I practically launch off the couch, but I’m just trying to get more and more. It’s pain mixed with sweet. I can’t put the feeling into words, and all I know is that if it ends, I may cry.
Then Cai shoves one of my legs up and buries her face in my panties, and I scream instead. The silky material is so wet that it’s hardly there. Cai’s tongue is enough to light me on fire. I’m dying in the best way.
She grabs the gusset of my undies and yanks. The lace panels at my hip bones pop and rip. Cai throws the panties over her shoulder and brings every bit of her energy to bear on me.
I shove both hands to my mouth. There’s pain when my palms grind my lips into my teeth. I don’t care. I don’t care at all, because Cai’s licking me and eating me.
I can’t tell the separate things she’s doing. It’s all blended together. My clit throbs with her attention, but none of the rest of me is hungry either. She’s mouth fucking me. This is no passive act the way I did for her the other day. It’s a gift, but it’s also a warning.
This is a woman who fucks. Not making love or coming together or any of those things I’ve called it before.
She is fucking me.
And, god, do I love it.
My orgasm comes between one breath and the next. There’s no windup, no warning beyond how expertly she’s working me. One second I’m turned on and going nuts but not quite there, and the next second I’m shaking apart. The feelings rock from my clit to my empty sheathe and sneak up to snatch me by the throat. I don’t know what I say. They’re just words that are being ripped from the very core of me, the parts that Cai is laying waste to.
And she’s not letting up. She backs off only enough for me to remember how to breathe, and then her lips and tongue are back to work. She sucks my flesh farther into her mouth than I would have thought possible. Her explorations know no bounds, and she even delves between my cheeks to lick and probe the dark star there. I squirm at first, but as soon as the hot sensation of steamy pressure gets past my surprise, I’m squirming for an entirely different reason.
It takes me far longer to get to my second orgasm, but Cai never betrays the slightest shred of impatience. Gosh, she never even falters in her enthusiasm. It’s all full throttle, and the way she licks me and sucks me and nibbles is exactly what I need. I ride the swollen, heart-thumping pleasure up and up and up until I practically float away. This come seems to start in my chest, with great, huge gasps. My stomach clenches, and then everything is free and I’m loose on a storm of sensation. I break apart all the way down to my toes.
I come screaming Cai’s name.
Cai
We’re playing footsie, except with both hands and feet. We’re spooned on the couch and Tansy’s nakedness is curled up against my side. She stacks her toes on top of mine and then lines up the base of her palm to measure against mine. “You have bigger hands than me.”
“I’m taller than you. Makes sense.” I twine our fingers and lift the combined hands. She comes with me as easily as if I were leading her in a kids game. “I kept growing after twelve.”
“Twelve! I don’t look like a tween.”
“You certainly don’t,” I say with an intentional leer at her perfect, perky tits. I cup one and duck to kiss the tip. I add a bit of tongue for good measure.
She shivers and shoves her free hand through my hair. Even when she’s greedy, she’s delicate, and her weight is barely noticeable. “Besides. When I was twelve, you were twenty-six. That’s creepy.”
“Ew!” I bolt upright. “What the hell?”
She smirks, her mouth turned up in the most adorable tease. She’s looking at me from under her lashes, and she leans back against the ample couch cushions, seeming more like the Queen of Sheba than the nymph she normally reminds me of. Watching her grow into herself is starting to blow my mind, bit by bit. She’s fascinating. “Do the math, sweetie.”
I pause. Compare my birth date to hers. “That’s a little much.”
“I promise I wouldn’t have hit on you.”
“You wouldn’t have been capable of it. Even if you thought you were trying.” I open my arms, and she returns to leaning into me. “I can’t picture twelve-year-old Tansy in Idaho.”
“I probably looked a lot like twelve-year-olds anywhere. Except less eyelashes. Curse of being a true redhead. My lashes were practically invisible until I learned how to use mascara without poking myself in the eyeballs.”
I laugh, then tilt her chin toward the ceiling. “Yup, wearing it now, aren’t you?”
“Always. I’ve been thinking about getting lash extensions.” She grins, but I think she’s also watching my reaction carefully.
“That’s a thing?”
“Yeah. They’re glued in one by one.” She looks down at our joined hands and draws a pattern across my palm. “Probably a waste of money.”
“If you’re expecting me to freak out, it’s not going to happen. Go be a girly girl. I think it’s sexy as fuck.” I’m rewarded with a pink flush across the tops of her cheeks and down her throat. She curls up even closer to my side, nuzzling her way under one of my arms. I squeeze her shoulders. “I put ink in people’s skin for a living. If that’s not a waste of money, some eyelashes sure aren’t.”
“How did you get into tattoos? As a job?”
“By getting into them being on my body first.” I push up the sleeve of my T-shirt. It’s the original Barbie doll in the black-and-white-striped swimsuit. The brunette version instead of the blonde though. “This was my first. A memorial for my sister.”
She touches the curve of Barbie’s hip, and I’m the one who catches the sensation. “She liked dolls?”
“Always swore that the very first thing she got with a physician’s paycheck was going to be a 1959. She already knew a vintage dealer she trusted who she was going to buy from.”
“Why Barbie?”
“Living the American dream.” I sigh. “So then I got a fenghuang on my back for my heritage, and then a couple others. I didn’t really want to leave the shops. I liked how laid-back everyone seemed. I mean, I found out eventually that was bullshit.”
Tansy pushes her hair back from her face so that she can lean on my shoulder. Her jaw cracks on a huge yawn. “What do you mean?”
“We’re all just as crazy or driven or whatever as picket fence America in our own way.” I like her curls. Petting them is like plunging my hand into a cloud. “Skylar, who runs the shop? She’s got too many balls in the air. She’s going to explode someday. We each have our secrets.”
“And yours is that you like BDSM?”
“Not really.”
She freezes like a trapped rabbit. I think even the tip of her nose twitches. “Does that mean you don’t like … what we did?”
There’s no way I’m letting this go by without explanation. I scoop her up and arrange her so that she’s sitting in my lap. Her butt is nestled across my thighs, and I hook an arm around her bent knees. “That is not what I said at all. I’ve liked it a fuck of a lot.”
That gets a giggle out of her, but she’s still avoiding my gaze. She twiddles with the top button of my vest instead. “‘A fuck of a lot’ seems like plenty.”
“A mega fuck-ton?”
“That’s good with me.” She glances up at me from under those mascara-ed lashes. “So it’s good with you?”
“Yeah. You can say that again.”
“But you haven’t done it before?” If she keeps at that button the way she is, twisting it back and forth, it’s going to pop off. I don’t try to stop her. “Because it seemed like you knew what you were doing.”
“I’m not going to lie and say I’m a saint or anything.” I push the ends of her red curls back over her shoulder. She’s dotted with orange freckles. “I’ve played in dungeons before. Sometimes I’ve bottomed.”
“What?” She jerks her head up on a little squeak. “That’s not right.”
I chuckle and pull her closer. She smells like sugar and a heavy dose of gi
rl juices. “It was right for the moment. It wouldn’t be right with you.”
“I’m the first one you’ve … ordered around?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I take my time thinking about it, remembering how she’d locked up that first time. The way she’d looked at me when I was in the shower and she knelt before me. The hard shot of pleasure that I’d felt at the sight. “It seemed like what we both needed.”
She keeps her head bent. Her jaw slides against my collarbone, but she doesn’t end up saying anything for a long moment. “I like it. But I worry that means there’s something wrong with me. After … after the way things used to be, shouldn’t I want to be calling the shots and be the one who starts everything? I should be bar hopping and taking home whoever I feel like. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
I wonder about the spaces between Tansy’s words sometimes. I don’t know what she means about ‘the way things used to be’ and I want to know in order to shore up her defenses. But I don’t think I can ask. Not now. I take what she’s offered me and no more. “Whatever you’re doing is the way it’s supposed to be. No matter if that was standing on street corners wearing a clown costume and turning somersaults.”
“Clowns are creepy.”
“Pink flamingo costume.”
“Much better.” She kisses the side of my neck in the soft space underneath my jaw. “Though I don’t think a flamingo would survive a somersault.”
“Might be worth watching.”
I brush my mouth over hers. She’s sweet as sin and twice as tempting. I can’t seem to go very long without having my hands all over her. Her neck tilts, and it’s like I have every bit of her open to me. She’d give me anything.
It’s heady and distracting and almost overwhelming. I want to take and take without giving. I teeter on the edge between greediness and needing to nurture her. It’s different from moment to moment. I wonder if that’s what makes her different.
I wonder if I’ll ever tell her that she’s different.
Tansy
The day before I leave for Idaho flies by. It seems like I blink and I’m standing outside of the academy, waving at Mink’s Lexus. The red Lexus as opposed to the blue one. October in California doesn’t have the same feeling that it does back home. The sun’s warmth lies on my shoulders until I duck under the shade of the portico. I’m wearing capris and a sleeveless silk top, but it’s still hot as hell and pushing ninety degrees. A bead of sweat rolls down the center of my back. I can’t wait to go home.
I wish I could wear sunglasses, but it’s frowned on at arrivals and departures. Parents like the emotional connection of being able to see our eyes. They want to be able to see our deference.
“I am going to melt.” Imogene flaps a hand at herself. “I’m from freaking Toronto. I’m not built for this heat.”
I do a little dance. “Gonna be much cooler in Idaho.”
“Shove it, woman. Stop bragging.”
My stomach does a flip, I do an instant replay of what I just said and wonder if I went too far, but then I decide that nope, I’m going further. “Boots and pumpkin spice and falling leaves! Actual autumn. It’s a thing.”
“Not in Southern California, it’s not.” She laughs and opens the door to the building for me. “I hate fall. It means winter’s coming.”
“I guess there’s a reason you moved here?”
She leans against the wall beside her classroom. Over her shoulder is a montage of her class’s photographs from their monthly trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They’re working on an in-depth exploration of multisensory art. “There’s a load of reasons, but yeah, the weather is one of them. I hate the snow.”
“I kind of miss it.” I sigh. “Okay, I really miss it. I used to ski!”
Imogene’s perfectly groomed brows lift. “I don’t think I can picture you in a snow suit.”
“I loved it. And I didn’t mind the short days, and I loved being inside and having hot cocoa afterwards.”
She grins. “Now that, I can imagine.”
“I don’t know, maybe I’m romanticizing it.” I lean against the wall beside her, but I fail at cool points and have to pull my hair away from construction paper tesseracts. “It’s been forever since I’ve been home, and actually living in a place like that is so different.”
“I always hated the way everything was gray by January.”
“Yeah, the road salt is nasty.”
She shudders and wrinkles her nose. “It’d be fine if it were just the roads. But it’s all over the sidewalks and tracks in your house and corrodes your car. I am so glad to be done with that shit.”
“I miss it.” I sigh again and my shoulders drop. “And it sounds so far away.”
“Then go home.” She says it so casually, so easily. As if it wouldn’t be the biggest upheaval of my life.
No, wait, I think that was maybe leaving Jody at the altar. That was probably bigger. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Working here will give you a killer résumé. You’re single. You can go wherever you want.”
I blush. It’s like a firecracker that goes off in my cheeks and lights me on fire. I keep my gaze carefully trained on the poster on the other side of the hallway for our school concert and hope Imogene doesn’t have great peripheral vision. But naturally she does.
“You are single, aren’t you?” She stands straight and gawps at me. The goddess braids curved around the top of her head, combined with her height, make her a little intimidating. “Tell me you did not take Jody back.”
“No! God, no.” I jolt at the sudden terror that even the thought of having Jody back in my life brings. My palms sweat and my heart rate hits a speed that’s totally insane. “Never. I wouldn’t anyways, but it’s not like she’s even been trying either. We’re so done.”
“Thank you, my sweet Baby Jesus.” She presses her palms together as if it’s a real prayer. Maybe it is. “Who you got them thoughts about, then, huh?”
“I guess you won’t believe me if I say Angelina Jolie?”
“Her too, I bet, but I want the real-deal info.” She points at her classroom. “Come in for tea.”
I shake my head. “Can’t. I have to go home and pack. My flight’s at six tomorrow morning, and then I have a connection too. Nothing flies straight through to Idaho.”
Besides, I have no real idea what I’d say about Cai. We’re not a long-term, forever kind of thing, and yet she’s meeting me at home in three days. What do you call that? More than friends with benefits. Less than a relationship. The exact person I needed at the right moment in my life?
Words are hard.
Imogene is exasperated with me, but I think it’s in a gentle friendship kind of way. I hope. “At least tell me if I know her.”
“You don’t. I promise.”
She narrows her eyes and points at me as if she’s had a huge revelation. “The cat basket! With the toys.”
“Gyoza likes her,” I say on a laugh. “A lot.”
“She must be good people.”
“I think so.” It’s the perfect moment to say something about hoping my mom thinks so too, but I’ve kept it such a secret that Cai will be in Idaho that I don’t know how to start now. Maybe it’s just something Imogene doesn’t need to know. After all, I can barely stand to look sideways at the situation myself. Explaining to my mom was one of the weirdest conversations of my life, but I managed.
“You make sure she treats you right, sugar. If she doesn’t, she’s going to have to answer to me. I’m not keeping my mouth shut this time.”
Imogene holds her arms out for a hug, and I steel myself enough to step into it. She smells like cocoa for some reason. It’s awkward at first. I’m stiff. It’s hard to be touched still. But then she pats my back and lets go and my feel-good feelings come in the wake of freedom. I know I’m backward. Hugs aren’t supposed to only be pleasant afterward, but in the middle I’m waiting for something bad to happe
n. It’s like I can only process little pieces at a time.
I don’t like to look inward at myself. It’s broken in there, filled with shards of glass that hurt to turn over. I’ll start bleeding all over the painted wood floors. The cheery blue and gold diamonds wouldn’t do very well with pools of crimson. Not to mention it’d be hard to explain to the janitorial staff.
I am nothing if not considerate.
“Thanks. I’ll be sure to warn her.” I make myself smile at my friend even though it’s still hard to believe that I’ve had friends all along.
Now it’s time to go remind myself that I’ve always had my family too.
“Oh my god, Mom. No! I’m going to freaking choke you!”
She is absolutely, gleefully unrepentant. An outright cackle comes out of her. “Welcome home, baby!”
Our driveway is filled with people. Absolutely packed. Mom has to park her Jeep on the curb. There are balloons and ribbons and my high school girlfriend. Beth holds a poster board sign reading, Welcome Home! over her head and waves it back and forth. Dad is at the front of the crowd, standing with his hands fisted on his hips and his feet spread in the I belong in my world pose that he’s always had. Nanna waves manically. She’s wearing a bright-blue track suit.
I’m laughing and dying at the same time. “This is insane.”
“Everyone was so happy when I told them you were coming back.”
“It’s not like I’ve been to war or something!” I unbuckle, but I can’t look away from the craziness in front of me either.
“You’ve been in California. For years. It’s practically the same thing.” Mom sniffs the way she always does when she talks about California. It’s a reflex, the same exact thing that Grandpa Harold did before he died. But then she pushes a bit of my hair back over my shoulder and pets my head. “We’ve missed you.”
I know she’s saying she in particular missed me. When she picked me up at the Idaho Falls airport, I was struck by how much older she looked than I remembered. There are lines at the corners of her eyes and her skin is pale but just a little bit more dull than she should be. I get my curls from her, but hers are now shot through with a pretty solid amount of gray.
Her Hometown Girl Page 13
