by Fiona Zedde
“I do.”
After she’d learned about Claudia’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent recovery, Rémi had made it a point to learn everything she could about the healing process, including the best foods to eat in order to help keep the body cancer free. Once she’d decided on her course of seduction, she’d gone out and bought as many things that she knew Claudia would need and want to eat (at least those things that didn’t need cooking). She was glad she’d never developed the habit of smoking in the condo. She didn’t want even the most minute threat to Claudia’s health to exist here.
Rémi poured two tall glasses of guava juice and turned to take them into the living room when Claudia walked into the kitchen. She strolled around the built-in dining table with room for five, trailing a ringless finger along the pristine white edge. Eyes nearly black with amusement, she inspected the open, elegant space.
“You don’t cook, do you?”
Rémi smiled. “Not even a little bit.” She gave one of the glasses to Claudia and leaned back against the bar to watch her. “Dez cooks here sometimes. When she and the others want to have something here, they do. But I cater, or do takeout from the club most days.”
“But surely you can’t eat three meals a day from Gillespie’s, no matter how wonderful the chef is.”
“Rochelle takes care of me.”
Claudia smiled. “I bet she does.”
Rémi laughed. “Not in that way, I swear. The woman is happily married to her husband for... oh, I dunno, years and years. She doesn’t need or want my attentions.”
Claudia sipped her juice and said nothing. Only the teasing light in her eyes gave away her real thoughts on the matter.
“I’m not that bad you know.” But Rémi laughed, spoiling the righteous indignation act. She shook her head. “Come out to the terrace with me.”
Claudia sipped her juice and followed Rémi outside. The Miami night was gorgeous. City lights glittered and the scent of the ocean rose up, a perfect complement to the breeze lapping gently at their bodies. Claudia leaned against the railing, smiling into the night.
“I can’t say again how glad I was to get your invitation to come out with you. Even before you called, it had been a long day.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” She lightly brushed Rémi’s arm to lessen any possible sting in the words. “Your company is doing more than enough.”
Rémi nodded. She hated the idea that Claudia might be having any sort of hardship. After what she’d been through lately, she needed to have an easy time of it. Rémi put the glass of juice to her lips and stared thoughtfully at the other woman. Whatever was just said seemed to have propelled her back into the mood that she had been in before Rémi called her this morning. Her smooth brow furrowed and she glowered at the Miami city lights as if they’d personally done her wrong.
“Dez tells me you’re back at school this semester.” Rémi sat her glass down on the table nearby and straddled a lawn chair. “Are you teaching French lit again, or just language?”
Claudia turned. The look on her face said that she knew what Rémi was doing, but with a light shrug, she allowed the distraction from whatever was troubling her.
“I’ve jumped back into my full schedule. Four classes, literature and language both. Why? You want to take some more classes with me?”
Rémi blushed. She looked down between the sprawl of her legs. “Maybe.”
Claudia’s question was an abrupt reminder—did she really need one?—of just how far her crush had taken her after that fateful day of the strawberries. Not only had she ended up at the same school that Claudia taught at, Rémi also took her classes. All of them. Even the basic French class that taught pronunciation. It wouldn’t have been so obvious and laughable if Rémi didn’t already speak French. Until she was fourteen, she’d spoken it at home with her parents and sister. Even when her mother had run away with her children to Miami to escape Auguste Bouchard’s stranglehold on her life, Kelia Walker-Bouchard kept up Rémi and Yvette’s second language until no one knew which was native to the young girls, English or French.
Rémi shook her head and smiled, finally able to make peace with the foolishness of her youth. “Come sit with me, and tell me about school.”
They talked quietly on the terrace until Claudia, curled up in the lawn chair next to Rémi, began to lightly shiver from the suddenly enthusiastic breeze.
“Let me get you a blanket,” Rémi offered, standing up.
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Claudia said, then as Rémi turned to go inside she stood up too. “No, wait. I think it’s time for me to go.” She rubbed her hands up her goose bumped arms. “It’s already after midnight. I’m sure you have other things to do besides babysit me.”
“I hardly call this babysitting.” Rémi said. “I’m enjoying your company.”
“Still, I think I should go.”
Rémi opened the glass doors and allowed Claudia to go inside first. She’d forgotten how easy it was for the other woman to feel the cold. Although it was nearly the end of August, the night breezes off the ocean were already crisp. Claudia’s strapless temptation of a dress, though incredibly sexy, was no protection against them.
“Come inside,” Rémi murmured, as Claudia passed beneath her arm. “I’ll make you some hot tea before you go.”
In the kitchen, she put on the teapot and sat down at the table with Claudia. She could have put a cup of water in the microwave, but this way she was guaranteed the older woman’s company for a bit longer.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” she murmured, fiddling with a silver container of Darjeeling tea.
“I know, but any moment now this old woman might fall asleep on you and cut your evening short.”
“This is our evening, not just mine.” She shifted the canister between her hands again. “Oh, by the way, is Darjeeling okay with you?”
Claudia took the tea from Rémi’s hands then opened the container to smell it. She closed it. “Do you have any passionfruit?”
“For you, yes.”
When Rémi stood up to steep the tea, Claudia walked to the fridge. “I don’t know why,” she said, “I’m a little hungry.”
“It’s all that shivering you did outside.”
Claudia chuckled, reaching into the recesses of the refrigerator. She brought out one container and replaced it with another until she finally found what she was looking for. The container of tamarind sauce opened with a satisfying pop, and she grinned, sitting down with slivers of paratha. She put her finger in the sauce and licked it off. “This really is too delicious. The perfect midnight snack.”
Rémi set Claudia’s honey-sweetened tea near her hand and got a beer from the fridge for herself.
“Since you tempt me with honey and spices,” Claudia said, inhaling the indulgent smell of the tea, “I might as well make myself comfortable.”
“Come make yourself comfortable in the sitting room, if you don’t mind. I don’t spend much time in the kitchen, and it’s kinda creeping me out.”
“Maybe you should learn to spend some more time in the kitchen. Have you ever thought about learning to cook?”
“No.”
Claudia chuckled. “Come, sit beside me.”
Rémi sat, not knowing what to expect. She was used to being in control. Women did what she wanted, when she wanted, how she wanted. They didn’t tell her what to do. She took a sip of her beer. Claudia looked at her, still smiling. Her gaze lingered on Rémi’s face. Rémi could feel the eyes like an actual touch, skimming over her eyes, her cheekbones, her mouth. Was she imagining it? Just when she thought she would explode from wondering what the hell was going on, Claudia stood up. She nuked the bread in the microwave for about fifteen seconds before scooting back into position beside Rémi.
“You look so serious.” Claudia murmured, as if it were the worst possible crime. “Taste this.”
She dipped the warmed bread into the cool tamarind sauce
and offered it toward Rémi’s mouth. Without thinking, Rémi opened her mouth. The bread wasn’t as good reheated, was her first thought. The second thought had nothing to do with her brain. Claudia’s scent, her delicate perfume, and her own womanly smell, licked at Rémi’s senses. As Claudia leaned close, offering another bite, a dollop of the sauce fell from the bread to her fingers and palm. Rémi’s eyes zeroed in on the earth-colored moisture against the pale flesh. Her lashes fluttered down to hide her eyes as she moved forward to accept what Claudia offered.
Rémi bypassed the bread and went straight for the finger. She raked her teeth across the delicate surface, and Claudia gasped, so softly that Rémi had to lean even closer to hear it, then suck the finger into her mouth before it could completely escape. She soothed the previous hurt, forming a trough with her tongue and sliding the finger into it, back and forth until her panties were wet and a vibrating moan shook her throat. Her eyes fell closed. She was vaguely aware of the tamarind-coated bread falling from Claudia’s hand to somewhere under the table.
Claudia wasn’t pulling away. The knowledge of that made Rémi’s knees weak, and made her bold. She went for the palm next, licking down the long finger into the center of her hand. With all logical thought obliterated by her desire, she licked the tamarind sauce away, sucked at the surface until the hand curved around her cheek, trembling. She smelled like honey and spices, like bread and, of course, that sauce. Her teeth sank into the soft skin and Claudia groaned Rémi’s name. At last. God. At last. The pale flesh ended at the delicate wrist and Rémi followed it, nibbling and kissing her way up Claudia’s arm to the dip of her elbow.
“Rémi . . . stop.”
Her tongue flicked at the delicate crease. Her nose greedily drank in Claudia’s scent.
“Please.”
That last word was her undoing. She stopped, head resting on the slope of Claudia’s arm, just near her breast. Rémi could hear the frantic gallop of Claudia’s heart, and it made her glad. The other woman wasn’t immune to her. And she hadn’t pulled back.
“I’ve wanted to touch you for so long,” she said, still with her head resting near Claudia’s heart. “So long.” Rémi released a sigh and stood up, finally able to meet Claudia’s eyes.
They were startled, pupils dilated to swallow nearly all the lustrous brown of her irises. Desire. They were the shape of desire. For her. But she wasn’t going to push it.
Still breathing deeply, Rémi stood up. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
The ride to Claudia’s house was a silent affair, with both women lost in their thoughts. Memories of Claudia’s flesh, of it yielding sweetly beneath her teeth and tongue, made Rémi clench silently in the truck beside the object of her desire. An old Gregory Isaacs love song played quietly in the Escalade as they rode back to Coconut Grove. As the twenty minute drive neared its end, Claudia shifted in the seat for the millionth time beside Rémi, but still said nothing.
“Sorry, I made you uncomfortable,” Rémi said, nearly whispering the apology.
“You didn’t.”
But she had. There was no easy conversation. No effortless talk between them. All Rémi felt was her desire and her clumsiness. She’d never been this inept at seduction before. It never required this much effort. Then again there had never been this much riding on her technique before. Silence reigned in the truck again.
They pulled into Claudia’s drive and Rémi got out, walking with her to the front door. As the other woman looked in her purse for keys to open the door, Rémi tried again.
“Claudia.”
The other woman stopped the seemingly fruitless search through her purse and looked at her.
“I don’t want things to change between us in that way. I want to still be your friend and the person to distract you from your worries. Awkwardness between us would kill me.”
“You should have thought of that before you touched me, Rémi.”
Rémi closed her eyes at the unexpected pain that lanced through her chest. But regrouped.
“Did you enjoy it?”
She really wanted to ask if it made her wet, if her nipples had gotten hard under that pretty red dress. But Rémi had seen that evidence for herself. She had seen the stone hardness, felt the labored breath against her face. She knew well the face of want.
Claudia’s eyes fluttered down and she sighed. And found her keys. “Yes, I did,” she said and opened the dark oak door. As she turned to disable the security system on the wall, the telephone rang.
“Give me one second,” she said and dashed into the house to get it. Her heels made a musical sound against the hardwood as she went.
At Claudia’s breathless greeting to whoever was on the phone, Rémi slowly closed the front door behind her. She walked into the house that was more familiar than her own, through the split hallway that to the left led to the swimming pool and deck, and to the right opened up into the house. Except for the addition of a few small pieces of furniture, its cozy arrangement hadn’t changed very much. In the sitting room with its warm furnishings—a deep chocolate sofa and sectional with matching footstools scattered around. The coffee table and the neat arrangement of books and magazines and a few academic journals. Various pieces of black art on the cream-colored walls, and the large window overlooking a garden that always had flowers in bloom.
Claudia walked back toward Rémi with the cordless phone tucked into the space between her cheek and neck as she took off one high-heeled shoe, then the other. The normally smooth skin on her forehead was puckered in a frown.
“The wedding was over a week ago,” she said into the phone. “And you didn’t even send a card. What’s wrong with you?”
Rémi turned from her contemplation of the unlit fireplace. “I can go,” she mouthed to Claudia.
The other woman shook her head and gestured for her to sit before returning to her conversation. “Warrick, I swear you’ve hurt her for the last time.... No. It doesn’t matter what—”
Rémi tried not to listen, but not very hard. According to Dez, Claudia still carried a torch of some kind for her ex-husband, who was now remarried and living in California. Dez hadn’t talked about her very absent father too much other than to say that Derrick seemed to be following nicely in his footsteps. And that Claudia wasn’t as over him as she would like. At the moment, she didn’t sound very enamored of him.
“What do you mean you’ve been trying to call me all night?” Claudia sat in one of the velvet chairs by the garden window. She reached over to grab her purse as she spoke then took out her cell phone. The display lit up as she read whatever was there. “I was busy.” Silence. “Yes, it was a date.”
Rémi smiled and looked away. This was good. This was very good.
“Tell me what you want, Warrick, so I can get on with my evening. That’s none of your business.” She sighed. “Get to the point or I will hang up on you.” Then, “Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Just call me when you get here. I’m sure I can arrange to meet with you at some point in my busy schedule.” Her mouth twisted in irony, but it wasn’t at all conveyed in her voice. “Good night.” She pressed a button to end the call and turned to Rémi.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. I kept myself occupied.” She stood her hands in her pants pockets, watching Claudia fairly vibrate with frustration. Not the kind that Rémi would prefer, but frustration nonetheless. “Do you want to talk?”
Claudia chuckled tiredly and shook her head. “My ex-husband is an ass.”
She stretched out her feet to the footstool and leaned her head back in the chair. “That’s all it is. Nothing more. Nothing less. I just tend to let myself get a little too emotional where he’s concerned.” She sighed.
Rémi nodded, though Claudia didn’t see her with her eyes closed. So Warrick was still a big part of her life. Not only was she planning to meet up with him next time he came to town, her emotions were still on his yo-yo. Reaching a decision, Rémi sat down on Claudia’s footstool, s
weeping the bare feet into her lap as she did so. They were delicate beneath her hands, like small birds. She began to massage them.
Although she felt Claudia’s startled eyes on her, she didn’t stop. The soft feet with their surprising blue nail polish slowly relaxed beneath her fingers until Claudia’s gaze fell away and her head rolled to the back of the chair. Rémi slid her fingers between each of the slender toes, massaging the delicate skin of her feet as well as the soles. She cupped the heel in her palm and slowly, firmly manipulated the flesh until Claudia was sighing softly in her chair. A woman she’d dated briefly was a reflexology teacher and taught Rémi a lot about the feet and the points that linked to areas on the body. With sure strokes, she relaxed Claudia, had her purring in her chair; then she began to do something else.
She stroked the delicate bottoms of her feet, lingering on the areas leashed to the neck, waist, tailbone, and belly until Claudia wriggled in her seat, relaxation and stimulation working in tandem. Rémi could smell her. The scent of her pussy, wet and warm, flowed from between her legs, unencumbered, she thought, by underwear. She swallowed. After one final and deep caress, she stood up.
“I’ll leave you to it.”
Claudia’s lashes lifted to look at her. The eyes were liquid with desire. But Rémi could see that she didn’t know why. After all, it had been a simple foot massage. Right? Rémi smoothed a hand down the front of her shirt, over her trembling belly. She wasn’t exactly unaffected either.
“Don’t get up. I’ll lock the door behind me.”
“No, I’ll see you out.” Claudia made to stand, but Rémi put an insistent hand on her shoulder.
“I know where the front door is,” she said. “Relax, Mrs. N. I’ll see you later.”
Claudia subsided beneath Rémi’s touch and lay back in the chair with a soft laugh. “At this point, you might as well call me Claudia. Don’t you think?”
Rémi thought of the scent that rose from under her red dress. She’d been “Claudia” in her mind for a long time. She smiled and nodded.
“Good night, Claudia.”
