A Scarlet Kiss

by Heidi Lowe

  My patience with Marcus had been wearing thinner and thinner by the minute. Frequently snapping at him and blaming it on lack of sleep, phantom headaches, or anything I could come up with on the spot had become our daily routine. Because as far as I was concerned, every moment spent with him was a moment lost with Scarlett. I'd hardly seen her since our picnic in the woods, and that had made me especially cranky. Seeing her briefly at breakfast only made my heart ache for her more. Our exchanges at the dining table were so impersonal, so formal, like I was nothing more than her little brother's current flame. Could she still have been mad at me?

  We left the shop without buying the gloves, then headed to Tottenham Court Road at my request, in order for me to pick up a second hand banjo (which, I made clear, was completely unrelated to Scarlett's upcoming birthday).

  "I had no idea you played the banjo," Marcus said, shaking his head in amusement as we waited for our tube. "It's just such a random instrument to play."

  "It's different, which is what I like about it. Everyone plays the guitar or the piano. Not many can say they play the banjo." I clutched the case tightly, guarding it with my life, as it was my gift to Scarlett. Well, not the instrument itself, but my playing of it. My only hope was that she didn't find it too corny, and that I could compose something in time for her birthday.

  "And this is Catherine, she and Scarlett were joined at the hip once upon a time. We couldn't separate them. Wherever one went the other would be right behind."

  I greeted the woman, one of a dozen or so of Scarlett's buddies that Fiona had insisted on introducing me to. Being dragged from stranger to stranger and presented as their daughter-in-law, Marcus's long term girlfriend, soon to be mother of their grandchildren, didn't become any less embarrassing.

  What the hell was taking Marcus so long? the voice inside me screamed. He'd taken on the role of decoy, and volunteered to take Scarlett out for high tea, then bring her back for the surprise party, (and hope she didn't flip out and curse us all). They should have been here fifteen minutes ago.

  "We used to look alike too, if you can believe that," Catherine said. She was a fair-haired woman, about my height, and hadn't aged well. I couldn't see the resemblance to Scarlett at all. I would have fallen for Scarlett any day of the week, but Catherine did nothing for me.

  "How do you know Scarlett?" I asked, figuring it was prudent to get to know the friends of my lover.

  "We went to school together, before my parents moved me to the other side of the country. That was a difficult time for both of us."

  There was something about the way she laughed that made me think she might have been more than a friend. Was she Scarlett's first?

  When Fiona left us alone, I readied myself to grill her on her relationship with Scarlett, covertly of course. If she was the first woman Scarlett had slept with, I had a right to know. But as I opened my mouth to speak, Norman came rushing into the dining room, eyes wide and full of excitement.

  "Places, everyone. They're here."

  Some people crouched behind furniture while others, like me, remained in place. Norman dimmed the lights, and the room fell silent.

  "...because Dad wants to speak to you. It will only take a minute," came Marcus's voice.

  I heard Scarlett's sigh from the foyer.

  "Oh, of course, our father wants to speak to me...at six in the evening...on my birthday...in a dark, quiet house... Really, Marcus, how naive do you think I am?" I didn't have to see her to know she was rolling her eyes. I had to stifle my laugh. "Look, I know you've thrown a surprise party for me. Can we just get this over with?"

  "We wouldn't do such a thing," Marcus said in the most unconvincing voice. He wasn't even trying to fool her.

  She sighed again, then shouted into the dark room where we all hid, "You can all come out now. I know you're in there."

  When she switched on the light, the shouts of surprise were half-hearted, seeing as she'd ruined it entirely. I couldn't help laughing to myself at how disappointed some of her guests were, her parents included.

  "That's the Scarlett I know and love, never one to miss a trick," Catherine said, embracing her and kissing her on both cheeks. "Happy birthday, darling."

  I took note of the length of the embrace, and didn't like what I saw. They'd been intimate once, there was no doubt in my mind.

  As everyone went up to hug and kiss the birthday girl, Marcus came to my side and put his arm around me. "I knew she wouldn't fall for it. I've never been very good at lying to her or tricking her. She sees right through me."

  The reverse certainly wasn't true, otherwise he would have known his sister was gay, and that she'd been screwing his girlfriend.

  He started saying something else, but I'd zoned out, my attention now on Patrick and Scarlett, who looked exactly like the lovers Marcus mistook them for. He had his arms around her, and she seemed far too comfortable in them. Perhaps everything she'd said to me was a lie, a half-truth told in order to get what she wanted, i.e. access to my vagina. Maybe she was a master manipulator.

  My hatred for Patrick reached new heights that evening. It took all my might not to go retrieve the stupid banjo I'd bought and whack it over his head!

  It wasn't fair that he got to be so open with his affection for her while I watched from the sidelines. The affection I received came from the wrong Rutherford-Manning.

  After a while I couldn't take having him touch me, so as gently as I could, I pushed him away and put distance between us by wandering over to the food table in order to fill my plate. I knew I was hurting him, but at that moment I couldn't have cared less. I was hurting, too; more.

  It was here, as I took a bite of a mini quiche, that Scarlett found me.

  She didn't say anything at first, just reached for a quiche of her own, her arm brushing mine. When our eyes met, I knew she'd done it deliberately. Feeling her flesh, however fleeting, sent a shiver down my spine.

  No one was watching us; had they been, they would have seen the way we looked at each other, seen the undeniable sexual tension flowing between us. They would have seen how hopelessly my body wanted her.

  "I never got the chance to thank you for your gift," she said. "Thank you."

  "I didn't give you...oh, you mean the tickets? That was all Marcus, he just added my name to it."

  Her perfectly trimmed eyebrow shot up. "So you didn't get me a gift?"

  "Maybe," I said coyly. "Or maybe I decided not to give it to you. Maybe you'd prefer it to come from Patrick instead."

  "Sounds like someone's got a case of the green-eyed monster." Her voice rang with amusement.

  This infuriated me beyond belief. How easy it was for her to laugh at my suffering. Why did she continue to flaunt her relationship with Patrick in front of me when she knew how I felt about it? I'd made it clear that night at the spa that I was jealous of them together. Now she was just being mean.

  "I'm just trying to figure out what I am to you."

  She put her plate down. "Look at me, Jenna," she breathed. Once I'd built up the courage to do so, she said, "You want to know what you are to me?"

  I nodded.

  "Everything."

  That was all she said before she took her plate and went to mingle among her friends. She just dropped one heck of a zinger, leaving me open-mouthed and speechless, and feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.

  Everything. I'd never been everything to anyone before.

  FIFTEEN

  Exercising care so as not to wake Marcus, I lifted his arm off my torso and slipped out of bed. I retrieved my banjo from the closet, where I'd stashed it the day we bought it, then crept out of the room and onto the dark landing. Muffled voices were coming from Fiona and Norman's room down the hall, but that didn't deter me. Scarlett's admission that I meant everything to her was sort of an unspoken request for me to visit her that night. One hour still remained of her birthday, and I wanted to spend it with her.

  A chill hit me as I stepped outside and crosse
d the front lawn. Foolishly I'd neglected to grab a robe, having been under the mistaken belief that the good weather we'd had during the day would extend to the nighttime. It hadn't.

  The lights were off inside, but I knocked anyway. Lightly. If she was expecting me, as I suspected, she would be listening out.

  Sure enough the door opened shortly after my first knock. She stood before me in matching underwear – a delectable emerald green silk number that made my jaw drop. Her hair was tousled – bedhead, though it was clear she hadn't been asleep when I knocked.

  I wanted to discard my banjo to the floor and pounce on her. Just skip the formal hellos and let my tongue do its familiar dance with hers. The heavy pounding of my heart as I gave her the once-over could have been heard a mile away. She'd chosen this bra and panties combo specifically for me, there was no doubt in my mind. And I couldn't wait to get them off.

  "Er, hi," I said in a small voice. It was as though I was seeing her half-naked frame for the first time. I felt like a fish out of water. Not many women could pull off beauty and sexiness in equal measure. She made it seem effortless.

  "Hello." She gave me a lopsided smile. Her eyes landed on the instrument in my hand. She cocked her head to one side. "I like toys as much as the next person, Jenna, but I'm not sure what we're going to do with that."

  "Oh, this is for...erm, I heard that you have a thing for guitarists. Seeing as I can't play a guitar to save my life, this was the next best thing."

  "You're going to play that...for me?" She laughed. "Is that your gift to me?"

  "Well, one of them," I said, slightly offended. "I just thought it would be something different. You're rich and have everything you want. There's nothing I could give you that you couldn't buy yourself."

  "That's sweet of you. Really." With her kiss she extinguished my embarrassment at bringing the banjo. And when she released my lips, she added, "You being here is the best gift you could give me."

  She led me by the hand to her bedroom.

  "Should I leave the banjo?" I said, not sure what to do with it.

  "No. You came here to play for me, didn't you?"

  "Yeah, but–"

  "And that's exactly what you'll do."

  I'd never seen her bedroom before, and for some reason, being inside it made me more nervous to be with her than I'd ever been. We'd done the nasty in her living room, in our hotel suite, and again in the woods, but this would be our first time somewhere truly intimate; somewhere personal.

  She crawled onto the bed, then lay against the headboard, arms behind her head. I just stood at the foot of the bed, clueless, waiting for her to give me instructions.

  "What are you going to play for me?"

  "I did try to compose something, but I couldn't find anything that rhymes with Scarlett. Well, apart from harlot..."

  She chuckled in her sexy way. It was real agony not being able to climb on that bed and devour her, giving into my body's deepest desire.

  Self-control, Jenna. Everything in its time.

  "So I decided on this." I readied the banjo and started singing Happy Birthday, playing along as best I could with an instrument not designed for that type of tune.

  She stopped me on the first line.

  "I had something a little different in mind." Her smile screamed malicious intent, and worried the heck out of me. What wicked scheme did she have for me? "I think the song would go down much better if you shed your clothes. Don't you agree?"

  "You want me to play naked?"

  She nodded.

  "If you insist," I said, conceding without putting up a fight. "You're the birthday girl."

  The striptease I performed was met with cheers and claps from my sole spectator; my audience of one. First went my top, then the pants. Topless, the last thing to go was my panties, and I took my time with those, teasing her until she started heckling me.

  "Now you can play," she said, once every item of my clothing had been discarded.

  I tried to pretend that I wasn't standing buck naked in the middle of my boyfriend's sister's bedroom, wishing her a happy birthday whilst playing a secondhand banjo, but the act was so bizarre that I found myself giggling along with Scarlett.

  "My voice is terrible, and I'm freezing my butt off," I protested upon the request for a third round of the song. My nipples had hardened due to the cold. I needed her to warm me up. Funny. Had Marcus asked me to do something like this for him, I would have told him to go to hell. But for Scarlett I would have done just about anything. Such was her power over me.

  "All right, you'd better get that cute little butt over here," she said, beckoning me forward with her index finger.

  I flung the banjo aside and rushed to join her on the bed. I exercised no restraint in ridding her of her underwear.

  "Happy birthday," I breathed while I was on top of her. We kissed and kissed, and simultaneously fingered each other to climax, coming within seconds of each other.

  She watched me lick her residue off my fingers, and I watched her do the same with mine. Then we lay side by side, peering up at the ceiling, all sexed out.

  "Did you enjoy your birthday present?"

  "Very much. The singing, the banjo, the striptease...the sex. This will be one of my most memorable birthdays."

  "Next year I'll try to top it," I said. But as soon as it came out, the mood in the room changed. I'd gotten so caught up in the mind-blowing sex and the bliss of being with her, that I'd momentarily forgotten the dark shadow hanging over our union. Not just Marcus, but the Atlantic ocean that would stand between us in a couple of weeks when I returned to my life in the States.

  I sat up. "You know I go back home in two weeks?" She wasn't looking at me and her smile had faded. "What will happen to us?"

  "I don't know."

  "Some people do long distance, but honestly I've never known that to work for anyone."

  I hoped she didn't hear the panic in my voice. The thought of leaving her behind, giving up on what we had, terrified me. The last thing I wanted was to part from her, my soul mate. And if her comment about what I meant to her was anything to go by, she shared my sentiments.

  "It wouldn't work for us," she said simply, and didn't elaborate.

  "So what will we do?"

  She stroked my arm. "Let's worry about that when the time comes."

  Her blase attitude angered me. "We should worry about it now. Unless, of course, you plan on letting me go so you can resume whatever that thing is you have going on with Patrick."

  She rolled her eyes. "Now you're just being childish."

  "And you're being way too calm for someone who only hours ago claimed I meant everything to her, yet my impending departure doesn't seem to phase her."

  "Oh for God's sake, Jenna!" she snapped. She sat up, cut me a furious look. "Don't you think I've thought about this, agonized over it? I told you I don't know what we'll do. Let it go. Can't we just enjoy the time we have left?"

  It might not have been her intended outcome, but her response made me feel totally expendable; a seasonal lover not unlike Susan. She didn't sound sure of us, of her alleged feelings for me.

  To stop myself from crying, I climbed out of the bed and started getting dressed.

  "Really?" she said, shaking her head.

  "Really."

  "So this is what you do, pick fights over nothing, then try to make me look like the bad guy? Good to know."

  "The fact that you think planning our future together is nothing says a lot."

  She got out of bed to face me. "What does it tell you? I'm dying to know."

  "It tells me that you're not serious about me, or us."

  "Do you really believe that? Look me in the eye and tell me you believe I'm not serious about us."

  I opened my mouth to say it, but closed it again when I saw the intensity in her stare. How could I have doubted her feelings for me? She was risking everything by being with me. She had so much to lose. No one but a masochist would risk losing their family
over some irrelevant piece of ass.

  I sighed, letting my shoulders drop. "Of course not. I just...I just don't want to lose you. I'm afraid that when I go back I'll be out of sight, out of mind."

  She took me by the wrists and led me back to the bed. I sat beside her as we held hands. How I wanted to make love to her all over again.

  "You won't lose me, I promise. We'll figure it out." Her kiss reassured and calmed me. As long as we wanted to be together, we would find a way. That was how love worked.

  She gave me no reason not to believe her, or to think she would break her promise. Nevertheless, that was exactly what she did a few days later, breaking my heart in the process.

  SIXTEEN

  Beneath the powerful shower head, I let the water course down my face and body, soothing and energizing me for the new day. With my eyes closed I could better imagine Scarlett's presence in there with me, caressing me like only she could. When I touched the area where she had only hours earlier strummed, bringing me to climax, it was easy to envision her doing it again.

  A smile spread across my face at the thought of the many showers we would share together, about the mornings we would wake beside each other, about the kisses we would exchange, and the declarations of love that we could finally exchange once we were free of our burden.

  She was still on my mind when behind me the shower door slid open, and I felt a gentle hand against my back. It took a second to realize that the hand couldn't have possibly belonged to Scarlett.

  I spun round in horror to see a naked, and hard, Marcus standing in the shower with me.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I shrieked, trying to shield my nudity from him. I never again wanted him to see me this exposed. He had no right to me anymore, not in my eyes, anyway.

  "What does it look like?" He laughed and tried to kiss me, but I pushed his mouth away, unable to conceal my disgust. "Jenna, what's wrong with you? You've never had a problem taking a shower with me before."

  That was before I fell head over heels in love with your sister, and gave myself to her.