Curious Wine (13 page)

As she accepted her wine glass from Lane, their eyes met. Her fingers touched Lane’s. Lane’s fingers released the glass slowly.

Liz laid out the Scrabble game. Lane returned to the fireplace, sitting again with her back against the stone, one leg drawn up, a hand dangling over her knee.

“I think I’ll turn in, too,” Millie said, and put her guitar in its case.

“I want to sit on this side of the table,” Diana said to Liz. “So I can look at the fire.”

She looked at Lane. Lane’s lips curved into a faint smile.

Diana arranged and formed words with her tiles, looking up from time to time, knowing each time she would meet eyes made blue by the deep blue of Lane’s pullover; and when she looked away she felt the blueness on her, warming her skin, her body, her blood.

Lane was standing by the window when Diana climbed the ladder. She remained there as Diana pulled up the ladder and lowered the trapdoor. “I didn’t notice who won your game,” she said.

“Neither did I,” Diana said, coming to her.

Lane took her hands. “Diana,” she said softly, “I’m so glad you came back. I didn’t know… I would never have done anything to hurt you —”

“I know.”

“I thought... I felt from your response last night… You’re a very responsive woman. I thought what was happening between us was what you wanted, too.”

“It was.” Diana added with a small smile, “Women can be very difficult.” “Yes.” Lane’s teeth looked very white as she smiled. Her fingers entwined with Diana’s. “Nothing will happen tonight that you don’t want.”

Diana looked directly into her eyes. “There is nothing,” she said carefully, “that could happen tonight that I wouldn’t want.”

She was in Lane’s arms, her body softening, yielding, seeking the tightness of her arms. Holding her closely,

Lane said, her voice almost inaudible, “You never leave doubt that I’m holding a woman.”

Diana whispered needfully, “Please, just hold me.” Warmth was pervading her body, and a feeling of peace.

The window rattled in a strong gust of wind. The pines shook and moaned. Diana shivered and felt Lane’s arms again tighten. Lane murmured, “Come to bed. You’ll be in my arms all night.”

The window rattled again; the cabin creaked in a sudden gust. Sitting on the side of the bed, Lane said, “The wind… so strong… I turned on the heater to keep us warm.” Her voice was distracted; her hands were unfastening Diana’s pajamas. “I want so much to look at you,” she whispered.

Diana lay nude, warm and weak under her gaze. Lane said quietly, “I thought I had imagined how lovely you would be.”

Diana lost awareness of her own nudity as she undressed Lane. Lane sat gracefully, patiently; Diana was slow with her, sliding the pajama top from her shoulders, contemplating her for long moments, absorbing the slender lines of her, the warm tones of her skin, the perfect round fullness and hang of her small breasts, the nipples firming even as Diana looked at them. She drew Lane’s pajamas over her hips shyly, hesitantly, gazing at the small mound of pale delicate hair, the curving, firm, athletic lines of her thighs and legs. Diana lay back on the bed, mute, holding her hands.

“Do you want the light out?” Lane asked, bending over her. “No.”

“Neither do I. I can’t look at you enough.”

“You are so beautiful,” whispered Diana, and reached for her.

Dimly, Diana heard Lane make an inarticulate sound. Lips touched Diana’s ear, warm breath, a sighing: “Oh soft… warm silk.”

Inside her arms, down her legs, on every surface of her body that pressed against the woman she held in her arms, Diana felt exquisite softness. Her senses were flooded and stunned with softness. Strangely disoriented, she said, “Lane,” to hear her own voice.

Lane cradled Diana’s head in her hands and looked into her eyes. She said gently, “Are you all right?”

Diana’s hands touched, moved over her bare slender shoulders.

She looked into eyes that were a deep gray-blue in the shadows and dim light from the lamp. She thought: What I feel is your body. The realization penetrated her, and a powerful stirring of desire.

“Yes,” she whispered, and blonde hair was silk in her hands, flowing, sifting through her fingers as she drew Lane’s mouth down to hers.

They kissed deeply, slowly, again and again, caressing each other, Diana’s hands exploring the softness of Lane with gentle wonder. Inhaling the fragrance of her, Diana kissed her throat, her shoulders; but Lane took her mouth away to bring Diana’s lips again to hers. Lane’s hands were warm and slow on her, and she kissed her body lingeringly, without pattern, her mouth a sweet melting where it touched, and Diana heard her muffled whisper, “Dear God… so wonderful…” Gentle hands caressed her breasts as Lane kissed them, long slow kisses, sweetest stroking of her nipples, and Diana succumbed to pleasure, sighing, stirring, murmuring in her pleasure.

Lane’s hands came to her body again, and overwhelmed her. She was ardent in Lane’s hands; she moved and turned and arched under the hands feeling, caressing, exciting her, and she heard gasps of excitement in Lane’s light, rapid breathing. No longer gentle, Lane held Diana tightly to her, pressing the softness of her body into her, kissing her in an intensity of desire. Drawing breath deeply into her, her body vibrant with sensation, Diana gasped her desire as Lane’s hand came again to her thighs.

“Diana… Oh God,” breathed Lane against her mouth. Her hand had cupped, fingers gently, wetly caressing.

Electrified with pleasure, Diana arched and trembled, all her breath held within her. Lane’s fingers stilled, and in a moment her hair fell over Diana’s legs. Diana gasped, arched again as Lane kissed inside her thighs. Lane moaned, a low rapturous sound; and then her mouth was paralyzing softness, paralyzing pleasure, and Diana was dissolved into ecstasy, her body taut and trembling, opening to it slowly, fully, perfectly, like a flower; filling with ecstasy, becoming ecstasy to her core; ecstasy finally so vivid that her body stilled and powerfully gathered. Her hips rose to thrust once; and she became incandescent with orgasm.

She lay in Lane’s arms struggling for breath, her body hammered by heartbeats.

Her face in Diana’s hair, Lane whispered “Diana,” murmuring it over and over.

Remembering the women below, Diana swallowed and found her voice, asking through labored breaths, “Did I make too much… Could… anybody hear?”

“No,” Lane answered, her voice husky. “Only me.”

Her body tranquil, pervaded by exquisite lassitude, she sat beside Lane, eyes closed, seeing with her mind the beauty of the body she caressed, the warm sculpture under her hands. She lingered for long moments over the extraordinary richness of breasts that were pliant under her fingers, yet so easily resumed their shape of sensual symmetry; and over soft fine hair, touching not to arouse, but to absorb texture. Her hands moved slowly down over her legs, holding the calves for a moment, then the ankles and feet.

She thought: Now I have the beauty of you in me to keep forever.

She laid the length of her body against Lane, and looked into gray-blue eyes that held an expression she finally decided was questioning. She said, “You know how very beautiful you are.”

“Only if you tell me. I need to know it from you. From you.”

Moved by the defenselessness of the words, swept by tenderness, Diana said, “I hope I can show you.”

With increasing excitement and intense enjoyment, she caressed Lane sensuously with her hands, kissing her breasts and the delicate hollows of her body with light tasting strokes of her tongue, acute to responses very different from her own: Lane’s body quiescent, her pleasure evident in her breathing, her hands in Diana’s hair holding Diana’s mouth to her. She brushed her hair over Lane, and then her breasts, pressing, then undulating them into her as she heard the pleasure she gave. “Beautiful, you’re so beautiful,” she whispered. “Everywhere I touch you is beautiful.” She kissed down curving softness to the top of her legs, her fingers gently, shyly touching the soft pale hair next to her cheek. She heard Lane’s faint whisper, “I need to hold you.”

Diana came to her and took her into her arms. Lane brought Diana’s hand to her, closing her legs; and making soft sounds she slid her arms around her, hands clasping Diana’s shoulders, face against her throat. Moved to tenderness, Diana explored the yielding softness, the delicateness of her, the warm wetness enveloping her fingers.

Lane’s whisper was barely audible: “Could you. be inside me?”

“Anything,” Diana whispered. “Like satin to me,” she murmured, her fingers exquisitely enclosed, feeling tremors in Lane’s body. She moved her fingers, caressing very lightly with her hand.

“Yes. Oh…”

Lane’s hands slowly tightened on her shoulders, her body tense and trembling, hips in erratic then urgent rhythm, her breathing quickening to ragged gasps. Then she became still, rigid; she made tiny sounds against Diana’s throat; her fingers dug convulsively into Diana’s shoulders; and Diana felt a quivering, felt the delicate body of the woman clinging so tightly to her begin to shudder, like leaves in the wind.

Diana’s heart thudded painfully as she held Lane, now quietly breathing, in her arms. Lane moved languorously, contentedly against her, blonde hair spilling over Diana’s breasts. She had pressed her body into Diana even as she had quivered against her fingers, and then had closed her legs to hold Diana inside her; it had been some time before she had allowed Diana to take her fingers from her.

Longing to touch her, caress her again, Diana said, “I want to kiss your back. Would you like that?”

“Mmm,” Lane murmured, smiling, kissing Diana’s breasts before she turned over.

Diana explored the planes and smooth graceful curves of her back, her hands lingering, sweeping lightly back and forth with sensual enjoyment in the deep curve between her back and the swell of her hips. She kissed her lightly, with puffs of warm air and strokes with the tip of her tongue, smiling as Lane made exaggerated purring sounds. She slipped her hands under her and cupped and caressed the softness of Lane’s breasts, sighing, blissful in her enjoyment, and pressed her own breasts into her. Her mouth traveled slowly, and when her tongue began to brush the fine hair in the hollow at the base of her spine, Lane’s nipples were swollen hard in her fingers.

In growing excitement, willing Lane not to roll over and stop her, Diana continued to descend her, feeling the plushness of cool hips pleasurably against her warm face, her tongue caressing in slow circles in the delicate crevice between her hips. Lane’s breathing changed, deepened, and her hips became an undulation of pleasure. Her heart pounding, Diana moved a hand down into soft fine hair, fingers very gently seeking. Lane’s breathing again became sharp intakes, and the motion of her hips changed, responding only to Diana’s fingers. Diana said, “Turn over.”

Suffused with pleasure and excitement, fully absorbed in her own sensation, she touched her lips to the soft fine hair, tasting the essence she had known with her fingers.

“God in heaven… Diana.”

Enthralled by the subtly changing, unique taste of her, she slowly discovered Lane with her mouth, her own excitement mounting with the growing fierceness of Lane’s movements. Lane’s hands in her hair guided her, finally becoming transfixed. She felt Lane’s strong shudders in a powerful surging ecstasy of her own.

Thighs that had writhed in Diana’s hands were now limp and seemed to have a poignant vulnerability as they fluttered and shivered. Lane’s hands stirred weakly in Diana’s hair; her breathing was deep and labored. Wanting only to hold her close, Diana tenderly drew her mouth from her, from the complex, lovely taste of her, the scent of her, like the sea.

They lay side by side, Lane holding Diana’s hand, looking at it, pensively tracing a finger over her palm. She had been in Diana’s arms for a long time, quiet and unmoving. She said, with a sideways glance at her, her voice soft and warm, “Are you planning any more ambushes?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Diana said, smiling.

“I remember the last time you said that. I asked if you were sure you were going to catch me during the encounter games.”

“The first time I had my arms around you.”

“You enjoyed it so much you dropped me,” Lane teased.

“You deserved it. You didn’t trust me.”

Lane said seriously, “You’re very trusting. You’re a very courageous and honest person.”

“Not so courageous,” murmured Diana. “I don’t know why you say that. You’re very honest.”

“With you, yes.”

“Haven’t you been honest with other women?”

Lane looked at her with a slow, deeply amused smile. “How many other women do you think there’ve been?”

“Thousands.”

Lane laughed. “Why do you think so?”

“The way you know how to touch me.”

Lane rolled over onto her stomach and propped herself on her elbows to smile down at Diana. “Have you already forgotten what you just did with me?”

Diana said awkwardly, “That just. happened.”

“Yes. But how did you know how to touch me?”

“I… just knew. You made it very easy for me to know.

From how you were with me, and… from myself, and there were things I thought you would like… and things I wanted to do.”

“There were things I wanted to do, too. I wanted to please you, and I wanted to… do everything I did. And that’s how I knew how to touch you.”

Lane lay on her back again and locked her hands behind her head. She stared out the window. “When I was seventeen, Diana, there was someone. She was a year ahead of me in high school, a senior. We became friends. Friends,” she repeated ironically. “I thought my friendship with her was some kind of gift from the gods. I’d never felt that close to anyone before except my father. We touched, often, and we held hands when we were alone. I justified that so easily, you know—we were unusually close friends and no one would understand how special our friendship was.

What a fool, what an idiot I was. One night I was over at her house and we were in her bedroom watching television, holding hands, sitting on her bed. Her parents were out. We did that before, many times, but this time she put an arm around me and suddenly we were in each other’s arms, and when we kissed I knew how much I’d wanted to all along. We took each other’s clothes off. Her name was Carol. I was stunned by my sexual feeling, absolutely staggered by how her body felt to me. None of the boys I’d been with, and I wasn’t a virgin then either, none of them had made me feel even remotely like that. Nothing happened between us —I was too terrified. I put on my clothes and fled. I wouldn’t see her again. She finally gave up trying. I knew how badly I was hurting her, but I knew if I saw her again it would happen again, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop it again.”