by Gina Dartt
She glanced up as Nikki finally returned to the bedroom and slipped out of her robe to reveal pert breasts, a flat stomach, and slim hips. Her body was toned from a work-out regime that included exercises Kate had never before encountered, but certainly enjoyed watching, particularly when Nikki performed them in clinging shorts and a skimpy top.
Smiling as Nikki slid between the sheets next to her, Kate acquired a rather passionate good-morning kiss before finally settling down, her head nestled on Nikki’s shoulder. Nikki’s warmth was wonderful, and Kate uttered a soft sigh of contentment.
“Is everything all right? I thought you sounded a bit upset out there.”
“Not upset, just a little surprised. That was Kim.”
“What did she say?” Kim was Nikki’s best friend, but she was not in the habit of calling so early in the morning, nor very often on a weekend.
“That guy who became sick last night?” Nikki wrapped her arm around Kate. “He died before they got him to the hospital.”
“Stephen’s dead? I mean, I knew he didn’t look good when the ambulance left, but I thought they had it under control.”
“Apparently it was on the news this morning. Kim wanted to know if I had seen anything.” Nikki glanced down at Kate, her blue eyes quizzical. “Did you know him well?”
Kate shook her head. “Not very. Susan knew him better. She actually dated him briefly in high school. Hannah, on the other hand, lives next door to my grandmother in Bible Hill, and they’re friends. I know her far better than I’d like.”
“Is that why the old woman considers it her right to tell you how to live? Because she’s a friend of your grandmother?”
“Actually, Hannah thinks it’s her right to tell everyone how to live. Her family gets it the worst, though, especially Stephen and Denise. They live…” Kate paused, the situation suddenly becoming real to her. “Lived…just down the street from her. It’s understood in the Elliot family that Hannah’s way is always the right way, and anyone who disagrees is in trouble…as you witnessed last night.”
Nikki made a face at the reminder, and Kate decided it was time to change the subject. Placing her hand flat over Nikki’s stomach, she began to rub it in slow circles. “So tell me more about this canoe trip I’ve committed myself to.”
The corner of Nikki’s mouth lifted. “A group of us get together for a weekend every spring and meet at one of the bridges in Upper Stewiacke, canoe down to the park, and camp overnight before heading home. It’s really fun.”
“If you say so.” Kate kissed Nikki’s neck. “I really don’t know how to paddle a canoe or put up a tent or sleep on the ground—”
“Will you trust me to show you how? I’ll make sure we take along everything you need to be comfortable.”
Kate hesitated, but smiled when Nikki glanced at her sideways. “All right, I’ll trust you.”
She slipped her leg across Nikki’s groin, pressing down slightly as she lifted her hand to Nikki’s breast. Idly, she toyed with a rosy nipple, feeling it harden immediately.
“I bet you’ll enjoy making love in a sleeping bag,” Nikki said lazily, watching her through lidded eyes that were remarkably similar to Powder’s all of a sudden.
“I’d enjoy making love with you anywhere,” Kate murmured, brushing her lips along the line of Nikki’s collarbone. “Though that’s something I never thought I would say about anyone.”
Nikki ran her hand along Kate’s side, stroking her flank lazily as she half turned toward her. “Why?”
“Because I never thought of sex as particularly important.” Kate paid closer attention to what she was doing with her fingertips, circling Nikki’s soft nipple with more insistence. “Now, I find I need to be with you in a way I’ve never needed anything before. It’s almost a craving at times.”
“You should indulge your cravings.” Nikki reached up and took off her glasses, placing them on the nightstand by the bed before reaching over and pulling Kate close, nuzzling her ear.
After further shifting, Kate slipped on top of Nikki fully, pressing down on her as they kissed until she was breathless. Those soft curves and warm flesh cushioning her body intoxicated her, and she settled onto them with rising desire. Nikki’s mouth was sweet and tender, a connection Kate thought she would never get enough of as Nikki traced lazy patterns of sensation over her back, sides, and buttocks. Finally, Nikki slipped her hand between their bodies, and Kate lifted slightly, granting her lover room to touch her more intimately.
Kate shivered as she felt the fingertips brush over her, Nikki manipulating gently in a circular motion. Covering Nikki’s breasts with her hands, she felt the nipples prod her palms as she moved her hips against the maddening caress. Uttering a small cry when she felt Nikki’s fingers slip into her, she clenched around them as they flexed deep within her, the pleasure building with steady power. The ball of Nikki’s thumb took up where the previous caress had left off, rubbing firmly back and forth, and Kate could feel the first tremors of her approaching orgasm. Forcing herself to keep her eyes open, she surrendered to Nikki’s intent gaze, moaning softly as the caress intensified.
“Nikki…” she whispered, her breathing quick and ragged.
“I’m here, baby.” Nikki squeezed Kate’s breast lightly. “Let it go.”
The combination was all Kate needed, and with another helpless cry, she felt the pleasure seize her fiercely, shaking her before finally letting her go. Weak and vulnerable, she collapsed against the welcoming form beneath her, the shudders still reverberating through her.
“God,” she murmured, kissing Nikki’s neck. “You’re incredible.”
“You’re very responsive. Maybe you’ve been saving up for awhile.”
“Certainly until I met you.” Kate laughed shakily. “Honestly, love, I didn’t know it could be like this.”
“Between women? Or just in general.”
“In general,” Kate undulated slightly on the fingers that remained where they were, cupping her possessively. “You do things that overwhelm me”
Nikki nibbled Kate’s bottom lip. “Really?” She sounded very pleased with herself. “Maybe I should overwhelm you again.”
“No, it’s my turn.”
Kate was delighted that Nikki was so very open about what she liked and wanted, granting Kate the same comfort and freedom to try different things, even when they didn’t always work. Half the fun was in the attempt, so they rarely had any complete failures in their exploration. Primarily, the sense of absolute love and trust Kate shared with Nikki granted their physical interaction a depth that she had not believed possible.
Afterward, lying in Nikki’s arms, feeling boneless and sated, Kate wondered how anyone could be this happy. She was certain that she had discovered some brand-new secret that all the words in all the books could never come close to conveying their love in its entirety.
“Hmm, what are you thinking?” Nikki stroked Kate’s hair.
“You...me…” Kate sighed. “Us.”
“Ah. Any conclusions?”
“Just that I love you…forever.”
Nikki hugged her, making that her response.
“You think I’m overstating my case.” Kate smiled.
“I just count my lucky stars that I found you, and that you love me.”
“It’s not something that could have been predicted, is it?”
“Certainly not by this town.” Nikki chuckled. “Honestly, Kate, you really do like to shake people up at times. Is that why your ex figured out you were taking no prisoners last night?”
“I think we should talk about something else.”
“You know I’ll get it out of you sooner or later.” Nikki’s hands drifted and Kate squirmed.
“Stop that,” she demanded.
Ignoring the insincere request, Nikki growled and nipped at her neck, causing a corresponding murmur from the cat on the cedar chest.
All of a sudden, Kate realized that Powder had been there the entire time. “My G
od!” Kate pushed Nikki away as she sat up, staring wide-eyed at the animal. “He watched us make love!”
“I doubt that he derived any sort of thrill from it.” Nikki tried to pull Kate back down beside her.
“Doesn’t that make you...inhibited?”
“Not in the slightest, and since he’s been here for the last hour, it obviously didn’t inhibit you all that much, either.”
“I didn’t remember he was here. Now I do.”
“Fine.” Slipping out of bed, she scooped up the snowy cat and, ignoring his meow of protest, shoved him out the door, shutting it behind him. “Happy now?”
“Only if you get back in bed.”
“You’re hopeless.” Nikki laughed as she slipped back between the the sheets, pulling Kate into her arms. “But I love you anyway.”
Chapter Four
Lunchtime at the Mayflower Diner was busy on Mondays, and Nikki wasn’t surprised to find her best friend Kim at her favorite table in the corner, sitting with her lover, Lynn. The gay community in Truro was small but active, with the couple acting as its primary social directors. They were the motivating force behind the upcoming canoeing trip.
They greeted Nikki with a wink as she took the last empty chair in the diner and immediately asked how the dinner on Saturday night had gone, particularly curious about the mysterious death in one of the town’s better-known families. Nikki couldn’t tell them much more than what she had already discussed with Kim over the phone, though she did fill in the few details about the Elliot family that she had dug out of Kate during their weekend together.
“So who killed him?” Kim’s blue eyes shone as she regarded Nikki.
Nikki shrugged. “It was probably a heart attack. He looked the type, soft and too much cholesterol.”
“So you haven’t heard?”
From the half grin on Kim’s face, Nikki deduced that she knew something juicy. “Heard what?”
“Rumor has it, the man was poisoned.” Kim laid that bomb with all the elated casualness of a card shark laying down a royal flush.
Nikki felt her jaw loosen and barely kept it from dropping open. “Really?” A combination of excitement and dismay swirled in her stomach, a sense of expectation that she was on the verge of some special adventure. But considering the last one had involved an arsonist and nearly left her dead, she wasn’t sure she should be looking for another so soon. “How do you hear these things, anyway?”
“Actually, I heard about it,” Lynn offered. More reserved than her outgoing and vivacious partner, she rarely volunteered information, but when she did, it was usually accurate and to the point. “I do some accounting work for the hospital, and when I was there this morning, I overheard some nurses talking about the dinner Saturday night. Apparently, something unusual was found in the toxicology report.”
“It could just be food poisoning. Except…” Nikki shook her head, thinking quickly. “We all ate the same food. Besides, he became ill so quickly.”
Lynn shrugged. “It could be something he ate earlier in the day.”
“No, everyone said he just keeled over. One second he was fine, the next, he was facedown in his dessert.”
“So someone may have had it in for him.” Lynn looked thoughtful. “I wonder who.”
Kim twirled a strand of strawberry blond hair around her finger. “Well, I wonder what’s going to happen with the company. It’s one of the few family-run businesses still around. Who’ll take over for Stephen?”
Nikki thought about the Elliot manufacturing plant located in the center of town, next to the river dividing Truro from Bible Hill. The large brick building was blackened from more than a century of smoke and grime, despite the fact it had been updated with every pollution control dictated by government regulation. It had been one of the main employers in Truro for as long as it had existed, and while some of their business practices were still reputedly stuck in the 1800s rather than the twenty-first century, particularly when it came to pay and benefits, the plant hadn’t pulled up stakes and moved to Mexico as so many other businesses had when the NAFTA deal came down. There was something to be said for them staying put, something honorable. The Maritimes were home to the Elliots, and in the Maritimes they would remain.
“Remember how long it took for Hannah to decide Stephen could run the place?” Lynn said. “She passed over Andrew even though he was the oldest, and the one everyone expected to take over after their father died.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It was big news at the time,” Kim said. “From what I heard, Andrew was really mad about it, threatened to sell his stock to an outsider, but he didn’t in the end.” She grinned. “I guess Hannah got to him, and everyone knows, what she says, goes. Maybe he’ll take over the position now.”
“I never encountered any of them personally until Saturday night.” Nikki thought about how the family had done their part to ruin her evening with Kate and ground her back teeth. Stephen keeling over into his mousse was only part of the contribution. “Frankly, I’d be just as glad to never have heard about them at all.”
“So what do you think happened, Nik?” Lynn’s question was almost challenging. “Who wanted Stephen dead? You’re the crime expert.”
“I don’t care.” Nikki didn’t sound particularly convincing, not even to herself, and after a second, she forced a smile. “Probably, in the long run, it’ll turn out to be a heart attack after all, and all this talk about poison is nothing but a lot of speculation and gossip.”
“All right then,” said Lynn, “if you don’t want to talk about that, tell us the latest on you and Mrs. Kate.”
Their latest appellation for Kate was a not-so-subtle reminder that not only was she much older than Nikki, fourteen years, but had once been married to a man. Nikki eyed them both, but decided not to challenge them this time.
“We’re just fine. As a matter of fact, we’re going down to the city next weekend to visit her friend Susan. While we’re there, I want to show her Venus Envy, and maybe I can even get her to check out a bar.”
The couple regarded Nikki in blatant amusement, obviously having a difficult time picturing Kate in a gay bar, or even Venus Envy, though it was just a shop.
“She’s also coming on the canoe trip,” Nikki added casually.
Kim gaped at her. “I thought she didn’t like camping.”
“She’s willing to try it. Let’s hope nothing goes wrong.”
Lynn eyed her narrowly. “It’s one of our canoe trips,” she said in a tone that indicated Nikki should know better. “Something always goes wrong.”
“Let’s hope nothing goes wrong for me and Kate,” Nikki amended, remembering past excursions with a bit of a sigh.
Kim started to speak, hesitated, and then as the others looked at her, grinned somewhat sheepishly. “The Summer Twins are coming.”
Nikki closed her eyes as Lynn groaned.
“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Kim protested. “It’s an open trip for whoever in the group wants to come.”
Nikki felt her teeth grinding again. The Summer Twins were neither twins nor related in any way. They were actually a couple, a stout little brunette named May Hayward and a bleached blonde, June Allison. Though Nikki hadn’t known of their reputation the first time she had met them, she had instinctively loathed them on sight and continued to avoid them ever since. The two lovers enjoyed an open relationship, which essentially meant they liked to play games with other lesbians, particularly couples, delighting in trying to lure one partner away from the other. Worse, they apparently didn’t care what consequences their actions caused, either for themselves or other people. They drank to excess and could be counted on to provide at least one embarrassing or offensive display during any outing.
“Maybe Kate and I can go play golf or something that weekend,” Nikki said, frowning. Golf was Kate’s passion, and with the warm weather approaching, Nikki was keenly aware that she would have to learn a great deal more about it.
“There’ll be plenty of other women there,” Kim adopted a soothing tone. “You won’t even have to talk to the twins.”
“Oh, everyone gets to encounter them at least once. Plus, Kate’s new, which means they’ll be all over her.”
Lynn grimaced. “You don’t think Kate will go in for their games, do you?”
“Of course not!” Though a small part of Nikki wondered if that, indeed, was why she was so agitated, she realized she simply wanted this concentrated exposure to other lesbians to be a positive experience for Kate in a way that the Historical Society Dinner had not been for her. In other words, she wanted her friends and the rest of the women in the group to be perfect, which was a totally unrealistic expectation. “I guess Kate will have to take the bad with the good.”
“That’s the spirit,” Kim encouraged. “Don’t let the Twins keep you from participating in something you’ve always enjoyed. Especially don’t let them keep you from bringing Kate along.”
“Kate’s just not into camping.” Nikki sighed. “Not the real camping.”
“Hey, her and a lot of these folks,” Lynn reminded her. “Remember how long it took to pack up Cheryl and Gail last time? My god, they brought everything along but the kitchen sink. It took all seven of us an hour to get their stuff back into the car.”
Nikki laughed, her good humor restored by the memory. “It was mostly because they set up in that hollow by the river. It was easy going down there, but they didn’t think how hard it would be to lug all that stuff back up the hill.”
Lynn shook her head in disagreement. “They had far too much stuff for an overnight trip.”
“Well, I don’t think anybody needs a battery-operated hair dryer while camping.”
