by Radclyffe
“Well, you don’t act like it. Can’t you think about what you’re doing once in a while? Instead of just doing what feels good?”
“You know what, Ali? Maybe you have such a hard time seeing me with Eddie because you’re too scared to go after what you really want.” Sammy snatched her jacket and stormed toward the door. “If you weren’t so afraid of feeling anything at all, you might actually have a good time once in a while.”
“Sammy!”
…“Sammy!”
The gun swung in a slow arc, zeroing in on Sammy. Ali raced across the endless expanse of shimmering blacktop, screaming for Sammy to get down. Her words blew back in her face and her legs wouldn’t move. Sammy’s long black hair, a veil of silk, whipped about in the wind. Her face tilted upward to a cerulean sky and she was laughing, vibrant and beautiful. Ali stretched out her hand, her pleas strangling in her chest. Scarlet blossomed on Sammy’s throat and her smile faltered. She turned her head slowly in Ali’s direction, her eyes wide and wounded. Frightened and in pain.
“Sammy! Oh, God, Sammy!”
Ali jerked awake, the agony in her heart far greater than the pain in her head. She moaned softly.
“Easy. It’s okay now.” Beau sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Ali’s hair. “I’m going to turn the light on.”
“No, don’t do that.” Ali scrubbed at her face and the tears that wet her cheeks. “Please.”
“Okay,” Beau said softly, her chest hurting with the echoes of Ali’s anguish. She wanted to do something, anything, to comfort her. “Can I get you some water? Some more Tylenol?”
“I’m all right. Just a bad dream.” Ali sensed Beau hesitate in the dark. The dream-Sammy became Wynter, and as the events of the morning replayed, the terror she hadn’t allowed herself to experience rose to choke her now. In the next breath, she was back in the morgue, identifying Sammy’s bullet-ridden body. The anguish was just as fresh as it had been that day. Every breath hurt. She concentrated on Beau’s hip pressing against her arm. The heat and weight of Beau’s presence offered quiet comfort.
“If you want to talk about it…” Beau said.
“Sammy and I argued that afternoon. She left angry at me,” Ali said into the silence. “She was supposed to be on her way to the admissions office at the community college to confirm her fall semester courses. That’s not where she went.”
“What did she do instead?” Beau asked.
“She hooked up with her boyfriend—Eddie. We lived in California then, outside Sacramento. They rode out into the hills to a biker bar that was supposed to be in neutral territory. I guess it wasn’t.”
“That’s where she was shot?”
Ali shivered even though the room was warm, and she pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts. Her skin felt hot, but inside she was ice. “In the parking lot outside. Eddie and Sammy along with two other men and one woman. A rival gang cut them down like cattle. Sammy, the other girl, and one of the guys died at the scene. Eddie had a shoulder wound, nothing serious. The other guy died in the hospital a few days later.”
Beau found Ali’s hand in the dark and held it. “I’m so sorry.”
“She shouldn’t have been there. If we hadn’t fought, she wouldn’t have been.”
“She might have hooked up with Eddie and ended up there anyhow,” Beau suggested gently.
“I shouldn’t have pushed her. I didn’t believe she really cared about the guy. I thought she was just going out with him to piss off our parents.” Ali laughed. “Pissing off the parents was one of Sammy’s favorite pastimes.”
“She sounds like a handful.”
Ali laughed. “Oh, she was. Totally the opposite from me. I just wanted to get by unnoticed until I could get through college. Then I figured I’d just keep going and never look back. There was nothing there for me, except Sammy.”
“So you didn’t leave home when you started college?”
“No. I turned down a couple of pretty good scholarships, to my parents’ great disapproval, but I wanted to stay around until Sammy got her life on track.” Ali closed her eyes. “She would have, I know she would have. She was smart and talented. Except she didn’t have time. God, what a waste.”
Beau didn’t think she would have had the strength at eighteen or nineteen to sacrifice something she wanted for someone else’s welfare. Ali amazed her, and it hurt to know she was hurting. Hoping to convey her support, she carefully switched around on the bed until her back was against the headboard. She curled her arm over the top of Ali’s pillow, but she didn’t touch her or try to pull her closer. The covers kept their bodies effectively separated, but when Ali shifted and her cheek brushed Beau’s chest, Beau let her fingertips rest on Ali’s left shoulder. Ali draped her arm over Beau’s middle in a move so automatic, Beau doubted Ali even knew what she was doing. The contact was so unexpectedly good, Beau stiffened in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” Ali murmured, pulling her arm away. “Is it still sensitive?”
Beau grasped Ali’s wrist and drew her arm back across her stomach. “Is what still sensitive?”
“That scar.”
“How did you—oh, that morning in the locker room.” Beau’s initial reaction was to ignore the subject. She’d worked very hard to keep her past from influencing her present. Most of the time when she went to bed with women, if she even got to the point where she was naked, her bedmates didn’t ask or didn’t really want to know about her scars. Not that she ever actually told them the truth, when she did explain. But this wasn’t like those other times. She wasn’t about to have sex with a stranger. This wasn’t even about sex.
She was lying with Ali in her arms, surrounded by darkness and nothing between them but a thin layer of covers and a decade of secrets. Maybe she wanted to answer because Ali had just told her about Sammy, or maybe because the secrets had gotten too heavy to carry. Maybe she just wanted Ali to know some small truth about her. She didn’t know. “It’s weird. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but sometimes if someone touches it a certain way or my bunkers rub against it, I get this twisty feeling in my stomach.”
“Hyperesthesia.” Ali kept her arm still. “Is it all right now?”
Beau pressed Ali’s arm more firmly against her belly. “It’s fine. I like the way you feel.”
“How long has it been? Eventually, the scar should become desensitized.” When Beau didn’t immediately answer, Ali said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get personal.”
“I think I was hoping we could get a little personal,” Beau said.
Ali chuckled softly and rested her cheek on Beau’s shoulder. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“You think everything I say is a line, but it isn’t,” Beau whispered, brushing her fingertips up and down the smooth contours of Ali’s arm. Her shoulder was warm where Ali’s head rested. She could smell her shampoo and the sweet tang of her skin and all the fragrances unique to her. She never lingered in bed with a woman. Beds were for sex, and after the sex, she slept alone. But right now, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to stay right where she was with Ali in her arms for the rest of the night and the next day and as long after that as she could. She wanted to make love to her, and her belly tightened at the thought. She shifted her legs to ease the pressure that pulsed between her thighs.
“What just happened?” Ali asked, circling her hand on Beau’s stomach. “You’re hard as a board right now.”
“You might not want to do that,” Beau said tightly.
“Hurt?”
“Christ, no,” Beau said through clenched teeth. “Just the opposite.”
“Ah.” Ali stilled her motion. She wasn’t a tease, and she was in no condition to follow through. “Are you going to tell me how you got hurt?”
Wanting to direct the conversation away from her impending arousal-induced heart attack, Beau said, “It was a long time ago. Ten years, just about.”
“That long,” Ali said. “You must’ve been young. Someone shot yo
u when you were a teenager?”
“Shot me?” Beau shook her head. “What made you think that?”
“Turn on the light,” Ali said.
“Are you sure? Your headache—”
“Never mind my headache. I’ll survive.” Ali gave Beau a light squeeze. “Go ahead, turn on the light.”
After she did, Beau cupped Ali’s jaw in her palm, tilting her face so she could see her. “What’s going on?”
“Incisions like the one in your abdomen are almost always done under emergency conditions. When you have to get in really fast. Usually, that equals gunshot or stab wound. I hate thinking about anyone harming you that way.”
“That’s not what it was.” Beau had to look away from Ali’s dark, unwavering gaze. She wanted to tell her everything, but she knew better. She didn’t want pity, and she especially did not want absolution. But she couldn’t turn away from her completely. She pulled her shirt out of her jeans and guided Ali’s hand beneath it, pressing Ali’s palm to the ridge of scar tissue in her abdomen. The heat of Ali’s flesh bored into her and she caught her breath.
“Tell me,” Ali said, as if knowing that Beau needed permission.
“I got elbowed during a basketball game my senior year in high school. Ruptured my spleen.”
Ali tensed. “You had a splenectomy?”
“Yep.”
“It’s pretty hard to rupture a normal spleen with direct trauma,” Ali said, keeping her voice neutral.
Beau should have known Ali wouldn’t take the explanation at face value. Hell, she was talking to a trauma surgeon. “My spleen wasn’t normal. It was enlarged. A lot.”
“Hey. Look at me.”
Beau’s blue eyes were stormy, conflicted, pained.
“Whatever you tell me isn’t going to change how I think about you,” Ali said.
“You think?” Beau shook her head angrily. “It has with just about everyone else in my life.”
“I’m a doctor, Beau.”
“Hell, that makes it even worse.”
Ali smiled. “I’ve got a pretty good idea what you’re going to tell me. There just aren’t that many things—in a, what, seventeen-year-old female?—to cause splenomegaly so severe a direct blow would cause a rupture.” She flinched inwardly, knowing how great the likelihood was that Beau could have bled to death from that kind of injury. And there had to have been something much more serious going on. “Leukemia?”
“Close.” Beau hadn’t told anyone. Bobby didn’t know. None of her squad knew. She couldn’t stand to be seen as physically weak or, worse, someone who needed to be protected in the field. But she believed Ali, had to believe her, because she had to tell her. “Hodgkin’s. I had Hodgkin’s disease.”
Ali had been prepared for the answer, but she reflexively spread her fingers over the scar on Beau’s abdomen, trying to protect the fragile, vital organs within. Mentally, she categorized and calculated and prognosticated. The Hodgkin’s had to have been advanced to present the way it had. The thought made her a little nauseous, and she pushed away the picture of Beau so ill. Beau needed to know she saw her strength, not her illness. “How could you possibly still have been playing basketball?”
“Everyone thought it was mono, and I was on track for a basketball scholarship at Stanford. I needed to play. I wanted to play.” Beau laughed a little raggedly. “No one could’ve kept me from playing.”
“I can’t believe you kept going that long,” Ali murmured. “You had to have been in severe pain.”
“I’m pretty stubborn. Pain doesn’t bother me much.”
“I’ve noticed that. What happened to basketball and your scholarship?”
“I was sick for a while. A couple of years.” Beau’s mouth twisted before she blanked her expression. “By the time I was ready to think about college, I’d already lost any chance at a sports scholarship. I hadn’t played in almost three years and it took me a few more after that to get back into shape. I decided if I wasn’t going to play college basketball, I could get everything I needed at City College. As soon as I finished, I joined the PFD.”
“I suppose you couldn’t think of anything more physically demanding or dangerous to do?” Ali knew she sounded critical but she couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. Even if Beau’s cancer was cured, and Ali had to believe it was—the thought of anything else was too impossible to even consider—with no spleen, Beau was at lifelong risk for overwhelming sepsis from relatively minor infections. Her immune system would never be normal. The constant physical stress, risk of toxic chemical exposure, and sheer danger of her job would be a strain on anyone. For her, the risks were multiplied. “What are you trying to prove?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with me,” Beau said stiffly. “I can do whatever I need to do.”
“I’m sorry, I know you can.” Ali’s fear and anger evaporated as soon she recognized the pain underlying Beau’s defensive pride. God, Beau had lost so much at such a young age—her sports career, her college dreams, not to mention the assault on her body. Ali ached to comfort her and didn’t think about what she was doing when she brushed a kiss over the underside of Beau’s jaw. She caressed Beau’s stomach with the hand that still rested beneath Beau’s shirt.
Beau groaned at the exquisite touch of Ali’s fingers on her skin, and when she turned her head, Ali’s mouth was there. She couldn’t not claim a kiss. With a quiet sigh she sank into the heat of Ali’s mouth, gently slipping her tongue inside, stroking softly as Ali arched into her. Even with the covers between them, Beau felt Ali’s thigh slide onto hers. She twisted to face her, body to body, and Ali’s leg pressed against her crotch. When Ali’s fingernails scratched light circles on her belly, a torch ignited in her loins and her hips jerked. She pulled her mouth away from the kiss.
“Ali, stop,” Beau gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Ali murmured, captivated by the softness of Beau’s lips, the sweet taste of her mouth. Kissing her was better than any narcotic—she couldn’t feel her headache, she couldn’t feel the terror of almost losing Wynter, and she couldn’t feel the agony of Sammy’s death. She couldn’t feel anything at all except pleasure, and she didn’t want to think about why kissing Beau was different than kissing any other woman she’d ever been with. For one of the few times in her life, she didn’t want to think at all.
“We can’t do this now.”
“Just a kiss,” Ali whispered against Beau’s mouth, teasing Beau’s lips with her tongue. She rose up slightly on her elbow and smoothed her hand up and down Beau’s abdomen, feeling the muscles twitch and jump beneath her fingers. “Mmm, the big bad firefighter likes that, doesn’t she.”
“God, Ali.”
Mercilessly, Ali kept up her steady caresses, listening to Beau’s breathing turn into shallow pants. Feeling, hearing the power she had over her was unbelievably exciting. She liked this place of no thinking, just feeling. “A kiss. That’s all, I promise.”
Beau wasn’t strong enough to say no, not with Ali’s mouth gliding over hers, not with Ali’s fingers dancing on her skin. But she couldn’t let herself forget that Ali was hurt, and no matter what Ali wanted, no matter how painful the ache, she couldn’t give in. “Just one more.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Ali tugged on Beau’s lower lip with her teeth, then licked the swollen surface. “Then we’ll have to make it special.”
Ali pushed away the covers and slipped her hand back under Beau’s shirt, then slid naked into Beau’s arms. Her breasts pressed into Beau’s chest, her nipples hardening against the equally tight points of Beau’s breasts. She turned her hand downward and edged her fingers just under the waistband of Beau’s jeans, massaging her lower abdomen with the heel of her hand. Beau’s pelvis jerked and Ali murmured her approval.
“Christ, Ali, what are you—”
Ali silenced her with a deep, sultry kiss. She stroked and sucked Beau’s tongue, sighing when Beau rolled her crotch against her bare thigh. The denim was hot and damp on her skin. She roc
ked her thigh between Beau’s legs. Beau groaned into her mouth and started to shake.
“Ali, we have to stop,” Beau gasped.
“I know,” Ali whispered, reading in Beau’s hazy eyes how close she was to the edge. She reluctantly stopped caressing her abdomen and stroked her damp hair instead, careful not to move her thigh, still trapped between Beau’s legs. “Beau, if you need to—”
“Don’t say anything.” Beau tilted her forehead against Ali’s and closed her eyes, her chest heaving. “Just give me a minute here.”
“I didn’t mean to get you quite so excited.”
Beau choked out a laugh and caressed Ali’s face with trembling fingers. “My fault. I shouldn’t have let this get started.”
“I kissed you first.” Ali dimly registered the headache still resonating at the base of her skull, but not hammering with the intensity it had a few hours before. “I’m not usually so insistent.”
“I’m not complaining.” Beau pulled her body away. “But I need to stop distracting you so you can get some sleep. That means I have to get away from you.”
“You’re leaving?” Ali hated to sound needy, but she didn’t want to stop touching her. And she didn’t want her to go.
“No. I noticed an empty bedroom across the hall. Guest room?”
“Yes.” Ali hesitated. “I’d invite you to stay in here, but I can’t promise there wouldn’t be a repeat of this.”
“I think you’re right,” Beau said. “We still have a couple of dates before we’re ready to go there again.”
Ali groaned. “We’ll discuss that in the morning.”
“I like the sound of that.” Beau climbed out of bed, covered Ali, and kissed her forehead. “I’ll leave the door open in case you need anything. Go to sleep. Sweet dreams.”
Ali lay in the dark, listening to Beau move around in the room across the hall. After only a few minutes, the light went out and almost immediately she detected the faint rhythmic creak of the wooden bed frame. Her heart lurched when she heard a muffled groan, and she imagined Beau masturbating—the way her stomach would tighten and her hips lift as she climbed toward her climax. She held her breath until a low moan signaled Beau’s release. Her own sex throbbed and she clasped herself gently, but she didn’t try to orgasm. Thinking of Beau, recalling her taste and scent and the sounds of her pleasure, she drifted off on a torporous sea of arousal and expectation.
