Coalescence - SF3 (38 page)

The conversation reverted to a teasing game in which Ryan tried to think of the most awkward Irish names for their children. Jamie finally called a draw with Phelum and Fergal for a boy, and Dymphna or Gobnait for a girl. As they prepared to leave the club Jamie felt a brief flash of panic as she mused,
She’s kidding, right? Please God, don’t let her grandmother’s name be Gobnait!

It was after two when they returned home, and to their extreme pleasure the key to the door that contained the recording equipment was in the mailbox when they arrived. Jamie kissed the envelope with a big smack, and they dropped off their purchases and raced each other to the garage.

Jamie slid the key into the lock, and smiled in satisfaction as the knob turned. "Whew!" she said, dramatically wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. They walked into the small room together and looked around at the array of monitors displaying images from around the property. Just as Jamie had suspected, there were cameras in the courtyard, near the rear and front doors, in the foyer, up the main staircase, in the pool house, the garage and the gym. There was also one located near the front door of each apartment, but none inside. There was no camera in the kitchen or any other living area in the main house, and Jamie sighed in relief, at the knowledge that, no matter what, at least her mother would not see them defiling her precious concrete counters.

The room contained four large recorders sitting on big metal racks. It looked as though one recorder captured still shots of the courtyard, the access doors, the main staircase, the pool house, and the apartment entrances. A separate recorder was dedicated to the foyer, another to the gym, and a third to the garage. As they sat and watched the cameras work, it became clear that the largest recorder captured shots of most of the property in sequence, showing a photo of the rear door, followed by one of the front door about 30 seconds later. The rest of the exterior followed, so that every three minutes there was a shot from every camera.

Regrettably, the cameras in the gym, the foyer and the garage were dedicated to just that area. The camera took a still about every 30 seconds, so the tape was a very choppy rendition of the activity occurring in that space. Nonetheless, as they rewound the tape from the foyer, it was obvious what was occurring on Monday afternoon when they arrived. The first shot was of Jamie pinning Ryan to the door. The next was of Jamie fumbling with Ryan’s zipper as she tried to remove her pants. The third shot was of Jamie pushing her hips against Ryan while she grasped her butt firmly. The last still was of Ryan lifting Jamie into her arms, mouths locked together. They looked at each other with wide eyes. "Now what?" they said in unison.

"I’m really not sure," Ryan admitted. "Obviously, if worst comes to worse worst we’ll just destroy the tapes and hope they don’t notice, or plead ignorance if they do. But I only want to do that as a last resort. Maybe we should wait for Conor. He’s a whiz with electronics. And if anybody is an expert in getting out of trouble, it’s Conor. He has years of experience!"

"Okay," Jamie agreed, a bit hesitantly. "But he won’t have to look at these, will he?"

"No, Baby," Ryan promised, wrapping her arms around her partner. "I guarantee no one will see these tapes. Except me!" she added with a leer, as she rewound the tape from the gym. "I bet this one is a scorcher!"

Jamie protested, a bit feebly, but she secretly wanted to see their lovemaking also. She had to admit that seeing Ryan do squats was hot, even in still photos. But she was mortally embarrassed that the tapes showed just how in control she was. Ryan looked like putty in her hands, as she was guided around the room with a glazed expression on her face. "I hardly knew where I was," she admitted with a chuckle as they watched the images roll across the screen.

"You do look a bit blank," Jamie agreed, as yet another image of a stunned looking Ryan flashed by. "God, I hate to admit this, but I’m getting hot!" she said as she rested her head on Ryan’s chest. "This is like watching porn!"

"It most certainly is not!" Ryan protested. "Porn is…it’s…it’s about exploitation, Jamie. This was about love. The fact that it turns you on to fulfill some of your fantasies doesn’t make it pornographic. It’s still just you and me, loving each other in different ways at different times. Just because it’s a little wild doesn’t make it any less loving, Sweetheart."

"I...I...I guess you’re right, Ryan. It just makes me uncomfortable to see how in control I look."

"Jamie, Sweetheart," Ryan cooed. "I thought we had resolved this last night. You told me then that you were feeling okay about this. What happened, Baby?"

"I don’t know," she admitted glumly, shaking her head. "I guess the pictures made it seem worse to me."

"I think we need to talk about this a little bit," Ryan said, as she took her hand and led her out of the room. She sat down on a weight bench and pulled Jamie onto her lap. "You seem to feel that being in control is a very bad thing, Baby."

"It feels like it is," Jamie confirmed, blushing at her admission.

"Let’s start at the beginning," Ryan suggested. "I want you to tell me how you learned about sex. Did your mom talk to you about it at all?"

"Huh-uh," she said, as she shook her head. "Neither of my parents was very good at that kind of thing. My nanny, Elizabeth, was in charge of all of that stuff."

"Tell me about her," Ryan prodded, not having heard of this woman before.

"She was really a sweet woman," Jamie recalled. "She was probably close to 60 when I was born, and she came to work for us the day they brought me home from the hospital. She didn’t have any duties other than raising me. I mean, she didn’t have to cook or clean or anything. So we spent practically all of our time together. I would guess that my character was formed by her more than my parents, at least for the first few years."

"Did she talk to you about sex?" Ryan gently inquired.

"Yeah, she did," Jamie admitted. "She was very English and very proper, always answered my questions, but in a clinical way. I do remember her telling me that sex was something that your husband was in charge of. She gave me the clear impression that it was something that women had to bear." Ryan didn’t say a word, wanting Jamie to talk about as many memories as she could dredge up. "I remember when I first got my period. She told me that it was another trial that women were put through, like childbirth. I remember thinking that all of this stuff was tied up together, you know? Menstruation, sex and childbirth. They all seemed like mysterious and painful things."

"Did she have children?"

"No, she and her sister were spinsters. They live together now, back in England."

"What else do you remember?" Ryan asked.

"I do remember when I first started to date boys. She sat me down and had a very long talk with me about how they would all want to touch me, but that I shouldn’t let them. She really made it sound kind of scary, and I was kinda freaked when guys first started trying to touch me. I remember thinking that it was some sort of game, and that I would lose if I let them do what they wanted."

"Wow!" Ryan said as she shook her head. "That’s not a very sex positive message to give to a young girl. Did you believe everything she said?"

"Yeah, I did," she admitted. "I might have doubted her, but from the first date I had, the
boys
were
trying
to get into my pants. I wasn’t allowed to start dating until I was 15, and the boys in my school were really pretty wild. Most of them had already had sex by the time they took me out, and it was just a constant struggle. The older I got, the worse it became; it was kind of a game for the guys to see who could get me to give it up. But you know me," she said with a chuckle. "There’s no better way to get me to dig in my heels than to try to force me to do something."

Now that she finally knew how hot her lover was sexually, Ryan asked a question that had puzzled her for months. "Did you really not want to have sex?"

Jamie leaned against her chest and let out a heavy sigh. "It’s hard to say. I probably would have if I had gone out with someone who didn’t try to force themselves on me," she admitted. "I don’t know why guys can’t figure this out. If they’d just act like they were casual about it and not push so damn hard, they’d probably get a lot more."

"Is that what happened with Jack?" Ryan asked, not wanting to pry, but genuinely curious about her lover’s sexual development.

"Yeah, it is," she admitted with a small smile. "The first time we went out he tried to kiss me a little too intimately for my taste. I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn’t do that kind of thing with guys I didn’t know well. He’s as stubborn as I am, and I think he took it as a personal challenge. He really backed off, and I was eventually the one who started going a little farther each time we went out. He would just sit there with this smug little smile on his face while I was going crazy!"

"Smart man," Ryan said with a grin. "That’s a very effective ploy." She had used the trick a time or two herself, and Jack climbed up a few notches in her estimation for being so crafty.

Jamie shot her a smirk and agreed, "Oh, yeah. He’s pretty quick. I have to admit that’s why I eventually trusted him enough to sleep with him. It felt safe since he wasn’t pushing. After he asked me to marry him, I knew how committed he was, and I felt free to be with him totally."

"But even with that commitment you weren’t free from those old warnings, were you?" Ryan seemed to understand her situation completely, and Jamie felt her unease about discussing the topic fade away.

She shook her head, rubbing her head against Ryan’s chest in the process. "No, all of those years of saying no still hadn’t gone away. I just expected Jack to know what to do, and I thought I could just lie there and have him make me feel good. I think it caught him by surprise since I was pretty aggressive when we used to just kiss and touch each other. But once we started to have intercourse, I got really submissive. The stupidest thing we did was that we failed to talk about it. I know both of us were disappointed, but we just didn’t try to work it out. I think we both had issues about sex that prohibited us from really looking at the underlying problem. When we tried to get back together, things were better because we talked, but it was too late by then, since I was so in love with you."

"What do you think your issues about sex were, Hon?" Ryan asked gently. If the problems that Jamie and Jack had experienced were isolated within their relationship, Ryan didn’t want to pry. But she had a strong feeling that whatever problems occurred in the past might crop up again, and she was determined to avoid that at all costs.

"I know this sounds crazy, but I never got over the feeling that sex was something Jack took from me. Do you understand what I mean?"

"I’m not sure," Ryan admitted, honestly having no idea what Jamie was talking about.

"Well, I think I felt that sex was mine to give or withhold. He was always ready to go--kind of like you," she said with a little tweak of Ryan’s chin. "I felt like I had to control how much sex we had because he would just consume me if I didn’t. It’s like I felt it was a precious resource that I had to conserve."

"Did that make you feel like you couldn’t express yourself fully?"

"Yeah, it did. It really did." She wriggled around in Ryan’s lap trying to get comfortable, but she realized that must be even more uncomfortable for her partner, so she got up and tugged her over to a cozy chair that faced the large-screen television. "Better?"

Ryan grinned up at her and snuggled closer.

"It’s like this, Babe," Jamie continued. "There was no room for me to explore. Any time I gave him the slightest signal, he wanted to get horizontal. Not that that’s bad, of course. But it didn’t allow me to try little things and see how I felt about them." She smiled up at Ryan and added, "That’s the most wonderful gift you’ve given me. Letting me play with you without you jumping on me really freed me up to explore myself a little bit. Obviously, that’s an ongoing process, but I feel so much better now, it’s really remarkable."

"Do I ever make you feel overwhelmed?" Ryan asked softly, hoping that she had never pushed too far.

"Well…yeah," she said as her face curled into a smirk. "But I like it when you overwhelm me." Jamie’s voice had taken on a sultry tone, and she snuck a little nibble of an always tempting and conveniently located ear.

"Not that way," Ryan chuckled as she pinched her sides. "Do I ever make you feel like I’m asking for too much? Do you ever fear me, or feel that I’m consuming you?"

An impish grin had settled on Jamie’s face as she replied. "I think I’ve shown that I no longer have an issue with the consuming thing, either, Honey."

That comment earned her a serious tickle attack, and when Ryan had delivered her punishment she calmed down and answered the question seriously. "I don’t ever feel that way with you, Ryan. I don’t understand exactly why I feel so comfortable with you, but I really do. Maybe it’s because you seem to get so much pleasure out of satisfying me. Sex with you doesn’t just seem like it’s all about you. I mean, it was really discouraging to Jack when I would fail to have an orgasm. But he wasn’t really willing to do whatever it took to help me get there. He just wanted to have intercourse and make me come that way. And that rarely worked for me. But with you," she said, resting her head on Ryan’s shoulder, "I can feel how much pleasure you get out of my enjoyment. And I know it’s not because you want to use my body to have an orgasm. You’re really doing it for me. Just me," she said softly.

"I appreciate the thought, but that’s not really true," Ryan whispered. "I get so much satisfaction out of watching your face and touching your body, that it feels like it’s just as much for me. It’s truly a toss up as to how I get more pleasure. If you never touched me again, I could honestly be happy just loving you."