Club Storyville (25 page)

Feeling the dip of her sitting down on the bed, I stared toward the low light coming in from the street, wondering if she would remember to pull the curtains closed, until I felt her lie down next to me and knew she had forgotten.

As we lay there in the silence, I considered getting up to pull the curtains myself, putting forth greater effort to stop the shaking, but I knew Ariel could feel it when she rolled over suddenly and the soft contours of her body pressed against my back.

“I'm so sorry,” she breathed, her arm closing around me, hand finding mine where it clutched the pillow, and, despite knowing she meant only to comfort me, Ariel felt nothing like comfort. Instead of stopping, the trembling only changed with her breaths that stirred the hair at the back of my neck, along with places deeper inside that should have had no logical connection, but somehow did. “I never should have let him take you there.”

Her voice thick with guilt, it was as if she thought she made the decision for me and owned the blame for all that happened. It was a strange thing, how people’s minds remembered differently, as I clearly remembered giving my consent first.

“I'm glad he did,” I whispered. “I wanted to see.”

“Did you?” Ariel questioned, and I knew she was thinking of what I had seen in the worst moments, the ones that came after the real world invaded the Big World of Desmond’s club.

The feel of her against me, though, her heart beating a rhythm that seemed to have trailed us from the dance floor, I could remember only the best moments, those precious few that lived in the time between my fear of what I wanted from Ariel and the fear of the world closing in on us.

Rolling against her, I could tell she knew what I was thinking by the way her eyes deepened grayer, by the cadence of her heart that sped up against my arm. Ariel didn't move, though, or say anything until I reached for her and her hand closed around my wrist to stop me before I could make contact.

“Elizabeth,” she said, but, as sure as I was it was meant to be warning, my name on her lips still sounded enticing, and I closed the tiny distance between us to feel them against my own.

“Please,” I prayed when Ariel pulled away from me, her hand pressing against my shoulder too gently to mean it, her lips close enough I was sure I could reach them again before she could stop me. “I have to know what it's like.”

A loud exhalation escaping her, her eyes drifting closed, it might have looked and sounded like exasperation anywhere else, but, in the night, in that room, I could tell it was something different, though I couldn’t say what, or what Ariel would do as her eyes opened again.

“I know it’s hard to imagine now,” she started haltingly, and I didn’t know which was truer, the words themselves, or the pauses between them that seemed to second-guess her even as she spoke. “But you’ll have other opportunities. There will be other women.”

Knowing she was only trying to give me hope in what felt like a hopeless situation, as she always tried to give me hope, pained laughter broke over my lips at how much I didn’t want that to be her answer.

“Not just with a woman,” I pulled my arm free of her grasp, my fingers sliding onto her cheek, relieved at the feel of her warm and unhurt before me. “With you. You are all I think about. I try not to, but I can’t help it. You are my fantasy. Please, Ariel, please,” I was willing to beg and more, “pretend you want me. Just for tonight.”

“I do want you,” she breathed instantly, and I didn't know if she meant it, or if she was already pretending, but I wanted her so much I let it be true.

Giving into instinct, and to my body, which had always known closer to her was better, I pressed my lips to Ariel’s again in the soft black that held us, feeling the ugly memories of the night release me into a world of sensual pleasure.

Lips parting to taste her, I gasped when Ariel’s tongue touched mine, awakening things within me that had lain dormant since the garden. Because there was simply no fantasy of Ariel that came close to the reality of her. She had tempted me with other women, as if other women could serve as substitute. As far as I was concerned, there were no other women. There didn’t need to be anyone else. Ariel was the woman I wanted, the woman I loved against all my reason and training and the rules of the world, and I wanted her to feel that, what I felt, as she pulled me closer and her kiss alone made me forget what we were and made only who we were matter.

Feeling the mattress at my back, I groaned at the feel of Ariel’s weight pressing down upon me, and again in frustration when she pulled back for a moment, as if surprised by our sudden position. I was so afraid she would change her mind, realize what she was doing and decide she wouldn’t pretend for me after all. As I clutched desperately to her shoulders, though, Ariel’s head dipped and she captured my lips for the most fleeting of instances, before her lips moved to my neck, pulling gently at the flesh there until I couldn’t suppress the moan that rose up in my throat.

Her kiss trailing downward, Ariel untied the binds that held me captive one by one, and I knew if there was any such thing as true freedom, she was the way. When she went as far as the neckline of my gown and no further, though, I knew she wasn’t going anywhere I hadn’t given her express access, and, suffering her hesitation with a deep, throbbing ache throughout my entire body, I reached between us, pushing her back just enough to pull the interfering garment over my head and toss it to the floor.

Exposed before her, I felt such a surge of pleasure as her gaze moved over me, I didn’t even remember to feel discomfort with myself. I just felt needy, desperate for something I couldn’t name, but felt I might die if I had to do without.

Ariel’s gaze rising to mine as her hand stroked down my skin, I felt its brush against the inside of my breast as she sought to verify the permission we both knew I had secretly given her months before. The simple touch a thousand times more powerful than it made sense for it to be, I realized nothing was going to make sense.

As it didn’t make sense for her kiss to feel like so much more than any other kiss. Or for my mind to go blank as it did when her thumb brushed across my nipple, only for it fill with the tingly crawl of euphoria that spread up my neck and scalp when Ariel’s mouth replaced her hand and her tongue sent fiery offshoots of ecstasy in every direction.

It was nothing like my fantasies. In fantasy, everything took time. Ariel and I spent hours touching, her fingertips moving softly over my skin, her lips brushing mine again and again, until it became inevitable for things to come to a natural conclusion.

In reality, Ariel’s touch set me on edge from the first instant, and, as much as I wanted her to take her time, for her touch to go on forever, a part of me demanded instant gratification, a fulfillment of the need that had plagued me from the moment she showed up at Nan’s door.

The slide of her hand across my abdomen was torturous, and my body curved toward it, desperate for her touch where it needed it most, more wanton than I ever thought I could be. And, Ariel’s hand growing heavy against my skin, it held me in place as she pulled her mouth from my flesh, which certainly wasn’t my intent.

“Are you sure?” Her eyes rose to my face, and I squirmed beneath her, in such a state I couldn’t imagine her leaving me that way. “You can’t get this back.”

I didn’t know why she thought I would want it, how she could tell what it was I was giving, but didn’t know she was the only person on Earth I wanted to take anything from me.

Unable to speak, I nodded my certainty, grateful nothing more was required as I felt the soft brush of cotton between my thighs when Ariel stripped my panties from my body.

Her hand sliding up the inside of my calf, that alone felt like too much, and my breath hitched when Ariel’s hand paused to wrap around my knee, bending it up against her body and opening me up to her in a way I was probably supposed to think shameful. If there was any shame that remained, though, from my proper Christian lady upbringing, it was superseded by a dozen feelings more pressing as Ariel’s fingers skimmed the inside of my thigh.

Nothing I had ever wanted so much, everything in me reached for it, but, in those last centimeters, I still felt the thick taste of fear on the back of my tongue.

“Wait,” I said, and Ariel paused instantly, her hand resting somewhere between a comforting touch and torture, and when she looked up at me, it was the first moment I felt at all embarrassed, the first instant my lack of experience felt like a burden, and I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Is it going to hurt?” I questioned, because, though I hadn’t been told to expect pain - not directly, since such information was expected not to be required until my wedding night - there had been enough allusions to the fact it was a woman’s lot to suffer in all ways that I had drawn my own terrifying conclusions.

Despite not looking at her, I could feel Ariel’s gaze on me, and I blushed harder at the sensation.

“No,” she shifted against me, the heat through her thin gown sweltering, and I was distracted for a moment by her fingers crawling gently along my inner thigh and the yearning for her to undress too. “It shouldn’t,” she said. “For a lot of women, it does, because they're not ready. They don't really want it. So, Elizabeth...” Ariel situated onto her elbow so the fingers of her free hand could lift my chin, making me look at her. “I need you to be sure,” she said. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“I’m sure,” I breathed, but it was such a lackluster term for what I was feeling, it felt almost like a lie. I was on the verge of desperation for her, and no amount of pain was going to stop me from wanting everything. I just wanted to be ready, and I knew she would tell me the truth.

Even more sure when Ariel’s touch traversed the tiny expanse that remained to touch me where I’d been taught never even to touch myself, silken ribbons of pleasure sprouted from her fingertips to wind completely around me.

It was that, I realized, that surprised me most of all, not the lack of pain, but the abundance of pleasure. Why, I wondered, had no one taught me to expect that?

After some time, those silk ribbons, tied by Ariel’s fingers, tried to tug me back through the door to the Big World, and, arching against her, I wished I could tell her what I wanted, that I wanted more, to feel her deeper, that I needed to know what that was like, to be fully and truly possessed by her.

Those words were bad, though, almost worse than the acts themselves, and I couldn’t make my mouth form them to tell her how much I needed her and how I needed her.

“Relax,” Ariel didn’t need to be told. “If you're tense, it could hurt.” Her lips opening against my neck, her tongue ran hot and wet up it, and I felt a resultant stream of perspiration run down my back. “If you want me to touch you,” she whispered against my jaw, “let me touch you.”

It was all I wanted, everything I wanted, so I let her. Head falling to the side, I invited the next stroke of her tongue against my skin as her delicate touch carried me further and further from my mundane existence, before bringing me right back to immediacy as it moved suddenly inside of me.

Gasping, I discovered my imagination utterly insufficient, or that one could never adequately imagine the touch of someone she desired as I desired Ariel. I could imagine the act, and had many times, fabricating a sensation I thought could be estimated, but my mind with its limitless boundaries had never come close to predicting the feel of Ariel’s touch as it invaded me in the most intimate possible way.

“Are you okay?” she asked, but I couldn’t speak. Struggling to draw air, I was just lucky to have understood the question. “Elizabeth.” One hand stroked across my cheek as the other stilled, and it was the threat of her stopping that forced my eyes to open.

“Yes,” I panted. “I just…” Honesty seemed the best way to make sure she didn’t stop, a blessing, since, in my incapacitated state, I had nothing else. “It just feels so good.”

Staring down into my eyes, it took a moment for her to believe me, but, when she did, a soft smile chased the worry from Ariel’s beautiful face.

“Good,” she said. “It's supposed to feel good.”

As her fingers moved again, sinking deeper, I realized good was an utterly insufficient term. Ariel’s touch on my cheek moving to cradle the back of my neck, I felt completely safe in her hands, in closing my eyes, in coming apart under her touch.

There were moments my heart beat so hard, I thought it would gallop from my chest, and moments it slowed to barely beating, as if experiencing Ariel was my body’s sole purpose and all other functions ceased to matter.

It was as I felt Ariel’s lips at my throat again that I felt the unremitting pull in my body, that something building inside bound to erupt, and it drew me even more to her. My arm tightening around her, locking her close, I felt her breaths on my cheek as she lifted her head, felt the brush of her hair on my neck as her fingers beckoned me into the world beyond the door. Though I had been there before on my own, in every way, nothing could prepare me for walking through it with Ariel, for the moment the world of my fantasy and the world of my reality merged in a flash of pure, radiant light that transcended both.

As dark as I had been led to believe my desires were, my feelings for Ariel were, I found no darkness, and I felt no evil. Everything in me letting go at once, all the bad seemed to leak out, and, settling back into my body, I felt it running down my temples into my hair and opened my eyes, worried Ariel would think she had hurt me when she had done nothing but heal things in me I didn’t realize were fractured.

“How do you feel?” she asked, her eyes searching mine, her hand moving up to rest warm and wet against my stomach.

“I feel…” I started, but, thinking through all the descriptive words I knew, I determined them all lacking or totally incorrect. “I don’t know,” I admitted, because I had never felt anything like it before. Looking to the ceiling above, tinted brown where the darkness and yellow street lights mixed, I wondered if I would ever feel anything like it again. “Is it always like that?” I asked, goose bumps breaking out across my skin as Ariel’s small laugh hit my bare chest.