Chapter 2

“Do you want to drop your thong in with my laundry?” I asked. “I can loan you something when you leave.”

“How about you offer me a ride home? Then I won’t need underwear.”

I shivered. “God you’re evil.”

“The other upside to that plan is that you can’t avoid me. You’ll have to get it back to me or keep my underwear like a pervert.”

“Ugh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Lauren’s pitying look made me uncomfortable, but what could I say? “I’m not going to get my heart broken for your misguided matchmaking experiment?” Lauren didn’t deserve my rudeness. So I just shrugged and poured us both another coffee.

“I am,” I said. Sliding my fingers around her chin, I turned her toward me, then touched my lips to hers. It wasn’t an entirely chaste kiss, it was very light, but I waited until her lips parted and I could stroke her tongue with mine before drawing back.

My action had surprised Rachel. Her cheeks seemed a little pink. “What was that for?”

“To thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate you. I thought you should know that.”

She smiled. “You can thank me again, if you like.”

I would have done, but I saw someone approaching the French doors. Zoe’s aunt Nyssa knocked, Hannah following in her wake. Rachel pre-empted me and rose to open the door for her.

“Hey, I hope I’m not interrupting, but we’re taking the kids. Is it okay if I collect our stuff?”

“Of course,” I said.

Nyssa folded the crib, while Hannah took the mat. Curious Magpie tried to examine Nyssa’s work, then started purring as Nyssa took a break to pet her.

Before they left, Nyssa glanced between Rachel and myself. I thought for a moment that she must have seen what we were doing before she knocked, but her question caught me off-guard. “Hey, do either of you play softball?”

“Nyss!” yelped Hannah. “You can’t recruit everyone!”

“Hey, it’s your people who twisted my arm!” she replied.

Hanna grabbed her arm and tried to drag her out of my living room, but Nyssa planted her feet. “I coach softball for Hannah’s church. We could use some support in the outfield. You don’t have to be a member – I’m not – but they’re truly a great group of girls.” She glanced with amusement at Hannah. “The boss says I have to leave, but if you’re interested, Lauren has our number.”

I grinned as Nyssa finally acquiesced to “the boss” and left through the French doors. I saw other partygoers collecting their things, too, though far from everyone.

“A great group of girls, she says,” I said to Rachel. “A women’s softball team is its own trope. I might even be tempted if not for the other word.”

“Church?” Rachel asked.

“You were about to thank me again,” Rachel said.

“I was, was I?” I grinned at her. “I don’t recall agreeing to that, but if it makes you happy…”

I moved in close, then kissed Rachel in the same way, with a gentle touch of my lips to hers, drawing after touching my tongue to hers for just a moment, surprised to find how dark her eyes had become. Surely this was nothing for high-energy Rachel, who wanted her boss to bend her over her desk and dominate her. The idea intrigued me so much that I leaned forward for a third kiss, her breathing rapid against my skin.

Backing away only a couple of inches, I held her gaze. Her lips were parted as we studied each other. Then a hand slipped around the back of my neck and urged me back toward her.

This fourth kiss was still tender, with only a little tongue, but it lasted about a minute, after which I was also breathing heavily. When we both leaned back against the loveseat, Rachel smirked, then whispered, “You’re welcome.”

I leaned against Rachel, which she didn’t seem to mind, and we sat in silence for several minutes, observing the slowly dwindling crowd on the grass outside the French doors. I was going to have to deal with what I saw as my failures, but not today. Today I still had the support of this surprising woman who enjoyed enthusiastic casual sex, yet who was aroused by a gentle kiss.

“Look, I know you’re not ” – making airquotes – “my person, and I know you didn’t come here for this, but I would really like for you to be naked and in my bed right now.”

Rachel’s eyes darkened and her lips curled up, but she didn’t say a word before taking my face in her hands, pressing her parted lips to mine, then retreating slowly, her tongue stroking my tongue and lips as her face moved away. Before I could think to react, she’d done the same again, then again. Each brief kiss was intense, and my heart was racing when she stood, reaching down for my hand.

She led me unerringly to my bedroom. I pushed the door closed behind us, then turned her to face me and pressed my lips to hers. While we both moaned, I lifted her shirt, working it up her body, allowing me to caress her sides and back. The shirt was every bit as tight as it appeared. I had to draw it back down again to straighten it before lifting it over her head. As she was wriggling out of it, I was already unbuttoning her pants, which proved much easier to slide down, leaving her in a tan bra and black panties, whose outline I’d noticed earlier.

Rachel wouldn’t allow me to take the activity any further until she’d stripped me to my bra and panties. Rather than continuing to undress her, I pushed her onto her back and kissed her thighs. She was moaning softly when I kissed the crease of each thigh. She shoved a pillow behind her head, propping it up to watch me as I moved my lips to the base of her stomach, just above her panty line.

When I stroked the side of her panties with my thumbs she reached out to caress my hair, and her face took on the flush of arousal, lips parted.

Crawling up her body I kissed the bottom of her rib cage, drawing my teeth over individual ribs. I moved both hands to her bra, thumbing her nipples. “Christ, babe,” she groaned. “You’re killing me.”

Maybe because I was taking so long with what I was doing, Rachel reached behind her, and a moment later was drawing her bra straps down her arms, revealing her gorgeous breasts, sharp-sided as mountain peaks.

I kissed just below and between them. As I did, I grasped the waistband of her panties in both hands, tugging it upward and shaking it rapidly, so that the tight fabric jerked against her sex. She cried out, her hips rising from the bed. “Fuuck…” she breathed.

“Did you like that?” I asked, before closing my mouth on her right nipple.

“I like it all, Mandy,” she groaned. “You’re fucking amazing.”

I grinned before switching to her left breast. As I suckled I stretched her panties against her again. She writhed against me, then as I kept kissing her nipple she began to roll her hips, her body undulating against me as she moaned.

Moving to the side of her body, I studied her. She was lovely. Her lips had puffed out in a pout when I’d moved off her, but as I slowly kissed them, she wrapped an arm around my head, holding my face to hers.

Content just to kiss her for a time, I curled my fingers over her belly. The sounds of pleasure she made were soft and long.

I moved my fingertips from Rachel’s belly over her hips, then under her thighs. I pushed up on the underside of her closer thigh, and she raised her leg, allowing me to reach her pussy. As we kissed, I felt around for her entrance, pushing her panties aside, then plunging two fingers into her.

It lit a fuse within Rachel. She began to cry into the kiss, her body bouncing against the bed, sex thrusting against my fingers. The pitch of her cries rose, then suddenly stopped as her body tensed, before her sex clamped my fingers, and she was coming, making long, desperate sounds into my mouth.

“My God, Mandy,” she breathed, as I finally released her. “You really are amazing.” She panted softly. “But you’re still not naked. I plan to rip the rest of your clothes off… just as soon as my soul returns to my body.”

“That’s usually how you make me feel,” I said, with a laugh. “Allow me to help.” I unclasped my bra, slid it down my arms, then shoved a nipple against her lips as I lay down. She chuckled, then closed her mouth on the nipple, her eyes on mine.

Rolling me onto my back, she kissed both breasts enthusiastically, then my lips briefly, before sliding down my body, taking my panties with her as she moved, then pulling off her own, leaving us both naked. She kissed my navel and the crease of my thighs, then continued down to kiss my inner thighs, then all the way down to my ankle and back. Occasionally she’d take a break to suckle my breasts, but what she did not do was let her lips get close to my pussy lips or clit. I could feel them swelling, aching with need, but Rachel tormented me by not relieving the pressure. I lost track of time in my haze of lust, so I had no clue how long she’d been torturing me.

Toward the end of the time, I began to beg:

“Rachel, please… I can’t take this… Rachel, baby, I need you.”

I didn’t realize that last was going to pass my lips until it did, but in my defense, thinking clearly had ended minutes earlier.

When I felt her tongue touch the close-cropped fur of my sex, I moaned in relief, but my ordeal wasn’t done quite yet. Fingers slid into me, curling and rocking, and her tongue glided along my clit, but she still wouldn’t let me come. I’d feel like I was finally close, but Rachel would slow down, taking her tongue away, and I’d clamp my thighs around her fingers, but it wouldn’t be enough.

“Rachel, babe, let me come… please let me come, babe… Rachel… I need to come…”

Finally, she whispered, “Okay, babe,” then drove me higher, her fingers plunging, her tongue unrelenting, until I yelled her name in pleasure, the intensity of my climax blanking my senses for a moment.

She didn’t give me time to recover. When I could finally open my eyes, I found that Rachel had lowered my legs to the bed, moved to my side, parted my pussy with her fingers, and was leaning down over my hip, lapping sideways at my clit. My next orgasm crashed into me with all of the force of the first.

Rachel tried to continue, but it was too much. I pushed her head. “No…” I croaked. “Too…”

“Too sensitive?” she asked, and I nodded.

“Okay,” she said, moving from my side, but not backing away. She raised my right leg, and began to nibble the underside of my thigh. I cried out. The sensation was almost intolerable, but not quite, and that not quite was soon fueling another climb.

Rachel took it a little more slowly, but I knew I was close when my phone started to ring. It took great will for me to form the words, “Touch that and die,” but Rachel burst out laughing which made me squirm.

“Okay, no more…” I groaned after I’d come again. “I really can’t.”

Rachel’s expression told me she thought I really could, but this time she’d let it pass. She dropped onto me, and we rolled around as we kissed.

My breathing was almost normal when she rolled off me. I took her hand, threading my fingers into hers. “Girl…” I breathed.

“I know,” she said. “Chemistry. I told you.”

“Yeah,” I said, then reached for my phone. The call had been from Lauren. I showed the screen to Rachel. When I hovered my thumb over the call button, she nodded.

“Hi, Mandy,” Lauren’s voice answered the call.

“Hey,” I said, my voice a little squeaky as I tried to hide how out of breath and aroused I was. “Sorry I couldn’t get to the phone.”

“Everyone’s gone, there’s wine and dessert left over. Do you want to join us in the meadow?”

“Sure,” I said. “Uh, Rachel too, right?”

“Rachel?” Lauren sounded surprised. “I thought she’d left. She’s there with you?” There was a short pause as she considered the implications, then, “Oh! I called you at a bad time, didn’t I? I’m sorry, I should have texted.”

I glanced at Rachel. I hadn’t put the phone on speaker, and I didn’t know how much she could hear, but I grinned at her. “It was anything but a bad time,” I said, “but aliens could have landed on the meadow and I wouldn’t have let it distract me.”