The morning delights me, the ocean air makes me breathe easier.
We sit down for a lovely breakfast of steamy muffins and juice, just the three of us. This surprises me, in a place so large—there has to be at least a dozen guest rooms on three floors—I expect more women enjoying the tranquility of this place.
“Did you make these?” I ask. “They’re delicious.”
“I cook much of what you’ll eat here, though I do have some help,” she says, as if she’s trying to hide something. I wonder if she’s so obscure about everything.
Peach sits next to me, uncharacteristically subdued.
“Perhaps you’d two like to sunbathe,” she suggests. “The beach is lovely this time of day. You’ll find the sun less harsh and there’s a perfect spot to catch the rays, just to the south of the stairway.”
“I remember it,” Peach says. She sounds annoyed with our hostess.
“I’m glad I can offer women the opportunity to do things here they would not be able to do elsewhere,” she says. The more I’m with this odd woman, the more I see a quixotic spirit, with facets to her personality beyond those that first appear. I’m not sure what to think of her.
After breakfast, Peach and I make a trek to the beach, passing through a vast garden of well manicured wildflowers, perennials, and more than a dozen varieties of roses. I could remain here forever just drinking in the beauty against the backdrop of the ocean, and the windswept cliff-side trees.
“Miriam created this garden,” Peach tells me. “I was here when these roses were planted.” She shows me a row of bright blooming wild roses that entwine like lovers along a split rail fence.
“They’re wonderful, and so fragrant.”
“Don’t think that woman had anything to do with this. This place belongs to Miriam, whether she’s here or not.”
“You don’t like her at all. In fact, I’d say you resent Tasia being here.”
“Maybe.”
“Perhaps we should see your friend, maybe she’s not so unhappy to have been replaced.”
Peach pouts, then pulls me along with her to the rickety stairs. I can’t believe how far above the beach we are, and how dangerous the descent. Our trek moves slowly as the stairs are in need of repair.
“We’ll go up another path on the way back,” Peach comments, obviously knowing of some route I cannot see.
Finding the spot Tasia mentioned, Peach and I remove our clothes. I’m hesitant, self consciously thinking that someone might spy on us here, even though I’m aroused by the indecency of public exposure. The truth is, it’s really quite safe, with so few to discover us naked. I lay down on the heavy quilt we’ve brought with us and let my body get used to the freedom.
The sun never fails to ignite me sexually; it only takes minutes before I feel the sensuous heat on my skin. I reach out for Peach with a fondling hand. We must be on the same wave length, for we fall into each other’s bodies easily. Everything seems perfect now, especially the way the sun warms our skin so that it feels prickly when we caress each other. I’ve missed this effortlessness with her.
She runs her hands between my legs where it’s wet and sticky. She pulls at my ring so I let out a tiny “ouch”. She smiles at me, and I think that everything that was raw between us is healed. I cum easily. Peach doesn’t need to do anything but fondle my clit and labia for a few seconds, it’s so alive.
After my climax, I roll her over on her back, and climb between her legs, finding her clit with my tongue. Looking up at her as she lies back drinking in the sensations, I watch her expression change. She rocks against my face with her groin. Her brow wrinkles, then relaxes. Her muscles tense and her breasts bob, the soft flesh jiggling. Her nipples are erect, and I lean forward to take them between my teeth and bite them lightly.
She gasps, the harder I bear down on her nipples. I suck them hard, and she cums as my hands play between her legs.
When Peach is conscious again, she rolls me over and spreads my ass wide towards the sun, letting the warmth bake my rear. I wave my ass like a beckoning slut, and she slaps it to make it burn all the more.
“I’d love to see this ass of yours whipped,” she says. I don’t pay much attention to her “love talk”, as I’m lost in the crude sensations that rise as she tortures my ass with her hands, slapping, pinching and scratching the surface until I’m sure it’s raw. She reaches down and penetrates my cunt with at least two fingers; I’m so sloshy I can’t tell.
I roar something nasty when I cum again. She slaps my ass as I finish, then rolls me over to kiss me as a satisfied smile appears across her face.
I let the sun beat down on me again as Peach covers my tits with suntan lotion. “I don’t want to burn you that way,” she says slyly.
It’s quiet, except for the ocean’s sonorous roar. I could fall asleep to the rhythm.
“You two have quite a wicked way of making love,” a voice interrupts our peace.
We open our eyes and look up to see Tasia staring down at us, just steps away from the blanket.
“I see she’s marked with a devil’s ring, did you do that to her Samantha Clarisse?” the woman asks.
“What? You watched us?” Peach says, sitting up. She’s pissed; I know the intonations in her voice well.
“I’ll likely get off to the memory,” Tasia says smiling.
So nonchalant she is. I don’t know whether to be offended or aroused. I let Peach take the lead.
“You plan to mark her more, Samantha? I’d be delighted to watch,” the woman says, referring to me. She seems to ignore me, in favor of Peach. And why the hell does she call her by her right name? This annoys me.
“If she were willing there are lots of things I might do,” Peach tells her, “but that’s hardly a devil’s ring, just tiny insignificant roses.”
“Roses? They’re never insignificant,” she says.
I’m annoyed with Peach now, too, making vague statements about our private lives to a woman who is yet a stranger. I immediately flash on something sinister about this place, about the woman, and her eyes, which are now nothing like they were the night before and earlier this morning. They have a distinctly carnal quality to them that makes her look as if she’s sprung from the dark, dank earth itself. Her comment about my cunt ring irritates me as much as it does Peach.
“Perhaps this vacation away from that other world will give you both the opportunity to explore your more substantial selves. I can see you two just simmering. But I’ll let you be, I have things to attend to. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed this beach so much already.”
We watch her walk away.
“Damn! Can you believe that she deliberately watched us?” I vent.
“Yes,” Peach replies. She looks as if she’s lost, her mind having drifted far away.
“And what’s this about my ring?”
“Perhaps she knows something you don’t,” Peach says with a haughty twist to her words.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like what you really want.”
“Don’t press me,” I tell her irritated with the turn of events. “I’m here to rest and recuperate. The last thing I need is more sexual adventures.”
“Oh,” Peach sighs despondently. She turns over on her stomach and rests her head on her arms.
“Besides, I don’t like the way she calls you Samantha Clarisse.”
“Why not?” Peach replies sleepily. “It is my real name.”
“You don’t like me calling you Peach?” I ask.
“Stop before you make a fool of yourself, Cassidy, I never said I didn’t like your term of endearment.”
Duly admonished for my pettiness, I say no more, even though I’m uneasy with sweet Tasia turning into a witch in my imagination.
Chapter Seven
That afternoon, we strike out for Miriam’s cottage. A watchful Tasia waves goodbye as we back the Jeep out of a mud puddle and make our way back up the steep road. The way Tasia gushes over us about this trek leaves us
both wondering what ulterior motive the woman has in mind. How odd, after less than a day at The Edge, we’re ready for a breather.
We drive up to the place Tasia describes for us, as if we knew instinctively where we were going. I’m having better thoughts about this woman who was Peach’s lover. Seeing her house, I’m even more at ease; I can imagine how Tasia’s house once looked.
Miriam greets us at the door with a breezy smile and lets us in, showing us to her ocean facing porch.
“You found me after all,” she says warmly kissing Peach on the cheek.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Peach asks.
“I always knew I’d see you again, Samantha,” she says, as she shows us where to sit. “And Cassidy, I’m glad to meet you.”
With other women the sentiments might be fake, but as I suspected, this woman has no fakery in her bones. She’s as common as the ground she walks on, her home an earthbound extension of herself, covered with vines, decorated in light, sunny colors and filled with plants and flowers that remind me of the garden at the B&B.
As we sit on antique wicker chairs, I can imagine making love to her in a minute.
“The resort is so different without you,” Peach tells her.
“Tasia has done quite a transformation.”
“I’m not sure I like it,” Peach adds.
“Really?” Miriam looks surprised.
“Yes really, the woman is bizarre.”
“Perhaps.”
I feel as if Miriam is not telling us everything.
“She had the audacity to watch us make love on the beach this morning,” Peach explains.
Miriam smiles. “I’m sure it was a delightful sight.” There’s a lustrous light in her eyes. Though, while I find Tasia’s voyeuring unnerving, I might feel completely at ease if Peach and I made love for Miriam’s eyes.
“It was rather unexpected,” I add.
“I think Tasia would be good for you both,” Miriam says. “She has that wicked sense of drama that I warned you about.”
Peach looks at her former lover thoughtfully, as if she’s remembering some long ago conversation.
“What is it with the resort now, we seem to be the only ones there.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Miriam says. As she leans over to pour us another lemonade, I see down her blouse. Her hefty breasts swing nakedly beneath. I see a hint of sweat inside the cleavage, thinking how pleasant it would be to hold her flesh in my hands and kiss its sweetness. I can smell her fragrance as if I were close, and it draws me even more.
“Well the place looks rather empty if you ask me,” Peach says.
“I’m sure everyone is there that you two need for a perfect vacation, and there are likely others who will join you in the next few weeks. We are approaching midsummer.”
“You mean the rites still happen?”
“Oh, my yes, Tasia has a real flair for the season.”
I would have liked to have asked her more about these rites, but Peach jumps in too soon. “What made you leave?”
“It’s her house,” Miriam explains simply.
“Hers, but I thought…” Peach starts.
“I kept it for her as if it were my own. I suppose in some ways it still is, but it’s better that I live here.”
Her vague answer hardly explains a thing but it satisfies Peach.
“You’ll really like Cassidy,” she begins, changing the subject, “she has this crazy view of sex and God.”
“Oh?”
“Tell her?” Peach says.
I blush, though I’m not that uncomfortable. It seems I could never be embarrassed in this woman’s company. I feel as if I’ve known her forever. “I’ve told her that I live in my cunt.”
“That’s understandable.”
The way she says it, I know she understands without further explanation even though Peach seems to want me to continue.
“Everything is sexual to me, even lampposts,” I laugh. “The way everything is emotional to Peach.”
“You have one little hothead here in Samantha,” she jokes at Peach’s expense.
I don’t know why, but it seems perfectly all right for Miriam to call Peach by her right name, where it wasn’t just hours ago with Tasia.
“If you live in your cunt, Cassidy, then this is a good place for you to vacation,” Miriam says.
“Why is that?” I ask.
“The opportunities are vast here in our little seaside haven. Be sure not to miss them.”
I smile, feeling a little sheepish, as if my mother has just gently admonished me. I tingle all over too, wondering what it would be like to be swept into her arms.
“And Sam,” Miriam says almost sternly, “there are lots of Tasias in your life, perhaps it’s time you faced her.”
Peach nods, but is struck silent.
We talk more, but not so strangely as our earlier conversation. I’m so pleasantly taken with Miriam, I can’t imagine I had felt threatened by her. When we leave, however, there is an unexpected silence between Peach and me as we ride back to The Edge.
“What was that about ‘Tasias’?” I ask when we are in our room together.
“Nothing,” Peach says harshly.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, why would there be anything wrong?” she replies icily.
“There shouldn’t be, but you’re angry about something, and you’re not even hiding it,” I point out the obvious.
Peach sulks for some moments, eyeing me with a look I rarely see in her. It has me scared. “You’re wrong,” she finally blurts out at me. “It’s you.”
“What do you mean? What the hell have I done?” I ask.
“If I were a man I’d probably call you a prick tease. You get me so damned charged about some sexual things and then you drop me in the middle of my arousal with your sudden flare of judgment.”
“What are you talking about? When have I done that?” I ask, astounded.
“All the time. Ever since I’ve known you. Ever since you handed me that first story of yours. Most recently, with the dykes at Gram’s; but it’s been a dozen times before that too. I’m beginning to feel cut out of your life half the time, especially when I want right inside that nasty mind of yours.” She looks at me with a grin that seems pure evil.
My heart and loins pound as she speaks. “Why this? Why now?” I ask.
“It’s always been between us, Cass, always, you just want to ignore it all the time, but I can’t. Believe me, I can’t anymore. Don’t tease me with your fantasies and your stupid stories. I can’t stand it. Maybe it’s this place, and seeing Miriam and that woman… that’s probably it,” she rambles on confused, “but whatever, I can’t hold all this back anymore. And I’m damn sick and tired of tiptoeing around what I want to do, and what I know damn well you want to do too!” I look at Peach in shock. “And, my dear, don’t ask me to be faithful to you on this vacation, because I’m not sure I can be.”
I feel crushed, suddenly weighted down with a thousand pounds of lead all hanging on my heart.
“Who are you going to fuck?” I ask.
She looks at me haughtily. “I don’t know.”
“Does this mean you want to break up?”
“I don’t know that either,” she says, “just let me be.”
I’m left certain that she plans to run back to Miriam; it’s the obvious conclusion of this amazing day. What’s worse is that I can see why she might want to return to her lover; Miriam is an uncommon woman.
But what about those other things, allusions to my stories, the leather dykes, and God knows what else. I wonder what I need to do to make her happy again; there are a bundle of thoughts that rush through my brain. But I dismiss them all, realizing what they might mean. They’re too absurd to even consider.
We remain estranged from each other all evening, and for two days after. We play at conversation, but there seems no way to breach the horrendous feeling of doom that has suddenly overtaken me. It seems al
l through our meals with our hostess, Tasia speaks as if she’s playing us against each other. It continues to be just the two of us and Tasia; and I come to discount Miriam’s claim that there are others at the resort, since none show up for any meal except the three of us. I wish that other women would arrive soon to take away some of the oppressiveness I’m beginning to feel in Tasia’s overbearing presence. Peach changes when we’re with her and her mood doesn’t quickly repair.
Peach is rude to her, snapping quips that are likely meant for me; but since I can’t think of a thing to say, and am hiding away in my thoughts, she aims her barbs at Tasia. The woman ignores them easily, as she goes on to explain to Peach all the things she has done to the house and the grounds since she returned from Portugal. She has some strange tales to tell about some mystical experiences she had on the continent. While I might have wanted to hear about them days before, they sound like silly tales now, especially since she aims her comments solely at Peach—who flatly looks bored with the conversation.
Tasia says nothing to me at all anymore. That bothers me, only because her disregard for me is so deliberate.
“That woman is exhausting,” Peach says when we retreat to our room after dinner on the third day. This time, she appears more congenial, as she rants about Tasia. “I’m not sure I want to stay here any longer,” she tells me. “She’s insufferably boring with all that crazy talk of hers.”
I’m ready to agree with her, though her strange mood swings and cutting accusations at my expense leave me too cautious to agree with her now.
This night, Peach doesn’t touch me at all when we go to bed, and for the first time since I can remember, we don’t make love. I feel as if whatever evil thing is lurking around us is about to come to a head. I look forward to morning when I’ll suggest we leave and find some other place to spend our summer.
About two o’clock in the morning, I wake to see Peach slipping away, out our door. I catch sight of her kimono as she’s almost out of sight.
Warm milk, a book to read? Perhaps she can’t sleep. Now I’m wide awake, perhaps I’ll join her. I get out of bed and move to the bay window looking out into the night. I spot Peach down below, moving from the house into the garden. She’s barefoot. The picture of her leaves me breathless, and I watch mesmerized by the woman I love so dearly—who’s now so dearly distressed. I wish I could fix things, but I’m still at a loss to know what she needs, and much too scared to figure it out.
Pagan Dreams Page 6
