Amanda's Young Men (15 page)

‘You’re welcome. And please, call me Amanda.’

She used the onscreen system to order scrambled eggs with white truffles, wholewheat toast points with sweet Normandy butter, Royal grey-blue Caspian Beluga caviar, Turkish coffee with raw sugar and a dessert of mixed berries in Armagnac with Cornish clotted cream. To drink, she asked for a carafe of Buck’s Fizz on ice. It was close to the meal that Roger had ordered for them on their very first weekend away together. The meal had complemented his seduction very nicely, she’d always thought. Not that she was trying to seduce Meg. Not exactly. She didn’t know what she was trying to do, only that she wanted to be with Meg, to talk and laugh and yes, OK, she wanted to kiss Meg’s ascetic mouth. She ached for a kiss from Meg. In fact, glad as she was that she’d played with Nola and so at least had some experience, a part of her wished it hadn’t happened, so that her first girl-girl kiss would be with Meg. But after that …?

This line of thinking only served to make her anxious so Amanda rapped on the bathroom door and walked in without waiting for an answer. ‘I want a robe,’ she explained. ‘I’m putting my things out for cleaning as well. I hate to put anything on that’s not really fresh, don’t you?’ She paused.

The Jacuzzi tub had whipped up a froth of bubbles that concealed Meg’s breasts but her bare wet shoulders were pink and sculptured. The girl didn’t seem at all embarrassed by Amanda’s presence, so she continued, ‘Room service will take about thirty-five minutes with our supper, so, if you don’t mind, I’ll quickly use the shower while we wait.’

‘All girls together, right?’ Meg observed dryly.

‘Right.’ Not wanting to push too far too soon, Amanda scooped up the girl’s clothes and took a robe from the rack out into the other room. She stripped off quickly, bagged both of their clothes and hung them outside their door.

Amanda slipped into the fluffy white terry robe, took a deep breath and marched back into the bathroom. Meg’s grey gaze was cool, impassive, as she watched Amanda shed her robe, hang it up and step into the shower stall.

Amanda washed as elegantly as possible, just in case Meg could see her shape through the translucent glass door. She knew she couldn’t come close to the kind of natural grace that Meg displayed in every movement, but she could try. ‘I wondered if you were a dancer,’ she called over the sound of the running water.

‘Not me!’ replied Meg. ‘Clown school!’

The Jacuzzi motor hummed into action, putting an end to any chance for conversation.

When Amanda was done she left the shower gracefully and took her time slipping into her terry robe, giving Meg a chance to look her body over if she wanted to.

Did the girl like girls? Amanda guessed the answer was yes,
reading
between the lines of what Meg had said about Rupert not being her type. Though really, that could mean anything. And, even if the girl did like girls, did she like women? Amanda thought she’d die if Meg didn’t want her, so better she give Meg a good look at the goods she had to offer and then, if Meg wasn’t interested, Amanda might be able to figure it out without having to offer and so, perhaps, having to suffer the humiliation of being rejected. Then, at least, she could crawl away and die alone.

The wall-to-wall vanity was opposite the bath. Amanda loosened the tie of her robe and turned the hair dryer on. With both of her elbows up, one hand brushing her hair and the other directing the dryer, her robe naturally fell wide open, displaying her breasts in the mirror in a most complimentary way. Amanda kept a surreptitious eye on Meg. Was it a coincidence that Meg chose that moment to wash her own hair and so sat up higher in the water, arms raised? Like Nola, she had small breasts but, whereas Nola’s were gentle swellings tipped with puffy pink nipples, Meg’s breasts were more prominent, like pale soft cones, with turret-shaped light-brown peaks. Like her eyes, her breasts were widely spaced, her clavicle prominent above them and her ribs equally prominent, below. Amanda caught herself staring in the mirror at Meg, something she’d vowed not to do, and now Meg was looking her way and had caught her gawking. God, what does a woman say to a girl who’s caught her leering at her naked body, and who is now salaciously eyeing her in turn, if she’d not got her signals crossed?

A rap on the suite’s outer door saved Amanda. She tightened her robe’s belt as she hurried to answer it. The meal came on a little wheeled silver cart. Amanda signed for it, aware that she was flushed and breathing quickly. She steered the cart into the bathroom.

‘Supper in the bath, Meg?’ she asked. ‘Or would that be too decadent?’

Meg turned off the Jacuzzi. ‘Decadent seems to be the order of the day, and I haven’t had the opportunity to be decadent in ages.’

Amanda sat on the toilet seat. She laughed. ‘I’d say you’re too young for anything to be “ages ago”.’

‘I suppose.’ Meg’s grey eyes clouded. ‘Although I’m older than I look. I’ll be twenty-eight on my next birthday, you know.’

Amanda laughed. ‘You’re a baby.’

‘If you say so.’ Meg stretched her long limbs and sighed. ‘Sometimes I feel ancient.’ She leant against the curved back of the tub and closed her eyes.

‘You really do work too hard.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, but you’re right. I do work too hard. My boss is a killer.’

She laughed her boisterous laugh then, and the sombreness of the moment passed. ‘So what’s to eat?’ She sat up again.

‘Scrambled eggs.’

‘Since when are scrambled eggs decadent, anyway?’

‘When they’re served with truffles.’ Amanda scooped fluffy eggs on to a triangle of toast and presented it to Meg.

Meg took the toast and popped it in her mouth. ‘Yum.’ She gestured at the tray. ‘Is that caviar?’

‘Yes,’ said Amanda.

‘I’ve never tried caviar.’

‘Want to?’

‘Absolutely. I’ll try anything once, or twice, even three times. If I don’t like it the first time, I might acquire a taste if I give it a chance. I think all the best experiences are acquired tastes. Like, every kid likes sugars right off, but the grown-up pleasures, like espresso or martinis, those take time to appreciate. They require a mature palate, don’t you agree?’

‘I think so. Although there are some adult pleasures that I’ve taken to as a fish takes to water.’ Amanda spooned up a few of the glistening grey globes and presented them to Meg’s lips. ‘Just hold them on your tongue for a moment to appreciate the texture, then pop them between your teeth to release the flavour.’

Meg’s face was thoughtful as she absorbed the feel of them, then surprised as she burst the salty little morsels. ‘Different,’ she mused. ‘More, please. And more plain old scrambled eggs too, please.’

Amanda fed her several tiny spoonfuls of caviar and then some eggs on toast.

‘I could get used to this,’ said Meg.

‘Me too,’ said Amanda. The extreme nervousness she’d suffered all evening had mercifully passed and now she was calm. She’d be content to sit by the tub and serve Meg treats all night long, if that’s the way it turned out. Amanda raised a flute to the girl’s mouth. ‘Buck’s Fizz?’

‘What is it?’ Meg asked.

‘Just orange juice and champagne. I like it because it reminds me of Regency times.’

‘Regency times? Men in tight buckskin pants and girls in flowing empire-line dresses? Yummy!’ She put her lips to the flute and drank.

‘What’s yummy? The men in tight pants or the girls in their flowing dresses?’

‘The orange juice and champagne.’ Meg laughed so boisterously that her breasts bounced on the surface of the water. She opened her mouth, like a greedy baby bird, and Amanda obligingly held the glass to her lips and tipped it. Meg slurped noisily. When she was done, Amanda tipped the glass to her own lips.

‘What about you?’ Meg asked. ‘Not about the drink, about
the
men in tight pants and the girls in flowing dresses. Which would you prefer?’

This was it, the pivot point. ‘Both,’ she answered honestly.

Meg reached for Amanda’s hand, dipped two of her fingertips into the dish of caviar and lifted them to her own mouth to daintily lap the morsels off. Her cool grey eyes met Amanda’s. ‘Want to fuck?’

‘I do,’ replied Amanda. ‘Very much.’

‘Me too,’ said Meg.

The meal went rather quickly, after that. When they were done, Amanda wheeled the cart into the hallway, keeping the Buck’s Fizz and two glasses, and hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door handle. She sat down on her bed and waited for Meg. Perhaps she should arrange the lighting? Get under the covers? Find some music on the clock radio by the bed or on the TV? She found she wasn’t thinking clearly enough to do anything and anyway Meg was with her, now, naked and rosy from the bath, gracefully crossing the room to sit beside her, and it seemed the only thing to do was kiss Meg and, when Meg kissed her back, to kiss her longer, more deeply, until both of them were panting and Meg was helping her out of her robe and they were falling back on the bed, twining their limbs and pressing up close, still kissing as if there was no such thing as tomorrow.

The first time was rougher all around than Amanda might have imagined, had she had the capacity to think. Since she’d only known Meg a matter of hours and had been in one peculiar state or another for all of that time, she hadn’t actually imagined anything beyond the feel of Meg’s skin against hers, lips to lips and breasts to breasts. Amanda didn’t have anything planned and her usually precise mind and persistent manner utterly deserted her. Hence the ‘rough’ part – where she would turn one way and Meg the other so that they bumped heads
or
poked ribs. As Meg was so thin her bones seemed able to dig especially deep into Amanda’s flesh but at least she had natural grace. Amanda felt bigger than normal, like she was taking up twice her usual space, so she was uncoordinated and once discovered she was suffocating Meg with her thigh only moments before it might have become dangerous.

None of it mattered. Each woman was intent on having the other. Each used her hands, her mouth, her feet, her hair, her breasts, her sex to entice and entrap the other. Breast to breast, they sucked tongues and pinched nipples and licked and bit earlobes and shamelessly thrust out their mounds. Side by side they used their fingers, first, to find every crease of the other’s sex, marvelling at each other’s hooded bead, small, then not so small, emerging from the safety of shelter to come out and play.

They tasted each other and in that way and in many others made each other wet. And, when both were glassy-eyed and loose lipped and dripping and panting, they tried to ride each other’s hard places and clumsily knocked bone against tender flesh. Neither cared. A murmured gasp, a quick apology, ‘Never mind,’ whispered in response and on they went, always forwards until Amanda found the perfect curve of Meg’s hipbone and rode it without pride or grace but like a wild thing that has caught its prey and will not give it up. Meg urged her on, her language that of the gutter but her voice as lilting and soft as an angel. Amanda’s passion rose so high she was almost afraid to let go but Meg was unrelenting; she ground her hip against, almost into, Amanda’s wetslippery centre, caressed her breasts with slender fingers and half-sang, ‘Show me how you come, sweet Amanda. Splash your come all over me, that’s a good girl, such a good, pretty, wet, lezzy, slut-whore.’

When she came, it was like tumbling from the peak of the highest mountain into free fall through a blazing white sky
with
no ground in sight. She whimpered as each spasm clenched and released, like a parachute deployed and almost instantly cut away so she jerked once, twice and then kept falling. The breathless descent continued until she landed, mewling and safe, in Meg’s arms.

They were close, so close Amanda breathed in the air that Meg breathed out. She nuzzled her way through Meg’s hair to find her ear and taste the rim with her tongue, suck the lobe with her lips and whisper, whisper sweetly. She’d have liked to stay curled up in the warmth and softness of Meg, but the other woman was on the move. ‘Fold your hand like this,’ she said, pushing Amanda’s thumb and little finger under the other three fingers of her right hand. ‘Fuck me with your hand, Amanda. Please?’

Amanda found energy where she’d have sworn there was none. She worked her fingers into the other woman, keeping them stiff. Meg was soft inside, a small warm cave with walls of wet satin that Amanda penetrated as deeply as she could. In truth, she hoped her fingertips would touch Meg’s cervix, though she guessed that might not be pleasant for her lover. But to touch it, just once, the mouth of the womb?

‘Put your hand inside and curl it into a fist. Your whole hand.’

‘Silly,’ said Amanda, before she realised Meg was serious. ‘Is it possible?’

‘Yes. Please, Amanda. I like it.’

This must be the way Rupert had felt, or Paul, when she’d told them to do something they’d never imagined, though in this case it was a request, whereas with her young men she gave orders. ‘OK.’

She kept her hand in the position that Meg had shown her and pushed, giving no notice to how tightly her hand was squeezed or how wide Meg was opening. When her fingers
were
as far past Meg’s pelvic bone as they could get, she started to curl them. Her knuckles scraped satin-draped bone. Meg groaned, as deep and loud as her laugh. Amanda made a fist. It fit.

Meg was blissed. Her eyes were open, pupils dilated, unseeing. Her cheekbones seemed softer, as if all her bones had slackened to let Amanda in.

An utterly peaceful moment came and went.

‘What’s this then?’ began Amanda, her tone very gentle. ‘There’s a cunt stretched around my fist. My whole hand is inside Meg’s cunt, and what a sweet sweet cunt it is. What happens, I wonder, if I pump it?’ She flexed her fist.

Meg groaned. She nodded, or maybe she was nodding, like a junkie on a high; either way, Amanda took it as a cue to continue.

‘What if I turn it?’ Amanda turned her fist. Her hands were small and she kept the fist tight but still, knuckles rippled silky flesh and made Meg whimper. Amanda turned it the other way, just a little, and Meg shivered. The girl was like a hand puppet, with Amanda’s hand inside, clear to the wrist, easily manipulating it. ‘I never even thought of this,’ she admitted.