Choices

by Tessa Vidal

  This was such a bad idea, and yet it seemed like such a good one. Shell held me on top of her, lightly, but she was holding me.

  She wanted this. We both did. We'd waited so damn long.

  “Nobody's stopping us but us,” she said, and she was right.

  “Then nobody's stopping us,” I said. “Not this time.”

  Built on a lighter frame than she was, I had to push myself down hard and then harder, rotating my pelvis a little as I spread myself out on top of her. The clothes weren't so much of a barrier as they were a tease. We were kissing again, our tongues dabbling just inside our lips before sucking deeper. I slipped to one side, so both of my long thighs could grasp greedily at her more muscular right thigh. She was a strong woman with powerful muscles that invited me to hump and rub.

  “You're a tease.” Her breath tickled the side of my mouth, the shell of my ear. “You always were.”

  “Not such a tease. I like the build-up.”

  “Mmm. I might like it too.”

  Her hands drifted here and there, locating buttons and zippers but not yet unbuttoning and unzipping. The gesture was more a suggestion of what she could do to a light-bodied woman bobbing up and down on top of her.

  Her pelvis lifted, and, even through our layers of clothes, I could feel the very bones move beneath the skin. From beneath, she was grinding into me, using the powerful muscles in her derriere to rotate her sweet delta into my leg. My panties were already soaking wet, and it wouldn't be long before my designer trousers were soaked as well.

  Shell's practical jeans might hold out longer, but who needed them to?

  It was time to unwrap her like a gift. Time to unwrap both of us.

  Her mind was on the same wavelength, and at last she found the hook of fabric at the nape of my neck.

  “Undress me.” No, that wasn't right, that was too princessy, too formal. “Strip me, Shell. Strip me bare.”

  One touch, and she set the button free. The first step. “Say it again.” Her eyes sparkled. “I want to hear you beg.”

  “I can do that, Shell. For you, I can do that. Strip me naked. Get me out of this tangle of clothes.”

  We wriggled around, not really wanting to unglue our thighs from each other. The places where our legs clutched together pulsed with pleasure. Still, there were greater pleasures coming, so we'd have to separate if only by an inch to tear this inconvenient fabric from our bodies.

  “How long I've dreamed of this moment,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said. “I thought I'd never see you again, but I couldn't help but dream.”

  Her quick hands grasped the hem of my shirt to pull it up and up. I closed my eyes, momentarily passive, enjoying the sensation of being stripped.

  To everybody else, I was a star, and one of the more difficult ones. Distant, demanding. An ice queen. A self-appointed princess. But Rayna knew the secret. She knew I was only just Caroline. A pretty girl who dreamed of being a princess like every other pretty girl in Mississippi.

  She knew how to peel me out of the clear plastic wrap that seemed to separate me from the world.

  My celebrity wasn't something that dazzled her. It was something she took in stride, as if she and only she knew who I really was all this time.

  Laughing, she stroked the French lace bra she found beneath my shirt. The gossamer shimmer of the gold lace was the exact same shade as the polish on my toenails. Long ago, I'd worn knockoffs of such brands that I'd searched for high and low on the internet auction sites. Even my mom never knew about the post office box where I had the packages sent― packages that wouldn't fit in the tiny box which was all I could afford. Whoever distributed the mail always had to put a yellow postcard in the box telling me to pick up at the counter.

  A strange thing to remember now. Except I knew Shell was remembering too.

  “You haven't changed a bit. You always wore such beautiful things.” She flicked her tongue cautiously across the delicate fabric. An infuriating tease. My nipples were rock hard and she could see them, she could taste them, through the translucent gold fabric. “You were wearing a bra just like this that night. I used to wonder where you found that stuff. So delicate... I'd better go slow.”

  “You'd better not dream of going any fucking slower. You'd better speed the fuck up.”

  She laughed a soft laugh into my cleavage. “Oh, I think so. I think have to go very, very slow... ah yes... wouldn't want to put a snag in such exquisite lace.” Her breath was hot, her hands patient. She was using lips but not teeth, the pads of her fingers but not nails. Fuck me, respect for a designer brand was all well and good, but we'd been apart for over a decade.

  “You're doing this to make me crazy.” I grabbed her right hand around the wrist with both my hands and jerked it hard to peel the flimsy scrap of nothing away from my skin in an instant.

  “Mmmm.” She hummed sexy vibrations into my nipples. Dear God.

  “We've waited eleven years. We don't have to wait another eleven.” I arched my back to press my nipples even more urgently to her lips.

  “Mmm. If you're sure.”

  “I'm sure.” My fingers flew over her shirt buttons, and she shrugged it off and away. The purple sports bra she wore underneath was more confounding. How do you get that off somebody else without cutting it away with a pair of shears? There were no buttons, no clasps, no hooks. Just stretchable fabric that snapped tight against her boobs to keep them from jostling too much when she was working with her dogs.

  In other words, she'd found another way to tease and delay. “I think I'm going to lose it completely,” I said. “Please. This is too much. How does anybody get these things off anybody?”

  She laughed, then pushed me gently back on the couch. “Sit, watch, I'll put on a show for you.”

  Did I have the willpower to sit and watch? Naked from the waist up, I was stroking my own bare nipples as I watched her dance barefoot and blue-jeaned to a wide spot on the rug where she had plenty of elbow room to stretch, tug, and pull. Getting into that sports bra must have been a major production to judge from the squirm and bounce required to get out of it. It seemed to take an eternity before the first crescent of her small, firm underboob appeared. Slowly, so slowly it was a torture, she stretched and raised the bra, only gradually allowing a hint of pink goose-pimpled aureole to come into view.

  It seemed to take years before her nipples were revealed in full. The stiff peaks pointed straight at me.

  “Please,” I said. “Closer.”

  Diamond-cutters is what we used to call nipples like that. They were spiky. Dangerous.

  Delicious.

  Almost before she tumbled back on top of me, we were licking and sucking at each other's bare boobs. Nobody talked anymore about going slow. My trousers were already unzipped, and her hand zoomed easily down the small of my back to cup my buttocks. My own hands were busy at the fly of her jeans. They took more strength to yank down, but desire gave me strength. Too impatient to stand up to finish the job of getting naked, we arched spines and tilted hips, rocking here and there as we needed to get our pants down to our toes. From there, all we had to do was kick like ballerinas, and they were gone.

  Shell's nylon panties were the same shade of purple as her sports bra. Did she always color coordinate her undies, or had she thought of me that morning when she was getting dressed?

  I was color coordinated too. Gold lace panties to match the gold lace bra and gold nail polish, the expensive fabric so delicate it could rip if you gave it a dirty look.

  Fuck if the panties tore. I didn't have the patience for sweet, teasing Shell to handle them with care, inching them down inch by quarter-inch to avoid snags or runs. With a growl, I ripped them off myself and flung them in a ball or tried to. They floated like a feather to fall on the floor barely a foot away.

  Shell was giggling. Did she know she was capable of giggling at such moments? “They're made of air. Maybe you should put them away somewhere safe.”

  “Fuck
'em if they can't stand up to the game,” I said. My tongue zigzagged down the curve of her boob and the neatly defined muscle of her trim abs. She didn't get those abs from a trainer. She was herself a trainer, and she got them from working. I felt a strange throb of a thrill at the thought. Her muscles were real, and my abs were fake, if you looked at it that way.

  Yet, fake or not, I hadn't felt this real with another woman in a long time. The shadow of her belly button invited a flick from my greedy tongue-tip.

  “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck, that's so good, Caroline.”

  Caroline. Who was I, what was I? The lost princess or the movie star? The girl who dreamed, or the woman who outlived her dream?

  But I hadn't outlived my dream, after all. My dream was here.

  No. Too much. Don't make it more than what it is.

  This is just one night to make up for something we should have had a long time ago.

  Shell, suddenly demanding, suddenly urgent, lifted my long body like it weighed nothing, and probably it did weigh nothing to a woman routinely photographed with Saint Bernards and Bernese Mountain Dogs.

  “Do you want this?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Fucking hell, I'm so sure, I've never been more sure of anything in my life.” We were naked now, and the first slick of sexual perspiration was beginning to bead up on our nude bodies. Wet, slick, tasty... how could I not be sure? “Yes, Shell, yes. Please, I'm sure.”

  Her arms went higher, and so did I. Giggling, squealing, I let her pick me up and put me down. Just that fast, I was the one on my back, my legs sprawled open, with Shell turned around on top of me. It wasn't a control thing, me being on top and then Shell being on top. It was more of a dance. An exchange of pleasure. She'd teased a little, and maybe even I'd teased too, but now the moment for teasing was over.

  “Both of us,” she said. The words were ragged from the place they were torn from the back of her throat, but I understood.

  Oh, yes, I understood.

  Both of us.

  My tongue danced up, and her tongue danced down. Sixty-nine is an act that can be awkward, distracting, your attention broken between the giving and the receiving. Or sixty-nine can be the ultimate melting, no barrier between the tongue probing between your swollen folds and the tongue lifting to probe hers.

  This sixty-nine was one of the magical ones. Rayna and I were two bodies with a single purpose, our rhythm established as easily as if we'd done this a thousand times before. We seemed to know what we needed at the moment we needed it― when to tantalize with a flick across the clitty, when to pressure with a thrust between the lips. When to suck, noisily, the juices running down our faces as much as they ran across our taste buds. When to slurp, when to swallow, when to moan.

  Tiny muscles clenched in readiness. I could taste the clutch of her inner muscles with my tongue, at the same time I felt the clutch of my own inner muscles grasping eagerly for her tongue. My hips bucked beneath her face, moving faster, more frantically, neither of us bothering to hold anything in reserve. We were galloping right up to the edge, and it was glorious. As her pelvis rotated against my face, I closed my eyes against the blur of motion. I didn't need the sense of sight. Taste, smell, touch were everything.

  Our clits were two triggers primed to explode. I could feel it in her hardness against my lip. Hell, I could feel it from the inside-out, in the pulsing of my own clit against her mouth. Our tongues were everywhere seeking out the hot spots. We puckered to suck harder, but not too hard. There's a certain perfect amount of pressure applied to exactly the right place...

  Yes, yes, yes...

  And now...

  And yes...

  The pulse and clench of muscle went all the way down to my toes. My right foot cramped, a thrill of pain that only accentuated the explosive burst of pleasure. Because Shell came too in the same moment, I was being overwhelmed with sensation both inside and out. Her greedy walls grasped urgently on my tongue to pull me close and tight, while the warm woman's scent of her release filled my nostrils with a fragrance more precious than the most expensive perfume.

  Wave after wave, pulse after pulse. Her clitoris beating like a heart.

  “I want, I want.” I didn't remember how to speak more clearly, couldn't get the words out to say what I wanted. Instead, I pushed here and there on the sleek curve of her slick thighs. Shell, easy and responsive, flopped onto her back, and now I was on top again, back the way we'd started, my body light on hers, my mouth a fraction of an inch away from her mouth.

  A moment's pause. The slick of my juices on her beautiful lips belonged in a photograph. No, not a photograph. A painting. A work of art.

  Somebody was giggling somewhere, an intoxicated sound, although Caro Ballad never let herself get intoxicated and she never lost control. The extra coating of shine on Shell's lower lip...

  “That's mine,” I said. “Yes, I'm pretty sure that's mine.” Closing the distance between us, I spanked that sexy lower lip with the flat of my tongue.

  She was giggling too, or maybe it was more of a sensuous chuckle. Low and deep, but light too. Free from care. Nobody else was here, nobody else could stop us, we were real grown-ups now. Eighteen was a million years behind. Other people deciding for us... gone forever. We wouldn't, couldn't let that happen again.

  “Mine,” I said.

  “Mmm.”

  I sucked the juice from her lips, and she sucked the juice from mine, and the kiss was getting wild and reckless again. All heat and salt.

  This was ours. Nobody could take it away.

  Chapter Ten

  Shell

  Morning always comes. Was morning such a curse for other couples, or was it only Caroline and me? It wasn't even morning except in the technical sense. I could tell it was still dark outside from the way the shadows spread out from the curtains on the windows. Maybe five o'clock. Not a ridiculous hour for a woman who guided celebrity dogs on hiking tours, but not necessarily the hour you expected to wake up in a movie star's home.

  “Used to wonder,” Caro said, her voice still a little slurred from sleep.

  Was she even awake?

  I snuggled up to her, skin to skin. We'd climbed into the big bed naked and discovered it was much too big. We tumbled together in the center, sleeping curled into each other, legs wrapped around legs, arms curled around waists. Her throaty voice was close enough to tickle my ear.

  She was sleeping, and I should go back to sleep. Or so I concluded.

  Until she sat up the way people who suffer from nightmares sometimes sit up, like they've fought their way back to consciousness after a hard battle. It was dark in the room, but her eyes caught some glint of something, telling me they were awake and aware.

  “Used to wonder,” she said again. “Used to wonder where I got my things, that's what you used to wonder.”

  “It's all right.” I sat up too and wrapped my arms around her from behind, a cuddling embrace meant to make her feel safe. “You were dreaming.”

  “I was dreaming. But also...” She turned in my arms, her face so close to mine she barely had to lean forward to start planting sweet kisses on the side of my mouth. “Where did I leave you, Rayna? What did I do to you?”

  Shit. I hadn't meant to make her feel bad about things she couldn't help. “It wasn't your choice. I know it was your mom. She wanted to get you away from bad influences. Maybe if I was a mom, I would've done the same.”

  “Used to wonder.” Saying it for the third time, with even more certainty of what her unconscious mind whispered to her in her sleep. “I left you in the shit, didn't I? I mean, your mother dying, your brother on the run from the fucking FBI. And that wasn't even all of it, was it?”

  “It wasn't your fault,” I repeated.

  “They dug into everything. Every little thing. And then you didn't have to use to wonder, you knew.”

  I nodded into her face. What else could I do? They had.

  “They thought the two of us might have been in on it
somehow,” I said. “That they could pressure us to get to my brother. But they had no evidence, because it wasn't true.”

  “They found my post office box.”

  “They did. And they picked up some packages meant for you. They asked me what I knew, where the money came from, but I didn't know any of it. All these secrets everyone kept. They blasted through all of them trying to find the one secret they couldn't solve.” Where my brother went, where the money went.

  Her hand fumbled out blindly to turn on a small lamp set on the nightstand by the bed. It wasn't a bright light, but it was enough for her to search my eyes. “I was ashamed,” she said. “I didn't want anyone to know.”

  The FBI had uncovered Caroline Bullard's awful secret― that she was buying at flea markets, at garage sales, that she was selling online and taking the profits to buy the knockoff versions of the styles she really wanted.

  “It's nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “A lot of women in the country do it.”

  “I know, but I didn't want to seem so country. It would spoil all the mystery.”

  “Oh, Caro...” I rocked her in my arms. “You could've told me.”

  “No, I couldn't. You most of all, I couldn't.”

  That touched my heart like she'd touched it with a finger. I shivered.

  “I wanted you to...” She didn't seem able to find the right words. Her head shook itself against my chest. “I wanted you to respect me, to admire me.”

  “Oh, Caroline. I always admired you. I didn't give a fuck about where you bought your clothes.”

  I sat with my legs sprawled open on either side of her, a position which let us rock into each other for a while. She was warm, yet she was trembling. We were both trembling.

  “So they were tearing into every piece of our lives, snooping around into everything.” Her blonde head shook itself against my collarbone. “Maybe you could've come out here, stayed with me and my aunt...”

  I couldn't have her blaming her mom for wanting to protect her. “No, Caro, I couldn't. If I'd gone to Los Angeles, if I'd gone anywhere, the FBI would have gone with me. Ryder was my brother. My twin. And my mom was really sick.”