A Story of Now (40 page)

Mia smiles briefly and obeys. She curls her hand around Claire’s neck and pulls her into another fervent kiss.

But as soon as the footsteps depart again, on to the next battle in whatever stupid war they are waging, Claire pulls away and jumps off the bed. As quick as lightning, she shoots over to the windows and unties the flimsy cotton curtains on the porch side of the room. They don’t offer much in the way of security, but they provide at least a comforting illusion of privacy. She strides over and shuts the glass door and pulls down the blinds, shutting out a little more light from the house. Then she turns to the dimly lit, shadow-spattered shape that is Mia, and steps forward slightly so she can make out her face. She lies on her side on the mattress, her head on her arm, still in her bra and her shorts, with her impossibly longs legs curled against the sheet. She gives Claire a small conspiratorial smile as if she’s reeling her back in. Not that she needs to. Claire never left.

She stretches out on the bed. They lie there and stare at each other from this small distance and take a little moment to cement something between them. Certainty.

And before they can even touch again, the outside world invades once more, this time in the loud sound of footsteps and the splash of water as it hits wood, followed by a loud gasp and a laugh. Some of the water penetrates the wire screens and spatters on the floor near the window.

Mia opens her mouth to whisper something, and Claire, scared she is going to suggest they stop or postpone, that this could be brought to an end by whatever this bedlam outside is, halts whatever she is going to say with another long, breathless kiss. She has to. Because if she doesn’t do that, she doesn’t know how she’s going to stop herself from storming outside and telling everyone to shut the fuck up and let them have this precious, new, and slightly terrifying moment in goddamn peace if that’s what it takes to make sure it happens. And she knows she probably doesn’t want to do that.

But to stop what they have started is not an option. So, adamant that there will only be the two of them in this room, no matter how much the outside world tries to march in and occupy this territory with its noisy clamour for attention, Claire will not allow it. Instead, she cups a hand over the side of Mia’s face and anchors her to the moment, sealing them both back into their tiny world together, doing everything she can to renew the urgency again. She presses her mouth onto Mia’s and moves her tongue against hers—a silent command for Mia to hold her ground.

And it works. Mia’s arm snakes around Claire’s neck and pulls her into a fierce, returned embrace while her other hand glides along her spine, down over her shorts, and as far along the back of her legs she can reach. She slides her fingers upward, wraps her hand around Claire’s thigh, and pulls it up and over her own.

Claire breathes hard into the kiss and does precisely what that hand asks of her. Mia languidly slides her fingers up and down the sensitive skin at the back of Claire’s thigh, up to the hem of her shorts and down again. Driven by this new level of boldness, Claire runs her own hand up along Mia’s torso and eases it slowly over the swell of her breast. She traces the edge of Mia’s bra lightly with her finger before she replaces it with her mouth.

For a while, they manage to maintain the sanctity of this tiny but fiercely held piece of ground despite the unrelenting chaos of everything that comes at them in the form of thuds and shrieks and shadows that dance along the walls. It’s easier now as they delve into this new hot and reckless territory.

They manage to stave off their fear of invasion until the dizzyingly anticipatory moment when Mia has slowly unbuttoned a button and gradually lowered a zip. Claire is breathless and strung between two urges—to accommodate the tentative ease of Mia’s hand into her shorts and to not relinquish any proximity between them. That’s when footsteps come dangerously close and stop.

And it’s also when, as Claire feels the first, vertiginous waves of sensation urged by that hand, that the world crashes back at them in full force.

Because that’s the moment there is a loud tap on the door.

Mia pulls her head back, her eyes wide.

Claire, dauntless at this crucial point, locks her gaze to Mia’s and says nothing. She shakes her head, hoping it will go away. She pushes herself against Mia’s hand and bites at the soft skin of Mia’s ear lobe, recalling her to the exigency of her task. And Mia, obedient to this silent command, complies.

Then a voice rings out into the hot night air.

“Claire, are you in there?”

Claire draws herself as close to Mia as she can, burrows her face in her neck, pulls in a breath, and holds it. Mia’s free arm closes around her head, a flimsy but welcome protection against this latest invasion.

Nina calls out again. “Hey! Are you asleep?”

That’s when Claire finally takes a deep, furious breath, pulls her head back, and yells into the night. “Yes! Go! Away!”

And that’s when the footsteps retreat without another word.

“Fuck.” Claire releases a drawn out, frustrated moan and presses her face into the pillow for a moment. Eventually she lifts her head. Mia raises her eyebrows and lets out a breathy laugh.

And Claire smiles sheepishly and again pleads, in a silent entreaty with her eyes, for Mia to stay with her. And just in case Mia considers straying, Claire mirrors her. She reaches around and slides her own hand teasingly up Mia’s thigh and inside the leg of her shorts, giving her no choice but to forget whatever is going on out there and to stay deliciously here with her. And the perceptible gasp tells her it works.

And from this moment on, the world is reduced to the simple but all-consuming sensations conjured by just one hand and the hot press of Mia’s mouth on her neck. That hand and those lips are enough to shrink the world entirely around her. This is all she requires to keep her in this dizzyingly hot place.

They are enough and they are too much at the same time too. So much so that it feels as though it’s only minutes before she pushes her face into the soft inward curve where Mia’s neck meets her shoulder and tries to quell the sounds coming from her in throaty gasps. At the same time, she refuses to surrender her own project of bringing Mia to this place with her. And it turns out that Mia isn’t far behind her. She presses her face sideways and breathes out her own orgasm into the pillow.

And then the room is filled with the quiet sounds of their breath hollowing out. They become the hushed eye in the storm of thuds and bangs and shouts that surround them. Paralysed by the product of their own daring, they are capable only of a weak but insistent clutch of limbs, bound together into a slightly shocked silence. Claire blinks heavily, closes her eyes, and presses her lips against Mia’s shoulder, unnerved by the hair-trigger nature of the desire that got her to this place so soon. She has rarely felt so instantly kindled and
never
so quickly sated.

That was…unexpected.

Everything about this is unexpected, of course. But most of all it’s the unbelievable effortlessness of this call and response they’ve just discovered in each other.

Now, it has rendered her bashful, this first ardent display of wanting. It’s left her too afraid to lift her head and acknowledge its passing. In the past, she’s always been quick to brush off sex, slightly embarrassed by the intimacy of the aftermath, no matter how much pleasure it brought. She’s always needed to close out the moment with something quippy or sassy, something that would end the silence and haul the moment back to reality. But right now she cannot. Not now and not with Mia. Not yet.

In the end, it’s Mia who breaks the silence. But she breaks it
in
silence. She pulls her head back and waits until Claire meets the relentless fix of her gaze. Mia smooths the hair from Claire’s cheek and smiles, that cute, tender crinkle at the edges of her eyes recalls Claire back to familiarity.
It’s just Mia
. And Claire smiles sheepishly back, astonished by both the simplicity and the intensity of the feelings this girl provokes in her. Why did it take her so long—both of them so long—to be aware of this possibility? She tucks her head back under Mia’s chin, breathes in and out slowly, and notes the sudden quiet outside.

“You okay?” Mia whispers as she slides her hand under Claire’s hair and curls her fingers against the base of her skull.

Claire nods, presses her lips against Mia’s collarbone, and runs her hands along Mia’s side. She’s not willing to break the silence just yet. So they lie there a little longer, entwined in a bundle of limbs and awareness. Their breath eases in and out, flowing over each other’s skin.

Suddenly, the newfound calm outside is ruptured by the crash of the back door as it flies open and the thuds of footsteps from the house. They thunder across the porch and down the steps. Someone says something about the water. They must be going for a swim. She listens as footsteps dash down the path and voices call out into the night.

“Thank
God
.” She sighs as their voices fade away down the lake path. She rolls onto her back, grabs Mia’s hand, and clasps it between them on top of the sheet because she still needs to touch her.

Mia follows her anyway, turning on her side. She presses her face into Claire’s arm and looks up, grinning. They dissolve into giggles over the ridiculous duel just fought between the clandestine intensity of what was just happening in here and the utter chaos of everything that surrounded them. Now the storm has passed, they are free to find the incongruence of the scenario completely hilarious. And they do.

“That was…interesting,” Mia whispers as her giggles abate to breathless hiccups. She pulls Claire over and kisses her.

“I have never wanted to murder someone more than I did just then,” Claire mumbles. She rolls on top of Mia and luxuriates in the way their legs instinctively tangle together in a delicious slide of limb against limb.

Mia laughs again and folds her arms across Claire’s back. “You weren’t supposed to have murder on your mind.”

“Just for a minute.” Bashful, Claire pushes her face into Mia’s neck. Then she groans loudly as she imagines the potential carnage in the morning. “Oh God, do you think they have trashed the house completely?”

Mia runs her hand through her hair. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it cleaned up, okay?”

“Mmm, we have to. Or my mum will kill me.” Claire frowns as she slides her hand along the undulated stretch of Mia’s side, from hip to underarm and back again.

“Shh,” Mia tells her. She dips her hands into the back of Claire’s shorts and then runs them all the way up Claire’s back. “Don’t think about it now.”

“Okay.” Claire sighs, agreeable, unable to stop the relentless sweep of her hand up and down the sleek landscape of Mia’s skin. These hands are, it seems, thoroughly addicted.

She draws in a breath, unable to shake her shock at this beautifully strange turnaround. She cannot quite believe that not so long ago—not even an hour ago, probably—Mia came and sat beside her on the steps and kissed her out of a seeming nowhere. And now they are lying here, halfway to naked, sealed together in this tender aftermath. And Mia’s skin under her hands is her proof that this is actually happening.

Claire lifts her head and looks down at her, needing to
see
Mia as proof to further believe it. She rests her chin in her hand and stares. She notes the way the light from outside reproduces itself in small pinpricks of light in Mia’s pupils and how one eyebrow raises just slightly in response to her stare. But Mia doesn’t say anything at first, just obediently subjects herself to this scrutiny. Eventually though, when Claire has clearly stared at her for too long, a small, nervous half smile crosses her face.

“What?” she whispers.

“Nothing,” Claire says quickly. She shakes her head and smiles. She has no idea how she could possibly explain any of these feelings, so she isn’t even going to try. Instead, she kisses her.

And it’s only now, in the safety and privacy of this moment, they are freed a little and are able to become bolder. Now they get to go back and take the remedial lessons they were forced to skip during that urgent, covert little scene.

This time they get to revel in those fun baby steps they missed, like the simple but provocative striptease of removing clothes. She relishes the delicious baring of skin and how it feels as if they’re now showing off for each other, confident that swagger will be met with desire in return. They linger in these moments and make slow new acquaintance with this as yet unmet lay of the land. It’s new and hot and even a little graceless sometimes when clothes won’t cooperate, or teeth clash, or she momentarily loses her way.

But even those awkward moments, moments that would usually embarrass Claire or make her feel clumsy, don’t. Because this is happening with Mia, the one person in the entire world who makes her feel
not
awkward and
not
stupid and
not
embarrassed. And, most of all, she’s stunned by this almost electrifying new knowledge that Mia is the person she most wants to feel desired by. It’s also during these lessons that Claire learns valuable and highly flattering little trinkets of knowledge about Mia. And these trinkets are as much derived from sight as they are from feel. She notes and relishes the smallest flicker of reaction on Mia’s face and in the undivided attention she attracts when she sits astride Mia and slowly, and just a little flauntingly, removes her own bra. She studies the way Mia’s eyes narrow slightly, how she bites her bottom lip as she reaches for the flesh now laid bare, her immediate response to Claire’s little show. And Claire gets to craft her own lessons in the shape and feel of different tracts of Mia’s newly bared skin as together they remove what is left of her clothing. And later, and even bolder, she learns the reflexive ripple of desire that runs through Mia’s body when Claire kneels over her, presses her knee between her legs, and dances her tongue along the underside of her breast and then up to her nipple. Then she learns the small, intimate sounds of Mia’s desire as she yields more vocally to Claire’s touch again, evoked this time by a series of slower, playful, and less clumsy cadences of hand.