by Heidi Lowe
Then it was time to hit the slopes. He chose one of the smaller ones, which leveled off nicely at the bottom, so I was (theoretically) able to slide to a comfortable stop. That did not, however, stop me screaming on my way down, causing everyone — coworkers and strangers alike — to point and laugh.
“Keep your head up, don’t look down,” the instructor would scream when I got distracted by the onlookers snickering at me. “Remember to snowplow to control your speed.”
I remembered nothing as my life flashed before my eyes, soaring at a million miles per second, toppling over more times than I could count.
“Veer left with your left foot,” he yelled, just as I was about to crash into a small child.
I was hopeless!
The instructor called time out, shook his head, mumbled something in German, then stormed off into the building. It had taken him just a couple of hours to get sick of me.
Saeed and Gaynor came sliding skillfully to the bottom, joining me. We pushed our goggles onto our heads. I lay on the snow, spent, likely bruised, and feeling no better about my skiing skills.
“I saw you guys laughing at me, by the way,” I said with a sulk.
“We were laughing with you, not at you,” Saeed said, lying through his teeth.
“That wasn’t me laughing, that was me screaming!”
They both chuckled.
“You were pretty funny. The whole park was amused, even Naomi.”
I’d been so caught up in trying not to die that I hadn’t noticed her. Now I felt ten times worse, because she’d seen me fall on my ass and face multiple times.
I looked around to see if I could spot her stylish blue jacket, but couldn’t.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Tinkerbell’s too easy for her. She’s gone to Boondoggle.”
They helped me to my feet. “Can we go watch?”
As soon as we reached the top of the Boondoggle slope, and I saw the depth, the deathly drop, I felt my stomach come up in my throat. Several others watched from the sidelines as experts/lunatics flew down the slope at breakneck speed.
I couldn’t see Naomi anywhere, and I panicked. Had she already gone down, and was she hurt?
“She’s not really gonna go down there, is she?” I shrieked.
The others didn’t seem to see what the fuss was all about.
“She’s done it before. She’ll be fine.”
“But... but what if she’s not fine? What if she forgets to snowplow or something?” I’d only just learned the term that day, and now I thought I knew everything.
Then I heard behind me, “I told you, I don’t forget anything.” I spun round to find Naomi standing there. “Especially not how or when to snowplow.”
“You’re gonna hurt yourself.” I simply couldn’t conceal my fear.
I couldn’t see her eyes through the goggles, but I was certain they were smiling, just like her lips. “While I appreciate the concern, Miss Adams, I can look after myself.”
With that, she made her way to the summit, and she was off. Down, down, plowing through the snow. I wanted to shield my eyes, certain I would witness the love of my life crash and die in front of me. But I couldn’t look away; I was overcome with awe. She wasn’t an amateur, far from it. As she took those twists and turns, then disappeared from view, she made it look easy. And sexy.
“She’s great,” Gaynor said, awestruck.
“Yeah, she is...” I said.
I was glad when the whole thing was over, and we were back in the comfort of the hotel. I went for a swim, sat in the sauna, then got changed for dinner. I ached in places I never had before.
A message came through from Brit as I stepped out of the shower.
Naomi hasn’t replied all day. Is she all right?
I shook my head, didn’t respond. She hadn’t bothered to ask how I was doing. No, it was all about what Naomi was up to.
When I’d thought up a reasonable reply, I messaged back, She’s alive. I’m not spying on her for you, remember?
I decided to leave my phone in the room.
The dining hall was packed, and when I found Gaynor, Saeed and Reece, to my horror, another coworker had already claimed the fourth seat.
“Sorry, you were taking too long,” Saeed said through the corner of his mouth.
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. If I was the kind to hold grudges, this would have been a good reason to. “I’ll find another place.”
I cast my eyes around the room, spotted Naomi sitting alone, sucked in a deep breath and made my way over.
She ate so regally, like she was royalty. She looked up at me.
“Do you mind?” I pointed to the chair. She’d said the exact same thing to me in Mario’s.
She gestured for me to sit. A waiter brought a menu. My eyes perused it nervously. I hoped she didn’t see my hands shaking as I held it.
“Can I get you anything to drink at all?” the waiter asked.
“House white. Thank you.”
Once I’d made my food order, he left us again.
Naomi put down her cutlery, picked up her glass of white wine, sipped it while regarding me with the tiniest hint of a smile.
“So I dropped a couple of times,” I said.
“I saw. And it was more than a couple.”
I smiled. “Made a complete fool of myself in front of the whole mountain.”
She gave an unsympathetic shrug, continued to smirk.
“Where did you learn to ski like that?”
She returned to her meal. “I’ve been going since I was three. It’s something we do where I’m from. Some kids had horse-riding, but we had skiing.”
And some had to fashion skipping ropes from three of their father’s belts tied together, and then hide when he found them, afraid he would once again use them on us.
“That must have been nice.” Not the skiing part, the family part.
“It was. Is. We still go a couple of times a year.”
How I wanted to be a part of that, of her life outside of work. To meet the family, to share them with her. I would even take up more skiing lessons to be able to join them all.
I opened my mouth to speak again, but raised voices a few rows down caught my attention.
“...you will eat it. Do you know how much this stuff costs, you ungrateful little...”
The man was trying his best to lower his rough, aggressive voice, but his anger wouldn’t let him go unnoticed. I wasn’t the only one whose attention he caught.
I heard the small voice speak then, “But I don’t like it. It’s too salty.”
“I don’t care what you like. You’re going to eat it, if I have to force it down your throat myself.”
A woman’s voice, “Honey, she says—”
“Be quiet!” he snapped.
I stood up so I could get a better view of their table. I saw all I needed to: the man, a mountain of muscles and hair, his petite wife, and their daughter, who looked no more than seven.
My breathing became labored as the blood boiled beneath my flesh.
I heard the faintest little weeping, watched as the little girl forced herself to eat the food.
“Stop that crying. You’re lucky you’re getting anything.”
I clenched my hands into fists. Give me a reason, asshole.
“Dakota?” Naomi’s voice, heavy with concern, sounded so distant now, even though she was sitting right there. I ignored her.
“Did you... did you just wet yourself?” came the outraged voice of the ogre.
There was no force to stop me, nothing strong enough to hold me back. I was like a rabid dog, flying to the table just as he seized his daughter by the scruff of her neck.
“Hey! Keep your fucking hands off her!” I screamed, and shoved him in the back, pushing him into the table. “And you, are you just gonna let him do that to her? You’re no better than him!”
The whole restaurant, it seemed, had to pry me off him and hold him back from me. He would h
ave pummeled me into the ground. I would have been no match for a guy that size, with that much rage. But I didn’t care.
“Get that crazy bitch away from me,” he warned the waiters and everyone else who’d stepped in.
Naomi came rushing over. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” she assured the crowd, as she tried to lead me away. But I was too far gone.
“Get off me!” I snapped, shoved her away, then ran from the room crying.
Some ten or fifteen minutes later, while I was curled up in a ball on my bed, weeping, I heard my door open. I looked up, saw Naomi with one of the hotel’s workers, who’d obviously granted her entry. What story did she have to spin to get that, I wondered.
“I’ll take it from here. Thank you,” she said, and the woman left.
I lay down again, my back to her. I felt the bed sink with her weight.
She was silent, I was silent. I could hear her breathing.
Then I felt her press herself to my back, drape an arm over me, and bury her face in the nape of my neck.
“I’ve got you, baby,” she whispered. And I wept all over again.
FOURTEEN
Before that night, I’d never made love to anyone. Sex, there’d been much of that. But love-making, true, real love-making, never.
My final teardrop fell onto the bedsheet, and I twisted to look at her, my eyes questioning. She pressed her lips to mine, giving me the sweetest, most gentle kiss. I knew what it meant.
The kisses that followed were more passionate, as she slowly started undressing me. My assistance wasn’t necessary, she took complete control. I was in good hands.
First went my sweater, which she discarded somewhere behind her. I lay back, let her mouth caress my chest with a thousand kisses. Every exposed piece of my flesh received a kiss, like it was some precious thing to be protected, cherished.
When she freed my breasts from the sports bra, she devoured them one after the other, in a slow, drawn out motion, my nipples stiffening between her lips. The feeling was glorious. My soft whimpers filled the room. I held the back of her head, my hand entwined in her dark hair, the French plait loose.
Once she released my breasts, she licked a trail down to my belly button, poked her tongue around it, before returning to my breasts, and gobbling them some more.
I lost all sense of time and place that night, so didn’t know how long she’d spent on the top half of my body. A wonderful eternity that I would have been happy to never see end.
She sat up, and I watched her in breathless anticipation as she pulled off her own clothes, leaving on her panties. There was no doubt in my mind that she’d eventually remove those too. Everything in its time.
She reclaimed my mouth, biting my lower lip a little, whilst battling my tongue for dominance. I let her have it. This was a war I was happy to lose.
I heard my phone buzz as a text came through. It went ignored.
Releasing my mouth, she once again kissed a trail down my chest, until she reached my panties. She took no time sliding them off.
I tensed up as her tongue made first contact with my sex. She’d gone where no woman ever had. None of my conquests from Strobe had gained access — I’d saved that prize just for her.
My eyes fluttered shut, and my body writhed against her face. Her tongue was so powerful, so unrelenting in its assault on my nub, that I thought I would break her nose with my pelvis! If someone had heard me, they would have thought I was being strangled. My whimpers couldn’t be contained, or tamed.
She did a million different things with her tongue, alternating her strokes and strides, throwing in a bit of sucking just to destroy me. I couldn’t believe my toes were actually curling, or that my grip on the bedsheets was close to tearing them.
And then she upped the ante. I opened my eyes to look down at her, barely able to keep my head up. She peered up at me while she ate away. In her eyes I saw something daring. For the briefest moment she freed my bean, but only long enough to suck two of her fingers. She eased them inside me, and reclaimed my nub. I thought I would expire immediately. The sucking working in concert with the finger-fucking was too much for my undersexed vagina to bear. I howled and bucked, squeezed the thread from the bedsheets, broke a couple of nails.
This is what Heaven must feel like, I thought to myself.
I held on and on, never wanting the sensation to stop. Thankfully it wasn’t an orgasm that brought the beautiful torture to an end but Naomi herself.
I was still gasping for breath as she climbed out of her panties. She caught my mouth in a kiss, as she pressed her naked flesh to mine, pinning my arms to the sides. We kissed and kissed, and I could taste myself on her lips.
Then she released my arms, pushed my thighs up around her waist, and gently eased her sex onto mine. My nub was so sensitive from her earlier assault that even the slightest contact with her own stiff, moist bean was enough to send me into a frenzy.
She ground and rode me, while catching my cries of ecstasy in her kisses. I had no idea what the position was called but I loved it. It would likely leave me unable to walk, but boy was it worth it.
I grabbed her ass as she galloped. Her murmurs met mine in volume. There was so much friction — nub against nub, breasts with breasts, flesh to flesh — that we could have started a fire.
In a far off land, my cell phone buzzed for a second time. It went ignored again.
We didn’t last long. She came only seconds after me.
My body spasmed and trembled as the orgasm gripped me, tore through me. I felt it everywhere. I felt hers, too.
She peered down at me with a tired smile. She looked just like she did the day we met. She wiped the hair, that had clung to my forehead with sweat, out of my face.
I returned her smile, before stealing a kiss.
Ten minutes later, we were sitting up in bed, my back resting against her chest, her arms wrapped lovingly around me. I felt so safe, safer than I ever had. She kept kissing my neck, my earlobe, my shoulder, anything she could. Each kiss brought a huge smile to my face.
“No one’s ever made me come before,” I said.
She let her lips linger on my shoulder before saying, “You mean never? Not even before you found Jesus?”
I laughed, shook my head. “You’re the first.”
“So how did I do?”
I twisted round to look at her. “What do you think? Did you not hear me screaming?”
She laughed. “You could just be a great actress.”
There was no faking an orgasm like that. The tribulations she’d put my vagina through were crippling. I was still sensitive down there, even the fabric of my panties against my nub would have been too much to bear. Not that I was in a hurry to put them back on. Sitting here, buck naked, in her arms, was like a dream come true. I never wanted it to end.
We were silent for a while, though she continued to pepper my flesh with kisses. But there was a big, fat elephant in the room that had started to knock over the furniture, insisting to be addressed.
“I can’t believe I lost it like that downstairs,” I started. As it was happening, it felt like I was having an out of body experience, like someone else was saying those words, attacking that man. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d tried.
“He deserved it.”
I fell into a pensive silence, filled with shame and anger, remembering not just the way he’d treated his daughter, but everything else that had led me to that point.
“You asked me if I wanted to elaborate before—”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to. I want you to know me. To know why I acted that way.”
She kissed my shoulder again. “I think I know.”
I shook my head. “You don’t.”
I got up, turned to face her, sat on my knees in front of her. I threaded my fingers through hers, because holding her hands would give me the strength I needed.
Her eyes were gentle, overcome with sympathy. “Was your father ab
usive?”
I nodded. “My mother, too. They took it in turns. They were alcoholics, junkies; any bad addiction, they had it.” I had to look away to keep myself from tearing up.
“Oh, honey.” She reached out a hand to stroke my face. “That must have been awful.”
I swallowed, willed myself to keep it together to get through the rest of the story. “When they lost their jobs, an inevitability considering they kept coming in drunk or high, they took that out on me and my brother. We hid whenever we could, but that just seemed to make them angrier.”
“Then one day, when I was nine, my dad just up and left. Didn’t say where he was going, or if he’d be back. Took a bunch of his stuff, and that month’s rent.” I sucked in as much air as I could, knowing that I would need it. “I was so foolish, I really thought Mom would finally be happy, and she’d be nice to us. But she wasn’t... She blamed us for him leaving. And then the rent wasn’t paid, and the landlord sent an eviction notice...”
My throat tightened. I was wrong to think I could get through it without breaking down. Naomi’s gaze grew more intense. She could sense something bad was coming.
“What happened?”
“I should have known something was off when she gave us banana milkshakes. We never got those. I didn’t realize it tasted funny because I’d never had one before. And by the time we realized she’d drugged us, she’d already locked us in the bathroom and set fire to the house.”
Her eyes looked as if they would pop from their sockets. “Oh my God!”
“If the neighbor hadn’t smashed down the front door, kicked in the bathroom door, we would have been burned alive.”
Now I lost it, collapsed in her arms and let her cradle me. Only then did I realize how broken I’d been this whole time, stuck back together with sticky tape, but never repaired. Christianity was the sticky tape. I’d been dying to break down for two decades.
“That monster,” she said, squeezing me tightly.
“She died of an overdose two weeks into her prison sentence.”
“I’m glad.” She meant it.
