by Kim Baldwin
“The Nearness of You.”
It gave her courage. She quietly crossed to Kash, took a deep breath, and slipped her arms around Kash’s waist from behind. The humming stopped.
Kash straightened, and every nerve and muscle in her body tensed, but she didn’t pull away. Isabel took this reaction as tacit encouragement and pressed against Kash’s back. They were close enough in height that she could rest her head on Kash’s shoulder.
Softly, Isabel started singing the song that Kash had been humming. She had a beautiful rich alto, and she sang with meaning. As she did, she traced lightly over Kash’s stomach with her fingertips, and it wasn’t long before Kash began to relax against her.
“Come to bed,” Isabel whispered.
“Nothing more is going to happen between us,” Kash said unsteadily. “You go ahead, and I’ll be there soon.”
“Stop denying this, will you?” Isabel loosened her hold on Kash and pivoted her until they faced each other. Before Kash could respond, Isabel slipped one hand behind her neck, pulled their faces together, and kissed her.
Isabel’s lips were feather soft as they glanced over Kash’s, and as they did, Isabel trembled, a shudder of poised anticipation. A heartbeat later, her mouth laid claim to Kash’s, firm and insistent. Her tongue demanded entry, wetly caressing Kash’s lips, pushing in, and Kash’s mind fogged as she surrendered to the rush of feeling pouring through her. When Isabel kissed her, it was as though her whole body was being kissed.
With her lips, and teeth, and tongue, she returned Isabel’s passion, and the kiss grew so heated she didn’t immediately realize that Isabel had managed to unfasten her trousers and unzip her fly.
She became aware of it when Isabel’s fingertips slipped between her shirt and pants and touched the naked skin of her stomach. She closed her own hand firmly around Isabel’s wrist. “No, Isabel. I told you.”
“Yes. You told me,” Isabel agreed. Kash’s stomach muscles had gone suddenly rigid beneath her hand, but she didn’t withdraw it and was encouraged when Kash allowed it to remain. “But you also said the way you usually are with women didn’t feel right with me. So let it be different, Kash. Let me touch you.” She gave Kash several slow, wet kisses on her neck. She wasn’t ordinarily comfortable with taking the initiative sexually, but she knew that she had to with Kash. “You can deny it all you like, but I can tell from the things you say to me with your eyes, from the way your body moves against mine, and especially from the way you kiss me, that you want me to, very much. Am I wrong?”
Kash didn’t respond verbally, but she took her hand away from Isabel’s wrist. When she did, Isabel began moving her fingertips lightly over Kash’s abdomen, tracing circuitous paths that moved lower with each rotation. The muscles beneath her hand began to relax. “Do you like that? Feel good?”
Her mouth was still nuzzling Kash’s neck, so she felt more than saw Kash’s nod of assent. “I crave it, Kash. Touching you. Exciting you the way you excite me.”
“You do, Isabel.” Kash’s voice was strained. Her hands, which were now on Isabel’s ass, gripped tighter but didn’t move. Isabel knew that she must be struggling with what was happening.
“Please let it happen, Kash. I want to so very much. So much.” She punctuated every other word with more kisses and gentle bites on Kash’s neck. Let me make love to you. She couldn’t say the words aloud for fear of chasing Kash away, but she felt the truth of them in her heart. No matter how improbable or impossible, she was falling in love, falling fast and hard, and this was definitely making love for her, not just sex.
Kash’s heart was pounding and her mouth was parched. It was warm in the room with the window closed, and perspiration trickled down her chest, between her breasts, as though chasing Isabel’s hand to push it lower, toward the swollen, ready ache between her legs. But she couldn’t ask for it. She was doing her best merely to allow it.
She roughly massaged Isabel’s ass as she took a half step back so that she could use the wall behind her for support. Her head spun as she leaned back against the cool brick and closed her eyes, and her legs felt rubbery as she spread them to allow Isabel greater access. This was as much encouragement as she could manage.
Isabel’s hand detoured from its sweetly torturous exploration of her lower abdomen and slipped to the waistband of her trousers to pull them down and off, exposing her overheated skin to the air.
“Jesus, Kash, that is so hot.”
She opened her eyes hazily to find Isabel staring at her black string bikinis with a lustful expression. Kash got harder, and her need for release intensified unbearably. Please touch me, Isabel. Please. I’ll die if you don’t.
As if answering her unspoken plea, Isabel slipped her hands beneath the slim waistband of the thong and smoothed it over her thighs and off. Kash’s clit grew harder still, and she bit her lower lip to keep from voicing her desire.
Isabel slowly straightened to stand again before her and on the way ran her hands up Kash’s ankles, calves, and thighs, palms spread to explore, getting her used to the feel of a woman’s touch on her body again after so damn long. So damn long. Was I waiting for you, Isabel? It sure feels as though I was. With you, it’s almost…easy.
She closed her eyes when Isabel touched her stomach again, moving upward, this time to unfasten the buttons on her shirt. Without looking, she put her hands around Isabel, who stopped her, gently placing them instead at her sides, palms flat against the wall.
Kash gritted her teeth at the surrender of control but allowed it for, surprisingly, it only increased the pulse between her legs. “Isabel.” It came out more growl than word, but had the desired effect. At once, her shirt was open and Isabel’s mouth was on her breast. Oh, fuck, yes. She spread her legs farther and braced for deliverance.
Isabel built her slowly, and every blessed bit of it, from that first maddeningly light touch of her fingers to the driving thrusts that shattered her, were somehow worth the long wait, the self-imposed exile of sexual solitude her life had become. When she finally came, she was weak and gasping, and sank to her knees, scraping her back against the rough brick.
“You okay?” Isabel gently inquired from somewhere close. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Dared not even open her eyes, afraid that Isabel could see how vulnerable she had let herself become. Kash felt raw, and exposed, and suddenly afraid that she had let things go much too far.
With Isabel, she had felt out of control almost from the start. All along, I’ve been trying to tell myself that Isabel couldn’t handle sex with me without complications and expectations. But it’s not her at all. It’s me. Somehow I knew that if I let her touch me, I’d be lost.
Now what? What have I done? I let her in, all the way in, when I’m going to have to say good-bye to her in a little more than a week. Kash began to realize and accept how truly important Isabel had become.
“Isabel,” she said when she could find her voice. “It’s late. Why don’t you get ready to go to sleep?” She indicated the bed with a tilt of her head, feeling too vulnerable to be able to meet Isabel’s eyes.
“Kash?”
She could hear the concern in Isabel’s quiet inquiry, but had no ability to do anything about it at the moment. “Please, Isabel.”
“All right, Kash.” Kash heard a soft sigh, then the soft footfalls of her retreat toward the bed, the sounds of her undressing, and the quiet stillness after Isabel had slipped beneath the covers.
Only then did she redress and extinguish all the candles but one faint one, near the head of the bed. She stood over Isabel, who was watching her with the same uncertainty and confusion that she was feeling to her core. Much as she wanted to give Isabel some reassurances that somehow, something had just changed between them, she could not. She’d stepped in some kind of quicksand, and she couldn’t bring herself to succumb to it. “Sleep. Sweet dreams.”
“Are you going to join me?” It was more plea than question.
“Isabel, I…I’m not
very comfortable sharing a bed with you,” Kash admitted. “Especially one that size. I sleep alone, except when I drift off unintentionally.”
“I’ll be very respectful, Kash,” Isabel said. “I mean, I’ll try not to touch you, if you don’t want me to. But it is a small bed, and I might accidentally put an arm over you or curl up next to you while we sleep. Can’t help it.”
Kash felt her skin get hotter with the prospect of Isabel lazily cozying up behind her, half-asleep. That would certainly wake me up in a hurry. Would I be able to stop myself from touching her, getting even more irrevocably lost in her embrace? I’m not certain I would. “Thanks for the warning. Please don’t take it personally if you wake up and I’m curled up on a pillow on the floor.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll try not to,” Isabel replied. She was hurt, though she clearly tried to hide it.
You try so hard to please and encourage me, though I’ve treated you pretty shabbily at times, pushing you away again and again. I can’t hurt you anymore. And I can’t let you hurt me. Kash sat on the edge of the bed. “I…I’m not in a familiar place right now, Isabel. I need a little time alone.”
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Kash. Or in any way increase the distance you already want to put between us. But you…make me feel so much. And I wanted…still want…to share that experience. As much as I can, as long as I’m able. I’ve…I’ve come to care a lot about you.”
Isabel’s voice was low and somehow extraordinarily soothing, as though by just listening to her, Kash could heal the fractures that all the women who had used her had inflicted.
“I don’t regret what happened, Isabel. Not for a moment. I wanted very much for you to touch me.” However brief their time together was to be, Kash wanted Isabel to know that she, too, had impressed her, deeply. She owed her that much. “You’re an extraordinary woman, and I’ve come to care a great deal about you, too.”
Isabel smiled, and Kash’s heart melted. She would miss that lopsided smile, so much. Along with so many other things. “Sleep now. It’s very late. I’m going to stay up a while.” And try to figure out how the hell I’m going to manage without you in my life.
Chapter Eighteen
Kash yawned and massaged the crook in her neck she’d gotten from nodding off, something she thought impossible given her posture and current mental and emotional state. She sat beneath the window, back against the wall and legs stretched out in front of her. The sandstorm was blowing in earnest, and the steady drumming of the tiny grains against the glass had lulled her, like the soothing cadence of a wire brush on cymbals in a good piece of jazz.
Knowing Isabel was across the room, half naked in bed, was driving her mad. What have you done to me, Isabel, that suddenly so much of my whole life seems…wrong? How can I go back to Manhattan and act as if all of this never happened? She rubbed her eyes and tried to see her watch. Another half hour until dawn.
The sandstorm seems appropriate, somehow. All Isabel, a combination of such tiny things that you don’t feel threatened at first…you don’t see it coming, but all of a sudden, the world as you know it is gone, and you have no idea which way is up. In the scant two weeks since they’d first met, those simple traits that made up Isabel—her sweet and open honesty, perky optimism, dogged and sexy determination—had combined to obscure Kash’s vision of where her future lay.
All she knew for sure was that her old routine didn’t fit so well anymore. She didn’t think she could get much further satisfaction out of drinking the night away alone and going to the right parties and screwing models now and then. And taking bullshit pictures because it’s easy and gives you plenty of women to fuck.
That thought led her to the answer as to what to do next. She would try to regain the passion she once had for what she did. Bury herself in her work. Photography was the one thing that might be enough to get her mind off Isabel and her life headed in a positive new direction.
As soon as Kash heard people up and about in the outer room, she slipped out of the bedroom and away from Isabel.
*
Isabel knew immediately that Kash had never joined her in bed. The other side of the thin covering was unwrinkled, the pillow untouched. She frowned in disappointment. I bet she got no sleep at all. It had taken her a long while to doze off, her mind too preoccupied with trying to think of something she might say or do to get Kash to let her guard down and open herself up to the possibility that something real—something deep—might develop between them.
Kash’s admission that she had come to care for her, too, had been a welcome surprise. But she didn’t allow herself to take it as encouragement for the future. And that was what she wanted with Kash. She knew that now. A future. Or at the very least, more time. Time for Kash to learn to trust again. Time for the two of them to get to know each other better. Time to see if something more than a brief affair might come from their undeniable mutual attraction and growing connection.
She thought back to what Kash had told her about her previous relationships. Though Kash had avoided any kind of emotional commitment for some time, she was certainly capable of love. She had once loved, and loved deeply—she had just been terribly hurt and was too afraid of it happening again to open herself up.
Well, we still have ten days left. And things seem to be moving in a positive direction. She let me touch her and opened up to me a little.
One thing was certain. They wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Her watch said it was eight in the morning, but she could scarcely tell it from the way the sandstorm had blotted out the sun. Dressing quickly, she joined the others and found them clustered tightly together on pillows in the outer room, focused on Kash’s laptop.
All of them looked up at Isabel when she came in and hailed her with good mornings and smiles, but only Kash held her eyes. Nazim and their Egyptian hosts immediately returned their attention to whatever Kash was showing them.
“Evidently I’m missing something pretty fascinating,” Isabel observed as she moved to a place behind Kash where she could also see the screen.
“Oh, yes, truly magnificent,” Nazim answered without taking his eyes from the computer, which currently displayed a full-screen photo, black and white. It was an adolescent boy in the Khan al-Khalili bazaar in Cairo, stoking coals for a glassblower. He was rail thin and his shirt was stained and dark with sweat, but his eyes held no anger or depression with his wretched lot in life, only placid acceptance.
After a few seconds, the screen pixilated into another photo, brilliant with color this time. An elderly Asian woman with a flowery dress was weaving a basket of green fronds in a lush tropical paradise. Once again Kash had captured her at the precise instant where her expression told the story of her life. The satisfied smile on her face said she had been doing this forever, and she kept at it because she liked to, not because she had to.
“Lovely,” Isabel commented. “Where was it taken?”
“Thailand,” Kash said.
The third was an Indian elephant-keeper, caught smiling as his charge rubbed his back with her trunk. The fourth, a dour Russian guard with severely bloodshot eyes and a mustache caked with ice.
There were many more like them, and all had captured their subjects in a way that conveyed much more than simple photos usually did.
“Are these published in a book or something?” Isabel had always respected Kash’s talent as a photographer; she thought her reputation well deserved. Her celebrity portraits also captured their subjects in an authentic and insightfully unique way. But while the star shots nearly always had some element of unexpected humor, these portraits painted a moving snapshot of the common man, caught at work. Isabel thought it was remarkable how well Kash was able to convey whether the subjects enjoyed or despised their labors.
“No. These are some photos from my travels, many years ago.”
“You have a fine talent, Kash,” Nazim remarked, and their Egyptian host and his wife echoed his enthusiasm.
As s
he studied the photos, Isabel sensed that Kash had probably spent some time getting to know her subjects, to ensure that whatever pose and expression she chose to represent them reflected their true nature, just as her celebrity shots did. And this realization made her relax quite a lot about how she would be portrayed in Sophisticated Women. Although she still abhorred the media attention that her appearance on the cover would likely generate, at least she felt confident that the cover would not be something she would dislike. Kash will show me only in a positive way, I’m sure.
“You should let people see these,” she urged as Kash exited her photo program. Their hosts were now in the kitchen preparing breakfast, and Nazim was helping out, so they had a few minutes out of earshot. They were lounging side by side on pillows, Kash seated, her laptop on a low table in front of her, and Isabel lying on her side, propped up on one elbow. “They’re extraordinary.”
Kash faced her. She was used to people complimenting her photographs. But usually her popular advertisements or sexy model shots drew the attention. “Most people like the other stuff I do.”
“Oh, I think you do all types of photography well, Kash,” Isabel said. “You have a wonderful eye. But I like these best. These…well, these are art. They say something. They make you think.” She blushed, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to imply that your magazine covers and other stuff aren’t important.”
Kash smiled. “I know what you mean, Isabel. No offense taken. In fact, I’m happy you appreciate what I was trying for with these.”
“So…if that was what you were trying for, why haven’t you put them out there?”
Kash considered her answer. “Those were all shot before I got famous. I took three months for myself and traveled the world. I always intended them to be part of something larger, but I got sidetracked from that idea not long after I got back.”
