The westering sun had already dried the storm-water from the bare earth as Rachel pushed through the screen door once more. Dust stirred from rain-pounded craters as she stepped down, then swirled tetchily aside as the hem of her borrowed bathrobe followed to drag listlessly about her bare feet.
Rachel paused, her eyes on the ground, and took a breath. Beyond the peeling whitewash of the nearby corner of the villa, she was waiting.
In an immaculate tan summer suit, a woven white sun hat, and aviator sunglasses. Rachel had just about believed, spying between spread fingers levering apart the slats of the lounge blinds, that Susan had thrown them on in a rush. But she could also believe that Susan had chosen them precisely because they appeared so, while at the same time emphasising her athletic figure, her model-perfect posture.
It didn’t matter now. Rachel had made her decision.
She jumped slightly as the screen door bounced noisily off its frame; then raised her eyes. Let’s face the music — she balled her fists in the loose sleeves of the bathrobe — and dance.
The patchy yellow lawn ahead gave way to patchy yellow dirt as she rounded the corner; then the sleek white rump of a sports car, glowing and ethereal in the fading light. Susan was already gazing towards the source of the sound, half-sitting behind the Ferrari’s door; but she stood up in surprise as she recognised Rachel.
Susan took a step, then paused as she registered Rachel’s expression. Rachel strode calmly but with all the determination she could muster: and perhaps Susan did not notice when Rachel realised her arms were shaking, and focussed on unrolling her fingers; at least until she stepped decisively on the flapping hem of the bathrobe and floundered forward, raising a cloud of dust.
She righted herself, felt the gentle press of Susan’s palms on her shoulders, felt even more the amused maternal smile. But as she lifted her face, she also lifted a finger, and laid it onto Susan’s lips to still her laughter.
Trembling but resolute, she shuffled forward enough to press her mouth against Susan’s.
The kiss was forceful; possessive; but fleeting; and the moment their tongues touched, Rachel withdrew, and replaced her finger.
‘This is how it’s going to be,’ she said. Somehow her voice seemed smaller than it had been, rehearsing the moment in her mind. ‘We’re going back to my hotel. I’ve got four more days of holiday to spend with you.’ She rushed on through her faltering determination, as Susan’s expression turned from surprise to hurt. ‘Then you let me go.’
She could see Susan’s mouth begin to frame the inevitable question, why; though she respected the silencing finger. And Rachel answered, in her mind: I won’t let you break me, like you broke Syn.
For a long moment Rachel felt Susan’s eyes, searching her face. She stared fixedly at the lips before her, at the level of her own eyes. The wind gushed over the branches of the unkempt acacia and maples that surrounded Syn’s front yard, swirling inward to tug at the loose folds of the bathrobe and the still-damp strands of Rachel’s hair, and her heart danced in synchrony with its blustering. When at length she lowered her finger, and Susan removed her sunglasses, Rachel could only focus on the way that Susan’s cheeks indented gracefully as she breathed the single word: ‘okay.’
Then Susan’s eyes glanced to the house beside them, and Rachel was startled to see a single tear form, slide raggedly down Susan’s cheek, and fall to earth like the last remnant of the departed storm.
Reflexively, Rachel smiled a desperate apology and rubbed the trail of wetness from Susan’s face with her thumb. ‘Thanks,’ was all she could think to say, and the word seemed to hang between them accusingly while Susan controlled her catching breath. Then, she looked down at Rachel and smiled softly.
‘Four days,’ she repeated, her voice even. ‘Four days.’ She concluded lightly, ‘a lifetime.’
‘Yes,’ said Rachel, smiling in return; then, the smile grew lopsided. ‘And four nights. Although maybe we won’t know the difference.’
Susan’s eyes stole once more to the house. Rachel followed them, and said, ‘I’ll get my clothes. Say bye-bye to Syn.’
She turned to flee, but Susan’s hand was still at her shoulder. ‘Wait,’ said Susan. She was still gazing aside, and she sucked a breath through tight lips. ‘I can’t…’ she began, then looked down, tried again: ‘I can’t promise I won’t hurt.’
Rachel’s composure teetered. How she ached to love, to pull Susan in so close that they became one, to encompass her. But still the black heart of her doubt remained; becoming, in contradiction, a certainty. What if, even now, Susan was acting? A puppeteer, manipulating, preparing Rachel for yet more, and deeper, and helpless orgasm at some final perfectly pitched twitch of a finger?
Rachel squinted at the ground, as though her eyes could bore through it to reveal the truth beneath. At length she allowed them to shift to Susan’s feet, then rise slowly over her exquisite shape.
‘Me neither,’ she said when her eyes had reached Susan’s cheekbone, though she could not meet her downcast gaze. ‘Me neither.’ She wanted lust to overwhelm her again, as it had on Syn’s couch inside; to quash her need for love, to both excuse and drive the plan she had invented and then sworn to carry out. She would have that ecstasy, and then she would be away, unbroken, still herself.
For a moment she imagined dropping the bathrobe from her shoulders and throwing herself at Susan, forcing her to consummate their pact on the delicate nose of the Ferrari. Susan’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity for sex would play into Rachel’s hands, and all misgivings, all hurt, would be consumed in the fire of their passion. But she was still sore, and beyond satiety, after her orgy of masturbation inside; and she found her only desire was to appreciate Susan as a work of perfect erotic art, to gaze at, and to possess.
The silence had become awkward. Rachel plucked Susan’s hand from where it still rested limply on shoulder, examined it briefly lying across her palm; then raised it to her cheek.
‘I want you,’ she said simply, allowing the thought to bubble to the surface, unfiltered. ‘Just you. You’ve already given me an amazing gift, but I want more.’
Susan looked up, and Rachel was relieved to see fire in her eyes. She turned her fingers over against Rachel’s skin, cupped her jaw. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think you believe me, and considering how I behave, I’m not surprised.’ As Rachel’s mouth opened to protest she raised a fingertip onto her lips. ‘I’ll do anything for you.’ She glanced to the house again, as her voice trailed to a halt. ‘Anything.’
Rachel nodded, smiling. A strange happiness seemed to rise in her. She grasped Susan’s hand with both of her own, kissed the still-raised fingertip, and returned it to Susan’s chest. Then she hiked the folds of the bathrobe around her hips and turned to skip back to the house.
The hard-baked earth was warm but harsh against her bare feet, like a pinch to the dream; all around the dusky greens and yellows gave way to the deepening blue sky; and she revelled in the sensations in a way she had never before thought possible.
She tugged the screen from the kitchen door and barged through, her toes catching slightly on the curled lip of ancient linoleum behind the sill, then pattering onward. She glanced through the window above the stained stainless sink, hoping to glimpse Susan’s shape; but then staggered slightly, the skin of the balls of her feet sticking uncomfortably as she stopped.
There was someone else in the yard; it was Kim, approaching Susan from the drive. Susan faced the newcomer with a rigid stance, and Rachel leaned across the counter to peer through the dirty glass, turning her head slightly askance to listen.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Kim snarled, her voice carrying clearly across the distance.
‘Finding Rachel,’ stated Susan, folding her arms.
‘No way,’ spat Kim incredulously, halting. ‘You broke your promise, for that little slut?’
Susan visibly bristled, but quickly controlled herself. She said something that might have been, ‘We were just going.’
‘You fucking bet you are,’ said Kim, turning aside. ‘You’re trespassing.’
Rachel gaped; but Kim was approaching the kitchen now, and she ducked back to avoid being seen. As she hurried through a short corridor to the dim lounge, her mind was a kaleidoscope of confusion. ‘Trespassing’? Those two women were having sex, in Susan’s house, only last night! What had happened since then?
‘Rachel.’ Syn’s voice. Rachel’s eyes flicked to the muscular shape, silhouetted against the blinds in the deepening dusk. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeh,’ Rachel replied automatically. She had halted in her absent-minded lunge for the damp clothes that still lay in a forlorn pile on the floor. She found she was glad Syn was there; but something in her voice was disconcerting.
‘Changed your mind.’ Syn declared huskily.
Rachel saw no point denying it. ‘Yeh,’ she said again. ‘Syn,’ she continued, into the uncomfortable silence. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll look after myself.’ As soon as she said it, she regretted how silly it must have sounded to Syn. ‘I mean,’ she stumbled on, ‘I’ve got a plan. She won’t hurt me.’
There was a bang from the kitchen: Kim slamming the door. Rachel dived for the clothes, then faced Syn. She presented a lapel of the bathrobe. ‘Is it okay if I borrow..?’
Syn waved one hand dismissively. On impulse, Rachel darted forwards and encompassed her with both arms, planting a decisive kiss on her cheek. If there was any intention, it was purely playful. But suddenly her mind was filled with the incredible memory of Syn’s naked breasts, and the animalistic power beneath, pressing upon her own. Kim’s and Susan’s were small, perfectly proportioned ornaments, complimenting and completing their overarching beauty; but Syn and Rachel’s shapes shared a more bounteous eroticism, and Rachel suddenly missed the time they had spent mutually exploring its depths.
She let go, hurriedly, just as Kim entered the room. She felt a spike of hatred, but quashed it long enough to say, ‘Bye, Syn, and thanks.’
She strode away, past Kim who was coming the other way. She was prepared to meet her eyes and give battle, but Kim blanked her completely. She was focussed on Syn. As Rachel left the room, she caught a glimpse of Kim draping herself seductively onto her butch lover.
Susan was already in the driving seat when Rachel returned to the Ferrari. She merely nodded as Rachel collapsed on board, dropping her clothes in the foot-well; and then gunned the engine, leaving a wake of angry dust as they departed.
*
Long after Susan had fallen asleep, Rachel continued to gaze through the open blinds at the mesmerising pool-light rippling over the tropical hedge opposite, with the dull glow of Beverly Hills above and beyond.
The exhilarating drive to the coast; the cruise on Santa Monica Boulevard; the meal in the hotel; and the gentle romantic lovemaking afterwards, all seemed too perfect, too fanciful, to be real. But Rachel could feel the warmth of Susan’s body behind her; feel the weight of the arm draped over her side, palm tucked loosely between her breasts. It was real, it was incredible. But Rachel could scream, at the unease that had spoiled almost all of it.
Of course, she should have spoken out, should have confronted Susan with Kim’s behaviour, demanded an explanation. But from the moment she had settled in for the ride, and for the entire evening, starting the conversation had just seemed impossible. Her supply of emotional energy was utterly exhausted. But without release the puzzle had become a misgiving, and then a thorn beneath the crisp silky sheets that creased and crumpled under their bodies.
And now, Rachel could not bear to disrupt the sweet embrace into which she was nestled. Only Susan had ever held her like this, only Susan, oh! Susan, whose fingers and tongue had touched like the wings of a passing angel, soft, whispering of love, so that every moment had been a tortured heaven. Her shape, lines of shade against the dark of night; her smell, her heat. Rachel squirmed slightly as the memory spread into her loins, and she remembered how they had seemed to ride an ever-mounting wave, higher, higher, until she had moaned in wonder with every desperate breath. And when it finally broke, it was as though her entire being was swept away to some distant majestic shore beneath a storm-shattered sky.
She sighed, and Susan twitched in her sleep, mumbling a few syllables of comfortable nonsense. What was going on between those three women, Susan, Syn, and Kim? Rachel had made love to all three, although with Kim it had been more sport than passion, or at least it seemed so in her memory. With all of them it was free, wild, energetic, seemingly without emotional attachment beyond the moment of ecstasy. But she knew now that there was some strange conflict beneath it all.
She replayed the moment in her mind, over and over. Susan’s defensive posture. Kim striding up the drive, in her tight sports crop-top and leggings, fury in her features. Striding. Returning from Susan’s house, scene of their orgy with Kristen, the fumbling newcomer.
Wait.
Rachel held her breath, trying not to wake Susan, as it dawned on her.
Kim had walked. Rachel thought back to the occasions she had travelled from Susan’s house to Syn’s. Once, via Ferrari to the Woodland Hills commercial strip, and then Ducati into the suburbs. Once on foot into a descending storm, and then on board Syn’s truck.
She had assumed that both journeys were almost straight, that the houses were miles apart. But what if both had been convoluted, by accident or purpose? What if they were only blocks from each other?
Kim had walked. But Susan had driven Rachel into town, to hand her over to Syn yesterday. She could have just dropped her off. Instead, she had used neutral ground.
For some reason, Susan herself was not allowed to go to Syn’s property. It was the only explanation. That was her ‘promise’, which she had broken. It was not some recent argument, but a permanent exclusion. That was why she had not simply come in, to find Rachel on the couch.
Rachel’s mind raced. Had Susan hurt Syn so badly that there was a restraining order between them? But if so, why had Susan treated Syn as a trusted friend, to look after Rachel while she went to work? To continue Rachel’s introduction to their incredible world of sex? To fuck her!
Why?
And now, what was Susan going to do to her, Rachel, so young, so inexperienced, so much weaker than Syn was?
Suddenly the hand between her breasts became a hot coal, and Rachel grasped at it, squirming away from the beautiful body behind her. She flopped out of bed, barely getting her feet under her. Susan did not wake, but rolled forward, drawing her hand up to clutch the pillow as her face pressed onto it.
Rachel tried to calm herself, standing naked by the bedside, her indistinct shadow falling over Susan’s body. What was she doing here, a confused and naive English flower, among these vipers? They had taught her how to fuck; even how to fuck herself, in this very room only two nights before. But at what cost? Would she ever be able to use the same skill, to love?
Oh! How she wanted to love! But now she saw that these women had completely detached love, from lust. They even hated each other, yet still they fucked, like marionettes, unable to do anything different to their perverted designer’s intention.
She could learn nothing more from them. She controlled her nausea, dressed, flung her belongings quietly into her suitcase; and once again, she fled.
"The wind gushed over the branches of the unkempt acacia and maples that surrounded Syn's front yard, swirling inward to tug at the loose folds of the bathrobe and the still-damp strands of Rachel's hair, and her heart danced in synchrony with its blustering."
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