I am rewarded with a feral sound as she surges up from the chair with me wrapped around her, takes me to the bed and throws me down on it.
And then she fucks me. Oh! God! Does she fuck me!!
******
“Happy anniversary, princess,” Beth wakes me up right before dawn.
After that fucking of a lifetime that I got last night we just collapsed into a coma after we finished.
But there is no way we can miss the gorgeousness of a sunrise lighting up the desperately beautiful Monument Valley in front of us.
I hum and mumble incoherently snuggling deeper into her. I’m still in the grip of post-coital torpor and in no mood to shake of that languorous haze.
She runs her hand gently over my arm letting the sensation of love touch me and wake me.
“Happy anniversary, honey,” I look up at her after a few moments.
I know from her angle, I must be all eyes. And all love. I see the answering emotion as her eyes soften and she gives me a smile that is all eyes, lips and love.
“Nature is about to put on a show just for us…and it would be a shame to miss it. Let’s get our lazy butts out of this be and make the trek to the balcony,” she is laughing at both of us and our hedonistic craving for lolling around.
I grumble a little as I untwine myself from her and roll on my other side. She hugs me from behind and nuzzles my back and neck and I purr like a kitten.
With a kiss on the sweet spot between my shoulder and neck, she gets up and goes to freshen up.
When she comes out she is purposeful and bustle-y. No more lolling around…there are things to be done…sunrises to be seen.
I mumble about how sunrises are beautiful but happen at a most inconvenient time of the day and stumble into the bathroom.
I come out to the smell of coffee. My coffee. Betha has kept this is an anniversary surprise for me. She’s got our coffee machine from home and my favourite coffee grind. She’s made my coffee just as I like it. She has also got my favourite chocolate chip home baked cookies to go with the coffee.
This may seem like a small, tiny thing…but to me it is one like screaming out her love for me from rooftops.
A wealth of emotion and caring lie in the actions that are seemingly small. I am touched beyond words and I go and hug her from behind, pressing myself into her back and discreetly wiping away the sudden tears in my eyes.
We take our coffee and cookies into our beautiful balcony.
Betha sits on the settee and stretches her legs out on the ottoman. I sit in her lap.
Her hand nestles between my legs and the other caresses my breast. I lean back into her so her face is resting over my shoulder. We share the coffee from my mug (since both her are hands are otherwise occupied) and watch the dramatic landscape, the towering natural monuments in stone rising proudly.
They are in silhouette right now against the dark sky. There is a forecast of possible rain and dark clouds are roiling in the sky.
Soon, the sky behind the stones starting getting lighter. There are theatrical colours growing in the sky. Blues, deep purples, oranges, pinks, yellows, an odd dash of green…oooh, Nature is really going all out for us throwing up visual melodramatic histrionics for our benefit. The dark, thunderous clouds add to the effect.
This is way more beautiful than a sudden burst of light in a clear sky.
We are the only two people in the whole world right now as we watch the exaggeratedly vivid theatrics with a hushed reverence.
“Betha,” I say very softly. Her response is but a vibration against my back. “This is what you have done to my life honey…from a dark silhouette of existing you have brought in all colours and light into my life. You have made it technicolour and vibrant. Thank you,” I almost choke with feeling on the last word.
I feel warm liquid seeping through the thin fabric of the t-shirt on my shoulder and turn towards Beth. Tears are pouring down her face freely. We just gaze at each other for an eternity, a whole world of silent exchanges taking place between us.
******
“So you like it rough, eh?” We are lolling around in bed, grabbing a few minutes of indolence before we need to get going to take the touristy ride through the intense Valley.
“Not necessarily. This was the first time ever that I wanted it.” I turn to her and sit up. “Bethy, haven’t you got it yet? I like it whichever way you do it,” I smile at her.
Her smile back rivals the entire drama which we witnessed in the morning. It lights up the universe…including the dark holes and the mysterious dark matter in the universe.
******
“It’s only for a day, Betha,” I say reassuringly as I run my fingers through her hair. She is hugging me tight and has her face buried in the crook of my neck trying hard not to cry. But I can hear her tiny sniffles.
It is about a couple of months after our anniversary. I am scheduled to go to California, Beverley Hills, to meet Taylor Blair, my client, who is a leading designer in the world. In fact, she is the headlining client for Franklin.
Taylor has been my client since the day she started her business. She has completely revolutionised the design industry with her marketing genius.
She is a rockstar designer, but took an unusual, untrodden and unexpected path. She went entirely the virtual way from the start. She first started an online shop and has since then expanded and expanded so much that she is now amongst in the top three designers in the world.
She has created a worldwide brand and has filthy rich clients all over the world knocking her door.
She created games via which she created a new online store model and entered the world of prêt-à-porter in a dramatically unusual way.
She actually still goes through every single design that her label puts out including bespoke, ready-to-wear, accessories, prints, materials…you name it.
Currently she’s huge enough now to not need the services of Franklin, but continues with us because if me. She refuses to leave someone who has been there with her from the beginning, insists that mine is the best financial brain she has ever met and trusts my business analyses, opinions and guidance implicitly.
I’ve not met anyone who works as hard as her and with such genius – who is also one of the loveliest human beings to ever walk on this planet.
Tay and I are not ‘everyday’ in our connect but she is most definitely my 3 a.m. friend.
She wants to meet me on Friday and has invited me to a party on Saturday. The party is to celebrate her business hitting a thousand billion turnover or some equally obscene figure.
Beth will be joining me on Saturday, so it is really only for one day that I will be away from her.
All this time when Betha was travelling, I was going to pieces. I used to worry that I am too needy and clingy and would drive her away with that. But her reaction to the news that I will be travelling lays all my anxiety to rest. She is devastated. I am dancing with joy at her reaction even as I try to reassure her.
But that huge smile just won’t leave my face.
******
“Tay has given me a couple of proposals,” it’s Saturday morning and I’ve just picked up Beth at the airport and brought her back to my hotel room.
“She is offering to employ me full time to head her finance department. She has offered me a hundred percent revision of my current salary. The second alternative she’s offered is that I should start off on my own and she’ll shift her business to me. She has offered to pay the full fees that she pays Franklin and will add fifty percent to that.”
“Wow! You really must be killer at work,” Beth says. “I always knew that you’d be one of the winners when we were in high school,” she adds. I colour slightly at her compliment and her confidence in me. “So are you considering any of her options?” she asks.
“What do you think I should do?” I ask.
“Are you happy at Franklin?”
“I enjoy my work…I am paid well…but my promotion came at le
ast three years too late. There are office politics everywhere.”
“Not at Translink…but I know what you mean. So how do you feel about starting off on your own? From the sound of Taylor’s offer you’ll be making a profit from day one.”
“Ummmm, I don’t know. I never thought about that possibility.”
“I get that everyone may not want to run their own business. How about shifting here?” I can hear her heart hammering because in am lying partly on her. Does she really think that I’d take the full time option and move here? Leave her?
“That would mean we live in two different cities. How do you feel about that?”
“I could come over every weekend,” she says carefully. I might have even tried to believe this had she not been whimpering in my arms just two days back at the thought of being away from me for a day.
“Betha, do you think I could do the long distance thing? You are surely crazy if you think that. Certifiable.”
“Or, you know, I can ask to work remotely and shift with you. If they don’t agree to that, I can resign and shift with you and then dabble in whatever project catches my fancy.”
I love her for putting me first. She doesn’t know it is exactly the same with me. “But you love Translink and your work there. Plus if you work remotely, you won’t have access to all their technology and infrastructure…not to mention all the insane big bucks they pay you,” I am just playing this out with no real intent to take this conversation anywhere. Just one of those conversations that couples have.
“I don’t need the money,” she shrugs, “I have plenty. But this offer pole vaults you into major league, right?”
“Sweetie, I don’t need the money either,” I tell her. This is the perfect opportunity to tell her about my finances and I do – to her growing amazement.
“Fuck! I’ve got me a real, live princess,” she exclaims wide-eyed when I finish.
I giggle, “Just like I’ve got me a real live Ms. Moneybags.”
We shelve Taylor’s proposals for the time being and decide to spend the half day that we have left doing touristy things. Big party tonight.
******
Taylor and her artist partner, Joy, live in a frigging mansion. It is a structure declared a historical monument and spread over at least ten acres. Tay has sent us a limo but we still pull in rather late.
When I met her the previous day, I had asked Tay to give me a dress for her party that “would drive my girlfriend insane”. She is a lesbian…that single one I’d known in my life…quite madly in love with Joy, so her only reaction to my big coming-out announcement was the slightest raise of her eyebrow (given my past history which exclusively had men).
She is by far the most intuitive person I know with an uncanny ability of know just what the other person is thinking. She knew that I didn’t want to discuss my shift right there in her office and that I would speak to her about it in a not-so-distant future.
After giving me a measured look, she’d winked at me with a twinkle in her eye. And boy! Had she delivered!
Tay has sent me a short evening dress soaked in colours of the sea…blues, greens and turquoise…made of some shimmering material. It hugs me possessively and shows enough skin strategically to make Betha pant just looking at me. She’s even sent me matching lingerie and those little pieces of cloth and lace are by far the sexiest little scraps of material I have ever worn.
When I came out wearing the dress with the matching heels and purse, Bethy practically salivates over me.
As requested, the dress drives my girlfriend insane alright and delays our departure from the hotel by about two hours. After the hour long insanity, re-fixing the dress and make-up didn’t happen in a jiffy, you know.
But finally, here we are now. And there is Taylor coming towards us.
I haven’t mentioned what this glorious creature looks like, have I? Taylor is the most jaw-droppingly stunning woman I’ve ever seen. Big blue eyes, long wavy red-blond hair, slim curvaceous body, full lips, with just a hint of overbite, making them pouty, creamy skin.
But these descriptions do no justice to the overall package. There is something way, way more about her beauty that no words can either capture or do justice to. Plus she is the most gregarious and likeable person in the whole world.
She greets me with a hug, “I take it that the dress had its desired effect,” she whispers mischievously in my ear, casually accepting and laughing away our tardiness.
“This is my girlfriend Bethany Swift,” I introduce. I love that…calling her ‘my girlfriend’. She is mine. And I am telling that to the world. Okay, I’m telling that only to Tay right now…but you get the emotion, right?
“Bethany Swift!” Tay exclaims. “The Bethany Swift who does all that work at Translink…whose unbreakable 3D locks are currently all the rage in the world?” I am constantly surprised by how well-informed Tay is about such a mind-boggling range and multitude of things.
“I do work at Translink and have created a fairly impregnable lock,” Betha says shyly. Aww, my cutie. Look at her getting shy in the spotlight of fame.
“Oh! I have to introduce Joy to you…she is such a fan of your work.” Tay looks around, her eyes alighting on an arresting dark-haired woman dressed in a black palazzo and a fitted top. The form, flow and fit of the outfit clearly marks it as Tay’s design. The woman in question has a camera slung around her neck and is currently nursing a drink by herself at the bar. “There she is…that is Joy at her social best,” she says fondly leading us to her partner.
“Stop drooling,” I whisper to Beth as we trail Tay. Am I jealous? I sure sound jealous to me.
“Admiring,” Betha corrects, “Like you would admire any natural wonder. Like I’d seen you admiring Radhika,” she adds slyly. Okay, I accept that. I had though Radhika was a goddess but didn’t particularly want to sleep with her.
“So no urges to jump into bed with Tay?” I confirm anyhow. I am only partly teasing. I still need to know I am the first choice. That someone always chooses me. The need has gone down drastically with the confidence of Betha’s love for me, but once in a while, the want for validation and reassurance pokes up its head a teensy-weensy bit.
“Kitty Kat, the only woman I want to rip clothes off, throw on the floor and make sweet, sweet love to, is you,” she replies passionately.
“Not only sweet, sweet,” I say naughtily and she growls in response as we approach closer to Joy.
Joy is looking at Taylor with an expression that can only be called predatory and her eyes are screaming ‘mine’. I can see Tay blushing at the look and she is looking back rather hungrily at her partner. We reach Joy and Taylor is making the introductions.
Joy and Betha hit it off instantly. Turns out that both are fans of each other’s work. Joy is a leading fashion photographer and one of the most notable mixed-media artists in the world and Beth has for long been totally mesmerised by her work.
Tay and Joy spend the better part of half-an-hour with us before remembering their hostess duties and wandering away to look after their other guests. At least Tay is off to attend to other guests, Joy is just trailing her, looking besotted.
“Over a decade or more together,” I muse looking after the two.
“That’s going to be us, princess,” Beth says, “You will be charming the world and I will be following you, lusting after you – forever,” she smiles.
“Lusting?” I raise my eyebrows.
“Oh! Most definitely. I can barely keep my hands to myself right now.”
“Who says you have to?” Fuck! Is that my voice? It’s so bloody sultry.
Beth gives me a sizzling look and then quickly scans the room. She takes me by my hand and rushes me out of the French windows on to the terrace. She does a quick recco of the terrace we are on, then the grounds and leads me down the steps. The terrace stands at a height and there are beautifully manicured short needle pine trees running the length below it.
She takes me into a dark co
rner behind one of the trees and pulls me to her.
There is something dangerous and illicit about fucking semi-hidden when there are people around that really makes me go wild.
The risk of discovery, the marginal, borderline depravity – flirting with exhibitionism gets me soaking in seconds. It had happened at the concert on my birthday. And today also, my motor is revving crazily.
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