Chapter 27 #2
She was hearing her wife being touched by someone else, and she couldn’t see it.
The darkness made it strange and abstract, yet somehow more intimate than watching had ever been: not the visual feast of Kelly in the moonlight, nor the kinetic intensity of Cass giving Becca exactly what she’d dreamed of, but something raw and reduced to the essentials.
Sound. Breath. The knowledge of what was happening without the proof of it.
And instead of the jealousy-arousal loop firing up in the way she was used to, it was different: less frantic, less frustrated, more tender, not so much about threat as a parallel experience.
They were both doing the same thing, in the same room, at the same time, with different people.
They were in it together, even apart, and Becca’s necklace rested around her neck while Becca wore Ellie’s, a reminder of who they both were.
Alexa’s fingers were moving a little faster now having found what worked, and Ellie felt the climax building, slower than usual, arriving from further away, the unfamiliar hand and the unfamiliar rhythm meaning her body had to work harder to get there, but she was getting there, she was definitely getting there.
“I’m close,” Ellie whispered, and felt Alexa nod against her shoulder, her fingers adjusting, giving Ellie exactly what the whisper had asked for, and when it hit it was quiet and deep and shuddering, a climax that rolled through her in waves while she pressed her face into Alexa’s neck and gripped her shoulder and let it happen as she felt her body clench around Alexa’s fingers. It felt good… really, really good.
She lay there for a few seconds, catching her breath.
She’d just had an orgasm with someone who wasn’t Becca.
The first in seven years. She was lying in a cheap hotel bed in Panama City Beach with a college volleyball player’s hand still down her shorts, her fingers still inside her, and she could hear her wife breathing hard across the room, and the ceiling she was staring at wasn’t hers.
Nothing about this moment was anything she could have predicted or imagined, and it was ok.
It was more than ok. It was extraordinary, life-affirmingly extraordinary.
She focused on Alexa then, moving her hand, finding the rhythm again, and Alexa buried her face in the pillow making sounds that were muffled but unmistakable, her hips rocking against Ellie’s fingers, her breath fast against the cotton, and when she came it was with a full-body shudder and a gasp that she tried to suppress and couldn’t, her hand gripping Ellie’s wrist, holding her there while the waves passed, her head turning to look at the ceiling and crying out once, twice, a third time…
Ellie grinned to think that Becca, and Mia, would definitely have heard that.
They lay still, breathing, Alexa’s head against Ellie’s cheek, and in the quiet that followed Ellie heard it all from across the room.
Mia first. A series of sharp, climbing sounds that she clearly tried to keep quiet and failed at spectacularly, she came loudly, gloriously loud, before her breathing went ragged and then stopped entirely for a few seconds before she let out a long, shaky exhale that was followed by a breathless, whispered “oh my God, Becca, oh my fucking God.”
And then, maybe a minute or two later, Becca.
Quieter than Mia, of course she was because it would be hard to be louder, but Ellie heard every nuance of it: the catch in her breath, the gasps and moans she always made right before she came, the silence that meant it was happening, and then the long, slow exhale that meant it was over.
Ellie knew that soundtrack, could have identified it in a room of a thousand people, and hearing it in the dark, caused by someone else’s hand, was the weirdest and yet most beautiful thing she’d experienced all night.
Ellie lay there holding Alexa, who she could tell was drifting in a post-orgasmic haze, and stared at the orange glow on the ceiling, trying to organise her thoughts.
It wasn’t jealousy, nor arousal, nor compersion, not any of the words she’d learned over the past weeks.
It was something simpler and larger than all of them.
Gratitude, maybe. For Becca, for this night, for the improbable chain of events that had led from a hand on her wife’s arm in an Austin bar to lying in a hotel room in Florida having just been touched by a woman she’d met six hours ago.
Life was very, very strange.
And very, very good.
The room was quiet. Alexa’s breathing had slowed. From the sofa bed, silence.
Then, softly, from across the dark room: “El?”
“Yeah?”
“You awake?”
“Yeah.”
A pause. Then: “Can I talk to you for a second. In the bathroom.”
Ellie gently disentangled herself from Alexa and rolled over, padding barefoot across the gap between the beds, bumping her shin but following Becca’s shape until she was near blinded by the bathroom light switching on.
“Hey,” Becca whispered, pulling the door shut behind them.
“Hey.”
“You ok?”
“Very ok. You?”
“Very.” Becca leaned in close and kissed her, then pushed her mouth against Ellie’s ear. “I have an idea,” she whispered.
“Go on.”
“What if we got a taxi back to ours? Right now. Tonight, all of us. The house is bigger, there’s the pool, it’s actually nice.” She paused. “And we wouldn’t have to do it in the dark. They could hang around as long as they want.”
Ellie felt herself smile. “You want to be able to see next time.”
“I want to be able to see. And I want you to see. But more than anything I want an actual bed that doesn’t have a bar digging into my spine.” She twisted and winced. “Seriously, that sofa bed is a crime against humanity.”
Ellie thought about Becca’s suggestion. Mia and Alexa at the rental house, the pool, the space, the privacy. Being able to watch.
Being watched.
The night was still young, it was barely eleven, and there was a house twenty minutes down the coast with a pool, good wine, and enough room for four people to do whatever four people wanted to do without worrying about rules of the road for hookups in a hotel room.
“Yeah,” Ellie whispered. “Let’s do it.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s not even eleven. The night’s only just getting started.” She kissed Becca, slowly, lingering. “I love you, remember that. More than anything.”
“I love you too. But…” Becca grinned. “It’s spring break. Let’s keep the party going.”
They came out of the bathroom. “Mia. Alexa. Change of plan,” Ellie said.
“I’m listening,” Mia said. She’d sat up on the sofa bed and one of them had turned a lamp on. It looked like they'd been talking.
“How do you both feel about coming back to our place? Right now. We’ve got a house, pool, ocean view, actual space. Stay the night, stay all day tomorrow if you want.”
The silence lasted about roughly a quarter of a second.
“Are you serious?” Alexa said from the double bed, already swinging her legs over the side.
“Very serious.”
Mia looked at Alexa. Ellie couldn’t quite see the look that passed between them but she didn’t need to… it was the silent communication of two people who’d been best friends for years and could have pretty much an entire conversation without speaking.
“We’re in,” Mia said. “Obviously we’re in. Is that even a question?” She was already on her feet, looking around the room. “We are so done with spring break anyway.” She paused. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” Becca replied. “And… no strings, right? Just come and hang out. Or…” she shrugged. “We can see.”
Alexa laughed. “You had me at or. Can you just give us both a few minutes to throw a few things in a bag. Otherwise I’m going to be gross tomorrow if all the clothes I’ve got are what I’m wearing.”
“Take your time, I’ll call us a taxi.”
Ellie got out her phone and Becca came over. “You’re sure?” she whispered.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah. I think…”
“Don’t forget this,” Mia interrupted, holding up the bottle of rum then jamming it into the rucksack she’d been packing.
Ellie looked at Becca and laughed. “Spring break.”
“Yeah. Spring break.”