Lightning Strikes

by Cass Sellars

  Apparently unfazed, Sydney slid her arm around Parker’s waist as she grazed her lips over her hair. Parker shivered. Syd’s gray eyes sparkled as she addressed the trio. “Don’t let it bother you, Bob, you were never even in the race.”

  Parker stifled a giggle as she melted into Syd and avoided eye contact with the three strangers. She walked beside Sydney to a corner table overlooking the night sky and brilliant lake. A decanter of bold red was breathing near a flickering white candle.

  Parker reached for Sydney’s hand as she leaned in to fall against her. “You’re a menace, Sydney Hyatt. But I have to admit that I enjoyed that immensely.”

  Sydney spoke quietly into Parker’s ear. “Which part? Where men were fawning over your every breath or the one where I claimed you?” A mischievous grin found her lips as she lifted Parker’s hand to kiss her knuckles.

  “Definitely the latter.” She had answered before she could corral the thought.

  Sydney fixed Parker with her gaze as they sat. “I’m glad.” Her eyes darkened and then shadowed as she looked across the table.

  Once again, the minutes fell away just as they had on their first evening together. Syd sketched out her week in Pennsylvania and Parker covered her catch-up week at the office. Thoughts blossomed in the intervening silence and Parker spared Syd a careful look.

  Parker was serious for a moment. “I hope you don’t think I expect anything beyond tonight—I’m not trying to insinuate anything. I mean, I’m not trying to make this more than you want it to be.” Parker compelled her breathing to steady as she forced herself to make eye contact with Syd, who was clearly amused by her stammering.

  Sydney rejected Parker’s attempt to minimize the import of the evening, even though she was still surprised that she was having feelings for Parker. “I didn’t plan to meet you or want anything more. I never looked for more because I didn’t think it was there. You fell into my neighborhood, my life, I guess. I don’t know what this is yet, but…”

  “Hey, I’m ready to try it your way, I’m not ready to date one person—besides, I would never presume to take you out of the game. I think you would miss the chase.”

  Sydney hoped that wasn’t true.

  Parker moved her fingers in a figure eight over the white cloth. “I guess I’m not asking for anything more than all the information.”

  Sydney hadn’t expected Parker to sound so casual. She seemed prepared to walk away if the time came. Sydney considered how much she hated that thought. “I guess when you aren’t in relationships, people think you should be. Then, if you start thinking about being in one, people think you’re beyond reform.”

  Parker looked through the window into the inky black sky. “I guess I never thought of it like that, and it’s kind of unfair. In the same way that people think every connection for other people means rings and babies.” She glanced back at Sydney clearly trying to decipher her intensely contemplative look. “No one knows what lightning feels like until it hits you.” She added quickly, “I didn’t mean to imply anything about us, I was just saying.”

  “You’re right.” Sydney didn’t elaborate. Parker seemed to be ready to play her role against type, opposite in every way her life had been before. Sydney wondered briefly why that didn’t seem to be enough right now.

  Dessert came at some point during their effortless conversation, no longer about relationships or the lack of them. Parker absently fed Sydney tiny bites of lavender chocolate cake, and she regaled Parker with her war stories of local crimes and cleaned the chocolate from Parker’s fingers between sentences. Sydney couldn’t have identified another soul inside the restaurant. She was unsure if there was anyone else there at all.

  After dinner, as they walked to the valet stand, Parker seemed to float on Sydney’s arm. Sydney was impossibly happy to share the intoxicating moments with her as they drove back together. Parker kissed her shoulder and laid her head against Sydney for the ride home.

  “Thank you for so much more than you know,” Sydney whispered, pressing her head against Parker’s, wondering if she had even heard.

  Inside Sydney’s loft, Parker let her wrap slide from her shoulders and fall over the sofa where Sydney had placed her jacket. Parker excused herself to the bathroom where she took long calming breaths and chased escaped strands of hair back into the clip. She opened the door and heard Sydney quietly move into the hall to face her, the shirt now hanging loosely at her long waist.

  Parker was absorbed into a slow embrace as Sydney pulled her close. She felt weak as Syd’s sultry voice mixed with the music and her intoxicating energy. “I believe you owe me the rest of a dance, Ms. Duncan.”

  Sydney’s hands skimmed around Parker’s waist as she eased her mouth over and down her neck. Parker draped her arms around Syd’s broad shoulders and drank in the mysterious moment. She couldn’t find a lucid thought through the pounding of her heart and paralyzing electricity that was sliding up her spine. Sydney’s fingers captured her hips more powerfully as she pulled her into the music and into her.

  Releasing the clip, Sydney let Parker’s hair fall down and across her face before guiding her along the floor to the song they heard during their first dance.

  “Hey, this is ‘Perfect’ that we…” Parker couldn’t fathom the coincidence or imagine that Sydney would begin to remember that brief moment.

  “I know. It played in my head for three days after that night. I downloaded Doria Roberts’s whole CD once I figured out what song it was.”

  Parker just stared at her. “I would never have believed that you remembered any of that.” Parker was consumed by Sydney at that moment, the enigma of her causing an unexpected flood of emotion to rush through her veins.

  Syd smiled as she glided her hands along Parker’s jaw, behind her head, and through the thick hair resting at her neck, suddenly pulling Parker’s mouth onto hers. Parker made a startled mewling sound as the heat of the moment consumed her. She felt Sydney’s thigh between hers as she rocked into her instantly, heat blazing between them. Parker’s body swelled against Syd and she strained to be closer, to be touched by more of her. The kiss then became frantic and desperate as Sydney pulled her harder against her charged figure. Parker’s body compelled her response, clawing at Syd’s back, obliging her tongue deeper, and sending fiery messages that collided into the mystery that was Sydney.

  “I can’t take this anymore.” The song had long faded when Sydney exhaled desperately and moved away from her mouth. She breathed into Parker’s ear, “Come to bed with me now.” Syd searched Parker’s face for an answer.

  Parker, barely audible even to herself through the maze of emotions and gripping need for the woman holding her, issued a shaky, breathy, “Yes.”

  Parker shocked herself when she recaptured Sydney’s mouth hungrily. She snaked her arms around her tighter and locked her legs around Sydney’s waist. Parker adored being this close to her; she believed that she had never desired another person more than she wanted Sydney at that moment. Raw passion, abject lust, complete surrender: Parker couldn’t sort the myriad of synapse fires consuming her brain, and didn’t care to.

  Sydney was intent on providing Parker with unhurried attention, on deliberately drinking in every inch of her, on pulling her slowly through each fervent touch. She had never imagined wanting that with a woman. She was routinely intent only on delivering swift pleasure to compliant partners; she never cared to know all of them, to expand in any way on their needs or desires beyond the immediate. Now, she didn’t want to dominate Parker for the sake of it; she wanted to methodically become a part of her, to bask in the exploration of her. To move away from Parker at this moment would be unimaginable. Syd knew this was more than she’d had with any other woman she’d known, in any capacity. She shunted aside the fears that threatened to consume her mind.

  As they reached the bedroom, Parker again drove her mouth onto Sydney’s, mercilessly bruising a deep kiss. Sensations crashed like angry waves into uneven boulders as
Sydney let go, despite her desperate attempt to resist the fall.

  “Please,” Parker whispered as Sydney caressed her body deliberately, leaving trembling flesh in the wake of her expert explorations.

  “Tell me, baby,” Sydney coached as her body pulsed with the intense desire for Parker. She moved behind her, sweeping her hair to the side and bending to course her tongue along her delicate shoulder. She disengaged the clasp at the top of her dress; she felt Parker shudder when she slid the zipper open slowly, leaving the small metal pull to sit just above her lowest curve. The dress fell away and pooled around Parker’s feet as she stepped from her shoes. Syd pushed her hands around her and across her breasts guiding each nipple between her fingers, traveling the path to ignite her most primitive yearnings.

  When Sydney heard Parker gasp, she stepped around her, bending to capture each nipple slowly in her mouth, grazing her teeth hungrily along the hypersensitive flesh. Shedding her own clothes swiftly, her taut thigh found purchase between Parker’s. Syd felt Parker’s legs threaten to fold and gripped her more tightly before directing her down to lie against the bed and under her. She sensed an invading heat that burned through her as she delivered increasing pressure against Parker’s bowing pelvis.

  Sydney stared as she absorbed the woman in her arms, naked but for a thin black lace G-string stretched across her narrow hips. “God, you are so beautiful.” Sydney briefly recalled being in this place with other women many times before this and never really seeing them, perhaps not wanting to, not like this, and not anyone who caused this churning, flaring intensity.

  “Please,” Parker hissed insistently as she pulled Sydney to her mouth. “I need you now.” Her words energized Sydney as she trailed her lips across Parker’s stomach, passing scorching fingers over her taut nipples, returning to reclaim her slender throat urgently with her mouth.

  Sydney whispered hotly in her ear, “How do you want me, baby?”

  “Hard,” Parker growled. Sydney faltered at the sound of the demure brunette demanding to be taken by her. Sydney was gripped by a dark impatience as she moved to drag the tiny string down Parker’s legs with her teeth, slipping it to the floor to join the discarded pile of clothing near the bed.

  Sliding up smoothly to rejoin an entranced Parker, she rested against her, supporting her weight with her left arm as her right hand sought the sensitive skin at the apex of her thighs. As she teased Parker’s intimate flesh, Parker soon arched against her, surging, pleading, begging.

  Sydney invaded Parker’s mouth as she grazed her fingers across her quaking center. The deluge of emotion consumed her as Parker’s powerful response, in her kiss and in her core, hypnotized Sydney, and she felt Parker invite her in. Sydney watched Parker’s eyes as they stared hungrily into her own. Parker melted into Sydney, grasping at her, spurring her, until Syd finally moved into her, plunging deeply into her writhing lover. Slowly, Sydney summoned Parker’s obliging body as Parker moved helplessly under her command and under the exquisite violation.

  After an eternity of seconds, Parker released a strangled cry as she thrust her hips in answer to her lover’s demands. “Oh God, Sydney,” she cried again as Syd found her nipple once more with her teeth and Parker impaled herself harder against Syd’s plunging fingers.

  “More,” Parker commanded. Syd charged into her more deeply as she felt Parker strain against her, driving against her fingers as Sydney sought to summon the sensitive ridges of her hidden flesh.

  Syd stroked into Parker repeatedly as she crawled and arched against her over and over. Syd had never been so captivated or unraveled by the experience of making love to someone. She was desperate to inhale her, to possess her, to deliver her. She swept her thumb urgently across Parker’s swollen knot of nerves as Parker grabbed frantically at Sydney’s neck and tensed powerfully against her.

  Parker’s body jerked again as Sydney found her ear, delivering the sensual edict, “Yes, baby, come for me,” as she felt her own ecstasy climbing to meet Parker’s, rolling and pulsing against the woman she was steering toward her edge.

  “Just for me, only for me, baby,” Sydney begged in Parker’s ear multiplying her lover’s frenzy. Parker lost all restraint as she moaned and growled and finally screamed against her lover’s mouth as she guided her over. The blistering sensations captured her soul and turned out in waves.

  Sydney propelled Parker’s cresting body farther, and she felt her own control shatter with Parker’s blinding release. “Yes, baby, just like that.” She pulled Parker harder against her as new waves rolled over and through them both, uniting flesh as it consumed them equally. Parker forced her mouth onto Sydney’s, shaking still at the arresting sensations that continued to rock her.

  Only when Sydney felt the contractions abate in them both did she shift even slightly in order to tenderly embrace her lover, to feel her curl into her torso, desire slaked only temporarily.

  “Please,” Parker said weakly, still shuddering.

  “Please, what, baby?” Sydney whispered into her hair, strengthening her hold.

  “Don’t let go.”

  Sydney brushed her lips over Parker and stilled them on her cheek. “Look at me.” She compelled Parker to lean back as she took in her flushed visage. Watery blue eyes swam into focus, her gaze locking onto Sydney’s sculptured face.

  “I don’t think I could let go if I tried.” The words rushed out as panic washed over Syd. She had never uttered words like those to another soul in her thirty-five years and had never thought she would. “And I don’t want to try.” Syd was surrendering.

  Parker searched her eyes, perhaps looking for doubt or deceit. Sydney delivered a kiss bursting with new passion and desire, as if to reassure her.

  Sydney scanned her memory for the feeling, the one where she met the same desire and quenching passion as her lover, where she was hopelessly driven over by it. The feeling wasn’t there, it never had been there…until now. Her soul ached as she strangled at the thought of not holding Parker, shielding her, protecting her.

  Parker skimmed her hands hungrily over Sydney’s lean body. “I want to make you feel—”

  Sydney lifted to shift Parker beneath her again. She placed a finger over her mouth as she whispered, “Later.” Parker melted into her eyes. “I’ve never done this before, and I’m not finished.” Sydney smiled as Parker understood precisely what she meant.

  *

  Becky watched the muted light flicker in her girlfriend’s living room window. She thought she saw two figures there briefly before the lights faded out. She imagined Sydney would have tired of that plain girl and sent her home. She ignored the fact that she had never seen the woman cross the well-lit hallway. Maybe Sydney knew Becky was waiting for her and would come to take her inside. She shredded the Styrofoam cup which had long ago held her hot, bitter coffee. She bargained with herself that, with each sip, Sydney was that much closer to coming to her. To finding Becky waiting patiently for her.

  No, Becky thought again, it was so late. Sydney would want more time with her since she knew so well how to please her, like no one else ever had. The pile of white shreds littered the gravel at her feet. Sydney would want her all night, she thought, as she lovingly drove her message into Syd’s shiny car door.

  “I’ll teach her to be so mean. You don’t tell me to leave.” She pouted as she replayed the encounter at the gym. “She won’t do it again.” Becky was sure of it. Once that girl was gone, Sydney would realize what they had, how much they meant to one another. She sat again in her car, watching in vain for the lights to once again flood the living room windows. She pictured the last time they were together, and tasted the last kiss Sydney had given her. She would have more. Many more.

  Chapter Twelve

  Parker rolled sleepily onto Sydney, tucking her face under her lover’s chin. Sydney’s hands roamed over Parker’s warm, smooth back and she pulled her tightly up and onto her.

  “Morning, gorgeous.” Parker felt the words murmured into
her hair and tightened her arms, barring any separation from invading their strange new bond despite her inner edict to treat this as nothing more than an informal encounter of no particular import.

  “You have to work today?” Parker mumbled the query, desperate not to separate from Sydney for even a moment.

  “There’s nothing pressing in the studio, just paperwork.” Sydney found her mouth, reaffirming their connection.

  “Mmm. Can we just hide here? I want it to just be you and me for about a year,” Parker said sleepily.

  “That would be nice, but someone might miss us eventually.” Syd chuckled against her.

  Parker pulled back in order to meet Sydney’s eyes.

  Sydney must have seen her struggling to find words. “What is it?”

  “I’ve never been, you know, like that with anyone,” Parker whispered shyly, referring to her fairly uncharacteristic behavior the night before. “Unrestrained, I guess.” The formal word didn’t accurately portray the raw, passionate reaction Parker had for Sydney. She hid her eyes and laughed at herself. The truth was confounding. She had been blinded by the experience and reasoned that her commitment to sex without emotion was responsible. She quietly argued with herself when that made no sense.

  Sydney looked momentarily unraveled by the statement, clearly sorting in her mind. “That means everything to me,” she whispered.

  Parker looked up and asked hesitantly, “Is it always like that for you…with women? Are they always like that with you?” She silently chastised herself for sounding insecure. Parker couldn’t let herself feel more than she was sure Sydney was. But she still wanted the answer.

  Sydney pulled Parker’s chin up and caught her lips before replying. “No, it’s never been like that with anyone.”

  Parker tried to deflect the way that made her feel. She tried not hear the memory of Dayne’s voice echo in her present. There was so much to enjoy about being in this moment despite the internal fight to run from it.