Kat leads me inside my own house. Maybe we should have met at her place, where there aren’t so many pictures of Sam strewn across the lounge.
But I let Katherine take the lead. I need to let her. I know what will happen if I take it from her. My brain will start short-circuiting again and I will thwart all her wonderful, thoughtful intentions.
Even though I invited Katherine over to have a much-needed chat, I think I’ve said all I can say for one night. I’ve said more than I have said to anyone—apart from Jill—in a very long time.
Last night’s conversation with Hilda had me tossing and turning for a while, her words rummaging through my head, keeping me awake, until I found some small comfort in the fact that Sam could, at least, talk to Hilda, while I shut myself off from her. While I was trying to explain something to Jill that I would only truly come to understand after Sam died.
I needed time and I didn’t know we wouldn’t have the time. But I realize that I couldn’t know this then. It was impossible for me to know that Sam’s time was up when I rebuffed her advances for the umpteenth time, saying, “Later.” I wasn’t to know that, for the two of us, there was no more later.
Hilda was right. I’m the only one who can forgive myself for that. And just maybe, Katherine leading me up the stairs of my own house the way she’s doing now, can help me with that. Because one thing’s for sure: I need a little help. Frankly, I need all the help I can get. Because I’m still alive, even though, for the longest time, it felt like a crucial part of me had died with Sam.
Kat stops in front of my bedroom door.
“I’m not going to do one single thing you don’t want me to do,” she says solemnly. “But do know that every single thing I do, I’ll want to do with all my heart.”
She stands in front of me the way I’ve come to know her. So tall and charismatic and impossible to ignore. For a split second, it occurs to me how foolish I was to walk away from her last Sunday. A woman like this. The exact same sentiment applied to Sam when I had thoughts about leaving her, while all I ever really wanted was to be with her. Even though I didn’t know how to do it, how to break through that wall. I had no clue how to demolish the thought patterns I had carefully constructed to save myself from some upcoming pain—while the most excruciating pain was already tearing me apart. Tearing us apart.
It’s for Sam that I nod at Katherine. It’s for Sam that, today, I decide to trust Kat and her great big heart—because Hilda was right about that as well. It’s for Sam that I’m letting Katherine in. I’ll never get the chance to do that with Sam anymore. But Sam is dead and I’m alive. And here I stand, gazing into Kat’s dark eyes.
“You’re so beautiful,” I say. And maybe because of the darkness in my heart I didn’t think I deserved to be touched by such beauty. But my mind is changing. Three women who have survived with me have taken care of that. My sister, my therapist, and Katherine Jones. My nephew’s best friend. A woman I deemed so incompatible with me, I sabotaged my feelings for her from the very beginning.
“Right back at you,” Kat says, and her smile melts me to the very core. “Shall we go in?” she asks, her voice soft and warm.
“Yes, please.”
She opens the door and we walk into my bedroom.
Once inside, something about Katherine changes, a slight shift in her demeanor. As though, now that’s she’s gotten me over the threshold of this room, she knows she’s got me.
She might be right.
She brings her hand to the top button of my shirt—I dressed up for her visit—and asks, “May I take this off?” Her head is tilted and her voice husky and low.
I couldn’t even protest if I wanted to. Something in me has changed as well.
“You don’t have to ask permission for everything you do,” I say. “I trust you, and you need to trust me to let you know when I want you to stop.”
“Deal.” Katherine’s smile is so wide and inviting that, before she has the chance to undo one of my buttons, I pull her in for a kiss.
This kiss is different from all the others we have exchanged since we met, because, as I kiss her, I let go of my biggest fear. Whenever a thought creeps up on me that I’m betraying Sam or myself or, even, deceiving Katherine by doing this, by allowing this, I shut it down firmly. I talk back, the way Jill has taught me to do, something I never seemed to have gotten the hang of until now—and I simply enjoy the exquisite sensation of Katherine’s lips on mine.
I enjoy the anticipation, the thrill in the air, because I’m no longer afraid of what might happen. I’m no longer wasting all my energy and focus on coming up with plausible excuses for why I want her to stop. The biggest excuse dissolving when I told her the truth. When I admitted my inadequacies as a partner and a lover. Not only to her, but to myself. I’ve not forgiven myself for any of that just yet. But Katherine has promised to help me with that and, just as I trust her to only have my very best interests at heart when she removes my jeans later—as I know she will—I trust that she will help me with finding that forgiveness somewhere inside myself as well.
She has already done so much for me.
“You’re distracting me from the task at hand,” she says, when we break from our kiss. Her red lipstick is smeared all over her mouth and the sight of it makes me smile. It’s a smile that emanates all the way from my core. My entire body is smiling as I look at Katherine, as I take her in, drink her in, let her presence overwhelm me. As I relinquish control in a way I haven’t been able to do in years. Sometimes you need to start over, I think, as my gaze follows the motions of Kat’s hands on my buttons. Sometimes you need to hit that reset button and try again. Because being with Katherine will never erase who I was with Sam, on my good days and my bad days, but it will give me a chance to try to be my best self again.
She guides my shirt off and ogles my bra. But before she touches me again, she hoists her own top over her head and gets rid of her own bra first.
The sight of her bare breasts makes my mouth water. I’ve been such a fool to deny myself this because standing here with Kat, knowing, in every fiber of my being what’s going to happen next, makes me feel much more alive than I ever was in the months before Sam died. It’s a hard thing to admit but it’s also a comforting thought, because this is how life is. It knocks you down one day, only to pick you up the next.
Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m sad; mostly, I’m somewhere in between. Then a woman like Katherine comes along, a woman with her own myriad of complications, but a woman so radiant, so confident, so sure of herself when she comes for me, it would be foolish to resist any further. It would be foolish to resist that burst of happiness she brings with her when she walks through my door. When, as now, she brings her hands to my back, and unhooks my bra.
She throws it onto a chair, then looks me in the eye, before dropping her gaze. Her glance on my breasts makes my nipples rise up, as though they’re reaching toward her. She glances up at me again, briefly, looking for signs of me wanting her to stop—but I don’t want her to stop.
She lifts her hands to my breasts and cups them ever so gently. Her touch is so warm, so exhilarating, such a shocking reminder of things I’d never thought I’d feel again, a single tear rolls down my cheek. It falls off my chin, onto the back of her hand. She leans in and kisses it away, while her hands softly cup my breasts.
It’s then I know that someone like Katherine is what I’ve needed all along. Someone to kiss away my tears, to break down my walls, to give me pleasure once again. As her fingers curl around my nipples, I’m beginning to believe that I might just deserve it—that I might just deserve her.
I revel in the sensation of her hands on my breasts, her fingers on my nipples. I keep my eyes wide open so I can see her face. A small part of me is afraid that, when I close them, I’ll see Sam’s face. With that look she gave me toward the end. All desperation and need. So I focus on Katherine’s lovely features. Her big brown eyes. The lipstick I smudged on her lips earlier. She tilts her head a little. Another question. But it’s one I don’t have to reply to, not anymore. She can read it in my eyes now, I’m sure of that.
Kat lifts my breast to her lips and takes my nipple in her mouth. I do close my eyes then—her face is out of view anyway. On the back of my eyelids, while Kat’s tongue skates along my nipple, I don’t see Sam. I don’t see anything at all. And isn’t that the point of closing my eyes? To no longer see and to magnify the sensation of her tongue lavishing itself on my nipple. Because that’s what it feels like. She started off gently, but now she’s sucking my nipple into her mouth and all I feel is her hunger for me. The difference with the last time I faced Kat’s hunger is that, now, I feed off of it myself. My desire grows with hers. My thoughts are no longer in the way. Kat wants me and I want her. It really can be that simple.
Before Kat focuses on my other nipple, she pauses briefly. I open my eyes and catch her glancing up at me. God, her eyes. In them I see a blend of kindness and unbridled lust. It’s not the first time I’ve come across that look in her eyes. It’s the kind of look, I know now, that will thaw the coldest of ice queens. How did I manage to resist it before? Because I sure can’t do that anymore now.
I give her a slight nod of the head so she’ll know I want more. Much more.
Instead of enveloping my other nipple with her lips, she takes my hand and leads me to the bed. We lie down, I on my back and Kat half on top of me. Our breasts are pressed together and I don’t know what I want more. For Kat to lick my nipples again or for her to gaze into my eyes like this for a good while longer.
“I want you,” I say. My voice is not shy or timid—there’s not a glimmer of doubt in it. I want it all. I want her.
“You’ve got me,” she says, and kisses me on the lips, while her hand meanders to the button of my jeans.
My limbs don’t stiffen—nothing about me is rigid anymore. My body welcomes her because my mind’s letting her in.
As she lowers my zipper, it’s as though, with that act, she lowers the last barrier around my heart—around my desire. It’s a freeing action, one that makes me tug my jeans off my legs in an almost helpless manner. But Kat is here to calm me down. She doesn’t say anything, she just puts her hand on my belly, which falls and rises quickly in time with my sharp, intoxicated intakes of breath.
Then I realize I was wrong. Taking off my jeans wasn’t the final barrier. Spreading my legs for her is. There’s so much release in the simple motion of letting my knees fall apart. It’s an invitation. A heartfelt invitation for her to enter my most intimate space. It’s where I want her. But first, there’s that look again. I can still make out some kindness in her eyes, but they’re so dark with desire now that her glance raking over my body is enough for me to respond. And respond I do. By lowering my underwear. By freeing the path for her. And sure, she has seen me naked before, but this is a totally different kind of nakedness. This is me opening up to her, as wide as I will ever go. This is me under the spell of desire, under the spell of Katherine Jones.
Kat takes over and, torturously slow, guides the last piece of clothing off me. I need to spread for her—again. The flow of air between my legs is thrilling. My clit stands to immediate attention, which baffles me most of all. The way my body has taken over, whereas before, it was my mind that was in full control.
I’m not sure how she’s done it, but in a matter of seconds, Kat is naked as well. She must have picked up some special skills in her former life. I amaze myself again by being able to think of her like that, like the escort that she used to be, and not shut down completely. On the contrary. I open up more, spread my legs a little wider for her.
“I want you,” I repeat, nothing but urgency in my tone now. All the years without this blissful kind of intimacy catch up with me in that moment, a moment that’s been building since I met Kat.
She doesn’t respond with words this time but, instead, nestles herself between my legs. She kisses my lower belly while her hands reach for my breasts. Involuntarily, at least that’s how it seems, my hips move toward her. I feel her nipples against my thighs but, most of all, I feel her body close to my clit. Close, but still too far.
Kat kisses a path down my belly to my inner thighs. She peppers me with hot, wet kisses—all promises of what’s to come.
I bury my hands in her hair because I need to hold on to something—to her. Her lips are inches away from my clit. I can feel her breath on me there already. Years of sensual deprivation pool in my core. All my lust focused on one woman and what she’s doing to me with her mouth. Her lips are just above my clit now, and already, I’m close to exploding. To reaching the ultimate surrender. Because I was wrong once again. This is the final stage. The moment her tongue connects with my clit.
Her mouth on me there is unspeakably warm. It sparks in me such a rush of lightness, I may as well be levitating off the bed. I feel like I’ve just taken the most potent happiness drug on the planet—maybe I have.
Kat licks me between my legs and I feel it everywhere, in every last fiber of my being. It changes the fabric of me forever. I already know that, after this, I won’t be the same. Every time she flicks her tongue over my clit, I’m a fraction further removed from the bitter, buttoned-up woman I allowed myself to become. And I know, deep in my heart, that this was the only way for me to break out of this shell.
At last, I’m ready.
THE END