by Shea Lynn
“Please what?” I asked, my fingers dancing around her wetness.
She pulled her head up and rested her forehead against mine, her eyes drooping with desire. “Make love to me, Dee.”
That was all I needed to hear. I crushed her lips with mine and ran my tongue around hers. I slid my fingers down between her folds and made circles in the wetness until her knees began to buckle and she began to slip down to the Peach carpet.
With my free arm nestled comfortably against her waist, we gravitated toward the bed and pulled and pushed fabric until we were both naked. Our heads made it to the Peach pillows and I kissed her lips again and again until she moaned so deeply I thought she would explode. I understood what that moan meant.
She needed me.
Her skin was delicate, smooth and soft. I kissed a trail from her lips, down her neck, to the delicious dark breasts now quivering in anticipation of my touch. My fingertips traced the pebbling of dark brown skin around the hardened nipple and when I gently grazed that tall peak she moved under me, her hips seeking the pleasure of pressure.
I squeezed them both unable to draw my gaze away from the beauty of her swollen nipples. I kissed each one of them, dragging my tongue against the sensitive flesh, reveling in the scent of her skin, her throaty responses, and the urgency of her breathing.
Back and forth and back and forth until the scent of her silky sweetness drifted up and reminded me of the jewel that awaited my touch. My eyes closed softly as I bent at the knee and placed gentle kisses along the smooth skin of her abdomen and down to the insides of the thighs that had opened for me.
I kissed and teased and tasted until she moaned and whispered, “Please.” My lips found their way to the core of this beautiful woman. My tongue began to dance with the most sacred part of Sidney’s body and the faster we danced, the more Sidney quaked and shivered. Her beautiful brown skin, shining in the sheen of our lovemaking, rose and arched and opened for me until she screamed my name and her legs clamped tightly around my head.
I slid back up her that beautiful brown body of hers and held her close until she stopped shaking, started kissing me, and began to complete the circle of our love-making.
Chapter Six: Sidney
Dayna clung to me, her velvet walls closed around my fingers, her arms gripping me tightly. I didn’t want to let go. Her ragged breaths came fast, her chest heaving, a thin layer of sweat separating us. I held her to me, my free hand sliding behind her head, cradling her close to me.
“You okay?” I whispered, worried that the power of my loving had damaged her.
Dayna shook her head in response and when I pulled back to look into her eyes for confirmation, her dark, laden lids batted slowly before she snuggled close to me.
We lay like that for a few moments before I felt the cool wetness of her tears against my neck.
“What are we doing?” she whispered.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This. Us. What are we doing?
I was quiet. Unsure of what she meant and unsure of how to respond. Afraid to respond and explore the depth in her loaded question.
“We’re just friends, right?”
“We’re friends.”
“Do you sleep with all your friends?” she asked.
I sighed, finally understanding what direction her brain was traveling in. “You’re my only friend. So I guess the answer would be ‘yes’.”
“What are we doing?” she asked again.
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Dayna.”
She pulled away from me and leaned back so that she was looking down on me. Dark strands of her long, straightened hair, hung down on the side of her face and her coffee with cream skin was flushed. The smoldering sexiness of this beautiful woman formed a new lump in my throat and made me lick my her-needing lips. Despite my desire to kiss the soft pillowy mounds that were now pouting at me, the sadness in her wet-rimmed, dark-brown eyes drew my attention to the words that slipped from her trembling lips.
“Do you know…..do you know I love you?” she whispered, staring down into my eyes, nervously awaiting my response.
I reached for her hands and held the left one to my chest. “I know you love me. I love you, too.”
Dayna shook her head and a few more strands of that dark hair fell down. She was so beautiful then. And if not for the sadness in her eyes, I would have wanted to take a picture and immortalize her sexy strength.
“No,” she said. “I mean….I mean I’m in love with you, Sidney. In love with you. I couldn’t even make it two days. You’re all I think about.” And a trickle of tears slid down those flushed coffee-with cream cheeks and I instinctively reached up to wipe them away, my own eyes now watery.
“I know. I’m in love with you, too,” I whispered. I knew that. I’d known it for some time. Even before we had become lovers, I had known I was in love with her.
I pulled her to me then and kissed the lips I couldn’t resist. Kissed them softly and with love and tenderness. “I love you, too, Dayna.” I whispered as we separated.
She rested on my chest, her wet-rimmed eyes still staring into mine as tears snaked down her face. “Do you love Aaron? Are you in love with him?”
I knew the answer to that one too. I’d known it for some time. “I love him. But I’m in love with you.”
Dayna finally lay down and nestled her head between my head and shoulder. I could still feel the wetness sliding from her eyes and down to my chest. A heavy contemplative silence ensued. Right on cue, Confusion had slipped into our intimacy. He stood in the shadows, smiling at his great success.
Dayna finally broke our silence. “We were never supposed to fall in love, Sid.”
“But we did.”
“Yes, we did. So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know. I try my best not to think about it.”
“How can I not think about you?” she whispered in return.
She pulled herself up and our eyes met again. The sadness in the dark brown orbs gave way to passion as she looked through me. Our lips met and I shivered. The weight of her breasts against my skin was deliciously arousing and I pulled her closer to me, wrapping my legs around her.
My center throbbed and ached and I nearly melted as she touched me gently. I was swollen and wet and she whispered as much to me with that sexy voice of hers.
She knew just where to touch me. Just how much pressure to apply. My hips began to buck and naughty words slipped from my lips. I begged her to go deep inside of me and she did. The pleasure continued to build as she stroked me and loved me until I could take no more and I clung to her, gasping for breath with tears now standing in my own eyes.
I knew she loved me.
The strength of her loving had shown me that in ways words may never express.
We showered together, lovingly lathering each other in softly scented peach soap. I slipped out of the shower first, wrapped a peach towel around my wet body and grabbed one of the complimentary peach toothbrushes. As I brushed, I caught my own eyes in the mirror and stared at myself. Once again my mind struggled to reconcile the image in the mirror with the emotions I felt inside. I looked the same. My teeth were the same. My smile was the same. Same gums, same nose, eyes, and cheekbones.
But I wasn’t the same.
Neither of us was the same.
We’d walked through a one-way door of experience that didn’t allow us to revisit our former selves.
I brushed my teeth and dried my skin and before long, we were both dressed and preparing to leave.
“You ready?” I finally asked.
Dayna nodded, tears filling her eyes.
I don’t know if my legs carried me or if I flew, but suddenly I was standing before her, my hands on her waist.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” I whispered.
“I’m not ready to leave you, Sid. I’ve waited so long to get this time with you and I’m not ready to leave,” she replied, tears slipping from her eyes
and rolling quickly down her cheeks.
“I’m not ready to leave you either. We will figure this out. We will,” I said, with more conviction than I actually felt. I wiped her tears with my thumbs and sighed, my own heart sinking at her sadness.
Dayna nodded again and pursed her lips, forcing herself to get composed.
I kissed her forehead, then her lips and whispered, “I love you.”
She smiled softly. “I love you too.”
I hugged her tightly and we both shared trembling smiles before turning toward the Peach door. I pulled on the knob and we reluctantly walked back over the threshold of The Peach Room.
The journey back to our other lives had begun.
Chapter Seven: Dayna
I hadn’t meant to become so emotional. But the impact of what we were becoming hit me hard. When did I go from liking Sidney to loving her? When did we go from fooling around to this deep connection that wouldn’t let me go? It felt like my reality had changed as I’d been standing still and that I was a stranger to my new surroundings.
She had been in my life for almost a year, but my soul felt as though I’d known her my entire life. I spent most of my waking hours trying to suppress the tug of her smile on my soul; trying to deaden the true depth of our connection.
No one knew that she was my secret desire. No one knew that it was her smile that made my heart race, her touch that sent ripples down my spine, her kisses that made my sex swell.
I tried to fight it. To pretend that we were simply friends and that the new dimension of our relationship would fade away; slowly abate and then vanish like a bruise on soft skin.
I wanted not to need her. I wanted not to feel so engulfed by her. I wanted to remember what it was like to simply be her friend. To chit chat and shop and arrange play dates for our children and then go back home and resume the rest of my day.
My tears raised her concern and she held me even closer. The scents of lovemaking drifted up to me and the reality of our circumstance bore down hard on my mind.
What were we doing?
Why were we doing it?
Why couldn’t we stop?
I had to tell her. Had to let her know that what we shared ran deep down within me and refused to subside. I loved her. I was in love with her. And after I confessed the depths of my feelings, she responded in kind. I thought her words would make me feel better.
But they didn’t.
Suddenly, I was even more lost and confused than I had been at the outset.
If she loved me and I loved her, where did that lead? What did it mean? If we were in love, how was it possible for us to continue to maintain the double-lives we both led? How could we leave each other and pretend that we were simply friends? And most importantly, what were we?
Girlfriends?
Lovers?
Friends with benefits?
I’d started the morning with the best of intentions. My husband, Cameron, and I were separated and we’d come to an agreement that our only child, our five-year old daughter, Nina, would spend weekends at his apartment. That morning, I’d gotten her dressed and ready for Daddy.
My Nina was beautiful and bright and she’d bounced around with her little beaded braids jingling as we’d gotten her cleaned and dressed. She’d walked around with a permanent smile on her russet toned cheeks and as she sang a self-penned tune about “goin to see Daddy” I’d wished I could share her enthusiasm for seeing her father.
As a husband, “Daddy” had faltered somewhere between the man he was and the man I’d needed him to be and his faltering had hardened my heart. Seven years after we’d exchanged vows before God and men, we now lived under separate roofs. And with Sidney in my heart, there wasn’t really much room to miss him.
He and I were seeing a marriage counselor every two weeks and though I tried to sound engaged and committed in our sessions, I knew that my sneaky heart was not at all engaged or committed to him.
I felt guilty about it. I knew it was wrong to lead him in on, but I didn’t know how to deal with that. What I did know was Cameron was changing. He’d gone out of his way to express his desire for our eventual reconciliation and was becoming a better man for me.
The irony of it all.
There was a time in my life when all I wanted was for my husband to become a better man. The man I wanted him to be. And now that his salutary metamorphosis was well under way, my husband was the least of what I wanted.
Sidney was what I wanted.
But Sidney was a woman.
We were both women.
We were both married.
And we both believed in a God that abhorred the thought of the two of us together.
Both trapped in what should have been enviable marriages as wives and mothers. Frozen in identities as straight daughters and sisters and friends and members of the church.
That morning I’d stood in the home I once shared with my husband. I could the maturity in him. Deep wells of knowledge in his dashing dark brown eyes and gray that had begun to pop up in his neatly trimmed goatee.
We’d shared a pleasant conversation and he’d even invited me to lunch with him and Nina. But she was all I could think about. Getting to her was all I could think about. I hadn’t missed the look of disappointment in my husband’s eyes or the furrow of his bushy eyebrows. But he wasn’t her.
And now with her beside me and the fullness of loving her hanging in the air between us, I didn’t know how to go back. I didn’t know how to pretend that this wasn’t what I wanted. That sleeping beside her and absorbing her wasn’t what I needed. But I knew there was no going forward. An emptiness settled into me because I understood the limits of our universe and as the ache began to throb, I wondered to myself, “How were we going to end?”
Chapter Eight: Sidney
Our journey back into the land of straight-laced reality was tense and uncomfortable. I had loved Dayna. Teased and tempted her until Confusion appeared. And now we were acting like shy kindergartners on the first day of school. We sat down together on the empty train car and our hands touched.
I jumped and then I apologized, my mind already donning the mask I needed to live the life I lived when we weren’t tucked away at Sara’s.
She sighed and shook her head slowly. “What are you apologizing for?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t apologize.”
My eyes met her soft brown orbs. “I don’t know what else to do.”
As she opened her mouth to respond, my husband’s distinctive ring tone sounded from my purse and I tossed her a nervous smile before fumbling in my bag to find the phone. When my right hand grasped it, I got up and moved away. I stood at one of the long metal bars and held on as the train moved beneath my feet. I looked away from Dayna and answered the call.
“Hey,” I said into the receiver.
“Hey, you coming home soon?” Aaron asked.
“Yes, I am. I’m on the train now. Everything okay?” I asked.
Even though I was standing a few feet away, I could feel the coldness in her demeanor, the subtle change in the air between us.
Aaron was my husband. My reality. I was in love with her, but I still loved him and the guilt I felt at betraying his trust made me get up from my seat, turn away from her, and give him my undivided attention.
He deserved that much.
“Everything is good. The kids are watching a movie. I didn’t want anything. I was just checking in with you. Wanted to see how you were holding up.”
I smiled as if he could see me. “I’m making it. I was able to get some work done and I feel good about that. Thanks for watching the kids this morning. I really needed the time.”
“No problem. We’ve been hanging tough. You know they love playing with Daddy.”
I chuckled. “I know. I just hope the house is in one piece when I get there.”
“All under control. I’m just glad you got to get some work done. You’ve been working so hard lately.
”
I chewed the inside of my lip, one of my nervous habits. “Yeah, it’s been a little crazy. Thanks again.”
“One more thing. Darnell called, he wants to hang out tonight. Is that cool?” he asked.
Darnell was Aaron’s cousin. They were really close; like brothers. And Aaron’s desire to focus on anything other than me was more than welcome. I answered him quickly. Maybe even a little too quickly.
“Ab – absolutely. You need to get out and have some fun.”
“Alright, let me call him back and let him know.
“Okay. Tell him I said hi. I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon. I love you,” he said.
My eyes closed and that ever-present feeling of defeat began to nip at me. “Love you, too.” I whispered.
Once again I was at a loss for words. I didn’t know what to say, but I felt like I should say something.
“Dayna, - - - -,” I began, my voice more pleading than I’d intended it to be.
I stopped when her free hand rose up to block my words.
“You don’t need to say anything. I know this is crazy. I’m crazy to feel possessive. I’ll get over it,” she whispered, her eyes tearing, her pupils fixed on the fast-passing Chicago scenery.
“Dee,” I said, before moving to caress her cheek with my hand. “Look at me.”
I felt her jaw tense before she turned to face me. We had a discussion with no words. The impossibility of this situation bore down on us as the train hurtled us back to acceptable familiarity. My hand dropped back to my own lap. There was nothing I could say to make this any better. It was what it was.
I quickly scanned our train car and confirmed that we were alone. I could spare a little affection to soothe her spirit and calm my discomfort. On a normal day, we didn’t display affection publicly. We had too much to lose. The wrong touch and wrong witness could totally destabilize the homes and families Dayna and I had worked so hard to create. We didn’t take any chances.
But on that day, on that empty train, with her jaw tense and her eyes filling with unshed tears, she needed me. I leaned in to her and whispered, “Dee, look at me.”