looks resplendent in the suit I’d given her for her birthday. Her hair is down, loose and shining.
I have carefully chosen a sexed-up version of the proverbial little black dress from the new wardrobe that Bethy gave me for my birthday. This one is accessorised with subtle but noticeable gold jewellery. I’ve done up my hair into a French plait. We both have minimal, subdued make-up. We are posh…even if I say so myself. We look good enough to eat right now, but neither is in the mood.
Maybe a first between us.
I bring along a massive bouquet of a multitude of flowers and Beth brings a bottle of the finest vintage of Dom Perignon.
The door is opened by a butler. I mean I assume it is a butler, though he isn’t in the long-tailed butler suit with white gloves that P.G. Wodehouse would have us imagine all butlers in. He welcomes us in warmly and my eyes are arrested by an iridescent goddess walking towards us wearing a colourful sari with a sleeveless blouse, hair in a French bun. The sari is tied just below her navel. A sari definitely is the most sensuous and the most feminine of all clothes for women, I realise. This woman literally takes my breath away…but it is in a being awestruck at a magnificent act of nature way than in a lustful way. Her smile is a million splendid suns conveying warmth and happiness.
“Beth, welcome,” she says in a low voice that is all sensuousness, and hugs Betha.
Beth introduces me with the slightest stammer. “My girlfriend, Kat…Katrina Dali. Kat…Radhika.”
My girlfriend…this is the first time she has introduced me as such and I feel like I am the champagne – I’m bubbling so much inside. A smile lights me up…seriously, I don’t only smile with my mouth but I can feel my whole body smiling.
Radhika seems to catch on to the reason of my exuberance and a tiny glimmer enters her eyes as she greets me. “Kat…delighted to meet you,” she turns the full wattage of her smile on me and I am sure I have gained a couple of shades of tan under it.
She hands over the flowers and champagne to the butler speaking something rapidly in a language I don’t know. “Hindi,” Beth supplies softly in an undertone.
Radhika leads us through the massive house into a room that must surely be their informal living room. It is done up with a distinct Indian vibe. It is colourful, but not loud. The furniture is covered in lovely raw silk of various colours and different prints. There are all these prints and sculptures adorning the room. It is vibrant and alive.
Reeth is in the room. She stands up to greet us when we enter. She cannot be more different from Radhika. She is surely quite a bit older than her wife, wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt. Her shoulder
length hair is casually open. But her personality is compellingly charismatic.
“Beth, you’ve come just in time,” she says with a smile, “Ika was just massacring me at carrom,” she sends a look of such affectionate adoration towards Radhika that Radhika blushes and I actually feel goosebumps on my arms.
And just like that, with that one sentence of welcome, Reeth has drawn us into a world of informal friendliness and made us a part of the moment completely bypassing any possible awkwardness.
“What is carrom?” I blurt out. Caught in a weird mix of nervousness and a feeling of being with comfortable old friends derails my social etiquette, apparently.
“C’mon, let me show you,” Reeth says leading the way to one corner of the room where some sort of a game is set up. There is a board with black and white coins and one magenta coin. They explain the game to us. If I was a scientist (rather, a biologist) intent on assigning genus or genera, I would say that this game belongs to the family of billiards and it vaguely does.
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