Chapter Nine #2
I do, and her tongue begins to lap my clit; I stop trying to hold anything still. “Oh — god —” My hips move against her face, finding their own rhythm, grinding into her mouth.
Her tongue slides down to my opening and licks into it — slow and thorough — and her eyes find mine and hold them. I grind onto her tongue. Between us, the room has filled with desperate sounds.
“Em — Emma — I need —” The words dissolve before I can finish them.
She knows. Her thumbs gently press wider, opening me, and her mouth moves up, closes over my clit and sucks. “Oh — Em — Yes —”
I feel it gathering — deep and insistent, coiling tighter with each pass of her tongue, each pull into her mouth.
Once, twice — my thighs trembling with the effort of holding still, the pressure of it almost unbearable, almost too much, almost — I cry her name — and then it breaks through me, stars at the edges of my vision, and the whole long weight of everything releasing at once, and for a long, suspended moment I am nothing but that — just the feeling, just the release of it.
Jolts move through me in the aftermath, her mouth staying on me through all of it, riding each one out. She is careful with me. Present. Paying attention in the way she pays attention to everything.
What I feel isn't only physical — though there is that too, a depth and tenderness I'm not sure I have felt before. But underneath it, something that has been wound tight for years is releasing, here, in the quiet dark, with her.
“Fuck,” she breathes.
I let out a breath that has been, I suspect, several years in the making. “Yes,” I manage, and fall back to the bed. “Fuck.”
Every limb feels weighted, every muscle weightless. Emma is right here and I think, looking at her, of all the time before tonight, and I think: There it is. There she is.
Emma kisses her way up my inner thigh, across the linen of my skirt, up over my stomach, my ribs, my chest and by the time her mouth finds mine, I have pulled her up to meet it. The kiss is slow and deep and I taste myself on her lips, and the intimacy of it makes me pull her even closer.
On top of me, the weight of her broad, warm body makes me want her again already. The want is immediate and specific and has apparently decided that one round was merely an introduction.
I push her tank top up and she sits up to help me pull it over her head.
There, in the low light, I trace the cotton sports bra, the strong line of her collarbone, the curve of her chest, and low on her ribcage, a tattoo — wings curving around a crescent moon with a scatter of stars, and at the centre of it, a date in small neat numerals.
That is a story for another time, and it belongs to her, and I want to be trusted with it properly rather than ask for it now.
She is the most beautiful thing I have seen all evening. And the evening contained the Milky Way. My hands skim down over her waist and stop at the zip of her jeans. “I want you,” I breathe. “Can I?”
“Mm, yes.” The voice that comes out is gravelly, lower than usual. “I am so turned on right now. You have no idea.”
We untangle ourselves with the practical, slightly graceless negotiation of two people removing the rest of their clothes, and then we are lying close, facing each other on our sides.
She is beautiful to look at. The small, neat weight of her breasts, the bicep I want to put my mouth along, the jut of her hip I want to bite.
Emma's eyes move over me in the low light, and then her hand travels lightly across my stomach. For a moment, I am conscious of it — the roundness of it, the give of it, the fifty years of it — and I wonder what she makes of what she finds.
She takes my hip and draws me in further. There is the press of her against me, and the press of me against her, and we melt into a grinding rhythm as we kiss that builds and has no apparent intention of stopping.
I slide my leg between hers. Emma's hand finds my thigh immediately, gripping it, guiding it higher, and then I feel her — the wet heat of her against my skin, unmistakable and remarkable.
I pull back just enough to break the rhythm. She makes a small sound at the loss of it.
“Can I —” I breathe. “I want... to touch you.”
Emma's breath catches. Her forehead drops to mine for a moment, the two of us still, before she speaks. “Yes,” she says. “Touch me.”
“How do you like to be touched?”
Emma ghosts her mouth over mine. “I'll show you.”
She guides my hand to her breast, pressing my palm against her, then takes my fingers and pinches lightly. Watches my face. Does it again. Then does it again, harder. A gasp escapes her that makes me want to grind down.
Then she draws my hand down the curve of her waist, the swell of her hip, over the warmth of her backside, down her thigh. Then slowly, deliberately, up the inside of it.
My fingers reach her. She is so incredibly wet and the fact of it — that she is this affected, that I have contributed to this — lands in me with a force I was not prepared for.
Our fingers move together between her legs in a slow, guided rhythm.
Emma curses under her breath and I watch her — the way her eyes close and then open, the quality of her breathing, the way her hips begin to shift — and watching her is its own distinct thing, layered on top of everything else, and I want all of it simultaneously.
“Still alright?” Emma breathes.
I hadn’t noticed I stopped breathing. I press closer. “Can I go inside you?”
“Yes.” Her hips shift against me. “Fuck.”
Emma moves my hand lower to her entrance and it is me that pushes in — one finger, slow, feeling her close around it — and then two.
She makes a sound at that, a guttural moan from somewhere deep in her chest. I find a rhythm and hold it and watch her face with the careful, fascinated attention of someone who is learning something new and wants to get it exactly right.
Emma's own fingers move to her clit, working in counterpoint to mine, and I tilt her back gently — just enough — so I can put my mouth to her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her chest. I want all of it.
I take what I can reach, and she arches into me, and the sounds she makes are private and unguarded and I feel them everywhere.
“Curve your fingers,” she breathes. “Just slightly—”
I do.
“Yes.” Her hips shift. “Like that.” Her breath unsteady. “Harder.”
I give her harder.
“Fuck,” she rasps, her voice dropping. “Cathleen.” I watch her — mouth open, the breath that comes in short and broken, the way her whole face has stopped performing anything at all, and then her hand finds my back and grips. “I'm going to come.”
My thighs press together at her words.
She stills completely and then the shudder moves through her, her whole body clenching and releasing around my fingers in a long, exquisite pulse, and I don't look away for a single second of it.
Afterwards, she breathes. Coming back into herself in pieces. I follow the rise and fall of her chest in the dim light. Beneath us, the sheets are warm and damp in a way they weren't before. I already know I want to do that again.
“Okay,” Emma says finally, to the ceiling. “God.” She breathes and turns her head to look at me. “How are you so good at something you've never done before?”
I consider this. “I've been reading extensively,” I say.
She laughs — the full, helpless one — and reaches without looking and finds my hand.
I move up off Emma’s chest, lying on my back beside her, and the room settles around us; the fan turns and the curtains move faintly in the sea air coming through the open window. The room feels different to the one I left this afternoon. I am different to the person who left it.
“Still alright?” she asks.
I consider the question with the honesty it deserves. “I think,” I say slowly, “that I am entirely alright. You?”
“Mm.” She stretches with a long, satisfied exhale. “Very alright.”
“I’m glad you sat down opposite me.” It comes out without planning, the way the truest things have been coming out all evening.
“So am I,” Emma admits. “And I'm hoping we haven't finished yet.”
“Me too.” I pause. “I do need some water though.”
Emma laughs. “How many more days are you here?”
“Six. You?”
“Three.” She weighs this with the air of someone drawing up a schedule. “I think we can fit quite a lot in, given what we've accomplished in just one evening. If you want to, that is.”
For a moment, I see it. The two of us at the pool, at the beach, walking somewhere in the evening heat, falling back into this bed and every available surface between now and her leaving.
“I absolutely want to,” I reply, and move to get up. “I'll grab us some water from —”
Emma's hand catches my wrist. She pulls me down on top of her in one smooth movement, her thigh sliding up between mine, her mouth capturing my mouth before I have finished the sentence.
I stop thinking about water.
I stop thinking about most things, actually. I close my eyes and sink into her — the warm dark, the bright feel of her, the way this moment is entirely ours.
Somewhere above us, through the ceiling and the night air and the long dark miles of sky, the North Star is exactly where it always is. Fixed. Steady. Everything turning around it. I don't need to see it to know.