Water Under Bridges

by Harper Bliss

  Mia ran a finger along Lou’s inner thigh. Up and down, then it moved to the other, trailing circles and complicated figures on her skin, making every last hair on Lou’s body stand on end with anticipation. At last, Mia’s finger stroked along her panties again, but still too far away from where Lou really wanted it. Not for long though. It skated down, avoiding her clit, to run along her throbbing lips. Lou couldn’t see between her legs because Mia’s dark hair obstructed her view. She couldn’t stop herself from bringing one hand to Mia’s head and running it through her hair. Lou hoped it would spur her on to rip Lou’s panties off her, so she could bare her most intimate self to Mia, and get the growing arousal humming in her blood taken care of. This was beginning to feel more like torture than foreplay. But Lou was only getting what she had asked for.

  Mia’s finger lightly circled her clit—still over her panties. Oh yes, definitely torture.

  Lou strangled a moan in her throat. She might have asked for this but she wasn’t going to beg for more. She trusted Mia to take her where she needed to go, to follow a pace that was bearable, to bring Lou to the cliffside of desire and then catch her on the other side.

  If Mia kept circling like that, Lou’s arousal threatened to catch up with her, spill over the edges she was skirting now, and tip her over prematurely. But Mia was smarter than that. Her finger retreated, then hooked itself underneath the hem and pulled away the wet panel of her panties.

  Oh Christ. Too much air down there, not enough in her lungs. And the thought of Mia’s stare. Was she just looking? Yes. Nothing stirred in the room, there was no sound other than the ferocious beating of Lou’s heart in her ears, that mad drumbeat pumping more blood to her swollen clit. Seconds passed. Minutes. Lou didn’t know. Her brain had become incapable of measuring units of time. Everything blurred together. The first time she had seen Mia again in the Pink Bean and how it had felt like a punch in the gut—a punch Mia had never meted out. Mia Miller had never touched her, had only ever hurt her with words—words spoken by a tortured teenager. Words that hurt them both equally. The first time she was able to see Mia as the person she was now. The soft touch of Mia’s lips on her cheek when she’d kissed her goodbye last Sunday. And now this. The upcoming soft touch of Mia’s lips elsewhere. It was the beginning of something. Lou had no way of knowing what exactly, except that it would include much needed healing for both of them.

  Then Mia’s mouth pressed against Lou’s naked lips, against her throbbing clit. It was just a kiss, light and gentle, yet it was so much more. It held in its touch both forgiveness and new beginnings. In its intention, both the expulsion of demons and the will to drive Lou crazy. The last bit was working really well. So well that Lou let a moan escape from her throat. It burst out of her, the way the tears had done when she was a teenager, unstoppable and giving voice to something unspeakable.

  Once Mia put her tongue into play, Lou was lost. It was all too much. Her hand slipped from Mia’s hair and she leaned back on both her elbows, throwing her head back, enjoying Mia’s touch, her now insistent tongue on her clit, running along her lips, dipping inside, driving her mad. Because that was what Mia had done from the very beginning, long before Lou had even had the smallest inkling of it.

  Mia’s hand pressed against Lou’s thigh where she held Lou’s panties at bay. It was an exquisite sensation, almost equal to the touch of her tongue on her pussy, because of the action it implied. Because of how that hand had been responsible for setting Lou free, for showing all she had and she was to Mia, for allowing her into that most intimate of spaces between her legs, to do to Lou as she saw fit. And it was the surrender most of all that got to Lou as she thundered toward climax. Until Mia stopped. Insufferable stillness in the air for a split second. And then, the touch of a finger against the rim of her pussy. It didn’t linger, but pushed inside, high and deep. Another moan escaped from Lou’s throat. Mia was taking all she had, and giving the utmost pleasure in return. Mia started licking her clit again while she pushed her finger high inside Lou. All the dots connected. Even Lou’s own groans and moans spurred her on, put her right back on that road to orgasm, made her muscles tremble and her blood sing. Then she was coming. She was coming at Mia’s hands and tongue. It was the end of one road and the beginning of another. It was a moment of extreme joy that could never be taken from her or erased from her memory. It was something she’d needed since that moment in Mia’s flat, when Mia had opened up to her without Lou even trying very hard.

  Then Lou uttered two words she never thought she would. “Oh, Mia.” She crashed through her arms and let the back of her head fall onto the mattress. She brought her own hand to where Mia’s thumb had stroked earlier in the hollow of her neck, as though she could feel her there, as though that was where it had all begun.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Perplexed, Mia sat between Lou’s legs. Had this really just happened? Had her life taken another crazy turn yet again, and was Louise Hamilton the source of it again? She pushed herself up from between Lou’s legs and took in how she lay spent on the bed. She was so beautiful she almost looked like a vision to Mia, like someone unreal descended from the heights of heaven or, perhaps, brought up from the very depths of hell to play a trick on her.

  Mia rushed to Lou’s side, wanting to touch her, not only because of the pull between them, the electricity crackling in the air when their skin touched, but also because she wanted to verify whether Lou was real. To confirm that the woman from whose body she had just demanded orgasm, and who had gladly accepted Mia’s tongue and fingers, was an actual person—was, in fact, Louise Hamilton.

  “Are you all right?” Mia asked as soon as she came face-to-face with Lou again. She brushed the back of her hand over Lou’s cheek and felt the flush that burned on her skin. That skin of which she could never really describe the color, except perhaps now, with the rosy red of her blush mixed in. It looked like liquid honey, like gold set on fire, like an expanse of silken softness Mia wanted nothing more than to disappear in again and again.

  “You’re still wearing your top,” Mia said, as she dragged it upward and ran a finger over Lou’s belly.

  Lou turned on her side, pressing her hot belly against Mia’s. “Because you made me.”

  Mia wondered if Lou’s words held any deeper meaning or if she could take anything she said at mere face value. Or was it what lay beneath it all that made this so thrilling?

  “I’ll make you take it off now.” She shot Lou her warmest smile.

  “You’ll have to help. I seem to have lost all muscle power in my arms.”

  “All that yoga and so easily wiped out.” Mia pressed a kiss on Lou’s cheek and with a very inelegant, clumsy movement, maneuvered the top over her head.

  “My top for your bra,” Lou said. She ran a finger over the cup of Mia’s bra. “You’re such a tease, by the way.”

  “But you loved every second of it.” Mia brought her hands behind her back and let her bra drop down. The air on her skin and Lou’s gaze on her breasts intensified the throb between her legs. A pulse that had been building since Lou had told her she’d been thinking about kissing her earlier downstairs. Mia had come here for dinner, perhaps more of a kiss goodnight than an exchange of pecks on the cheek, but she’d never imagined this. Not only because she didn’t dare, or because it would surely lead to disappointment, but because she had no right. She had absolutely no right to find herself in Lou’s bed tonight. Yet here she lay. Her lips smelling of Lou’s most secret perfume, her ears still ringing from Lou’s orgasmic cries.

  “I can’t tease you the way you teased me,” Lou said. “It’s not in my nature.”

  “The need for teasing has long passed.” Mia kissed Lou on the lips. “Let me know when you’ve regained your strength. I’m going to need some of that muscle power.”

  “Taking off your jeans would surely help.” Lou’s eyes seemed glued to Mia’s chest. Entranced, she ran a wide circle around Mia’s nipple.

  “I’ll
see what I can do.” Mia tried not to tear herself away from Lou’s caress while she slipped out of her jeans, but her skin lost contact with Lou’s fingertip for a brief moment, a moment during which all the cells in her body screamed for her to reestablish a connection immediately. As though Lou touching her was the new norm. As though her body could no longer live without Lou’s touch.

  Mia had taken off her underwear in the process, and she lay on her side facing Lou, who was still wearing her bra and soaked panties. But Mia relished the thought that she hadn’t seen Lou completely naked yet, that there would still be something to discover later.

  “Yes, this has done wonders for my strength.” Lou became bolder, zeroing in on Mia’s nipple, her finger hovering, then touching down lightly, leaving it hard and wanting.

  “I can tell.” Mia was about to run out of words, or perhaps the strength to speak. She needed wordlessness now, a silence that could consume her and speak for her at the same time. She scooted closer to Lou, wanting to feel much more than that fingertip that already stirred so much in her. Even though Lou had asked her to take charge, Mia had no desire to steer this moment. This was Lou’s moment to express herself, to show to Mia, but most of all to herself, what desire looked like when it took hold of her. Was her desire for Mia as great as Mia’s was for her? Mia didn’t think it possible. But perhaps that was because Lou’s finger was beginning to drive her crazy, push her past a point of no return, a point where no other thoughts were possible.

  Mia examined Lou’s face. She was biting her bottom lip as if she was concentrating really hard, or contemplating her next move, or perhaps even doubting it. And this was the beauty of moments like this, when you didn’t know someone else very well yet, but there was promise between you, and the thoughts in the other woman’s mind were still made up of possibilities instead of disappointments. Mia hadn’t made it past many moments like this, and the times that she had, she’d felt herself retreat as soon as she’d crossed that invisible line. What if she was still ugly on the inside? What if she had somehow found a way to rid herself of any outward signs of the juvenile monster that she had been, but what if remnants of it still loomed deep inside, waiting for the right moment to pounce?

  As she lay with Lou, Mia couldn’t believe that about herself. Because Lou was not the sort of person who would look into Mia’s eyes, drag a finger over her skin the way she was doing now, and forgive her, if she still had the tiniest smidgen of that past evil inside of her. It was the one thing that Mia believed with all her heart and that she hadn’t been able to believe with anyone else before—because they didn’t matter the way Lou did.

  Lou’s finger dived deeper, traced a circle around her belly button, then plunged straight between her legs. Did she know that Mia was more than ready for her? That a few strokes of those delicious fingers would most likely be all it took. Because Lou was gorgeous and it had aroused Mia greatly to feast on her earlier, but that was not what this was about. It wasn’t even about quenching the desire that was so visible in Lou’s eyes. It was all about saying yes without words that could fail or hold different meanings and could be misinterpreted. Their bodies were saying what their lips couldn’t. There was so much truth in one body acquiescing to another, no other statement, no other way of granting forgiveness, could ever speak with more clarity.

  Mia kept her gaze on Lou’s face and she saw a small smile appear as Lou encountered the wetness between Mia’s legs. Mia spread her legs, lifted one knee up so Lou’s hand had full access. There would be time to experience the pleasure of seeing Lou disappear between her legs, her face leaving Mia’s field of vision as it approached Mia the way Lou’s hands were approaching her now, all candor and lust and the willingness to please. But that was for later, because right now Mia had a more immediate pleasure on her mind.

  Lou drew the same kind of circles she had drawn around Mia’s nipple earlier. Wide at first but quickly zoning in, quickly leaving Mia breathless.

  Lou’s lips had parted in concentration or perhaps sheer delight and Mia thought it a great privilege that she was allowed to read Lou’s reactions off her face like that, that she was granted access to this part of her as well. By the time they went to sleep, she’d have seen it all. Lou would have given her everything. But before that, Mia had to give back. Because Lou was looking at her face, having diverted her gaze from her chest. She was staring into Mia’s eyes as if she was looking for that one last ounce of truth she may need.

  The circling motion of Lou’s finger became more insistent and Mia had trouble keeping her eyes from screwing shut because the intensity was too much to bear open-eyed. Was this it then? She asked herself in those moments when all went dark before her eyes, before it all blazed into an expanse of white as another jolt of about-to-be-met lust shot through her. Was this the beginning of love? Was she falling in love with the most unlikely person? Was she showing herself a way she had never followed before? Thoughts like these spurred her on to keep her eyes open and to meet Lou’s gaze as her climax approached, searching for the answers in the expressions of Lou’s face.

  But then Lou’s finger abruptly stopped circling and slipped inside Mia, making her cry out in a heartfelt moan.

  Lou’s smile widened and it was the kind of smile that connected with every fiber in Mia’s body, that ignited a fire in her every cell. To see Lou smile like that. To be the source of it.

  Lou fucked her slowly, staying away from her clit, but it didn’t matter, because Mia was already well on her way to orgasm. She’d been waiting and the points of her body that were now graced by Lou’s touch reacted much more excessively, because they marked the spot where Mia’s physical pleasure was originating. They could have been any spot that Lou touched inside her, they might just as well have been Mia’s lips as they drew into a smile, or her knee that stood up straight, or her hair that kept falling into her eyes. None of it mattered, because Lou’s finger was doing exactly what it had entered Mia for. It was delivering her from any last thought, any last belief that the old Mia might still exist. Because the Mia with Lou’s finger inside of her, and with Lou’s intentions connected to hers through that very finger, could only be the person she already knew she had become. The person she had always been.

  Mia bucked her hips to meet the last of Lou’s strokes as the fire inside her swelled. Mia cried out again and Lou took it down a notch. But Mia kept bucking, wanting to feel Lou’s finger inside of her, wanting to ride out this climax and prolong the meaning it imprinted on her brain.

  When she finally allowed Lou to withdraw her finger, tears streamed down Mia’s cheeks and, as she let her legs fall shut, she buried her face in Lou’s long hair.

  Lou threw an arm around her and held her close. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask if Mia was all right. They were still in the space of wordless atonement, of their bodies speaking the ultimate truth. Mia knew her tears said more than her words ever could.

  “Don’t you have to get up?” A voice whispered in Mia’s ear. “I think you forgot to set your alarm.”

  “What?” Mia opened her eyes and looked into Lou’s face. She burst into a smile immediately.

  “The Pink Bean will open soon. Don’t you have to be there?” Lou smiled back. Her hair was all over the place, half of it covering her face, some of it tickling Mia’s shoulder.

  “What time is it?” A slight panic took hold of Mia, but not enough to deter her from the utter beauty of this moment, of waking up next to Lou—even though it was a bit of a rude awakening.

  “Six fifteen.” Lou quirked up her eyebrows as she said it.

  “Looks like I’m going to be late.” She couldn’t stop staring at Lou.

  “That’s your reaction? What if I see it as my duty to inform Kristin about the laxness of her employee’s timekeeping?”

  “Then I would have to change your mind. Give you a really compelling reason not to.” Mia threw her arms around Lou’s neck and pulled her close. “And I have no time to waste.” She sank
her teeth lightly into the flesh between Lou’s neck and shoulder and as a shudder of morning lust ran up her spine, she caught a glimpse of all the times she would pull Lou close like this, all the mornings they would wake up next to each other, all the times they would share a joke between them and distance themselves more from who they used to be.

  “Not compelling enough,” Lou said into her shoulder. “Not nearly.”

  Mia pushed Lou onto her back and straddled her, touching down with her pussy lips on Lou’s warm belly. “If you keep this up, you’ll be the reason I’m late and you’ll have no claims to make about my loyalty to my boss.” Mia bent down and kissed Lou on the nose. “Besides, both Jo and Kristin know about our date. They’re probably already blaming it on you. And rightly so.” Mia kissed Lou on the lips.

  “They all know?” Lou asked as soon as they broke from their kiss.

  “Jo read it off my face and Kristin is too smart not to know.”

  “There are no secrets in the Pink Bean.” Lou smiled up at her. “I kind of knew that all along.”

  “I’ll try to do a better job in the Newtown branch. We’ll have a strict non-gossip policy.”

  “You can try, but don’t forget I have a direct line to any antics you might be up to. Just one phone call to Annie is all it will take.” Lou narrowed her eyes. “I think I might ask her to keep tabs on all the hot lesbians who come in for coffee when you’re there.”

  Mia chuckled until her eyes fell onto the alarm clock next to Lou’s bed and it hit her what time it was. “I have to get a move on.” In her haste, her foot got stuck in the sheet and she nearly tumbled to the ground, but Lou caught her and pulled her close by the arm.