I felt her sigh as she leaned in; I tucked my face in against her hair and just breathed her in. My heart hammered hard in my chest; I swallowed as I tried to control the nerves.
“You’re smell so nice,” she mumbled.
“It was the climb. Made me sweat.”
She sighed again, softer this time; her hand shifted slightly lower down my side, and from there to my hip.
“Charley…” I whispered, as butterflies erupted deep within me.
“Oh. Right, sorry, I keep forgetting…” she apologised, contrite. Her hand crept away.
“No… wait… that’s not…”
She paused.
“What… what do you mean?”
“Just… don’t stop, is all. I… I think I sort of really… like that. Being touched like that. By you. Um… I mean…”
“Are you fucking with me? If so, don’t, Ari. Please. I… ”
I turned; pulled back so that I could see her, so I could meet her gaze as I fumbled for her hands and clasped them clumsily in mine.
Her cheeks were flushed; pink and lovely.
Her mouth was slightly open, as if frozen in surprise.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she began. “Don’t…”
I leaned forward and kissed her – awkwardly and abruptly in my usual stupid way.
Her hands clenched hard on mine as she squeaked in shock. I broke free and leaned in against her, heart cantering in my chest as she panted little breathy gasps into my neck.
“Ariadne Sophia Taylor,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “You just kissed me again,” she added, as if she needed to make sure I knew what I’d just done.
“I… I know. Sorry.”
“Are you really? Oh. That’s a shame…” she sighed.
She slowly started to try to disentangle herself from me.
“No, don’t let me go!” I begged her. I locked my arms around her.
“I have to. Ari, I have to. Please, Ari, please, I can’t want you as much as I want you and not have you, Ari. I can’t…”
“I need you. I need you in my life like I’ve never needed anyone ever before,” I cried out. Other people turned to stare, but for once in my life I didn’t care about appearances.
“How… do you need me,” she whispered, after some time, her words stiff, her tone guarded.
She seemed to hold her breath.
“I think I’m in love with you,” I somehow managed to whisper, after a false start or two.
“… Oh,” she breathed.
And then she followed up an aeon later with a quiet little choked-up “Okay.”
“Is that… all?” I managed, not quite believing her lack of reaction. “Is that all you’ll say to me?”
“It’s all I can right now. The… the rest is going to have to wait. I don’t have space for it right now. Not right now. Too full up.”
She slumped in against me; I squeezed my eyes tightly closed as I clutched her to me.
She was shaking; I heard her sniff once.
“Jesus, it only took you long enough,” she whispered.
“I’m… sorry…”
“No. Don’t be. Don’t you dare ever be. Ari?”
“Yes.”
“Kiss me again,” she begged. “Please. Kiss me again. Third time’s the charm. Third time pays for all.”
So I did.
.:.
We’d retreated to a nearby pub to escape curious eyes and find some much-needed privacy for ourselves as we regrouped. She’d dragged me to a table in a dim corner, away from the noise near the counter and kitchen.
She’d pushed me down onto the padded bench and slid in beside me to trap me there, hip to my hip, thigh to my thigh, a warm, divine presence wholly in control of my personal space with no chance of my escaping her.
“You blush like no girl I’ve ever seen blush before.”
“Stop it,” I growled, blushing even hotter.
She took a jerky sip of her wine; her frown had returned from its brief jaunt elsewhere.
“So…” she said softly.
“So…”
“Ari… what caused your complete change of heart?”
I sighed and picked at my ragged fingers.
“I don’t know. I… does there have to be something? Can’t it just… be?”
“The problem, Ariadne, is that I don’t do things by degrees. I can’t. I’m an all or nothing creature. If I… now that I’ve… well. What I’m trying to say is…”
“I want you in my life, Charley,” I declared. I stared down at my own dark red wine – still untouched; I was far too keyed up to cope with it. I took a breath, tried to impose order the words that strained to tumble out of me. “I’ve always wanted you in my life. It’s just… it’s just now that I’ve finally come to realise how much and in what particular way.”
“And what way is that? Just so we’re absolutely clear?”
I glanced up, then swiftly down again. Her eyes were dark in the semi-gloom – nearly feral, almost fierce, very hard to meet for any extended period.
“You’re making this really hard for me,” I whispered. “Really, really hard.”
“I have to. I love you, Ari, more than life, more than song. But I… I can’t go blindly into this. It will consume me. There’ll be nothing left of me if… if this goes wrong. I can’t risk that without being sure.”
She took my left hand in hers and clasped it almost painfully tightly.
“Look at me,” she said.
Slowly, hesitantly, I looked up, met her gaze, swallowing nervously.
“I’ve never had any doubts about who I wanted,” she breathed. “I’ve always loved you and you alone. I dallied elsewhere to try to hide from it, but I never could. You were my one, my person. You never made it easy for me. Losing you the first time came close to killing me. Losing you again… well…”
She sighed, cocked her head to one side as she stared at me.
“I’m mad to even entertain this, you know,” she added. “Ari… love, how do you know this isn’t some passing madness, some strange attack of lunacy…”
“I don’t. I don’t know anything. Do you think I woke up today and said, oh, fancy that, I guess I’m a closet lesbian, I’ll go see if Charley’s still keen? I have no idea about almost anything right now. None. None at all. Everything I thought I knew about myself is… different…”
“Shh, wait, it’s OK, I didn’t mean…”
I swallowed, tried again.
“Charley,” I said.
“Yes?” she answered, after a brief silence.
“There are only two things that I know. And I mean, that I really, really know. Things I know in my bones. True things. One of them is how to build a reasonable sandcastle. The other is that I can’t bear to be separated from you any longer. I just can’t. I can barely function any more if I don’t have you to talk to, to laugh with. You… you bring the colours to my life, Charley. Without you everything is… grey. Not worth having. I don’t know if that’s enough for you, but it is for me. If you want me… I’m yours. Yours utterly and without reservation. There’s no part of me left that I could hold back from you. Or would want to.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and turned slightly on her seat to face me
“So… what do we do now?” she said.
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a…”
“Girlfriend. The word is girlfriend, Ariadne. Say it with me. Girl… friend…”
“Are you… I mean…”
“Oh my God you really are so bad at this,” she said with a strange little chuckle. “Yes, Ari. Yes, I am. Yes, we are. An item. In a relationship. Girlfriends. I’m utterly yours. Without reservation. Officially. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Oh… um… yes?”
Her grin widened to Cheshire cat proportions.
She leaned in against me and gently kissed my cheek.
“I’ll get you loosened up, don’t you fret,” she breathed into my ear.
I covered her hand with my own.
“Sorry I’m so utterly hopeless at this,” I whispered.
“Oh, Ari. It makes you all the more precious to me, that’s all.”
We stayed to finish our wine – not talking much, just being close to one another.
At some point she took my hand and put it in her lap, slipping my fingers down between her thighs and closing them on my hand to trap me there.
“Just teasing us,” she breathed into my ear. “Sorry. I know I’m a bit wicked. Just a little bit.”
And from that point my concentration was shot, because all I wanted to do was kiss her and make love to her and never, ever stop doing either.
.:.
I managed to control myself most of the way back to her flat, but lost my battle as we reached her door. I pushed her back against it, heedless of the way she squealed and protested, and I began to kiss her as if my life depended on it.
Which, I suppose, wasn’t really all that far from the truth.
I moaned as I felt her thigh press between mine; she grasped my bum and pulled me hard against her before she broke away for air.
“Ari,” she panted.
“Mm,” I disagreed as I tried to resume my frontal assault.
“Gotta… mm… love, let me at least… open the door for us…”
“Don’t… want to…,” I complained.
“I’ll… mm… I’ll carry on kissing… after…”
I sighed. “Fine!” I said with a pout, and I released my hold on her. She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“You do that far too well. Far, far too well,” she groaned. She turned, fumbled her keys, nearly dropping them twice before she managed to get them into her lock.
“Stop that,” she whimpered as I nibbled at her neck. “Let me… Ari… for fuck sakes… let me at least get the door open…”
“Sorry. Newly minted lesbian here. Not keen to stop. Not keen at all.”
She laughed, long and deep in her throat, then spun around, framed my cheeks so that she could kiss me as she pulled me over her threshold and into the kaleidoscope interior of her flat.
“Close that damn door,” she commanded. She stood, staring at me, cheeks flushed pink, breasts heaving under the constricting fabric of her blouse. I fumbled the door closed; turned back to her and leaned against it for a moment .
She kicked off her sandals.
“You’re impossible,” she said softly. “Do you have any idea how worked up you’ve just got me?”
I squeezed my thighs together, conscious of the ache within me. “Some, perhaps.”
Her eyebrow arched up and she smirked, pleased. “Lets take a five minute breather,” she said softly. “Lets… just… calm things down a bit. That was very… intense. Very.”
“Spoilsport,” I grumbled.
She stepped closer. “I want to possess you completely,” she said, as she reached out to trace my jaw with her fingers. “I want to know every bit of you, in intimate detail. But I want the time. Ari… I don’t… I don’t want to lose my head and have my first time with you be thirty seconds of frantic fumbling.”
“But…”
She cupped my cheek. “I’ve waited years for you. Surely a few more minutes won’t… matter?”
I pouted again, some small part of me aware of how ridiculous I probably looked.