CHAPTER 37 #2
Brenna dipped her head, slid her hands up the sides of Grace’s neck.
“I wish I could shelter you,” Grace said. “I wish we were somewhere beautiful, not in this ugly room and filthy floor.”
“We’re alive in this moment,” she whispered. “The next ones may not come.”
“You deserve a bed strewn with rose petals and a lover with all the time in the world for you.”
Without warning, Brenna’s eyes pricked. Her throat constricted. All the emotion that she felt for Grace was bursting loose. She was fracturing, cracking open. Trembling, she dropped her parted lips to Grace’s mouth and kissed her, lingering, and consummate, not fevered.
When the kiss broke, Grace clasped Brenna’s waist, gazing earnestly into her eyes. “I hoped to get you home again,” she said. Guiding her gently, she started swaying, as if listening to far-off music.
Brenna stumbled, not immediately realizing that Grace meant to dance with her.
“Do you like irises?” Eyes locked on Brenna’s, Grace stepped neatly forward with her left foot. Her voice was so soothing it created a private world between them that shut out the harsh reality around them.
Resting her hand on the curve of Grace’s shoulder, she was so close that their breasts brushed.
“They’re the blue flowers with the flat leaves,” Grace said. “Do you know them?”
Brenna slid her hand onto the nape of Grace’s neck, blindly following her. “My mother loved them,” she was finally able to say, not sure why she whispered except that it seemed so intimate to talk about what her mother had loved.
“The irises in my garden come from my grandmother’s,” Grace went on. “I planted them near the house so I could see them through the French doors in the morning. The borders of the garden path are lined with blossoms, a succession of brilliant colors from Spring to Fall.”
Grace held her close, moving in effortless unison with her now, deftly advancing, brushing Brenna’s thighs with her own.
“The sunlight falls across the hardwood floor in shiny rectangles. The first thing I do is swing the doors open so I can hear the mockingbirds.”
She guided her through a graceful circle.
“And—oh, Brenna—the scent as the season progresses: Lilacs. Honeysuckle. Jasmine.”
Brenna realized that Grace was painting a picture for her, of a safer, more hopeful place than their squalid, dangerous reality.
With each brush of Grace’s body against hers, Brenna yielded incrementally more to the pull between them.
She relaxed, imagining a sleepy Grace lurching toward her sunny doors before her first coffee.
Chuckling softly, she lowered her mouth to Grace’s ear.
She needed an image of Grace to go with the location that Grace was painting for her.
“What are you wearing when you open your door?”
Grace smiled, nestling Brenna’s right hand safely inside her own and pressing it against her bosom. With her other hand, she eased down the curve of her lower back. “My blue silk nightshirt,” she whispered back. “It matches my eyes.”
“Mm.” Brenna swayed as Grace led their graceful waltz, eyes fixed on each other’s, turning together. Her thighs tantalized Brenna’s as their bodies skimmed each other. “Your garden sounds wonderful,” Brenna said, tipping her pelvis forward.
Grace’s breath caught. She nuzzled Brenna’s neck with soft kisses and traced her ear with her tongue.
The effect was riveting, fueling a rush of arousal in her lower back.
A moan of pleasure escaped her. Violating all the rules of the classical waltz, Brenna yielded to the pull of Grace’s gravity and moved in for full frontal contact.
Sex burned through her, intimately slicking her.
She laced her arms loosely around Grace’s back, leaned down, and kissed her on the mouth, savoring her gently, lips probing the contours of Grace’s mouth.
With increasing fervor, she deepened the kisses.
Grace’s hands slid down the slope of her back and cradled her bottom.
She drew her forward. Holding Brenna snugly against herself, she continued the dance, teasing her, brushing against her, inserting her thigh more and more intimately between Brenna’s legs, rolling her hips against her, intensifying the dance.
Just when Brenna thought she couldn't remain standing a moment longer, Grace relaxed the distance between them. She was a master of foreplay, and Brenna was at her mercy.
Catching her breath, Brenna brought her hands around Grace’s front and slid them onto her breasts.
Grace clung to Brenna’s forearms, heat rising off her body.
Knowing they would not be able to stay on their feet much longer, Brenna pushed Grace’s jacket off her shoulders and down her arms.
She dropped it on the floor. She removed her own jacket next, adding it to the pile.
One by one, Brenna slipped Grace’s shirt buttons through the holes.
Between the panels, she glimpsed the rise of Grace’s breasts, boosted by her bra.
“Ohh,” she breathed, further spreading open the blouse, gliding her palms over the slopes of them, cupping them in her palms.
She reached around Grace’s back and unclasped the brassiere, pulled the shirt off her shoulder, and gasped.
Her left clavicle was deeply mottled with purple.
That was the bruise she’d gotten when she’d kept Brenna from flying through the windshield of the van.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Brenna pressed kisses to it.
“Good save,” Grace whispered, cradling Brenna’s head. “For a suit, and all.”
Brenna released her, picked up the jackets, and with sweeps of her boot, cleared debris from the floor around them. When she finished, she laid the jackets out more neatly so they would form a barrier to the frigid floor. Next, she pulled her own turtleneck over her head in a single fluid motion.
“Can we take this off, too?” Grace asked, about her sports bra.
She peeled it off. Her breasts floated free.
Grace’s eyes widened. She chafed her hands to warm them, then reached for her, lowering her mouth to the smooth pink nipples. Brenna groaned. Grace’s tongue was dexterous, not only turning her nipples into peaks, but simultaneously turning her knees into mush.
Brenna fumbled at Grace’s belt, working the buckle open and unbuttoning her waistband. The pants slid down to her ankles.
With an arm around her, Brenna helped Grace onto the frigid floor beneath her. She leaned over her, caressing her breasts with her dexterous tongue, ratcheting her pleasure, coaxing a song of delight from her throat.
Grace caressed her bare back, circled her shoulders with her arms and pulled Brenna atop herself.
Lifting her pelvis, writhing beneath her, she couldn’t keep still.
Her hips rose again and again, trying to merge, to forge a deeper connection with her.
Soon, their torsos were wedded together, undulating in synchrony, further inciting each other’s mounting need.
Brenna moved from suckling Grace’s breasts to savoring her mouth. She kissed her so deeply it torched her own fever. “Spread your knees?” she said, breathing raggedly.
Grace opened her legs. Brenna slid her hands up her inner thighs, used her fingers to spread her, and brought her mouth down on her wet center.
The sound of rising ecstasy flew out of Grace’s throat on the wings of Brenna’s exquisite attention.
Brenna whorled her tongue over Grace’s center. Ohh, She hissed in bliss. Ohh.
Brenna loved vocal women. She kept right on provoking her.
Grace exclaimed again and again, whimpering, her voice rising, calling out Brenna’s name as the sexual tension ratcheted higher.
Brenna slid a hand inside her own underwear, stimulating herself as her mouth worked on Grace. Soon, she joined in the soughing, her own breath coming faster, harder, more ragged.
As they came close to release, Brenna looked at Grace’s beautiful face, now turned aside in abandoned passion, her eyes closing as she yielded.
Rocking and breathing hard together, Grace called out her name.
Oh, how Brenna loved the way Grace offered herself!
Release your passion. Cry out for me. The foundations of her body shaking, she took Grace to climax first, then rapidly surrendered herself, peaking loudly, unabashedly.
They crumpled—spent, shuddering, and deeply bonded.
When her breath returned, Grace drew Brenna atop herself.
Brenna settled her full weight on her, buried her face in Grace’s warm neck and embraced her tightly, hanging on as an overwhelming wave of emotion passed through her.
Grace had shattered her. “Don’t leave me,” she cried in Grace’s ear, her voice a mix of sobs and breathlessness.
“Oh, Grace,” she cried, ambushed by the depth of emotion she was feeling. “Don’t ever leave me.”
Grace tightened her hold on her. “Never, my love,” she said. Never.