by Tara Wimble
Everyone’s into it. People grab their significant others if they’re there or just someone sexy in the club if that’s what they’re all about.
She has Bella though who immediately turns up the temperature.
In all of their years as a married couple they’d never quite had to deal with this particular situation. They’ve shared a bed but Jacque’s never really had Bella this close to her body in such a real way. This isn’t for anybody but themselves. This is just fun.
Their bodies are flush together. And Jacque’s comfortable with the way that Bella’s turned so her back is against Jacque’s chest. It’s safe territory. She can’t see her face and she can grind back but it doesn’t really have the full intended effect.
But then she turns around and everything goes to shit.
A leg is thrust between her legs, Bella’s leg to be exact, and that’s the end of articulate brain function.
She can’t help but stare at Bella’s lips as they dance, her eyes closed with her body just feeling and sensing the beat, her bottom lip bit between her teeth.
It’s too much and once she starts staring she can’t stop. Bella’s eyes pop open and she smiles.
And there it is.
That charge, that spark that pops up sometimes when their eyes connect in just the right way and everything aligns and before she knows what she’s thinking she’s leaning in to kiss her. For her part Bella is coming to meet her halfway.
There’s a moment right before their lips are meant to touch that Jacque thinks there’s no way this can be real.
White noise.
And then the song changes to something slower and something snaps. Suddenly it’s like Jacque is in a white dress and so is Bella, she feels like she should dip her like she did in their wedding dance and it’s too much. The pain and the stress of the last year come rushing back and she pushes herself away, rushing into the hall.
That should be it. She should be able to flee into the safety of the elevator and stare at her reflection in the mirrors without someone trying to puzzle out her face or the heat in her body. But no, she doesn’t get that the one time she wants it, and Bella chases her out. The last trails of music follow her and end as she pushes into the empty lift with Jacque.
The doors close and it’s just them.
Bella stands in front of the doors even though there’s no way for her to get out while they’re in motion. “You followed me.”
“You got the hell outta dodge.” Bella retorts.
Jacque looks at her, in the jeans and the Olympics jacket that says ‘CANADA’ in huge red letters that they all threw on for the party, and finds herself tired. Tired of this push and pull and breaking and falling short every, single time. Bella chased after her.
“You almost kissed me.”
The door clunks open and Bella doesn’t move back or run like she expects her to. She’s always the one to leave and to crumble first.
“You almost kissed me back.” Bella’s weak voice cracks.
No one is there to come into the lift so no one is in the way when Jacque converges on Bella, moving them out of the lift and onto their floor. The only sound that this is surprising is the gasp that comes from Bella as she sweeps them out. Her hands find Jacque’s biceps and nothing else until she’s half pressed and half placed against a wall.
“After everything that we’ve been through, all this shit- Bella, you can’t do that.” Jacque mutters. “You can’t turn around and play like this.”
Not when Bella knows everything now. How she felt, how she feels, how the simplest of actions is enough to make her quiver, then the biggest of gestures is cutting her at the knees. “You almost kissed me.” Bella reiterates. “You. Not me. You.”
“You almost kissed me back.” Jacque whispers and Bella feels the words against her face. This close again, against the wall reminds her of what she forgot about that moment after Bella presented her with papers. That urge to just disrupt the script, to make a mess of the line they followed, comes back in full force now.
Her forearms are flat against the wall behind Bella’s head. Closer and closer again. “Why?”
Why now? Why here? Why after everything?
There’s no fight left in her. There’s nothing. The papers are ready to sign at home and there’s plans being made for afterwards. They have to tell their families, friends, teammates and the world that they’re broken and Jacque can’t handle Bella doing this. Kissing her fixes nothing. It makes up for nothing. It only makes it worse, so why?
“Did you want to?” Bella utters. Like her answer matters now. Like any of this will change what’s brought them here.
“Bella, don’t.” Her jaw hurts from grinding her teeth together in every effort not to run.
“It’s a question.” Bella states. “Did you ever want to?”
Jacque says nothing and closes her eyes. Dream this away. Dream it all away and take the medal if that helps this from happening to her now.
Bella sniffs. “You don’t get to work your way into my life like this and stop without being honest with me.”
“There was nothing honest about this-”
“There was because we didn’t do this for nothing-”
Jacque presses against her forearms more. “We did this for you. I wanted to do this for you.”
This was always about Bella. About her dream and those earnest eyes that just wanted to go out and play. She never asked for any of this. Jacque never asked for things to change and for her life to get so turned on its head that standing up would make her feel so dizzy.
“But it stopped being for me. Just for me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Jacque pushes back. Bella catches the bottom of her shirt and stops her from leaving entirely. “That it was my fault that we couldn’t keep this up? If I didn’t find you attractive? If I hadn’t fucked things up for you with Blake, you never would have wanted to end this?”
There’s a growing dent in Bella’s forehead that screams tears and begs Jacque not to blow it all in her face.
“Do you want me to take the blame for everything because this stopped being fake for me?” Jacque can feel the soreness rising in her own throat. “Because I fell in love with you?”
Bella grabs the bottom of her shirt tighter. Jacque wraps her hand around Bella’s wrist. “Because I won’t, I won’t do that just so you can feel better about yourself and everything that’s falling down around us. Because for once, just think, that it’s not being fair to me.”
Jacque tries to pry her hand off but Bella doesn’t let go. “Did you-”
That’s when she pushes her back and follows. “Of course I did. Of course I fucking-” Her voice fails her and Bella can only press her clenched fist against Jacque’s stomach to keep her from falling against her completely. She sobs. “I wanted to.”
That’s what you do when you love someone. You want to be everything. You want that. It’s just another reminder that she never had that. Never was that for Bella.
“So you can’t-” Jacque puts her hand over Bella’s fist again. Pleading with her to let go. “You can’t.”
The glimmer of the meaning behind Bella’s hold on her disappears when she drops the hand between them. Jacque hovers with such a clear mind that she almost topples forward before realizing that her balance had nothing to do with it.
Bella hooks her fingers down the collar of her shirt and rises up on her tip toes. She’s not tall enough for this, she’s not strong enough to fight her off if Jacque fought, but she’s unable to hear the possibility of no.
If their almost kiss had ignited the tarnished memories of their wedding day, Bella catching her off guard and kissing her like this flares the night that she asked for a divorce. Her whole body presses against her and Jacque can feel it hard against her like she’s never experienced. Bella isn’t keeping her here, Bella is willing her to stay there.
Jacque leans down and groans into Bella’s mouth. She’s kissing her with no lie on th
e tip of her tongue or an audience to please. Bella is arching her back as Jacque tries to pin her to the wall. This is stripped of everything that they ever thought to hide under. Yet it’s anything but real.
Bella grabs her hair at the base of her neck and that’s when Jacque, still trying to feel the high that comes from the embrace, flinches.
She can barely breathe as she pulls back. Bella is dazed and the edge of the breakdown that started when Bella turned to dance with her is looming. She can’t. “I’m tired, I’m tired of this and I can’t-”
But the ease to end this now that they’ve broken something left untouched for years is enough to bring a rise out of Bella. One that Jacque never thought she had in the first place. A rise of something inherently sincere.
Bella has her by the front of her shirt though and she’s not letting her go despite the cracks in her voice. “If this was real, if all of it- from the very start-,” It’s not quite sobbing but the rumbles in her chest feel like it. “-you would have been good to me.”
If this had all been real. Jacque presses her forehead down on Bella’s, swaying them together in a drunk-like haze, feeling that there’s nothing left but reality now. There’s no crack in the sincerity of her voice and Jacque doesn’t wish to make one but Bella doesn’t end it. She doesn’t let go and she doesn’t stamp out the light in the small space they take up. And she can’t ignore that as much as she can’t do this.
Jacque touches her face with a shaking tenderness. “I can still be good to you.”
In the empty hallway, Bella coughs and it cracks in her throat. “You can’t just, you can’t say that to me.”
“Why?” Jacque’s hands go upwards, over her cheeks and into her hair so that Bella’s face is cushioned by her forearms. “Because it’s true? Because I could be so, so good for you if you just let me?”
How many times has she thought of this? The knowledge that she was that light at the end of whatever tunnel Bella was walking down. That for all the guys and the girls that passed them by at the side of the road, there was no doubt, she thought, that she could have done it differently. Been something better.
Bella’s hands cling to the crooks of her elbows. “Because it scares the hell out of me, Jacque. What if you’re not?”
The unspoken, ‘what if you are?’, rings in the tiny space between them.
Jacque knows that she’ll walk away. She’ll walk away like the rest of them and that’d be that. It will kill her to come this close and for the same closed door to be presented to her, but she would walk away every single time if that’s what Bella wanted.
But she holds on while Bella still holds her. There’s ghost sounds of the party going on floors below them but nothing else touches them. Not the high, not the low, not the past surrounding them. Just the weight of a key card in her pocket and Bella hanging on to the open sides of her jacket.
“Would you?”
The last time Bella asked her that question she signed her life to her in every written way. There was nothing consummated for a business arrangement but this isn’t business Bella is asking of her.
So Jacque echoes it again. “If you asked.”
This could ruin everything.
*
There’s no one with all the power here. Even as Jacque stands knowing what to do and Bella doesn’t. It’s not about experience. Free will and the anguish behind it pushing and pulling. Bella still has tear tracks staining her face when she steps up to where Jacque is sitting on the edge of the bed. Their knees tap and when Jacque looks up she can see just how tired Bella is. Tired of fighting, tired of this lie and of putting up this wall to protect herself from the world that has tossed her around.
It has to be slow. It has to be sweet. It has to be everything she promised more than everything she wants because there’s no other way they’ll get out when they reach the other side.
She pulls on the front of Bella’s shirt, then twists it until Bella unconsciously moves into the action. Her hand is the only thing that presses against Bella’s body. Just touching the soft skin of her stomach.
In the morning she won’t remember the way she told Bella to stop her if she doesn’t want any of this but she remembers the way Bella shook her head, her hair falling down her shoulders.
Her nose bumps against the tense abs before her mouth brushes. It elicits a sharp gasp and Bella’s hand on the back of her head. A hand that trembles when she presses the first of many kisses to her stomach. They’ll get further. Jacque’s teeth will catch over the skin when she places a hand on Bella’s waist only to have Bella shuffle forward and place her knee on the bed between Jacque’s legs. That’s where they stay, with the contact reeling them together bit by bit.
First it’s just the kisses. Then Jacque’s hands are firmly on Bella’s waist. Bella has two hands in Jacque’s hair, clenching and holding her to her kissing. Then Bella’s knees begin to give out and Jacque’s mouth is kissing up as Bella lowers into her lap.
She can hear the chorus of ‘I don’t know’, the self-consciousness in Bella’s mutterings that only lessen when Jacque tilts up her chin and kisses her deeply. This is something Jacque knows that Bella can control. That she can take charge with and set the pace.
The Olympics patterned bed-sheets are a stark contrast to what they’re headed towards. Bella’s mouth is hot and the room makes their kisses sticky, leaving tactile marks and teasing Jacque’s slow burning arousal.
There’s no surprise when Bella is the one to tug her own shirt off. Jacque has made it clear that if this is happening, like she knows that they want to, then Bella has to show it too. They can fight, they can lie and they can end it all when the inevitable time comes to sign on that dotted line but if Bella is here with her now, asking Jacque to show her exactly how good she’s been to her all these years and for Bella to realize it, then she has to show it too.
Seeing Bella like this doesn’t compare to what she’s seen of her before. Her face is framed with flyaway hairs, some which stick to her neck and forehead, wide eyed and panting as she drops the shirt to the floor. But it’s the change in Bella’s eyes she notices, the determination and whatever else lies in there, that appears after Jacque takes a sharp breath in at the very sight.
“I’m not-”
“Shut up.” Irritating pins prick at the corners of her eyes. “You’re-”
“Don’t.” It’s too close to Jacque’s memory of their first dance that Bella tightens her grip in Jacque’s hair. “Don’t.”
They’ll never be there, she thinks, never again.
Undressing drives shy eyes for both of them because deciding to do this, committing to this, promising that good intention hasn’t figured for the sight of each other stripped and the rawness that comes with presenting in that spotlight.
To her though, Bella is what she lay awake and imagined her to be. Mismatched and unexplainable scars. Hard muscle, soft knees and hands and elbows and a blushing face.
She sees Bella looking but there’s no time to read anything. There’s no words, only a silent communication that has Bella crawling on the bed first and being the one to pull Jacque over her.
A hot haze of kissing. The difference can be felt in droves. A coolness to their touching naked skin that starts to simmer the more they brush against each other.
When she thinks of what she’s doing as foreplay it doesn’t sit right in the back of her throat. Bella’s face is hot pink and Jacque’s lips dance over the tension in her neck as she slowly gets her ready. She can tell before anything that Bella isn’t used to this scrutinizing attention to her body. Jacque warms her up, touches each part of her as much as she can, while Bella buzzes with a trapped energy beneath her.
The single bed doesn’t give them much room to move so Jacque hovers over her, working a hand between Bella’s legs over and over, not to bring her to the edge, but to get her wet. Turning her on elicits dry pants that Jacque can feel start in her lower stomach.
As much as she tries n
ot to think how this has all started, whatever happens from here is plagued by everything that’s happened before them.
“Fuck.”
One thing that stings with a guilty sweetness is that Bella does exactly as she had implied. Commits to this. To this moment, no matter how painful and confusing and hazy, Bella has a hand on the back of Jacque’s neck and she kisses her. Actually kisses her.
The first tremors that run through Bella, the ones that spill over physically, are quiet and soft and Bella arches up, brushing her hips against Jacque’s bare stomach. Jacque lifts her further, supporting her back to hold Bella’s body against her as she cums for the first time. She wants to hold onto it. Squeezing her own eyes shut and blocking out the absent sounds of the party going on just outside their window. Bella becomes fractured in her embrace and something switches in that first.
She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing. Jacque can see it even before she tries to stutter it out but it doesn’t matter. Those words that she said outside, pressing Bella into a wall, that promise that she could have been good to her. Still could be. That’s what she’s doing here now.
Bella clings to her as she gets warmer. Her hands don’t wander as far yet over the sunkissed patches of her skin but the more they kiss, the more Bella rolls against the weight of her, the more that she does. It’s like they’re both knotted energy, waiting for someone to unravel them, and while Bella is here, Jacque is the one leading them both through it.
If Jacque was dazed the first time she ever kissed Bella, kissing her now unduly desperate. The last grasping thread twisting in her fingers. Bella’s hand on the back of her elbow pushes, wanting something, anything and Jacque can only give.
Getting her ready isn’t the case now. Foreplay, if she can call it that, has passed and it takes nothing more than Jacque’s steady hand and steadier nerves to give.
Oh.
It’s just two fingers but her whole body sinks behind them. Bella lets out short, sharp breathy responses that edge how Jacque pushes. Her mind turns into a blank baseline of basic thoughts. That Bella is gorgeous. That her heart is beating so fast. That she feels tight around her fingers.
