Radclyffe - Love On Call

“Neither can I.” Mari wanted things she’d never imagined wanting. Her secret fantasies had been nothing like this. “I’ve never felt this way.”

Something in her voice must have betrayed her uncertainty.

Glenn looked at her again, the fire banked, tempered by concern. “Are you afraid?”

“No, no.” Mari gripped Glenn’s leg tighter than she intended and Glenn’s hips flexed. Heat flared between Mari’s thighs. “Never afraid of you.”

“Then you don’t have to think.”

Glenn swung the truck down a narrow alley and pulled in behind a building. Mari finally focused on their surroundings and recognized the rear of Glenn’s apartment building. She caught her breath.

“All right?” Glenn murmured as she turned to her, her fingers tracing the edge of Mari’s jaw.

Mari swallowed. If she went inside, what was she saying? What did she want? She still didn’t know, but she wanted to find out. She nodded.

Glenn cut the engine, jumped out, and ran around the front of the truck. She jerked open Mari’s door and reached for her hand. “Come on.”

Mari slid over and started to climb out. Glenn’s hands grasped her waist, and she was lifted to the ground. When her feet touched the earth, Mari wrapped her arms around Glenn’s shoulders and, cleaving to her, pressed her mouth to Glenn’s throat. She tasted salt and heat and desire. “You have a beautiful throat. You are beautiful.”

With a faint groan, Glenn tilted her head back, offering herself. She buried her fingers in Mari’s hair and pressed Mari’s mouth closer. “If you keep that up, I won’t get up the stairs.”

Mari touched the tip of her tongue to the delicate skin over Glenn’s racing pulse. Glenn trembled, a fine shudder rippling through her body. Mari’s heart leapt and a fierce thrill raced through her. Mari laughed. “Then we should go upstairs now, because I want to do that again.”

With a low growl, Glenn grabbed Mari’s hand and tugged her up the winding staircase, across the narrow deck outside her door, and into a small, neat apartment.

Glenn stopped just inside the door and framed Mari’s face with both hands. She kissed her softly. “Bedroom?”

“I…yes,” Mari whispered. What should she say…what could she say? I’ve never done this before, I don’t know what I want, I want everything and so much more? “But I’m not sure…”

“It’s okay, I just really, really need to kiss you again. Whenever you want to stop, you just tell me.” Glenn’s jaw tightened, the hands cradling Mari’s jaw flexing as if holding back a storm. “Please, I need you.”

Mari nodded. She couldn’t imagine wanting to stop, not when she’d never felt as alive as she did in that instant. “Yes. Show me.”

Wordlessly, Glenn took her hand again and led her through the small neat kitchen, across an equally neat but sparsely furnished living room, and into a bedroom with a single bed against one wall, a dresser with a row of precisely arranged bottles and other objects, and a slatted wooden chair beside it. Sunlight slanted through a single window across the foot of the bed, and hazy air blanketed the room. Glenn kicked off her boots and sat on the side of the bed, drawing Mari between her spread thighs. She wrapped both arms around Mari’s waist and pressed her cheek to Mari’s stomach. “We’ll go as slow as you want.”

Mari stroked the back of Glenn’s neck and shoulders. “I don’t know what I want, except I want to feel you.”

“Go ahead.”

Mari edged closer between Glenn’s thighs and caressed the length of Glenn’s back, tracing the tight muscles along her spine and between her shoulders. She slid her hands inside Glenn’s collar and dipped her fingertips into the delicate hollows above her collarbones.

Quivering, her insides in knots, Glenn stayed as still as she could, letting Mari explore her, every muscle so tight she felt as if they might shred from her bones. When Mari lowered her head and kissed the angle of her jaw, Glenn’s vision wavered.

“Can we lie down?” Mari asked almost dreamily.

Glenn couldn’t refuse her, as dangerous as that would be. She could never remember need so powerful her insides hurt. She swung around, guided Mari down to the bed, and stretched out beside her. Turning on her side, she rested her hand on Mari’s hip. Mari inched nearer, her lips flushed and swollen from their kisses, her eyes wide and dark and moist. Glenn kissed her.

“You’re beautiful, Mari.”

Mari gripped Glenn’s shirt, her hips rocking insistently against Glenn’s. “Do that some more.”

Laughing softly, Glenn followed orders.

Kissing Mari was like discovering water in the desert and greedily filling the barren places inside that had lain parched and empty after the wastelands of the world had drained her dry. Mari arched against her with a moan, and Glenn’s body came alive with a jolt. She eased on top of her, her thigh between Mari’s, her weight resting on her elbows. She kissed Mari’s mouth, the tip of her chin, the hollow at the base of her throat. Mari’s hands scattered over her back, exploring, restless and demanding, setting Glenn’s flesh aflame.

Mari tugged Glenn’s shirt from the waistband of her jeans and found skin. When she skimmed her fingers over the hollow at the base of Glenn’s spine, Glenn stiffened.

“Easy,” she murmured. “You’ll make me forget my promise to just kiss.”

“I don’t care,” Mari gasped. She loved the weight of Glenn’s body over hers, the feel of their legs entwining, the ache that pounded in the pulse between her thighs. “It feels so good. I want you to touch me. Will you touch me?”

Glenn eased a hand under the bottom of Mari’s top, caressed her middle, thumb brushing just below her navel. “Tell me what you like.”

“I…I don’t know. Whatever you’re doing. It’s wonderful. I never thought it would be like this.”

Glenn stilled, her palm pressed to the bare skin of Mari’s stomach. Something clawed at the surface of her addled brain, a warning bell, clear and sharp. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“God, I just want you to make it stop—whatever, anything, I don’t care.” Mari bent one leg over Glenn’s, lifted her hips, pressed full-length against her. God, she couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t stand the churning fire between her thighs another second. “Anything.”

“This isn’t the first time?”

Mari struggled to make sense of words while drowning in sensation. “What? Oh. Yes.”

“Ever?”

Clarity rushed in, doused the fire melting Mari’s reason. She pulled back, read worry in the lines in Glenn’s brow. “Does it matter?”

“Hell, yes.” Glenn pushed herself off, leaned up on an elbow, and studied Mari’s face. “You were the one who said no involvement, no intimacies.”

“What difference does it make if I’m a virgin?”

“Because this is pretty damned intimate, especially if you’ve never done it before. Why now? What’s changed?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, neither do I.” Glenn didn’t know what she’d been hoping to hear—that Mari had changed her mind, that she’d discarded her self-imposed exile until she was sure she would remain disease free? Maybe, if she was honest with herself, she’d been hoping to hear Mari wanted her enough to say Fuck waiting . But Mari hadn’t changed her mind, she hadn’t even been aware of where they were headed, and she’d be damned if she’d take advantage of the heat of the moment. Not when Mari was likely to regret it before morning. “But I know you ought to think about what you’re doing.”

Mari sat up, anger and hurt twisting in her middle. “Don’t you mean you need to think?”