Chapter 25 #4
The rush turns dizzying when Jackie grabs the hem of her own dress, pulling it up and over her head.
Her brassiere is a silky-soft black thing, with lace at the edges and underwear to match.
She props a foot up against the shoe rack, opening herself up to Claire’s hand, and pulls Claire’s mouth to her throat.
Jackie is mostly naked, and Claire is mostly naked, and they’re pressed together skin to skin, and Claire is inside her. Nothing has ever felt more right.
Here, at least, Claire has some idea what to do.
Jackie makes a tiny noise of protest when Claire withdraws her fingers slightly, but it turns into a shout of pleasure that Claire is sure the whole party must hear when she plunges them back in, her knuckles pressing hard into the flesh of Jackie’s cunt.
Just thinking the word, so new and forbidden, makes Claire shiver in the best way.
The rhythm of the motion, in and out, gaining speed and force until Jackie is shaking with it, is enough to drive Claire mad with want. She can feel Jackie approaching that moment, the one she herself just felt, and she’d do anything to help her along.
Thankfully, Jackie seems to have no problems giving directions.
“Another,” Jackie pants, one hand wound tight into Claire’s hair. “Please, Claire, another finger.”
Claire almost dislodges them both in her rush to comply.
She slips a third finger inside, and Jackie clenches around them; every time Jackie makes one of those satisfied sounds, it’s as if Claire can feel her own actions in an echo against her own newly-discovered clit, a spot she hadn’t even known existed until three minutes ago.
The thought reminds her of how Jackie reacted when she dragged her fingers across it. She’s sure that, if she stretches her thumb at just the right angle, it would be—
“Claire!”
There.
Claire is running on instinct the way a car runs on fuel.
Jackie seems to struggle to give instructions now, her free hand clawing at Claire’s bare back under her open shirt.
Claire’s wrist is starting to cramp, but she can’t fathom stopping.
Jackie’s vocalizations are getting high and whimpery.
She’s getting tighter around Claire’s fingers, and somehow wetter than before; she’s on the absolute razor’s edge of something that Claire is determined to see through.
Jackie’s hand in Claire’s hair clenches into a fist. It doesn’t hurt, despite the tension pulling at her scalp—it makes Claire throb.
“Bite down, and—and curl your fingers,” Jackie whimpers, her voice high and tight as she uses that fist to pull Claire’s mouth to the right position.
Claire bites down gently on Jackie’s neck, and shifts her fingers. Jackie moans, but there’s an edge to it—like she needs more.
Claire can give her more. She’ll give Jackie whatever she needs.
“Like this?” Claire murmurs. She sinks her teeth into the curve between Jackie’s neck and shoulder, harder this time—she can feel muscle flexing, skin shifting, as Jackie cries out and arches into her curled fingers.
“Yes!”
The pace reaches a fever pitch. Jackie is clinging to her, and every moan is musical to Claire’s ears.
She can imagine tracing each sound with a paintbrush, filling out the cadence of Jackie’s pleasure with electrifying color.
The tension Claire felt when Jackie was using her mouth is around her own fingers now, getting tighter with every second, every thrust, every whimper.
In the moment Jackie finally snaps and releases around her hand, sighing Claire’s name into her own mouth, Claire is sure she could take on the world.
A missing piece of herself has just slotted into place, lighting up her whole world; there’s no more dim corners or shadowy places.
Her old life is greyscale, and now the world is dazzling watercolor, illuminated by Jackie fluttering and pulsing around her fingers.
This is what life is supposed to feel like.
Somehow, making Jackie feel this way is even better than feeling it herself.
Jackie is crying, Claire notes distantly. Maybe Claire is, too; their kisses taste like salt. How did she ever live without this? Without Jackie pulsing in the palm of her hand, her tongue in Claire’s mouth, pressed together as tightly as two people can be pressed, like two vines twisted into one?
“Claire…” Jackie whispers brokenly. Both hands cup Claire’s face as she presses her lips to every inch of bare skin she can reach. “Please stay.”
Claire isn’t sure if Jackie means not to pull her fingers away, or something more meaningful. Maybe she means both. Either way, Claire doesn’t plan on going anywhere.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t see this before,” Claire whispers back. Her fingers are still buried deep in a heat she never wants to leave. Her voice is shaky, but sure. “I feel like I’ve been blind my whole life.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Jackie says. She tilts her head forward until their foreheads are pressed together. “I should have explained it to you. Instead, I just left you to do it on your own.”
“I know you’ve been hurt before,” Claire says.
“I didn’t want to ruin another life. I was so scared you would hate me if I dragged you into this.” Jackie sighs, stroking her fingers down Claire’s temple and across her jaw. “It’s happened before. All because I—”
Jackie cuts herself off. Though she doesn’t finish the thought, Claire’s heart soars at the mere thought of what might have been the end of that sentence.
“I thought I could keep my distance with you,” Jackie says instead.
She’s gnawing at her lower lip. Claire can just see the imprint of her kisses there in Jackie’s faded lip balm, and it’s entirely distracting.
“Keep things light. Just a stupid little crush. But it grew. That day in the pool I realized it was more. And I got the feeling that…”
“That I wanted to kiss you,” Claire finishes.
Jackie traces over Claire’s lips so gently that it almost tickles. “That made it real. Suddenly it hit home that I was doing exactly the same thing I did last time.”
“With a better result this time,” Claire says. She nips at Jackie’s fingertips, making them both smile.
Jackie’s face brightens, but it dims again as she casts her eyes downward. It’s as if every time Jackie really feels this, lets this happiness course through her, she stamps on the brakes.
“I’m not Valerie,” Claire says softly.
Jackie looks up sharply. The shock is brief, changing quickly into suspicion as she glances backward as if she could glare at Theo through the wood. “Honestly, what did Theo tell you?”
“When you were gone, I…” Claire swallows, her mouth suddenly a little dry. “I was worried about you. I went into your house to find Theo’s phone number, so I could check on you, and there were photos on your desk.”
Jackie sighs. She toys with Claire’s shirt, smoothing the rumpled collar. “Ah.”
“And then Louise said something about you and Mrs. Wilson, and things started to make sense.”
“Who the hell is Louise?”
“She’s in Martha’s book club. It doesn’t matter,” Claire says. “But it’s true, isn’t it? You and Susan were together, at your housewarming party.”
Jackie bites her lip. “And if it was? Would you be upset?”
“No. It made me realize that I love you,” Claire says, with hardly a thought.
Jackie goes still. Her grip on Claire’s shirt goes tight again. She’s tense against Claire, and the shock in her eyes is palpable.
Claire can’t help it. She lets out a sound, half-laugh and half-sob, at just how true those words feel.
Ten years of marriage and years of dating prior, and she and Pete have barely said those words to each other.
No matter what Jackie told her about it, romantic love always seemed like a thing that was made up for the movies.
That squirrelly, desperate, lets-go-to-Niagara-Falls-and-elope love always felt like a lie. The love from the songs didn’t exist.
“You love me?” Jackie says, with a quiet wonder.
Pete’s angry face flashes in Claire’s mind, full of the confusion and rage that the morning will bring. She sees her mother, pale and worried about Claire’s future. She sees Martha, assuring Claire that her relationship with her husband can be worked out. Grin and bear it.
None of them hold a candle to Jackie right now, flushed and hopeful and nervous. Jackie is nervous. Jackie, the very embodiment of confidence. It makes Claire feel braver.
“I think I fell in love with you the minute we met,” Claire says.
Jackie’s breath shudders. It’s as if she’s deflating, sagging against Claire and throwing her arms around her shoulders.
“Oh, thank god,” Jackie mumbles, muffled by Claire’s shirt.
Claire laughs. She’s full to the brim with happiness, overflowing with it, and it’s spilling out of her now. “Does that mean…”
“Of course I love you, Claire,” Jackie says, tightening her arms around Claire’s shoulders. Her voice is quavery. “Part of what scares me is how much. Meeting you, knowing you, made me realize that what I had with Val was shallow in comparison. And if the end of that broke me…”
“So you pushed me away?”
“I was trying to let you go. I wanted you to be able to keep your normal life. To be happy.”
“My life wasn’t happy before,” Claire murmurs into her hair. “But now I think it could be.”
In an effort to hug Jackie back, Claire finally slips her fingers free from the warmth they’ve been buried in this whole time.
She was so content there that she’d almost forgotten, and Jackie did too, based on her surprised intake of breath.
Claire runs her wet fingers briefly through the hair between Jackie’s legs, and remembers how Jackie had nuzzled at Claire’s before she took Claire into her mouth.
It makes her want to drop to her knees, like Jackie did, and keep on learning.
Punch-drunk on love, Claire kisses her.