Chapter 4
Tonight, Kate decided. They should talk tonight. Whatever bothered Olivia, needed to come out.
A car door clunked shut in the crescent below. Olivia must have already handed Zoe over to Geeta.
Kate breathed out long and hard while staring into the ensuite mirror. She recognised that look on herself – mouth in a straight line and not a single muscle relaxed.
Anxiety wasn’t something she often felt with Olivia.
They talked to each other with loving respect, a novelty in her relationships, and god it was refreshing.
Olivia’s strengths were so different from her own that she admired her without reservation.
And, she believed Olivia did the same, watching her enthralled when transforming for a role.
But, things fell through the cracks. Especially now that they had a baby. Zoe brought them even closer, but their time was spread thinner and things went unnoticed.
But they had tonight.
She heard movement in the bedroom and she breathed out, properly nervous now.
“I’m nearly ready,” Kate called.
She swept her hair into a messy bun and hooked on her favourite necklace.
“I’ve just got to find...” she projected as she wandered into the bedroom. “Oh.”
She’d automatically smiled knowing Olivia was there, then faltered seeing stress radiate from her partner. Hands clasped, eyes down, silky black hair falling in a curtain across her cheek.
Yes, there were things to talk about.
Goodness, Olivia looked beautiful though.
Light brown arms bare in a sleeveless black dress, more toned and stronger than when they first met, with weight from pregnancy and strength from carrying Zoe constantly.
Tall, with a slightly fuller figure now, which lent a curve to her elegant black dresses.
Kate wanted to luxuriate in appreciating her partner, but the flutter of anxiety in her belly wouldn't let her.
Olivia approached, eyes seeking the floor, then the lamp-lit garden in the night outside, and back again, thoughts preparing to come out.
That flutter inside Kate jumped higher.
Olivia paused within touching distance, eyebrows pinched in concern. Kate wanted to soothe their worry with a kiss. But she waited. Olivia clearly wanted to say something.
“I...”
The moment tightened.
Kate closed her eyes, not wanting to see what was coming. This might not be good.
Then a touch at her hand and softest fingertips slipped into her palm. It was like Kate had hardly noticed her own arm before, and now it seemed light and sensitive. It floated higher, and tender lips kissed between her fingers.
“Oh,” she gasped.
Another kiss thrilled the delicate dip between her knuckles. The intimate contact elicited a shiver through her body that swooped low, almost as intense as the relief that the kiss was delivered with loving care.
She opened her eyes to find Olivia cradling her hand to her lips, and when she looked at Kate, the longing in her eyes was painful to see.
“Hi,” Kate gasped, overcome with this one touch.
The lovely eyebrows raised in poignant distress, and eyes searched around her face, everywhere but meet Kate’s gaze for long.
“Hi,” Olivia whispered, clearly wanting to say something very different.
Olivia tentatively stroked a ribbon of Kate's hair that had escaped. The finger tickled around her ear and made a heavenly trail across her cheek. Olivia’s eyes locked on where she explored, the sensation heated, until touch and sight lingered on Kate's lips, and the glow spread everywhere.
Kate swallowed.
“I erm...”
Olivia stepped closer, stopping that sentence in another gulp.
“I’m sorry,” Kate wanted to say at her obvious stirring.
It was rare they had the house to themselves. There hadn’t been enough time for intimacy lately. And her cheeks flushed and lips swelled, her body aching for Olivia, and her heart needing her as much. She knew Olivia had to talk, but tension and abstinence had her succumbing quickly.
She heard, “I love you,” whispered, then it disappeared like a ghost with Olivia’s lips taking hers.
“Ohhh,” Kate groaned out loud.
Arousal shot down her neck, filling her chest and pinching her breasts into exquisite alertness.
“I love you,” Olivia said, louder this time, between deepening kisses.
Anxiety flared into urgency, and she pulled Olivia closer.
“I don't want to go dancing,” Kate slurred, already drunk.
“Let’s stay home,” Olivia murmured. “Please.” As if desperate as Kate to close the distance between them.
Fingers swept into Kate’s hair, loosening the pins and casting them into the bedside drawer. Lips trailed down her neck, and all of her craved those caresses lower.
“Come to bed.” And a hand took hers with gentle insistence and pulled her to the foot of the bed.
They swept into each other’s arms immediately, pressing together while tugging off their clothes. Olivia’s dress discarded. Kate’s shirt pulled apart. Together again, hands stroking around naked backs, pulling at bras, seeking the closeness and tenderness of their breasts together.
“I need this,” Kate whispered.
In more ways than one. For reassurance that Olivia was happy with them even if something else troubled. And her body starving for sensual attention.
Olivia cupped her cheeks and kissed her hard.
Kate slipped her hands around Olivia's behind. She tugged her underwear away, and Olivia pushed herself into Kate’s thigh, slick and hot.
“Oh, I need this,” Kate growled low this time.
They eased onto the bed, Kate lowering Olivia down, while Olivia clung to her, their lips locked.
Then Olivia pulled closer and whispered in Kate’s ear.
“Fuck me,” she breathed.
And Kate caved with a groan at words Olivia only said at her most passionate.
Shaking, she trailed her fingers low, greedily taking in her smooth curves, enjoying the suppleness at the join of her thigh and the heat of her lips.
Moaning in appreciation at the tantalising beginnings of moisture on her fingertips, before pausing in anticipation and gently slipping her fingers inside.
For a moment, Kate was weightless and timeless, with the most delicate and private sense of being surrounded by her. The intimate warmth. Her wetness on her skin. The powerful togetherness after their distance.
Then the deep moan from Olivia plunged Kate into searing eroticism.
“Oh fuck.”
She might come with just that. Absence tripped into desperate need, and urgency surged high. Olivia slipped her hand between them, and the sweep around Kate’s clit had her beyond her own control.
Every stroke from Olivia, every synchronous thrust from Kate, hit deeper, as if she felt it in both of them, and it gripped harder until she didn’t think she could take anymore.
Cheek to cheek. Breast to breast. Olivia clung rigid, her orgasm intoxicatingly beautiful as she came in a silent cry. Nothing more erotic for Kate.
And the rush burst the tension in sensational release.
***
Breath humid against Olivia’s cheek. Naked softness beneath hers. Breathing as one entwined shape. Smiling on a happy high of hormones.
Kate rolled them onto their sides and clasped Olivia to her chest. Satiated and dozy brown eyes looked at her.
“We need to do this more often,” Kate murmured.
An Olivia Sachdeva smile, with pearly white teeth and shapely lips. Kate was besotted.
“I would like that,” Olivia replied.
“And next time, we could maybe take it slowly.”
Kate blushed at how fast and heated she’d been. But Olivia only smiled wider.
“In fact,” Kate added. “That was so quick we could still go dancing.”
And Olivia laughed, that rare, quiet sound that took Kate higher than anything on Earth.
“I’m very happy here,” Olivia said, mouth still plump, skin dark in the soft light of the bedroom.
Kate kissed her lips, then her cheeks, and down her neck, wanting to appreciate all the parts of her they’d skipped in their hurry to come together.
“Much more often,” Kate said, kissing down her chest as Olivia rolled lazily onto her back, arms spread languid across the white sheets. Kate gently teased her tongue at Olivia’s nipple, which pearled at her touch.
“Mmmmm,” Kate said, slipping it into her mouth. And “mmmmm” again to feel the sound resonate on Olivia’s pert tip. Arousal shivered through Olivia's body.
Kate pulled back slightly, not wanting to be too rough on a tender post-orgasm Olivia. Except she couldn't keep her hands to herself. She moved on top of her and kissed her, appreciative, with a hint of eroticism without demanding it.
“You are so beautiful,” she murmured through her smile. “I don’t get to admire you often enough.”
Was this what they’d needed? A chance to reconnect and feel whole again. Work and family demanded a lot of them both, and they needed to rebuild themselves as a couple once in a while.
She swept her hand lower over the cushion of Olivia’s belly, traced a finger down the light stretch marks below her stomach, then kissed them in a loving trail. The lines would fade one day, but were Olivia right now, fascinating and a sign of their life and family together.
She intended it as admiration only. But Olivia shifted beneath her, agitated, needing more, and Kate’s lips buzzed heightened with the urge to fulfil that need.
Her scent drew Kate in quickly, the prospect of tasting her irresistible.
“You said something about doing this more often...” came strangled from Olivia, as Kate kissed lower into the triangle of trimmed hair.
“How about right now?” Kate replied, her voice low, a dead giveaway of how much she wanted this. And she dipped her tongue between Olivia's lips.
The groan from Olivia rippled exquisitely along Kate’s spine.
She sighed, feeling her roused already on her tongue. She dipped lower to taste her.
Yes, it had been far too long, but she didn’t pause to say that. Encouraging Olivia's legs wider, so she could enjoy her more, Kate took her time. Slow licks of her clit. Deep pressure and achingly slow. Then gently sucking on her, firmer and firmer, until Olivia’s legs shook.
She held Olivia tight through her waves of release, enraptured by Olivia coming at her mouth. And murmuring words of love, they fell into ecstatic embraces.
Smiling, they both realised they had intense munchies for food then, and they sneaked downstairs in their knickers, laughing at their needless surreptitious behaviour, because there was no-one else in the house anyway.
They pulled two kitchen chairs around the Christmas tree in front of the doors to the garden, and ate warm chocolate puddings with dark melted sauce in the middle.
Olivia looked astonishing in the glow of Christmas tree lights, her long elegant legs crossed while she neatly ate the dessert, skin glowing golden, her larger breasts curving and beautiful.
And the look on her face? Relaxed, with no worries to be found. Whatever had troubled her before no longer did. And admiration and happiness glowed inside Kate. And admiration and licking of chocolate sauce led to a dash upstairs for a third time.
They must have fallen asleep after that, because Kate snapped open her eyes to pitch black and a knock on the front door.
“Oh...sh...” She sat bolt upright. “I think that’s your mother back with Zoe.”
“Mmm?” a sleepy Olivia said.
It was almost enough for Kate to forget everything in the world and slip into her arms again. But the door rattled with a firm knock downstairs, and she leapt out of bed into the ensuite to quickly wash her hands and throw on a dressing gown.
“It’s nearly midnight,” she said, tying up the belt, and pulling the side across her naked chest. “It’ll definitely be Geeta or Nicola.”
Olivia must have been deeply asleep before, because she hardly stirred.
Kate thundered down the stairs, not a light saunter like Olivia’s, and hurtled down the hallway.
She wrenched open the front door to a sleeping baby and smiling grandmother.
“I hope you had a...” Geeta started, and also stopped as her eyes took in Kate’s state.
It was clear Geeta had been about to say a ‘good time out dancing’. But it was also clear they’d not left the house the entire evening.
A taller figure stepped up behind Geeta. “A wonderful time?” Nicola suggested with an eyebrow raised.
Don't say anything, Kate willed. Don't say a bloody word.
Because Kate would die.
“Err...yes? We had a nice time.”
“Is she asleep?” came from behind her.
Olivia with mussed up hair, a black dressing gown on, and an obvious, dozy, hormone-filled smile, reached out and took Zoe from Geeta’s arms. Then spun around smoothly before gliding back into the house, leaving Kate at the doorstep to face the music.
“Thank you,” Kate said, apparently all her actress sangfroid leaving her. “Erm...very much appreciated.”
The two older women lifted their eyebrows in unison, both nonchalant as if there was nothing to be seen here, except they totally knew there was.
Nicola’s icy blue, amused eyes focussed on Kate’s face, however.
“What?” Kate dared ask.
“You’ve got a bit of chocolate...” Nicola tapped her own chin, with a long red polished nail, “right there.”
Fuck.
She hastily scrubbed at her chin with the back of her hand.
“Bit like the one Olivia had,” Nicola added.
Oh god no.
“Just a snack. Honestly...”
You know what, she’d better just cut the conversation there.
“Goodnight,” Kate raised a hand, aware that karma was giving her a nip.
“Goodnight,” the two outside chorused lightly.
“I mean, I really do appreciate it,” she added, aware that she was guiltily shuffling off, when they were being super helpful.
Nicola lifted another eyebrow to say that Kate didn't need to say another word.
“Right,” Kate said.
“Right,” the wives replied, with Nicola smiling far too much.
And she shut the door.