Beholden

by Fox Brison

  “Okay, okay you win.” Joanne groaned, but I think she was secretly relieved. “Besides, if it means I get to cuddle up with Bow and Arrow, maybe I should be the one sending flowers to the stalker as a thank you!” Ashleigh and I looked at each other not quite sure if Joanne had lost the plot completely, and she finally gave a true laugh.

  I admired her resilience and only hoped the police caught the cuckoo before it was severely put to the test.

  Chapter 38

  Joanne

  Adele and I quickly settled into a comfortable routine; living together was easy. She made me up the spare room overlooking the back garden because she knew how much I loved it, which was sweet, still I couldn’t help but feel disappointed it was the spare room not her room.

  And that notion was both intoxicating and terrifying.

  ***

  “Are you sure I look alright?” I tugged nervously on the hem of my shorts.

  “You look as wonderful and ever. Are you sure you want to do this?” Adele asked for the umpteenth time that morning. I grabbed her hand and held it tightly.

  “Yes, one hundred percent. Crazy hasn’t contacted me for over a week. You were right, he probably saw I’d moved in with you and cut his losses. Or maybe his doll from Taiwan arrived? Who knows? I’m just glad it’s over and we can get back to normal.” Whatever that might be. “We missed the dinner party and even though Mel and Adam were good about it, I wouldn’t want to let them down again. Besides, wasn’t this picnic the Jordan’s idea?”

  “Yes and it’s a stupid one,” she grumbled.

  “That’s as may be, but if you want the promotion we’re going to have to play ball.” I straightened her ubiquitous scarf, this one with little ice cream sundaes and sandwiches on. I’d seen it online and bought it especially for the occasion. Even though I didn’t think she needed it (and maybe I shouldn’t have facilitated the crutch) who was I to say what was right or wrong for Adele Jackson. “You never know, it might be fun!”

  “Oh come on, kids and dogs, games, sun worshippers wearing next to nothing...” she said regretfully.

  “Adeeellll.” I elongated the word into a stroppy whine and grinned.

  “Joaaaannnne.” she copied my tone and then pulled on her scarf to make sure it was secure. “I can’t stand these things because I usually end up being an arse – or worse falling on it.”

  “Well you have me now and I’m gonna make sure you do neither,” I promised faithfully.

  I wore shorts and a polka dot t-shirt, sandals and retro fifties sunglasses, the kind that tailed upwards towards my hair, which was in a high pony tail. I was rocking my inner Sandy from Grease. The girl next door, not the bad girl. I could never pull that off, not even if all of the Pink Ladies from both movies were by my side. Adele chose a pair of beige long linen trousers that accentuated her height and build, a pale blue shirt and a pair of Oakley’s.

  We were night and day.

  Class versus paucity.

  Elegance versus comfort.

  “What’s that song you’re humming?” Adele asked as we closed the front door behind us.

  “I didn’t realise I was,” I said, and blushed because Paula Abdul was in my head throwing me a mocking smile.

  Was there such a thing as being too opposite to attract.

  ***

  Adele carried the wicker picnic basket that I’d prepared earlier that morning, with her help. She made us little cheese and lettuce sandwiches and was dead cute asking exactly how I wanted mine assembled. Mayonnaise or salad cream? Shredded iceberg lettuce or a romaine leaf? Mature grated or medium sliced. She even bought three different types of bread for me to choose from. If she got sick of designing buildings I’m sure Subway would be glad to have her. But the fact she was so attentive, and went to such lengths to ensure I had what I wanted… surely that meant she cared for me?

  Right?

  ***

  We arrived at McLagan Park just after midday and it was already heaving. They’d hired a bouncy castle, set up goal posts, and a guy was making balloon animals to entertain the kids. Adele and I found a nice quiet spot in the shade of a large sycamore tree and were happy to watch the world go by. I sat up when Mel and Adam joined us as soon as they could get away from the sycophants who wanted a minute of attention from their boss.

  “You haven’t moved from this spot for the last hour,” Mel chided. “You should mingle.”

  “Been there done that,” Adele said. “I’m comfortable here being Joanne’s pillow.”

  “Dear god, what have you done to my best architect?” Adam asked but with a healthy dose of humour to his twinkling tones. “You’ll be hugging those trees before you know it, Adele!” he teased.

  “I’ll hug trees, shrubs, heck even lampposts, if it means I get to keep hugging this one.” She squeezed me tight.

  “Do you remember when you used to say romantic things like that about me, Adam?” Mel complained.

  “Yeah that was before our wonderful little monsters were born. Speaking of which they’re being very quiet. We’d better go and see who they’re terrorising,” Adam stood and pulled his grumbling wife to her feet. As soon as they left I turned to Adele and looked her straight in the eye. “Did you mean what you just said?” I dared to ask the question, even though I feared the answer.

  “Do you want me to hug a lamppost?” she joked.

  “I’m serious, Adele, no more beating around the bush. We started this thing pretending to like each other and now it feels like we’re spending more time pretending not to.”

  She cupped the back of my neck and pulled me towards her. “No more pretence. I like you, Joanne, more than you know and possibly more than is good for me.” Our lips touched and I moaned her name. The kiss remained languorous but before it could really ignite, a cough interrupted us.

  “Do you really think that kind of behaviour is suitable in a family environment,” Helen Entwhistle sneered.

  “No one else seems to have a problem with it.” Adele glanced around and then up at her. “We kissed, Helen, it’s not like I stripped her naked, ate her pussy, then turned her over and fucked her from behind with my strap on.” Helen coloured deeply and squirmed slightly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was turned on.

  I know I was.

  “It’s been a while, huh, Helen? Maybe you should worry about what Aileen does in private and with whom, instead of worrying about what I do with the woman I love in public,” Adele continued to quietly berate Helen, but everything became a blur.

  The woman I love?

  I thought I was about to hyperventilate. Did she mean to say that, or was it for effect. We were focussed on each other and neither she nor myself really paid much attention to Helen flouncing off in a strop.

  “Do you think she’ll complain?” I asked nervously.

  “Nah, although she may have a point,” Adele conceded.

  “How’s that now?”

  “If we continue, the public indecency brigade might really have something to moan about!”

  ***

  There’s something about laying in the shade of a tree on a summer’s day with the woman you… I stopped thinking at that point. I wasn’t ready to label it. However, the day with Adele was possibly the most perfect day I’d ever spent in my life and it was with regret we packed up when we did.

  The journey home was quiet. Adele clearly had a lot on her mind and I wished I was Jean Grey and could read it, and I definitely wished I had an idea of how our story might end - because with the amount of twists and turns we’d experienced thus far, I didn’t have a fucking clue!

  “Night, Joanne, sleep well,” Adele murmured and faltered at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t meet my eyes; her reticence was not unusual, but I thought tonight things might have been different, especially after her declaration in the park. Or… shit… it was an act. I was hurt and disappointed and didn’t hide my feelings very well.

  “Yeah. Night.” Maybe Adele heard the coldness in my
voice because she gripped the bannister tight until her knuckles whitened. “Adele-” I began hopefully.

  “Don’t, Jo. I’m struggling to hold on here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? I mean I want you so badly even my teeth hurt. I want to take you to my room and worship that body you were teasing me with all day. I want to lick and taste every part of you. I want my name to be torn from your lips as we make love.”

  Holy mother of God. If her actions were as good as her words, I’d be in a permanent daze of orgasmic bliss. “So what’s stopping you?” I argued.

  She finally looked at me. “I don’t want to hurt you and I certainly don’t want to ruin our friendship, by acting on this.” She waved her hand negligently between us. “Joanne, you make me feel. You make me lose control.”

  “And that’s bad?” I asked shakily.

  “To me, yes.” The word was brutally stark.

  “I guess this got a bit too real for you, huh, Adele? I may have thought you were a lot of things but gutless wasn’t one of them.” I walked away from her and went into the kitchen. For the first time in eight years I wanted a drink so badly I could taste it, when five minutes ago all I wanted was to fall to my knees and taste Adele.

  ***

  I was exhausted; the past month had been one long emotional rollercoaster ride, but it was over. I needed to get off before a serious breakdown occurred which left me hanging upside down mid loop. I made the decision easily. The next day I was going to get on with my life and return home. I left Adele a Dear John note in the kitchen and set my alarm for five am. The light switch clicked and I was thankfully plunged into darkness; it was the first time I’d relished the night in a long time. The relief was instantaneous and where moments before I was serene, now I allowed the pain to overwhelm and the tears started to fall.

  “What the hell is this?” The door almost burst off its hinges and Adele was standing in its yawning maw, the light from behind casting her in shadow. It was like a scene from an action movie, but instead of an AK-47 in her hand, Adele held my letter.

  Which was possibly just as dangerous for my health.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” I said. As if that excused my cowardly behaviour. And then it clicked; I wanted Adele to discover the note, I wanted her to come rushing up here, I wanted her to acknowledge her feelings, to take what I was freely willing to give.

  My heart, my soul, my everything.

  “A note? Is that all I’m worth?” she asked, a world of pain in the question.

  “No, Adele, you’re worth so much more. But until you’re willing to acknowledge that, I can’t be here, I can’t be around you. I’m sorry, I can’t flick my feelings on and off like a light switch. It has to be all or nothing.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” she growled.

  “Then explain it to me.” I pulled back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I don’t know if I can.” She took a small step into the room and I dared to dream. Could this really happen?

  “Come here,” I said softly and patted the mattress beside me. “Try. Please.”

  “I… I’m worried you might not like me in the bedroom,” she confessed quietly.

  “I like you in the office. I like you at home. I loved you at the park. Why wouldn’t I like you in the bedroom?” I asked calmly, even though underneath a core of excitement ran rampant through my veins.

  “Because it’s the one place more than any other I need to be in complete and utter control.”

  “You mentioned that before. And guess what?” I trailed a finger over her cheek and along her lips. A groan of yearning escaped her mouth and the bed shifted as she turned towards me.

  “What?” she asked huskily.

  “I trust you enough to wholly surrender myself to you.”

  “Are you sure?” she said hopefully.

  “Oh god yes. Absolutely.” I saw the shift in her body language long before she asked the question. She leant forward and kissed me. It was the type of kiss that leaves you in no doubt that you’ve been kissed, where your mind and body become one and thinking is simply an extension of being. Her hands slipped beneath my pyjama top and she grazed my nipples with her thumbs.

  “Take off your clothes.” The command in her tone was explicit and I hurried to follow it. “Good girl,” she whispered. This was what I’d been dreaming of from the first minute I met her. “I need you to taste me or I won’t last a minute before I go off. On your knees.” I knelt down and waited for her next instruction. She was playing into my fantasies like a clairvoyant who’d seen exactly what my soul desired. She lowered her pyjama bottoms and I gulped. I could not only smell her arousal, I could see it glistening on her shaved mound. “Let’s really see how good you are with that cunning tongue of yours.” I hungrily moved my head forward as she opened wider for me. My tongue slowly swirled over her clitoris, before flattening out and trailing along her drenched folds. “That’s right, oh… oh sweet jesus… that’s it, right there… don’t stop...” I did as she directed and allowed my tongue to work its magic. It may have been arrogant but I was excellent at giving a woman head, and hearing Adele’s shortness of breath, and feeling her legs tremble as an orgasm ripped through her body simply reinforced the confidence I had in my ability.

  “That got the motor running,” she said, pulling up her trousers with a satisfied smirk. “I’ve definitely got enough revs now to fuck you the way you deserve to be fucked. Get on the bed.” I immediately did as she asked and kneeling beside me, she began tracing lazy figures of eight over my body with her finger.

  I nearly came from the mere thought of what she was about to do to me.

  “Open for me.” I blushed, not from embarrassment but stimulation. “Beautiful,” Adele took possession of my body. First she kissed me, softly, then bruisingly as she owned me completely. When she moved her mouth to my breasts, my moans of pleasures echoed around the bedroom. “No touching,” she whispered when I tried to hold her head in place. Her tongue was doing wondrous things to my nipples, first one then the other, swirling and sucking. Oh fuck those suckles were driving me insane. My hand moved of it’s own accord and I reached for her again. She backed out of range and I followed her. “If you touch me again, I’ll stop. I’m in control, not you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I groaned.

  “Good. Hold onto the headboard and do not let go until I tell you to.” I swallowed hard and my fingers tightened around the white wrought iron. This was what I wanted, what I’d dreamed of - and Adele wasn’t disappointing me in any way shape or form. She was in charge yet I felt totally safe and utterly desired. Moving back to my breasts, she took my nipple between her teeth and tugged softly at first, then much sharper. I gasped. “You like that?”

  “Oh… oh god… yes,” I moaned.

  “Harder?” she gazed into my eyes and lightening passed between us.

  “Harder,” I repeated.

  This time when she tugged on my nipples it was bordering on painful, but Adele pirouetted the fine line between pain and pleasure with the skill of a prima ballerina. Arousal coated my thighs, and I should have been abashed but I wasn’t, I was fucking revelling in what she was doing to me.

  Her hand began a torturous journey southward, until finally her thumb began toying with my clitoris.

  “Please!” I begged hoarsely.

  “Please?” she repeated teasingly.

  “Yes. Please, touch me.”

  “Touch you? Isn’t that what I’m doing?”

  “Inside,” I pleaded again, arching my body towards her hand.

  “Begging already, Joanne? I thought you possessed a touch more resolve.”

  “I’ve been picturing you being inside me since we met, and I don’t know if I can last much longer.”

  “Oh you will,” she said with some measure of assurance. “You’ll last as long as I want you to last.” And with that I mewled piteously. I wondered if s
he realised the love and care she was displaying despite the tone of our role playing, but then any thought other than the pleasure her tongue and fingers were wringing from my body flew from my mind. Thrusting her inside, she studied me carefully, judging my reactions and waiting for a sign I was close to orgasm. When she saw my eyes flutter and my breath grow ragged, she removed her hand and traced my lips with her fingers. “Suck them,” she whispered. I took her index and middle finger into my mouth and tasted myself. Moaning, her grey eyes darkened with desire.

  I didn’t like bedroom Adele, I worshipped her.

  A few seconds later her fingers returned, slowly penetrating my core and I was lost. “I need to come,” I panted.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “I want you to remember this forever. I want this night to be imprinted on your soul.” She stopped again and I tried to catch my breath, but it was becoming an impossible task. Adele must have realised this, because her voice softened. “You’re desperate aren’t you?”

  I sobbed quietly. She moved between my legs and lifted them onto her shoulders. Seconds later her mouth latched onto my clit, her tongue swirling and flicking, before she tugged it gently between her teeth.

  “God yes!” I moaned in pleasure. She stopped and looked into my eyes and I begged, “Let me hold onto you. I need to touch you.”

  “Yes.” One word and I cried with joy as my hands found the back of her head. I held her tightly in place as she continued to lap at my arousal. Finally she entered me one more time with her fingers and lifting her head demanded, “Come for me, Joanne, come hard.”

  I exploded.

  It was unbelievable. My body shook, the aftershocks as tremendously powerful as the earthquake that rocked my world. I was dazed and confused; she held me tightly in her arms whilst I was blinded by the storm that raged through my body.

  “I’ve never been able to let loose in that way,” Adele admitted when I finally came back to earth.

  “Let loose?” I was puzzled because she’d been in total control the entire time.

  “Yes. I never felt… I don’t know, maybe felt that connection with anyone before. There was total trust between us.”