by Radclyffe
My knees felt like jelly as I passed her. I didn’t look back but could hear her walking behind me down the corridor toward my door. As I put the key into the lock, she ran her fingers down the crack of my ass and pushed between my legs. I breathed in deeply, leaning into the door for more; the door opened and I stepped inside.
I turned to her, undoing the top button of my coat. She undid the rest, pushed it over my shoulders, and let it drop to the floor. She ran her fingers down my neck, down my body, taking her time, watching my face as her hands traveled over my curves.
“Liberty,” she said, and slid one strap, then the other from my shoulders. My black dress also fell to the floor. I felt exposed but exhilarated. She reached for my waist and drew me to her, kissed me, calmed me, and placed her hand on my heart, then hers. “Equality,” she said.
“Fraternity,” I responded, and undid her shirt as sensuously as she had mine. I ran my hands over her shoulders and down her lean firm body. Her skin prickled. My mind popped. I reached for her belt.
“Red, white, and…blue,” she said, as her hand slid between my legs. My head tilted back with desire as her fingers grazed under my thong. She breathed heavily as she felt how wet I was. Then she reached both hands under my lower buttocks and lifted me onto her hips. I melted into her as she stepped forward and placed me on the mahogany table in the center of the room. She reached behind me and picked a camellia from the centerpiece and placed it behind my ear.
“There,” she said, her fingers skimming my jaw, brushing my cheek. “They say Paris is like a woman with flowers in her hair.” She leaned in to smell the camellia in my hair; then she lifted her head and looked into me. “So tonight, ma cherie, you can be my Paris. And I will be your traveler. Because when you wake in the morning, I’ll be gone.”
The next morning I woke up with a smile. She was gone, and yet, she was everywhere. I reached for the camellia she’d left on the edge of the bed. Underneath it was a note. “Your French is perfect.”
SUGAR ON SNOW
Sacchi Green
Powdery snowflakes swirled thick and fast, clinging to our jackets, clustering on woolly hats, even tipping Lea’s long eyelashes like a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar. “You’re in for it now!” I called back to her. “It’s too late to get away, even if your car would miraculously start.” I slowed my pace to let her come up beside me, skis swishing rhythmically along the cross-country trail.
“You saw me pocket that distributor rotor, didn’t you, Kit.” Her face, or what I could see of it through the snow, glowed pink with cold air and exertion. The glint of mischief in her hazel eyes melted away the twenty-five years since we’d been college roommates. It seemed impossible that the smooth hair concealed by a bright knit hat was silver now, and short, instead of the long fall of pale gold I remembered.
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t miss that little maneuver,” I said. “And then I checked your car while everybody else was indoors packing. Why should I blow the whistle on you if you wanted to stay badly enough to fake an excuse?”
The other two old friends from college had left our mini-reunion two days ahead of schedule, when the morning news had upgraded the weather forecast from light snow to a potential blizzard. They had families and work to consider. My own new assignment with the National Forest Service was right here, in the New England of my birth, after years of moving from region to region. The few relationships I’d managed had been deliberately temporary. Lea was taking a long break from burnout as head nurse in a big-city hospital, and her second marriage had dissolved several years ago. Neither of us needed to be anyplace else any time soon.
We coasted down the incline to my cabin beside the ice-edged river. Her car and my pickup truck were already coated with a thick layer of white as frothy as meringue on a lemon pie.
“I was pretty sure you knew,” Lea said, coming to a stop and releasing the bindings on her skis. “But since you didn’t say anything right away, I hoped it meant you didn’t mind. Thanks for keeping it to yourself. I acted on impulse and then felt silly for not just saying right out that I wanted to stay.”
“You were silly. What could make more sense than riding out the storm here, where electricity is only one possible option? We have enough firewood and food to last until plowed roads or spring, whichever comes first.” I managed to maintain a light tone, no matter how intensely I needed to know what Lea was up to. Once upon a time we’d been close enough to nearly read each other’s minds, but that was very long ago. When she had finally understood how much beyond youthful experimentation I wanted of her, and I had realized how much I couldn’t have, our friendship had survived but on a carefully superficial level. Over the last decade our communications had dwindled into annual notes on Christmas cards.
“What’s sense got to do with it?” Lea flashed a grin, but it faded quickly. “It’s not just a matter of shelter from the storm, either. Or...well, in a way, maybe it is, but...”
She paused so long that I picked up my skis and started up the steps. Lea followed into the screened porch. “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I said, keeping a firm lid on the hopes and speculations roiling inside. Lea had been under a lot of stress, I wasn’t sure she knew herself what she wanted. “We can do some catching up.”
She shook her head. Soft snow slumped from her hat across her face, like frosting sliding down a cake still hot from the oven. I reached reflexively to wipe it away, barely stifling the urge to lick it from her cheeks, just as she raised her own hand. When I started to pull back, she wrapped her fingers around my thumb and held tight.
“Not catching up,” she said. “Starting over.” She let go and gestured toward the white expanse outside. “Doesn’t the snow make you think of new beginnings, pristine, untrodden paths, unmarked pages?”
A gust of wind hit us with needles of that pristine snow blowing right through the screens. The flakes were smaller now, sharper, coming down even harder.
“It makes me think of stoking the fire,” I said, shaking the snow from my hat and jacket and then opening the door. “And getting in where it’s warm. C’mon.” She was going to have to be more explicit than that before I could lower my guard against disappointment. But once inside, kneeling to fit logs carefully into the woodstove in the living room, I looked over my shoulder long enough to say, “Lea, you know you made your mark on my pages long ago. Indelibly.”
“I do know it, Kit.” She was already mixing leftovers from last night’s communal feast into some sort of stew. “You don’t know how many times I’ve wondered, over the last few years... and wanted to reach out...But we seemed to have traveled so far apart.”
She stood beside me, stirring the pot on the woodstove, apparently getting into the spirit of rustic living even before it was necessary. The past three days she’d been cooking and eating with such enthusiasm that one friend had teased that her taste buds must have only just recovered from the long-ago trauma of college meals. She seemed to be making up for lost time. It did seem to be an irony of nature that Lea, so fixated on food, was still as elegantly lithe as a cougar, while I, who could hike all day on a handful or two of trail mix, looked more like a silver-tipped grizzly.
I stood up stiffly, brushing wood chips from my hands onto my pants legs. The hell with playing it cool when the heat building inside me mirrored the flames licking at the wood in the stove. “We don’t seem to be all that far apart now,” I said, beginning to reach for Lea. She turned right into the circle of my arms. My cheek brushed her smooth hair as she burrowed her face into my shoulder, and for a moment I thought she might be crying. But when she raised her head, her lips were curved into a little smile so delectable that I had to taste it, and then, of course, a mere taste wasn’t enough.
The kiss was so sweet and searing that we couldn’t bear to break it even when the lights went out. Power lines somewhere had gone down under the snow-laden weight of falling branches. The glow through the glass front of the stove was enough for us. The sound and
smell of boiling stew beginning to splatter over and scorch did get our attention, though. We pulled apart, and I grabbed a holder and moved the pot to the brick hearth.
“I suppose we should eat some,” Lea said, somewhat breathlessly. “To keep our strength up.”
“Definitely,” I agreed, and lit a couple of candles from the chimney mantle to place on the folding table close to the stove. Then, while Lea ladled stew into bowls and sliced bread, I opened out the futon couch. I’d been sleeping on it for a few days, leaving the bedrooms to my guests, but tonight I didn’t think I’d even need the excuse of staying close to the fire’s warmth to keep from sleeping there alone.
“This is so great,” Lea said, after about half her meal had been devoured. I’d just dunked my bread a few times and nibbled at it. “So...so...” she waved her spoon as though it might scoop the words she wanted from the air.
“Cozy?” I suggested. “Romantic?”
“Yes, those, but...so right, too,” she said. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the storm for chasing the others away.”
I shoved back my chair and gave up any pretense of eating. “Lea,” I said, “I only invited them to get you to come. So you wouldn’t worry.”
“Worry about what?” Candlelight flickered across her smile and danced in her eyes. She knew perfectly well what I meant.
“About this.” I stood, lifted the whole table aside, and pulled her up from her chair. She raised her face for a kiss, but I resisted, unbuttoning her shirt and spreading it open. “And this.” I pressed my lips into the hollow of her throat, savoring its tenderness, getting hungrier and hungrier for more. She shrugged the shirt right off while my hands pushed her sports bra up out of the way so I could cup her small breasts.
“Wait a minute...” Lea pulled the bra off over her head, and while her arms were raised, I caught one taut nipple after the other in my mouth. She gasped, and then tried to keep me from drawing away, gripping my short hair to force me closer. I pulled her hands free and stretched them far apart.
“I need to look at you. It’s been so long...”
“And I’m so much older,” she said wryly, but didn’t flinch from my gaze. There was no need. The set of her head, the curve of cheek and throat and shoulder and peaked breast, had been my standard of desire ever since they had been imprinted on my memory. If I noticed any changes—the very slightest filling out and softening, perhaps, of her breasts?—they just enhanced her appeal.
“And so much more enticing,” I said, letting her arms drop so that I could stroke her from shoulder blades downward until my hands slid inside the waistband of her jeans and pressed into the curves of her buttocks. “In the firelight your skin has such a delicious glow, like an apricot glaze.” I eased back just a little and bent again to taste her breasts. “Yes, a definite flavor of apricots, but nectarine-sized apricots, sweet and complex.” I sucked gently on an eager nipple.
“Ah...Kit...you’re making me so hungry...but what I want are soft, ripe mangoes...” Lea’s quick fingers tugged my shirt-tails from my pants and got right under to my skin, working upward until she had a firm grip on my flesh. Each lick and suck I gave her was echoed by sharp tweaks that sent tongues of flame streaking through my body. Too soon, of course, sensation overrode both concentration and balance, and we toppled onto the futon in a tangle of limbs and frantically shed clothing.
The wind outside howled down from the mountains through the river valley, making great branches thrash and rattling the damper in the chimney. We scarcely noticed. With my cheek pressed against Lea’s breast, I could feel the pounding of her heart and hear the ragged sounds forming in her chest even before they left her throat. I moved my hand insistently, stroking, squeezing, then probing into her slick, hot depths, keeping in time at first with the arching and thrusting of her hips and then increasing my tempo. She kept pace, voice rising, breath coming faster and harder until, with a rough cascade of cries, she clenched her muscles around my fingers in a spasm hard enough to hold them motionless.
I held her close against me until her breathing finally slowed. Even the wind had dwindled almost to silence, and the whisper of falling snow against the windows was as gentle as the stroke of my fingers along her hair.
Lea’s soft voice drew me upward through layers of sleep.
“I’ve been watching you dream,” she said. The fire had burned down to bright cherry coals, its light bronzing the silver helmet of her hair.
“Am I dreaming now?” I murmured, still drifting.
She lay propped on one elbow, blankets sliding down her shoulder. The scent of her warm body flooded my senses with memory. Much better than dreaming. I reached out to pull her close, but the goose bumps on her arm reminded me of what the fire’s sunset glow meant. I pulled the blankets higher over her shoulders and slipped out from under them myself.
“Time for more wood,” I said unnecessarily.
“I was about to do it myself,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you. But I’m not quite sure of the etiquette of fiddling with someone else’s fire.”
“Don’t worry. Anything goes in a blizzard.” My flesh tingled under her interested gaze as I stooped to the woodpile and knelt before the glass-fronted stove.
When the flames leapt higher, I went to pull the curtains aside and pressed my face against the window. “Over a foot and rising,” I reported, not that I could see all that much through whirling snow so thick it might have been a cave wall hollowed out by the heat of our bodies.
“Maybe we’ll have to tunnel out,” she said. “When I was a kid we used to dig dens and forts under the snowbanks.”
Her warmth welcomed me back under the blankets. “I’ve waited out storms in snow caves a time or two in the mountains,” I said, “but this is a whole lot nicer.”
“It had better be.” She snuggled deliciously closer. “You’ve got me. And the fire. And plenty to eat.”
“Are you sure? I’d better check.” My hand parted her thighs to stroke and probe until my fingers were slippery with her responsive wetness. By the time I raised them to my mouth for a taste she was working her own fingers into me with serious intent.
“Mm, yes,” she said, sampling the glistening results. “Done just the way I like it,” and suddenly she was burrowing under the blankets in a sudden assault on my eager cunt and clit, licking and sucking in a frenzy quickly matched by the bucking of my hips. I had no chance to savor the delicious sensations, to let the tension build; my response came fast, hard, and out of control, leaving me quivering blissfully and totally wrung out.
As Lea untangled the blankets and pulled them back over us, she said, with the satisfaction of a job well done, “Well, if there were any pristine, unmarked bits of these sheets left before this, there certainly aren’t now.” And she snuggled up against me with a sigh of satisfaction.
The next thing I knew, the white light of a snowy morning was seeping through the curtains. Lea lay sleeping soundly. A tremor stirred her eyelids; I wondered what she saw behind them, and how their tender skin might feel beneath my lips.
Her face was pale, but a faint flush lit the strong, lovely arch of her cheekbones. Her mouth, slightly swollen, was a deeper pink, tempting me to put out my tongue to taste myself there. I resisted, not wanting to wake her yet.
Without interrupting the even pattern of her breathing, I edged out of the blankets and dressed in the back hallway. Then I filled old water jugs with sunflower and thistle seeds for the birds, and stepped outside.
At least two feet of snow lay on flat areas, more in drifts, but it was coming down only lightly now. As I forged my way to the bird feeders, eager jays and chickadees were already making forays from the shrubbery. Back at the porch I grabbed a shovel and cleared a path to my pickup truck, moving the snow in layers. The road hadn’t been plowed yet, which was all right with me; what could be finer than being snowbound with Lea? I contemplated the absurd mushroom of snow on the roof of the truck and decided to preserve it for a wh
ile as a natural work of art.
I went back to the house with a childlike urge to show Lea the birds, the snow, the slashes of blue sky emerging between the clouds; to share every smallest pleasure. Just savor the moment, I ordered myself. Don’t complicate things. I shook my head, brushed as much snow as I could from my sweater and jeans, and concentrated on the joys of the present.
As soon as the warm inside air hit me, I knew Lea wasn’t still curled up waiting under the covers. Regret was muted by my stomach’s response to the smell of breakfast cooking.
“I hope you like French toast,” she said, flipping the slices in a big frying pan on the wood stove. A pan of maple syrup was heating near the edge. “Not only have I had my way with your fire, I’ve ravaged your kitchen.”
“Feel free to ravage anything you like,” I said, admiring her outfit, which consisted entirely of wool socks and one of my old flannel shirts, strategically unbuttoned.
“Which would you prefer, ravishment or eating?” She held me at arm’s length with the spatula. Then she tugged at my belt just enough to let a little of the snow clinging to my sweater descend into where I was warmest. I yelped but managed to stay on topic.
“Hey, I can go either way,” I gasped. Which, of course, she must have known by then.
“I think I’d better keep my strength up.” She flipped food onto plates, carried them to the table, and dug right in. My stomach growled. I leaned over to kiss her, licking syrup from the sticky corners of her mouth.
Laughter interspersed with kisses set the mood for the rest of the day. Something about being snowbound sets the inner kid free, however deeply the decades may have drifted.
After we’d eaten breakfast and hauled in buckets and kettles of snow to melt for water, we worked together on shoveling the driveway. A few snowball volleys were exchanged, a few frosty fingers warmed in moist, tender places, making them all the warmer and moister for the cool touch.
