Escape to Pleasure

by Sandy Lowe

“Do you think this is a good time for a headlock?”

  “That would be a real mood killer,” Mason said as the blonde pushed her back down where she needed her most. Mason spread her open and flattened her tongue over her hard clit and enjoyed the moan it got her. Obviously touching was allowed now as the blonde grabbed the top of her head and tried to press it down as if to get her to apply more pressure.

  Mason slid her hands under the woman’s ass and tried to keep her touch firm enough to be pleasurable but soft enough to make it last. She moved her hand and positioned her fingers at the blonde’s opening but hesitated.

  “God yes,” the woman said, and Mason slowly put two fingers in while continuing to suck on her stone-hard clit. “Fuck me,” she said loudly and slammed her legs shut, trapping Mason’s head between them for a moment before she reopened them, allowing Mason to breathe again. “Get up here,” she heard her say.

  Mason came back up and they kissed again, but she never stopped moving her hand. It took only a few more strokes before the blonde pressed into her and grabbed her hand to stop her from moving it. “Thank the gods you’re not clueless in everything.”

  “Do you think you can tell me your name now?” Mason asked, closing her eyes at the soft caress to her cheek.

  “Jude Graham, and it’s great to meet you…” Jude gazed up at her as if waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

  “Mason Preston,” she said and smiled when the walls of Jude’s sex pulsed around her fingers. “I’ve had a great time, but maybe now you’ll clue me in on why you picked me, aside from the good luck of running into you in the pool.”

  “Clueless, the truth is, it’s all about the waders. You look really sexy in them and I had to make my move before someone else scooped you up.”

  The words made her pick Jude up and carry her inside. “Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

  “Are you going to order the steak and potato?”

  Mason turned her around and pressed against her back. “You have a talent for finding things I like, so no.”

  “The other thing is, you have to survive dessert tonight,” Jude said as she straddled Mason’s thighs, taking one hand and placing it between her legs and placing the other on her breast. She hissed when Mason slid her index up and down her clit. “In case you were wondering, Clueless, that’s a hint to get going.”

  “Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

  Where It Began

  Nanisi Barrett D’Arnuk

  Known mainly as a conductor and jazz pianist, New England bred Nanisi Barrett D’Arnuk currently lives on thirty acres of wooded land in central Oklahoma. When multiple sclerosis curtailed travel and performing, she returned to her second love: writing. She has several mysteries and romances published.

  We’d just registered at the beautiful Vermont Inn where we’d gotten a wonderful room overlooking the fields, river, and mountains. Now we were going to explore the area. We pulled out of the inn’s parking lot and slowly drove down the road.

  “This is where it started,” I told Linda. “This is where I came out.” We’d pulled into a little Vermont town in the shadows of the beautiful Green Mountains. It was a sweet little place that still kept the quaintness of the last century. “I was twenty-five then. I didn’t even know what a lesbian was.”

  “Twenty-five! That was fifty years ago.”

  I nodded. I’ve been out for a half century. It seems like yesterday. I looked around the small town. It was partly what I remembered, but it still wasn’t the perfect match: it had changed and I had changed. We weren’t the same anymore.

  We pulled to a stop in front of the country store and I pointed across the town square at the large theater building. “I had a hometown friend who was working in the theater company for the summer so I stopped to say hi to her.”

  “I’ve read that this was one of the old summer theaters.”

  “Yes, they’ve been here for ages. They do really good shows.”

  “What are we seeing tonight?”

  “We have tickets to a revival of an old New England play, Our Town. It’s older than we are.” We chuckled.

  “It’s hard to find things that are older than us.” She grimaced. “Except the classics that everyone has done a million times.”

  I had to agree.

  Linda looked at her watch. “It’s only three thirty. Let’s get something to eat, and then we can look around the town before the show. Any special restaurant you want to revisit?”

  “No, wherever you want. I’m not sure I remember the restaurants here. I was only here for three days.”

  “You worked fast.”

  She threw the car in gear and we slowly drove through town until she saw a little restaurant she thought looked good. It was in a place I remembered but had been renovated. It still looked old…it had probably been redone twenty years ago.

  We went in and were seated immediately. When we’d ordered, she turned to me.

  “What play did you see when you were here before?”

  “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” I’d remember it forever. “I’d seen the movie version with Maggie Smith, but the stage version was different. The movie was straightforward, all in the same timeline, from beginning to end. The stage version gives you glimpses of the future, as though the play was just a memory of what had brought you to where you were that day.”

  “Was your friend in the lead?”

  “No, Joan played Sandy,” I answered, “the student who has an affair with Brodie’s lover.”

  “What part did your first lover play?”

  I stopped for a moment. I remembered very well, but I didn’t want her to think I still held on to it. “She was the lighting designer,” I said. “Her name was Dianne. I’m not sure I ever knew her last name.”

  “Was it just a one-night stand?” She seemed surprised.

  I nodded and grinned. “I was driving home from Montreal on a Thursday and really only had two or three days to get back to Boston.”

  “And you remember it very well.”

  I had to smile. “Don’t you remember your first night as a lesbian?”

  “Of course. I remember them all, but there weren’t that many, only three or four.”

  We ate our meals as we discussed and laughed about some of our firsts. After forty or fifty years some things seemed a bit childish, even if they were a big deal back then.

  I’d booked us special seats where my wheelchair would fit and Linda could sit in the seat beside me. I looked up at the theater stage. It hadn’t changed, although the lobby and outside had been renovated. I looked around, remembering, as the lights dimmed to start the show. I’d sat toward stage left…

  ***

  The play, and especially Joan’s acting, was much better than I expected it to be. Joan had always been good…but that was in high school shows. You can never really tell because in comparison to the other high school students who weren’t really serious, anyone with an ounce of talent looks fantastic. It had been six or seven years since we’d graduated and she’d gone to college to study acting. In this play, she was fabulous. She even had a nude scene, not that you saw more than her naked back.

  I had been shocked. It seemed strange. I really wasn’t prepared for someone I knew and had grown up with to be in this type of role. This was stuff you saw a stranger do…and not up close; it was supposed to be on the movie screen, or at least on a large stage where the audience was twenty to a hundred feet away. The front row here was barely ten feet from her.

  I was astounded by her part. I didn’t know it then, but that was just the first piece of innocence I’d have shattered that night.

  When the play was over and everyone had taken their bows, I waited in the corridor until she came out of the dressing rooms.

  “Wow!” I said. “You were fantastic.”

  “Thanks, Mick,” she said as she hugged me.

  “The whole show blew me away.”

  “Then you need a drink. Come on. We
usually go over to the cabaret after the show.”

  I followed her to a small nightclub next door. It was crowded with the cast and audience and it was noisy, both with talk and from the music in the next room. Everyone was in a great mood. There was laughter all over the place.

  “Whatcha want to drink?” she asked me. “If I get it it’s free. You can buy the next round.”

  “Sounds good to me. A vodka tonic would be nice right now,” I answered.

  “Coming right up.” She walked over to the bar and placed the order.

  A tall, very handsome, blond man walked up to her and hugged her tightly, giving her a major open-mouth kiss. It looked like he was trying to swallow her. She finally stepped away and brushed her hair back as she said something to him. She took the two drinks from the bartender and turned back to where I was standing. She handed me one and I took a sip.

  “This is my friend Mickey,” she told him, then turned to me. “This is Ross.” We shook hands. So this was the infamous Ross that she’d been shacking up with all summer!

  “Mickey and I went to school together,” she explained to him.

  “In college?”

  “No, before that.”

  “Were you in theater with her?”

  “No, I was in the band. We only lived a block away so we knew each other all the way through school,” I said.

  “Ah, even when she was a little spoiled brat?” he asked with a laugh.

  “We were both brats,” she cut in. “We got into so much trouble together!” We both giggled at the memories. “We called her Frick.”

  “And you were Frack. We even ran away from home together,” I added.

  “And no one came looking for us!” she clarified.

  “They knew we were too wimpy to stay away too long.”

  “And all we had was a paper bag of Hostess cupcakes and a few candy bars.”

  “And those only lasted three or four hours. That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? What were we, seven or eight?”

  She nodded. We both laughed, thinking back.

  We found seats at a small table and sat down with our drinks. Joan and I picked up where we’d left off that afternoon, discussing what we’d been doing in the last few years.

  A very attractive woman in a denim suit walked up and gave Joan a hug.

  “Mickey, this is Dianne. She’s the lighting designer for the company.”

  We shook hands.

  “Good show tonight,” she complimented Joan.

  “It was the lighting.”

  “You’re such a tease! One of these days I’m going to have to see about that.”

  Joan gave her a playful shove.

  Dianne turned to me. “Did you come up from Boston just to see the show?”

  “Sort of. I was near here and thought I’d come see how Joan was doing.”

  “Mickey and I have known each other since kindergarten,” Joan added.

  “You should come see next week’s show. She has the lead in that one.”

  “It’s a musical,” Joan added.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “A revival of Guys and Dolls.”

  “You’ll be Sister Sarah?”

  Joan nodded.

  “I wish I could come back for that,” I said.

  “Stay another few days. It opens on Tuesday.” Dianne gave me a big smile.

  “I wish I could. I have to be back at work on Monday morning.”

  We all sighed.

  I frowned at Joan. “And you’ll be ready? That’s a quick turn-around,”

  “We’ve been rehearsing for the last week and a half. This has been hell. We rehearse every day from ten till three, then do Brodie at night. We’ll close Brodie after the Sunday matinee and we have that night free.”

  “You’ll have Sunday night free. Dick and I will have to reset all the lighting,” Dianne added.

  Joan nodded. “We’ll have a dress rehearsal on Monday, do any repairs Tuesday morning, then we open Tuesday night.”

  “Good god!” I exclaimed. “What a schedule!”

  “The extra cast members and chorus have been rehearsing in New York City, but they’ll be here tomorrow. Ross is playing Sky Masterson. That’s the role Brando played in the movie version.”

  “I remember,” I assured her. We had both been big musical fans when we were younger: both the Broadway and movie ones.

  “Once we get rolling on Tuesday it’ll quiet down for a while. It’s the transitions that kill us. Good thing we only have to put up with that three or four times a summer, and there are usually only two musicals,” Dianne added.

  “And I had to star in both of them. We started the summer with The Fantasticks, so it wasn’t a hard musical.”

  “You already had it memorized.” I chuckled. The others joined me.

  “You knew the entire score,” Joan reminded me. Then she glanced at Ross and Dianne. “Mickey plays piano.”

  Ross and Dianne nodded.

  “Do you dance?” Dianne asked me.

  I didn’t know how to answer her question. “Onstage?”

  She shook her head and motioned to the other side of the room. “Come on. Let’s relax.” She rose and held out her hand.

  “Oh…sure,” I answered when I saw that there was another room where people were dancing to louder rock music. I got up and let her pull me into that room. I’m not sure how long we danced, but I was sweaty and tired when the music finally changed again for the fourth or fifth time.

  “I gotta get my breath,” I told Dianne as I started to walk off the dance floor.

  “What are you drinking?” she asked me.

  “Vodka tonic,” I answered.

  “I’ll get you one.” She walked off toward the bar and I walked back to the table.

  “Wow.” I moaned as I slid into the chair. “I haven’t danced like that in ages. Dennis didn’t like to dance, so we never went out.”

  “What are you going to do about that?” Joan asked. I had written to her when I decided to come up here and told her about the problems Dennis and I had been having.

  “It’s done. I broke up with him last week.”

  “You made the right decision,” Joan assured me.

  Dianne returned to the table and placed a glass in front of me. I took a good sip.

  “I hate to rush you, but we were just going home. I’m exhausted,” Joan said with a sigh.

  “Oh,” I said. “Of course you are. I should have remembered.” I took another gulp.

  “Don’t rush,” Dianne said as she downed some of her drink. “I can get her back home later.”

  Joan looked at me with a questioning gaze. “That’s up to you,” she said.

  “Well…”

  “Don’t gulp your drink. It’ll get you drunk and you won’t enjoy it. My car is right outside. It won’t be a problem.”

  I still hesitated.

  “Besides, you promised me one more dance.”

  I looked at Joan. “Well, if you don’t mind…”

  “Nope. I’ll leave the door unlocked. You can come in anytime. You know where your bed is.”

  I nodded. “It shouldn’t be that long,” I said.

  Joan got up, pulled me to my feet, and hugged me.

  “Just be careful,” she whispered in my ear. “She’s a lesbian.”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. “I can take care of myself,” I assured her softly.

  “See you in a little while, then. We’ll probably be asleep, so just turn the lights out. You don’t have to worry about locking up. No one locks doors around here.”

  “Okay.” We gave each other kisses and she and Ross walked out.

  Dianne looked at me and then checked her watch. “Relax,” she said, “We still have time. Finish your drink.”

  I smiled as I sat back down and took another sip of my drink.

  We chatted about the theater company for a few minutes and I shared with her some of the things Joan and I had done in our youth. We ended up l
aughing hysterically. Finally, she downed the last of her drink.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do that dance.”

  She stood and took my hand and led me back onto the dance floor. We finished two more dances before the music changed to a slow number. I turned to go back to the table, but she took my hand, wrapped me in her arms and started to sway to the slow music. I’d had just enough to drink that the feeling of this dance seemed right. I didn’t protest.

  “Are you sure you want to go back to Joan’s, or would you like to come to my place for a while?” she whispered in my ear.

  I took a step back.

  “I’m not gay,” I told her.

  “Have you tried it?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Then how do you know?” She pulled me into her arms and planted her lips on mine. I was shocked, but for some reason I didn’t want to pull away. Her lips were soft and insistent. It was probably the vodka, but I fell into the kiss and I found myself kissing her back. The kiss was nothing like Dennis’s had been. It was soft and gentle.

  Finally, she pulled back and simply said, “Let’s go.”

  I don’t remember how we got there but she’d started kissing me again as soon as she’d closed the door. We were in her bedroom and she was unbuttoning my shirt.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Mickey,” she whispered. “We’ll enjoy this.”

  “My name’s really Michelle,” I said softly.

  “Even more beautiful,” she said as she kissed me.

  Come on, I told myself. Get out of this now, but her hands were soft and her kiss was hot. No, it was nothing like Dennis. I felt safer. Why? Was I really gay?

  How…why was I letting this happen?

  We were on her bed, both of us fully unclothed. We hadn’t stopped kissing since we got in.

  Finally, her mouth left mine and moved to my neck, under my ear.

  Good God! I could feel my whole body reacting to her. She moved down to my breast. Oh, yes! I thought. Take it all! Take the other one, too!

  She did, and then she started down my body and was between my legs. Oh! I had felt fingers there before, but never a tongue! What was happening to me? My entire body started to writhe.