32 - THE LOTUS
Lacey
The dampness returned now with new purpose. I was going to lie down for her. I was going to lie back on the king bed in this cabin and let my best friend—
I didn't say no. Did I know how to say no?
I was more nervous than I'd thought I would be.
"If you're nervous, we could have some wine. That's the cruise spirit," she said. "We have a little bar." She went to the cabinet and pulled out two small bottles of white. "It's only two, so something light?"
Two small bottles. Already chilled. She didn't have to look for them.
I took the bottle she offered, unscrewed the cap, and drank straight from it. The chilled wine went down fast.
Janice watched me, sipping her own. "Lacey, I'm not going to bite. If you're this uncomfortable, I can teach you how to do it yourself. Or you can always go back for the schoolmarm suit you were looking at earlier."
"No." I shook my head, too quickly. "It's okay. You're right. I need to step into the modern world like you said. I have a lover now. I need to learn the ropes. I need—" I trailed off, because it sounded ridiculous out loud. And I realized with a shock: I wanted her to.
Nothing about the actual situation fit the breezy phrasing. Standing in a cabin in a tiny bikini while my best friend got ready to wax me.
Janice set her bottle down and tilted her head, studying me with the therapist gaze that always saw too much.
"Come here."
She patted the edge of the big bed. I hesitated half a second, then sat. The mattress dipped under my weight. Janice disappeared into the bathroom for a few moments and came back with a small kit: strips, warm wax, gloves, a towel. She tucked the towel neatly under me.
Maybe this wasn't a grooming touch-up at all.
Janice was about to wax my bikini line. Friends did this for each other. Right? The fact that my pulse was pounding in my neck was just embarrassment.
Janice reached for the ties on my bikini bottoms. My heart slammed against my ribs as she pulled the fabric away with unhurried fingers, leaving me bare.
My wetness glistened, now exposed. The shame made it worse.
Janice looked at me, between my legs, and she saw everything. I lay back on the bed and covered my burning face with both hands. Why didn't I close my legs?
My legs stayed open.
Janice pushed my knees wider apart. I was exposed in a way I never had been before, not even at the club. The club had been low light and strangers. This was full afternoon light and Janice. Janice was looking at my exposed pussy.
I wanted to say something. Janice, wait. Janice, are you sure about this— The sentence couldn't form. Janice's hand was already moving toward me with the wax stick. The sentence had had its chance and failed.
The warm wax touched my skin. Then a sharp rip.
Pain flared bright and vicious across my mound. I gasped, hips twitching. The burn went deep and stayed. My hips wanted to move toward the burn, not away from it. I didn't know how to process that.
Two more strips followed. Each rip sent a jolt through me. Each just raised the heat in my blood. On the third, a low, needy moan slipped out.
I froze, horrified. The sound had escaped me. I was lying on a bed with my legs spread for my best friend, and I had just confirmed that I was enjoying—what—the pain? What was wrong with me? But my legs stayed wide open.
Janice paused, her hand resting warm on my inner thigh.
"Does it hurt?" she asked in a low voice.
"Yes," I whispered, voice shaking.
Her tone shifted. Darker. Curious. "Do you like it?"
I didn't want to answer. Don't ask me. Don't ask me to confirm this about myself out loud. "Oh my God—oh my God—"
Janice let out a sharp breath. "Well." A pause that lasted long enough to register. "That's interesting."
She laid down the next strip slower this time. Then pulled sharply. I writhed on the sheets, another broken sound escaping me.
Her fingers stroked my thigh, easy and grounding. "Do you want me to do your outer lips? It'll hurt worse than the rest."
No. Janice. No. I don't—Janice, this is—wait.
But the words didn't come out. The words stayed in the back of my throat where they always stayed. My hips answered for me, lifting just slightly off the bed. Slutty, needy. Who was I? I did want it. I wanted it badly.
I heard her exhale. Quiet. Pleased.
"Good girl," she praised.
The warm wax touched my swollen, slick lips. She could see. She could see everything. She could see how wet I was, how swollen, how completely past whatever line I was supposed to stay behind.
I loved it.
Janice spread the next strip slowly, pressing it down with her warm fingers, repeatedly, until the anticipation was torture. She waited, one second, two, three.
Then she ripped it off.
The pain broke across my raw skin. I shuddered hard, a sharp gasp escaping me as the burn bloomed and sank deeper.
"Well, that part is done," Janice almost whispered.
Relief and an almost crushing disappointment warred for attention. I closed my thighs and started to lower my legs, feeling exposed.
"Thanks," I began, breathy. The word felt absurd as I said it. Thanks, as if Janice had passed me the salt.
Janice's hands settled firmly on my knees.
"Open your legs, Lacey. I need to rub oil on it or it'll itch."
I could have rubbed the oil on myself. I knew that. But the thought barely formed before it dissolved. I said, haltingly, "Janice, I—I think I can do it—" But my legs fell back open almost by themselves. Her hands pushed them wider against negligible resistance.
Her warm, oiled fingers slid over my freshly waxed pubic bone, soothing my burning skin in slow, careful strokes. It felt so good I had to bite my lip to stay quiet. Then her fingers moved lower, gliding over my outer lips, up and down, slick and slow.
I tried not to move.
When her fingertip brushed lightly over my swollen clit, a pulse went through me. My hips twitched. She did it again, circling once, deliberate. Then her finger slid down and parted my wet lips, stroking between them.
Oh God, she fingered me.
"Janice," I breathed, my hand flying down to touch her wrist, not sure if I wanted to stop her or hold her there.
Janice didn't stop. She slid her finger deeper.
Then, after she'd slid it deeper, after the act was already underway and couldn't be undone, she looked up at me. Calm. Her finger still inside me.
My walls closed around her. I felt them do it.
She placed my hand back on the bed beside me. Firm. Without comment.
She curled her finger inside me, finding the place that waited to be found. Slow. Patient. The pressure was specific. Not the bright urgency Ricardo's hands had. The work of a practiced woman who'd been inside many women's bodies and had perfected what worked.
"There you are." Quiet. Not a question.
She leaned down. Her lips brushed the inside of my thigh first. Then higher. Then she kissed the freshly waxed skin at the top of my mound, the place still burning from the strips. The kiss caressed the burn and the burn answered. Same circuit the wax had found.
When her mouth closed over my clit, I made a sound I hadn't made before.
I should have said something. I'd lost the ability to speak somewhere in the last hour.
Her mouth had been on me for two full seconds before my brain caught up, and by then it was too late.
Janice didn't pause. She'd been waiting for that sound.
"Should I stop?" she mumbled.
She hadn't stopped. Her tongue was still resting against my clit. The question was being asked with her mouth still on me. I didn't say the word I was supposed to say. Her tongue moved, slow, exploratory. My silence was her answer. Janice put her mouth back on me.
This was Janice. My Janice.
The thought looped, dizzying. My best friend had her mouth on me. The wrongness wasn't separate from the pleasure. It drove my pleasure.
Janice would never take advantage of me. Janice loves me. This is Janice. My hips kept lifting toward her mouth.
I reached down with both hands and squeezed my breasts. Hard. Then I pinched my nipples and tugged. The sharp sting went straight to the place Janice's mouth was, and the place Janice's mouth was answered.
Janice noticed. She lifted her head just enough to see what I was doing, and her eyes went somewhere I hadn't seen them go before.
"Mmmm. Lacey."
That was all. Just my name.
I slid my hands lower, reaching for her hair, trying to pull her tighter against me.
She caught my wrist and pressed it back down to the bed. Held it there. The hold wasn't a suggestion.
The fresh wave of desire that moved through me didn't have anything to do with her mouth.
She lifted her head again. Her finger was still inside me, slow and steady, not letting me settle.
"Stay still," she ordered.
She crawled up my body. Slow. Kissed and licked along my stomach, my ribs, the underside of my breasts. Her finger never stopped thrusting in me.
She reached my nipple, licked it once, flat and slow. Then sucked it into her mouth. The pull was strong. Her thumb found my clit at the same moment and rubbed hard, fast circles. All at once. The sensations didn't blend. They sharpened against each other.
Then they stopped being sensations I could count.
Time went strange. Janice's tongue. Janice's finger. Janice's thumb. They weren't separate things anymore. They were what my body couldn't get away from and craved. I lost the where. I lost the want. I lost my own breath.
I was making involuntary sounds. They came from my core.
I'd read about this. I'd thought the descriptions were exaggerated. They weren't exaggerated. They were polite.
I like to own women, she'd told me.
I bucked against her hand. Janice's mouth found my nipple and bit it. Not hard enough to break skin. Hard enough to make me make another visceral sound.
The pain went where every other pain had been going for the last hour. It fed my new circuit. The one I had only recently uncovered.
I was right there. Right at the edge.
She stopped her thumb. "Not yet."
Calm. Easy. The voice of a woman who'd decided when I was going to come and was going to enforce her decision.
A broken sound came out of me. I raised my hips, chased. Janice's hand on my wrist tightened. Her other hand, with her finger inside me, moved slowly, just enough to keep me from coming.
I'd never been held at the edge. Brad hadn't edged me. Ricardo hadn't edged me. My own hand in the dark had never edged me. The not-letting-me-come was its own sensation, and it belonged to Janice. I like to own them.
The shame arrived fresh. I begged without speaking. I bucked against my best friend, who held me here on purpose.
"Janice—" My voice was wrecked. "Please."
I'd never said the word please like that to anyone before. Not for sex. Not for anything.
The shame of having said it was almost too much to hold. I'd begged. I'd begged for my best friend to make me come.
Janice smiled against my breast. I felt it before I saw it.
"Perfect," she murmured.
She pressed her mouth to mine. Kissed me deep. Her tongue found mine and her finger drove back into me, faster now, curling against the place that had been waiting. Her thumb returned to my clit, harder than before.
The orgasm took me apart.
I came onto her hand. My whole body locked.
My back arched off the mattress. The cry that came out of me was the cry of a woman who'd been kept from this forever and had finally been allowed it.
My walls clenched on her finger again and again.
The next surge of wetness ran down her hand and onto the towel.
The pleasure didn't crest cleanly. It rolled in multiple waves, deeper each time, until I shook and gasped.
Janice kissed me, slowly, and held me through it all.
When the last wave moved through me, I went boneless. Trembling. Wet. Wrecked in a way I couldn't describe.
Janice withdrew her finger. Slowly. Held it up between us. It was glistening. She looked at it, then licked it dry.
"I knew you'd be sweet," she laughed, and bent down to kiss me. I took it, loved it, and was utterly confused.
She stood up suddenly. "Get dressed!" she said, like she hadn't just shattered me. "Let's go to the pool! I have tons of people to introduce you to."
I lay there after she stood up. Her bottle of wine was still on the desk, mostly full.
Mine was empty. I hadn't said yes. I hadn't said no.
I'd let Janice do what Janice wanted to do, and I'd liked it, and I didn't know what that made me.
The kit was still open on the bed beside me.
Janice had brought the kit from Lexington.
I was still trying not to look at what that meant.
"Lacey." She was still in her bikini. "Come on. Let’s go to the pool!”
I sat up. I got dressed. I followed her out of the cabin and into the corridor and toward the elevator that would take us to the pool. My legs were unsteady. The freshly waxed skin between them was tender. The place inside me that Janice had found was still humming.