Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
T he scent of coffee nudged Tori awake. Struggling to stay in a dream, she pulled the pillow closer and buried her face in it. The pillow wasn’t hers, she realized in some fuzzy part of her brain. It was too soft and she had to scrunch it up to make it firmer. Perfume, familiar and soothing, was strong enough to drown out the coffee smell. But as soon as Tori recognized it, her eyes flew open.
Through a window that wasn’t hers, sunlight poured in so bright, it was probably midday. Drowsy, Tori rubbed her eyes and accepted the truth. She’d woken up in Mia’s bed. Naked. Long after morning was over.
Her limbs were heavy, sore in places she didn’t know could ache. Her heart was too big for her ribcage. Too full.
Tori rolled onto her back, looked up at a ceiling she’d seen a thousand times, and laughed. It wasn’t a quiet chuckle, it was an eruption like she’d swam too deep and burst through the ocean’s surface gasping for air. It was too much energy and nowhere to put it. It was the dizzying relief of not having drowned.
She was still buzzing when Mia returned, two mugs in hand. In Tori’s shirt from the night before—unbuttoned, too tight, and clearly the only thing she had on—Mia smiled. Smiled with her eyes and skin and heart like she hadn’t expected to find Tori awake. Or maybe at all.
At the sight of her, Tori’s laugh returned, but this time it wasn’t so unruly. “Wearing my clothes?” She sat up, resisting the unnecessary urge to cover her bare chest. “When we’re in your house with literally everything you own?”
Mia tried to tamp down her grin, but it was ungovernable. “Since when are you so anti-sharing?” She handed Tori a mug.
“Since, apparently, you’re some kind of squirrel who’s been stockpiling my clothes for fourteen years like winter’s coming,” she said, sipping the most delicious café con leche she’d ever tasted.
“That’s not true.” Mia’s tone was defiant, but her perfect mouth couldn’t shake the smile. “I didn’t take a single thing all those years we were on hiatus.”
Laughing, Tori set both of their mugs on the side table and pulled Mia onto the bed. “Hiatus, huh?”
She took Mia by the waist, rolled her onto her back, and kissed her. Her lips were warm and sweet with coffee. She tasted like sunrise and light and morning. Like miracle and revelation and hope.
Opening for her, Mia pulled her between her parted thighs. Not with the intensity of the night before, but something much softer and significantly more devastating.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Mia said when she broke their kiss. She looked up at Tori with her red hair splayed over white sheets and eyes so full of the same emotion hammering in Tori’s chest.
Tori pressed her forehead to Mia’s. “Did you think I was going to slip out in the middle of the night?”
Mia took a deep breath that Tori felt in her own expanding lungs. “You know what I mean,” she replied softly, fingertips drawing a lazy pattern over Tori’s shoulder blades and down her spine. “Like, here , here.”
She went quiet again, fingers idly drawing slow circles over Tori’s side like she was trying to find the words in her skin instead of her mouth. Tori shifted onto her side, giving Mia space to talk at her own pace, but leaving their legs tangled and hands on each other.
“I keep thinking about how hard it must have been for you,” Mia continued, gaze fixed on Tori like she’d rather be hiding under the covers. “Back then. In high school.” She looked away. “I just always wanted to be close to you. Touching you. I never meant to torment?—”
“Mia, you didn’t,” she lied. “I mean, not intentionally?—”
“Victoria, I slept with my hand in your shirt.” Something between a smile and a cringe flashed on her face. “It’s not like I was doing that with everyone else. I just didn’t realize how fucking gay that was.”
Tori let out a bark of unexpected laughter. “Mia, you don’t have to?—”
“Marigold is big on me talking about my feelings instead of swallowing them,” she went on and Tori listened. “I’ve been thinking so much about who I am.” She knitted her brows together like she desperately wanted to get the words right. “And I know this is stupid because I was married to a man until five freaking minutes ago, but?—”
“Nothing you feel is stupid,” Tori promised, holding her as close as she could while still maintaining eye contact.
Mia took another breath to steady herself, and Tori wished she already knew what she was thinking so she wouldn’t have to say it. Tori didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. She just let Mia talk.
“I think I’m gay,” Mia said, as if testing it out. “And if heteronormativity weren’t a thing, I think I would have realized this so long ago. And it doesn’t mean that I didn’t… I mean… I loved Eric.” She looked down for a long time before finding Tori’s unwavering gaze again. “But I never slept with my hand in his shirt.” She paused. “And I thought it was just a you thing. But maybe it was a me thing.”
Tori waited for Mia to discover her own language. Gave her all the space while never loosening her hold.
“So anyways, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was always on top of you. Always touching you. I just... I wanted to be close to you. I didn’t know why.” She paused, then laughed to herself. “Actually, maybe I did.” She shook her head. “And then last night, I had you. I wanted you. But I didn’t know how to do what you did. And I feel like that makes me less… I don’t know.”
Tori could guess what Mia was unable to express. She brushed her hair from her face, focusing on the ridge of her brow and curve of her soft cheek.
“There is no wrong way to be who you are,” Tori promised. “I didn’t go from figuring out that I liked girls to having sex within a matter of months.” She ran her thumb over her cheek. “Be kind to yourself.”
“But I don’t want you to think?—”
“I don’t think anything.” She kissed her lips. “I don’t expect anything.” She kissed her chin. “And I don’t want you to move at anything other than your own speed.” She kissed her jaw.
Mia settled into silence again, but this time Tori could almost hear her thoughts trying to take shape. She blushed before she opened her mouth, the freckles scattered over her nose disappearing into a bright pink sea.
“Okay, so, this might be a dumb question,” Mia muttered, looking away from her. “And I’m probably about to ruin the vibe entirely, because, I mean, I don’t know how to?—”
Tori raised her brows. “You’re stalling.”
“I am not—” Mia stopped mid-defensive flail, groaned, and buried her face in Tori’s shoulder. “Okay, fine, I am. Jesus.”
Tori kissed the side of her head and waited.
“But what does it mean that I like…” She winced, peeking at Tori through her squint. “ Penetration ,” she whispered like the word was punishable by law.
Tori bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling at the adorable horror on Mia’s face.
Mia groaned again and dropped flat onto her back, arm flung across her eyes like a Victorian widow. Because it apparently lacked the theatrics she was looking for, Mia grabbed a pillow, covered her face, and screamed.
“Are you finished?” Tori asked after a beat.
“You’re going to think I’m trying to turn you into a man,” she shouted through the pillow.
If they were at her place, Tori would have sauntered across the room, pulled her strap out of the very nice box in her closet, and dropped it next to Mia. Instead, she lifted one side of the pillow.
“Enjoying that sensation is a physiological response,” Tori said gently, but Mia—who’d turned an alarming red that spread over her chest—didn’t look at her. “It has absolutely nothing to do with identity. I want to give you what you like. That’s not going to intimidate me. There are very straight women who don’t like it, and gold star lesbians who don’t want anything else.”
Mia didn’t open her eyes when she asked, “What’s a gold star?”
Tori grimaced. “A very antiquated term that weirdly celebrates lesbians who haven’t been with men, and please forget I said it. I just meant that what you like during sex does not define your identity or vice versa.” She continued when Mia slid the pillow down to her chest. “And, for the record, I very much like strapping it on.” She wiggled her brows.
“Are you just saying that?” Mia asked cautiously.
With a chuckle, Tori asked, “Do you want me to run home and grab it?” She wrapped her arm around Mia.
Eyes darting, Mia’s follow-up question landed like a blade to Tori’s throat. “One you’ve used with other women?”
Tori laughed and rolled off Mia. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know your ex-husband had a penis transplant for you.”
“Hilarious.” Mia rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her. A second later, she was crawling over the bed, straddling Tori’s hips like she’d done it a hundred times before.
The way the shirt— Tori’s shirt—hung open, revealing her sumptuous chest; her warm, bare body pressed against Tori’s stomach made Tori forget what the hell they were talking about.
“I just mean, if I had the option of picking what I want…” Mia shrugged, tossing back her messy red hair in an attempt to kill Tori.
Tori ran her open palms up Mia’s gloriously thick thighs. “What would you want?”
Mia’s skin flushed again. Her energy was unnecessarily shy for someone practically naked.
Sitting up, Tori peeled off her shirt and kissed a line across her shoulder, over her chest, and up her throat. When Mia was sighing, hips rocking gently against her, Tori ghosted her mouth over Mia’s ear.
“You’re a size queen, aren’t you?” Tori whispered.
“Don’t judge me,” Mia screeched, pushing Tori back onto the bed and landing on top of her.
Laughing, Tori kissed her and held her close. She looked into her bright hazel eyes when she said, “Let’s pick exactly what you want.”
“You really think you’d be comfortable with that? You don’t think I’d be trying to change who you are or anything, right?” Mia slid off Tori only to straddle her thigh, the warm heat of her body more noticeable. More lethal. “Because…” Mia pushed her thigh into Tori, grinding against her. “I like your body very much.”
When Mia kissed her, it was all heat and hunger. It said everything Tori needed to know— I want you. Please believe me.
Slipping a little lower on the bed, Tori gripped Mia’s waist. “Put your knee on the bed,” she whispered against her insatiable mouth.
Mia obeyed, hair half in Tori’s face when she got on all fours on top of her.
“Don’t stop kissing me,” Tori said, sure that her pent up desire was going to make the move possible.
Grinding against Mia’s upper thigh, Tori let her desire build.
“Just kiss you?” Mia asked, growing confidence making her rock into Tori—her back muscles tensing and releasing under Tori’s fingers with each swing. Without waiting for a response, Mia slid her hand up Tori’s side before taking her nipple between her fingers.
The combination of Mia’s touch and her tongue obscenely deep in Tori’s mouth made the heat pulse and spread low in Tori’s body. Arching her back, she willed herself to grind harder. Faster. And then Mia’s mouth was roaming down her throat, leaving hard, wet kisses everywhere she went.
Sighing, Tori threw her head back, mouth hanging open when Mia’s tongue found her other nipple. It was too much sensation for her to process. Too much to relieve with just Mia’s thigh.
Snaking her hand between their bodies, Tori found her hard, swollen clit with her fingers and pressed hard. Mia lifted her hips as if to give her room, but Tori didn’t want to lose an inch of her body on hers.
“Don’t go,” Tori said, straining against her own touch to stop herself from finishing the game too soon. “Unless you don’t want me to come on your thigh.”
“Fuck, that’s hot,” Mia groaned, dropping back onto Tori and taking her nipple into her mouth.
Tori was already so close, and then Mia moaned while she did something indescribable with her tongue. Tori felt it everywhere, imagining Mia extinguishing the heat burning under her fingers with her mouth.
“God, baby. That feels so good,” Tori panted before registering what she’d said. Eyes flying open, panic snatched her back from the edge. “Sorry. That’s weird.”
Mia looked up at her, mouth open and the tip of her tongue teasing Tori’s hard nipple. She didn’t so much as blink when she traded Tori’s breast for her lips.
“It’s not weird,” she promised, her usually deep voice raspier than Tori had ever heard it. She pressed her thigh into Tori, jumpstarting her still fingers back into action. “I like it.” She hovered over Tori’s mouth, taunting her with a kiss just out of reach. “I want you to call me baby when you come.”
Then she kissed her. Moaned into her. And pushed Tori over the edge she’d been clinging to.