More Than Paradise Part 17

"Machete?"

"It's a long story," She gave a de ective smile. "I'll tell you sometime over a civilized meal."

"You lived," Charlotte said softly.

Ash could not take her eyes off that full, pursed bow of a mouth.

She was made for kissing. It needed to happen soon or that fortuitous sense of calm would evaporate and Ash would probably blow everything by grabbing her.

Holding herself in check, she asked the question that kept repeating in the back of her mind. "Charlotte, why me?"

Charlotte took a while to think about it, then answered, "Honestly?

I don't know."

Ash shrugged. She didn't want to give the impression that the answer had mattered. She let it go, and because Charlotte seemed hesitant, she pulled her tank off for her and said, "You know this is killing me, don't you?"

Charlotte withdrew her hand and regarded her gravely. "You don't like it?" She sounded genuinely anxious.

"Quite the opposite. You're making me so h.o.r.n.y I'll probably drown in that waterfall, thanks to the distraction level."

To her relief, Charlotte's uncertainty vanished and, after a long look at Ash's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she shifted her attention to the briefs that stood between them and a real skinny-dip.

"I should tell you something," she con ded as she edged a nger around the waistband. Pink ooded her cheeks.

Wondering what this babe in the woods could possibly need to confess to, Ash murmured, "Yes?"

"I'm not as experienced as you."

* 152 *

Ash smiled. Tracing a solitary nger from Charlotte's throat to the bony recess of her heart, she said truthfully, "I like that about you."

The two small dark eyebrows angled together like b.u.t.ter y wings, joined in the center by a narrow crease. "I'm mentioning this because I don't want to disappoint you."

Her quaint formality made Ash think before answering. Normally she would have treated this conversation as play, but she sensed Charlotte wasn't teasing. She watched the shifting expressions on her face, the tiny giveaway signs of emotion. No, she wasn't pretending.

Her anxiety stemmed from a lack of con dence. She was trying to be honest and open about something that must have been an issue before, with other lovers. And maybe she had some far-fetched ideas about what butches expected from their s.e.xual partners. Over the years Ash had run into all the usual stereotypes in that department.

Hoping to cover as many bases as she could, she adopted a casual tone and said, "How about if I just tell you what I want. I think I'd nd that quite a turn-on."

The chest beneath her ngertip rose and fell with a slow, deep breath and Charlotte's beautiful mouth relaxed. The pressure was off.

"I'd like that."

Ash stepped toward her and curled a hand behind her neck, cupping the base of her skull. "See how easy it is." She brushed her lips back and forth over Charlotte's. "Any time you're not comfortable, just tell me."

She tilted Charlotte's head back a little more and pressed closer, taking in her creamy oriental scent. Delicious. Even in this humid zone.

Even with some perspiration. She placed the tip of her tongue a fraction beneath Charlotte's upper lip and slowly sucked until she was invited inside.

Caressing gently with her tongue, she moved against Charlotte, letting her know she was wanted. Charlotte responded with a soft whimper of antic.i.p.ation, her nipples peaking marble hard against Ash's chest. The response kicked Ash's heart into an up-tempo beat that pounded through her body. Blood rushed south and she let both her hands slide to Charlotte's b.u.t.t, cupping the rm cheeks and lifting her just enough so they connected completely.

Charlotte ended their kiss by catching her breath. Dazed gray eyes stared into hers.

Ash said, "Let's wash. I need you."

* 153 *

Charlotte shuddered and the arms wrapped around Ash fell.

Somehow they stumbled into the chill cascade, where they washed and licked and caressed each other, imprinting taste and smell. Ash could feel every pore contract as Charlotte's hands brushed over her. The delicacy of her touch was maddening. Her small hesitations and careful avoidance of b.r.e.a.s.t.s and groin made Ash ache for her relentlessly.

A stream of sunlight seeped through the leafy vault above, bleeding re ected color onto the water's surface, and Ash stared around at a paradise so vivid and sensuous it could have owed from the palette of a master. The ceaseless drone of the jungle pounded in her ears, surging with the ebb and ow of blood in her veins. She caught Charlotte beneath the arms and lifted her onto one of the natural stepping stones leading down into the pool.

They returned to the spot beneath the magnolia tree where their clothes were piled. Ash unrolled the sleeping pad she'd strapped to her backpack that morning and positioned it on the spongiest patch of interlaced vines she could nd. Then she spread her spare cotton sleeping bag liner over the top. It was clean. That, she'd made sure of.

Orchids clamored on all sides and Ash was drunk with their scent.

She couldn't help but be struck by the blatant s.e.xual allure of the plants.

Petals splayed wide. Moist, softly parted pink lips hungering toward rigid little shafts.

"It's a bower," Charlotte breathed. She clasped her hands behind Ash's neck and allowed herself to be lowered onto the improvised bed.

They stared at one another.

Ash asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, very sure."

Charlotte's mouth was orchidlike. Ash wanted to feed her tongue over the eshy folds. She closed her eyes and breathed in Charlotte's scent, an animal tang in a heady oral sea. Kneeling, bending down, she sealed their lips together, at rst in tender pledge then in silky, searing demand. Charlotte tilted her head in yielding compliance, inviting Ash to linger in the dusky almond wetness of her mouth. Still, she thirsted for more, her blood pulsing furiously through her body.

Charlotte felt new and good, all hers. There was something remarkably innocent about her for a woman of thirty-some years. Ash touched her. Smooth strokes, down the long pure line of her throat and the supple curves beyond. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her sides. Her hips.

* 154 *

"You're beautiful," she murmured, dragging a nipple beneath the tip of one nger, back and forth, watching it extend and pull at the pale skin around it.

The soft sounds in Charlotte's throat urged more. Ash wanted to take her time, she wanted to tease and caress her along a well-plotted course toward perfect satisfaction. But her self-control was slipping.

Holding back was torture. Her body was tight and swollen, bent on a course of its own. At this galloping rate, she would come rst. Not what she was planning.

She slid a hand between Charlotte's thighs, grinding gently into her esh. Charlotte opened eyes dark and heavy with languid promise.

Wordlessly, she parted her legs. Ash pressed harder. Something in Charlotte's expression altered and she reached up and slid her hands over Ash's shoulders, insistently drawing her down until they were rocking and sighing together in the ancient cadence of lovers.

Ash was completely undone by the thrilling shock of Charlotte's body, opening to her, the slippery blush of esh sealing around her ngers, the squeeze and pulse that matched her own. And she was startled when Charlotte's hand slipped down between their bodies to embark on her own exploration.

She didn't arrest the rst tentative strokes as she would normally.

Instead, catching a ash of apprehension in Charlotte's gaze, she guided her hand along the narrow ridge where her tension centered.

"Oh, baby. That's good," she groaned. "You'll make me come if you don't stop right now."

Charlotte's eyes glowed and she became intent about the rm gliding strokes. Resigning herself to the inevitable, Ash let go of her control and watched her lover's face ush with delight when she discovered how easy it was drive her straight off the edge. She was still convulsing when Charlotte whispered in awe, "Was that...?"

"Yes." Ash lifted her small hand away from the exquisitely sensitive posto.r.g.a.s.mic parts, explaining hoa.r.s.ely, "Afterward...I nd it too much."

"Oops. I'm sorry. Normally no one lets me do that, so I'm...kind of inept."

Ash couldn't remember ever having a discussion like this during s.e.x. But nothing else had gone exactly to script, either, so she expressed her opinion frankly. "Well, you've been sleeping with the wrong people."

* 155 *

She kissed Charlotte deeply and slowly, giving her own breathing time to settle. All the while she kept her ngers poised inside, awaiting a return of focus. When Charlotte arched her back in reminder, she said, "I should punish you for distracting me."

Charlotte draped one of her legs over Ash's hip and bucked a little against her hand. "Punish me some other time," she responded throatily.

"Be careful what you wish for." Ash eased her ngers slowly free of their slippery sheath until the tips barely teased inside.

Charlotte whimpered her name.

"Want something?" As she said it, she was back on track, that familiar hunger grinding inside. Heart pounding, she slid her left arm beneath Charlotte, gathering her close. Gazing down at her, she thrust inside.

"Yes!" Charlotte bore down on her. Avid concentration stilled her face.

Ash could feel the pressure building inside her, the rippling and gathering of muscles, and the stiffening of her body. She was almost there, losing herself. Panting. Moaning. Eyes closed. Head thrown back.

One of her out ung hands gripped an orchid. Slowly, inexorably, she crushed it as she began to spasm. And while she rocked and shuddered in release, a stain of amethyst juice trickled between her ngers. Eyes the same color frantically sought Ash's.

"Hold me," Charlotte begged, and burst into tears.

v Many hours later, lying in Ash's arms in their tent, Charlotte said, "I was thinking about that night."

Ash shifted a little to get more comfortable. They'd joined their in atable pads and zipped their sleeping bags together. "What night?"

"Back home. At Tamsin's house. When you were in the bathroom listening."

"What about it?"

"You slept with both those women?"

Ash sighed. "Charlotte, I haven't lived like a nun. I'm sorry you ever had to know about it. Okay?"

Charlotte hesitated. "I just hate the thought."

* 156 *

"You have nothing to be jealous about, trust me. It was just s.e.x.

And when that's all it is, who cares whether it's with one person or ten?"

Charlotte felt queasy. Britt's excuses echoed in the corridors of her memory. It's just s.e.x. It didn't mean anything.

"Is that what today was?" she asked. "Just s.e.x?"

Ash rolled them both onto their sides so they faced each other.

"How can you think that?" She placed a hand on Charlotte's belly.

"What does your gut tell you?"

It was more, so much more. At least that was true for her. If Charlotte were honest with herself, she had to accept that there was no way she could measure what she'd experienced. It was completely new.

By any standard, Ash was an exceptional lover. Charlotte knew that much from having close friends who talked about s.e.x. Most of them had much more interesting encounters than she ever did. But until now she'd thought some of their accounts exaggerated. Obviously s.e.x was a highly subjective experience. Those recalling it through rose-tinted spectacles could be expected to claim transcendent physical and emotional pleasure. But even with Britt, Charlotte hadn't come close to such delusions.

Ash was another story, a tale her body insistently told even now, in the damp tenderness between her thighs and the honeyed heaviness of her limbs. The impression of Ash's kiss, her tantalizing scent, the pledge of their joined esh, was written where there had only been blankness before. It could not be erased. Charlotte could not return to the way she was before Ash-numb, a stranger to the pa.s.sionate self within. Everything had changed.

She only wished she could trust that the change was rooted in reality. She'd felt alive with Britt, too. She'd fallen in love and handed her common sense in at the door. Britt had been a player, too, but insisted their relationship had changed all that because they were in love. Charlotte had believed every lie she was told. She had happily fallen sucker to every self-serving promise. Incredibly, whenever her doubts began to harden, Britt would sense her withdrawal and yank an emotional rabbit out of a hat. She knew exactly what Charlotte needed to hear at those times and, like the successful trial lawyer she was, she delivered.

It had taken Charlotte far too long to realize the promises and * 157 *

declarations were nothing more than the currency it took to keep her in the relationship. They were words. Closing arguments. Britt never had any intention of following her promises up with actions. Charlotte would not be made a fool of a second time, with another woman who thought the way Britt did.

In the end, she'd understood that Britt felt ent.i.tled to have it all- the wife who meant something and the extracurricular s.e.x that meant nothing. Thank goodness they'd been unlucky with the turkey baster.

She'd been bitterly disappointed back then and she still wished she had a child, but she was thankful it hadn't happened with Britt. The Fates had done her a favor.

Inhaling the scent of Ash's skin, she nestled closer, comforted by the fading traces of her clean spicy fragrance. A strange melancholy had corroded her joy. Puzzled, she allowed herself to be cradled, parting her legs to scissor with Ash's.

"You haven't answered me." Ash paused. "Or maybe you have."

Charlotte said. "I don't know if I can."

She wanted to believe there was more to this than two lonely people unanch.o.r.ed in a world without consequences, each enjoying the other while she could. But she'd kept herself safe for the last ve years by remembering the lessons of history, not repeating them.

Yes, she thought their lovemaking was far from mere physical union. And yes, she had feelings for Ash. That alone meant her judgment could not be trusted.

* 158 *

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.