I swallowed, then cleared my throat. “One of the reasons I hung on with Leigh for as long as I did, and why I worked so hard to save that relationship when it should have ended ages ago, was because I was afraid of starting over with someone else. Being alone I could handle. But I knew sooner or later, I’d meet someone else. And I had no idea what to expect.” I pushed out a breath. “I’m just . . . I’m sorry. For everything I said. Yeah, I’ve always had some hang-ups about dating bi women, but when it came down to it . . .” I shook my head. “I was wrong. Plain and simple.”
“That may be.” Her tone wasn’t so cold now, but she was still guarded. “You don’t know what it’s like, Anna. I’ve always felt like I can’t I talk to anyone without it meaning something. If I can’t talk to men, then I can’t talk to women either.” She shifted her weight, not looking me in the eye. “But maybe I didn’t think about how much it would bother you. If talking became flirting.” She threw up her hands. “My ex wouldn’t let me talk to men either, and if I gave a woman the time of day, then he’d start panting over when I’d invite her for a threesome. So I couldn’t talk to anyone. I want to be with you, Anna, but not if it means you’re going to be suspicious every time I talk to anyone. I’m tired of being alone just so I can be with one person who doesn’t trust me.”
“I get that,” I whispered. “I do.”
“Especially when she distrusts me because of things other people have done.” She folded her arms. “If you’re going to assume the worst when I talk to a man, then how is it any different if I talk to a woman? Because if I’m the kind of person who’d cheat on you, there’s no reason for you to think I’ll only cheat with a man.”
The words were like a hard slap to the face. It hadn’t even occurred to me that if a bi girlfriend were to cheat on me, it might be with a woman and not a man.
Natalya’s tone hardened. “I’ve done nothing to give you a reason to—”
“I know. I know.” I exhaled hard. “It took me way too long to realize that, but . . . you’re right.” I tried to hold her gaze, but couldn’t. “The truth is, I’m scared to death. My last relationship was in an awful holding pattern for so long, I forgot what it was like to feel this way. And I guess . . . I guess I’m scared of losing this. Of . . . how much it would hurt if something this good crashed and burned. What it comes down to is that I’m not . . . I’m not good at not being in control.”
“And I’m not good at being controlled.”
“No, no. It’s . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t want to control you, Natalya. But relationships, they’re not something that can be controlled, and that’s what scares the hell out of me.” I laughed bitterly. “Hell, I’m not even one of those ‘gold-star’ lesbians. I’ve been with men. I dated Levi, for God’s sake.”
She adjusted her arms a little and shifted her weight. “So you’ve said.”
“Right.” I fought the urge to start pacing across the floor. “And I guess . . . I mean, I know what it’s like to be with a man. It felt good. Physically. Just, my heart wasn’t in it, you know? And I guess part of me is always afraid a woman will experience me, and then experience someone like him, and decide they like that better.”
“It can go the other way too, you know. A woman who’s been with a man can figure out she likes women better.” Her eyebrow arched. “Like, if that woman dates Levi Pritchard, and realizes she’s a lesbian.” With a hint of sarcasm, she added, “Or he figures out he’s gay?”
Ouch. “Point taken.” I couldn’t hold her gaze, so I stared down at my wringing hands, and the coffee table, and my hands again. “The thing is, it’s not about you. It never was. I’m insecure. And I’m controlling. And . . .” I pushed out a ragged breath. “And I’m sorry.”
Natalya didn’t speak. She didn’t move.
Come on. Say something. Even if it’s “fuck off.” How long are you going to make me twist in the wind like this?
Apparently I hadn’t convinced her, so I set my shoulders back and kept going. “A while back, you told me that people used you. Treated you like a commodity.”
She flinched but still said nothing.
I took a deep breath and stared at the coffee table again because it wasn’t going to lash out at me. “And you wanted to know what your purpose was with me. And . . . there isn’t one. You aren’t getting me something objective like a job or a connection to someone. When I think about what I want from this, from you, it all comes back to the same thing: I want to make you happy. I have from the start. First it was in bed, and now it’s . . . in every way I can. And I guess I’m just scared I can’t do that. Not as well as . . .”
“As a man?”
Cheeks burning, I nodded, wincing at the shame swelling in my gut. “I’m sorry. It’s stupid.”
“Yeah, it is,” she snapped. “When Daniel flirted with me and I flirted back, you went straight to the worst possible conclusion. That somehow it was more than just harmless bantering. That maybe it wasn’t—” Her voice caught, and she quickly cleared her throat. “That maybe sometimes I just enjoy bantering with someone and convincing myself he’s just being nice. Like he really wants to talk to me instead of trying to get something else from me.” She swallowed. “If he’d come back and flirted again, it would’ve gone nowhere.”
Avoiding her eyes, I nodded again. “I get that now. And I think I got it in the moment too. But I’ve been scared to death from the start that the other shoe was going to drop and . . .” I met her gaze, my throat tight and my chest aching. “I was even more scared of that after Levi’s wedding because I didn’t count on falling in love with you.”
Natalya straightened, her lips parting. “What?”
“I love you, Natalya,” I whispered, struggling to keep my voice from breaking. “And I mean, when I realized that, it terrified me. So when I saw you talking with Daniel, I went right to the worst possible conclusion because I’ve been so scared it—” My voice broke, and I cleared my throat. “I’m . . . just, I’m sorry. I love you, and I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. That’s . . . that’s all I’ve got.”
She was silent for a long, long time. Her expression registered nothing—eyes down and unfocused, lips straight but not tight. Whenever she drew a breath, I braced, expecting her to tell me off or leave. Or both. Each time she let a breath go without speaking, I couldn’t relax, because this thing was still hovering between us, unresolved.
I couldn’t take it anymore, and broke the silence. “I thought I had a problem with you being bisexual. And maybe . . . maybe I did because I believed a lot of things that I now know aren’t true. But mostly, I was scared. I was scared of what might happen if we took this any further. And . . .” Heat rushed into my cheeks, and I lowered my gaze. “And your sexuality was a convenient reason to keep from setting myself up to get hurt.”
“Of course you’re scared.” Natalya’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Everyone is. Relationships are terrifying.”
“They really are.”
“But the thing is, everyone freaks out over the end.” She shook her head. “Instead of just enjoying what it is . . .” She paused. “It’s like everyone wants to stick the landing, but nobody understands that there is no landing. In gymnastics, you can do the routine just right, and it’s all perfect, and then you land and roll your ankle or just hop a little, and the whole thing is ruined. There’s no doing it over, and nothing that came before the landing matters. It’s all shit because the landing was shit.”
She wrung her hands in her lap. “Love isn’t like that. Even if you fall flat on your face or you break your ankle, you can get up and keep going. That’s the beauty of this—you don’t have to stick the landing, because there is no landing. Not until . . . well . . .” She paused. “The thing is, you just keep spinning and tumbling and flipping, and hope that when you do get to the end, both feet are together on the mat. And even if they’re not, you still have the memory of everything that came before it.”
I swallowed, letti
ng the words roll around in my head for a moment. “I never looked at it that way.”
“I don’t think many people do.”
“No, probably not.” But she was right, wasn’t she? All along, I had been worried about the end and had forgotten about everything else. Like actually being with someone instead of waiting for things to fall apart. “And for what it’s worth—” I took her hand “—I do trust you. Like I said, it was never about you. Or, well, it was, but not because I thought you’d wander off.” I moistened my lips as I lifted my gaze. “Because I’d never had more to lose than I do with you.”
Natalya’s features slowly softened. After a moment, she put her hand on top of ours. “This scares me too,” she said. “But it’s not enough to scare me away.” She clasped her fingers between mine. “It just means we have to hold on tight and jump in together.”
I smiled despite the lump rising in my throat. “I want to jump. Do you?”
Her smile made me shiver and nearly brought me to tears in the same instant. “If you will, I will.”
I scooted closer to her on the couch. “I definitely do.” Cautiously, I reached for her, and when she didn’t recoil, I slid my hands into her hair. We were a breath apart now, lips almost touching, and we hovered there for what seemed like years.
“Even though I was angry,” she whispered, running her fingers down my cheek, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too. I’m sorry I pushed you away.”
“Maybe we needed a few bumps like this. To figure things out.”
“Maybe. But I’m sorry I hurt you along the way.”
Natalya smiled again, and without a word, drew me in and pressed her lips to mine.
Holy. Shit. Relief had never been so sweet. Though I’d fucked things up with her twice, we’d once again come back to this. The woman I loved had forgiven me. She was holding me, kissing me, and didn’t think I was the scum of the earth. Because by the grace of God, I’d figured things out and wasn’t the scum of the earth anymore.
Thank you, Levi . . .
Natalya drew back and met my gaze. “I don’t have to be on set until eight tomorrow.”
“I have to be there at five in the morning.” I rose, taking her hand. “But tonight, I’m all yours. Let’s go upstairs.”
The first time we’d fallen into my bed together, I’d been drunk and disbelieving. Was Natalya really there? Were we really all over each other, panting and groping and well on our way to some long overdue orgasms?
This time I was sober, but the disbelief was stronger than ever. We’d made it back to this. For a second time. I’d be an idiot to let her go again, so I held on tight—to her, to clothes, to hair.
She did the same. We struggled out of clothes in between kissing, groping, grabbing. My shirt ripped. I didn’t care. A button popped off something and flew over the side of the bed. Didn’t know whose button. Didn’t care about that either.
I unclasped her bra. With that quiet release—elastic going slack around her ribs and the slender straps loosening over her shoulders—I may as well have pulled a thread that unraveled every stitch of clothing we wore. In a matter of seconds, we were naked, surrounded by discarded clothes that had somehow fallen away.
Naked, we tumbled onto the mattress. I rolled onto my back, pulling her with me, and grabbed a handful of hair as I kissed her.
She broke the kiss and moved downward. She kissed my neck so hard, I expected teeth, and yet when her teeth really did graze my skin, I jumped like she’d slapped me.
“You okay?” she asked, grinning against my throat.
“Uh-huh.” I tilted my head, arching into her. “Just . . . really . . .”
She nipped again, and the sting reduced my vocabulary to nil.
I wanted so badly to make her come, but right now, I could do nothing but touch her all over. Trace her smooth skin, the contours of her muscles, the swell of her hips the curve of her spine. Every time my fingers ran through her long hair or over her sharp features, I was a little closer to believing she was really here. That we’d had that conversation, come out on the other side, and found ourselves together and touching in my bed.
She lifted herself up onto her arms.
For a moment, we just stared at each other. The room was silent except for our fast, heavy breathing and the pounding of my heart, and when I touched her face, the faint hiss of fingertips across skin made my toes curl.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too.”
And with that, she sank into my kiss, and I rolled her onto her back. Her flesh warmed mine. My nipples grazed hers. The taste of her kiss nearly made me come undone, as did the softness of her skin when I started down her jaw to her neck. I continued along her throat, over her collarbone, onto her chest. I thought I felt her heart thumping beneath my lips, but with the way my own pulse was pounding in my ears, it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began.
I closed my lips around her nipple, and she sighed, stroking my hair and squirming beneath me. I pressed my teeth in until she yelped, and then I held her nipple there, teasing it with my tongue while she came unglued. Oh God, I’d missed this. Everything about it. Her shudders and gasps, her nails in my scalp, and her bilingual cursing. If I was dreaming—and I was pretty sure I was—then fine. As long as I never, ever woke up.
Kiss by kiss, I continued downward. I pushed her thighs apart, wrapped one arm around each, and went down on her. The second my tongue met her clit, she nearly jumped off the bed. I still couldn’t believe she was back in my bed, and though seeing was supposed to be believing, in this case, tasting was believing. That was the instant I stopped wondering if this was a dream. A delusion. A hallucination born of wishful thinking.
As I explored her with my tongue and teased her clit, a mix of arousal and relief washed over me. Her fingers raked through my hair, her nails scraping my scalp, and her soft moans filled the otherwise-silent room, and what kind of idiot had I been to push this woman away?
No time like the present to make up for stupidly lost time.
I closed my lips around her clit. Resting on one arm, I eased a finger inside her, and when I added the second, she whimpered. She was murmuring in Russian now, and I had no idea what she was saying, but the hand in my hair and the way she tightened around my fingers and pressed against my face filled in the blanks.
“Fuck, Anna,” she murmured. “Fuck, you’re so . . . good at . . .” She trailed off into a helpless moan. Her pussy clenched around my fingers so tightly I could barely move them, but I managed to beckon gently against her G-spot. And all the while, I worked at her clit relentlessly. No way in hell was I stopping until she came, and God, she felt like she was getting close. Trembling. Tensing. Gasping. Cursing. Much more of this, and I was going to come too just from the taste and sound and feel of her.
“Oh fuck!” She nearly levitated off the bed and cried out again, the sound echoing along my nerve endings. Her nails dug painfully into my scalp, and I kept circling and swirling my tongue around her clit until her fingers loosened in my hair. Then she nudged my forehead, so I backed off and finally stopped.
She sank back onto the bed, panting so hard her breasts were bouncing in time with her heavy breaths. “Fuck . . .”
I licked my lips, savoring the sweetness still lingering. Then I pushed myself onto my shaky arms and moved up over her, but I was so unsteady, I wasn’t sure I could keep from collapsing.
Just when I was sure my elbows would buckle, Natalya came up off the pillow, kissed me, and dragged me back down with her. We were kissing again, breathing each other, clawing at each other. The taste of her kiss and her pussy mingled between our lips. Hands drifted all over skin, and legs tangled beneath the thin sheet.
Then she rolled me onto my back and lifted herself up on her arms. As she rocked her hips against mine, rubbing her thigh against my clit and her own pussy on my thigh, she tilted her head back and whispered something in Russian. She was grinding agai
nst me now, both of us panting and cursing and whimpering, and then she shuddered so hard it reverberated right through me. She gasped for breath, shivering and trembling, our bodies rubbing together, and all I could do was stare up at her through tear-blurred eyes as her breasts bounced and skin flushed and she cried out in . . . Hell, it didn’t matter what language anymore.
Then she slumped over, exhaling hard. She whispered in Russian and collapsed on top of me.
I wrapped my arms around her, letting her bury her face against my neck as she panted against my skin.
“You haven’t come,” she slurred in sharply accented English.
“I will.” I kissed the top of her head. “We have all night.”
Natalya slowly released a breath and relaxed completely over me.
I couldn’t believe we were here. That her taste was on my tongue. That we’d bounced back from my stupidity.
But we were. It was. We had.
And I just closed my eyes and held on.
Eventually, she dropped onto her side so we could both breathe, but we didn’t let each other go. It was too hot for the sheets, especially when we held each other this close, so we kicked them into a rumpled heap at the foot of the bed.
For the longest time, we didn’t move, and we didn’t speak. My heart rate slowly came down, as did hers, but as the minutes went by, the nervous fluttering in my stomach intensified.
Finally, I whispered, “I’m sorry. For everything. Hurting you.”
“It’s done.” She kissed my forehead. “Forgiven.”
Still, I couldn’t relax. We’d landed here together again, but why didn’t this feel quite settled yet?
“Can I confess something?” she asked after a while.
Stuck Landing Page 21
