Entwined - SF5 (26 page)

"I really shouldn’t go out in public without a bra," Ryan admitted, smiling at the view she had of Jamie’s eager hands roaming around under her top, "but I forgot to take an extra with me this morning."

"You didn’t forget," Jamie murmured, leaning close to mouth a firming nipple through the cotton material.

"Pardon?"

"You didn’t forget. I took it out of your gym bag when you were putting on your shoes."

"You did what?" Ryan was slightly mystified by this admission, but knowing Jamie, she had a good reason.

"I swiped it," she admitted, propping her chin gently up on Ryan’s breast to look into her eyes. "I saw that you had packed this sexy tank top, and I love to see you moving around in it." Both eyebrows waggled impishly, with Ryan only able to shake her head in amusement.

"You are something else, Ms. Evans. You never cease to amaze me."

"That’s the plan," she admitted, getting back to work. After she pulled the tank top from Ryan’s body, she began to work on her jeans again. As the last button opened, she pulled the fabric apart and looked down into the fly suspiciously. "No panties? I didn’t take those out."

"No. I started out with my boxers but Jordan convinced me to take them off," she casually informed her.

"Pardon?" she asked slowly, drawing the word out until it sounded like it had three syllables.

"Jordan convinced me to take off my underwear. And once it was off, I figured I might as well leave it off," she said breezily.

"If you want to have a butt left to put underwear on, you’ll explain that comment post haste," Jamie threatened.

"Nope," she said, rolling on top of her lover. "You can figure it out for yourself. I’m not telling."

"Ryan," she said in a menacing growl.

"Nope, not telling."

Diving for her taunting partner, she began to tickle her in earnest. She got her fingers up under her ribs on her right side, clearly her most sensitive spot. She dug in deeply and was rewarded with near hysterical laughter, but Ryan would not give in. Since a counterattack was in progress, Jamie tried to cover her own ribs while continuing the assault on her lover, but they ended up grappling with each other and rolling around wildly on the bed, shrieking with laughter.

One mighty hip check found Jamie rolling off the rather high bed and onto the floor. Ryan leaned over to help her up and was roughly pulled down herself. She tumbled over slowly, her jeans sliding from her hips, and wound up sprawled across Jamie’s lap, face down.

"Ryan!" she shrieked as she took in the sight before her. "What have you done to yourself!?"

Emblazoned across her lover’s right cheek was the word ‘Jamie’--tattooed in a pretty script with a little red heart dotting the ‘i’.

"Do you like it?" she asked with a wicked grin.

"You got a tattoo?" she asked once again, stunned beyond belief.

"Do you like it?" she repeated patiently.

"Um, I didn’t know you were the tattoo kind of girl," Jamie said haltingly, trying to remember if laser tattoo removal worked better on a fresh one.

"I’m not," she laughed. "I’d faint with every needle prick. This is just temporary. It should last about two weeks."

"You big goof!" she screamed. "I believed I had to go through life looking at my name on your ass!" Since she had the pseudo-tattooed butt so attractively arranged on her lap, she had to spend a few moments spanking the cute round cheeks with both hands. She was pounding out a fierce bass beat when she abruptly stopped, "What did Jordan have to do with this?"

Ryan sucked in a breath, trying to control her laughter. "She was asking me about our relationship. After I went on and on about how much I loved you and how wonderful being in love was, she decided I needed to give you some tangible proof of my undying devotion," she said with a twinkle in her eye.

"So you had to take off your underwear?"

"Yeah. They use this permanent type of dye. I didn’t want to get it on my white underwear, so I just left them off."

"Was Jordan with you the whole time?" she asked with a hint of jealousy infusing her words.

"Yes....Why does that bother you?"

Jamie closed her eyes for a moment, trying to get a handle on her feelings. "It’s kind of odd to think of you with your pants off in front of her, so yeah, I guess it does."

"She sees me in the shower almost every day, Baby. We all get dressed in front of each other. It’s a jock thing. We don’t look at each other sexually."

"Oh, so you didn’t used to sleep with the people on your teams," she said, already knowing the answer.

"Um...I guess that wasn’t a very good argument, huh?"

"Not very," Jamie agreed.

"You get naked in front of Mia," she argued.

"That’s true, but we aren’t gay. Or at least we weren’t. Or I wasn’t. Oh...you know what I mean," she finally said in frustration.

"Jamie, I can’t control the reaction that people have to me, but I can control how I feel about other women and their bodies. And I’m not interested in any other naked body. Yours is the only one that holds my attention," she said firmly.

"So now I have to think of you in that locker room with a dozen other women lusting after your body," she sulked.

"Jamie, I don’t know of any other lesbians on the team. And if anyone’s body was going to be lusted after it would be Jordan’s. She’s nearly perfect."

She cocked her head and stared at Ryan for a long minute. "I thought you didn’t notice other women in the locker room?"

One eyebrow lifted slowly, as Ryan gave her a very suspicious look. "If you can honestly tell me that you haven’t surreptitiously checked out other women, even when you were ‘straight’, you can have that point," she replied, confident of victory.

"Okay, okay, so I have. This just feels weird to me," she said.

"It doesn’t to me, Baby. I don’t want to feel uncomfortable around my teammates. I’ve been in athletics for a long time, and I’m really used to being naked around people. I don’t want to change the way that I behave. So please try to understand and to trust me."

"I do trust you. But I’ve got the feeling that Jordan is used to getting what she wants, and I got some vibes that she might want you," she said, looking carefully at Ryan to gauge her reaction.

"If she was in the locker room stark naked with her legs spread wide open begging me to do her, I wouldn’t give her a second thought. You are my only love. Emphasis on the ‘only’. So please try to accept this. Okay?"

"I’ll try," she agreed. "But don’t take anyone with you if you go to get your clitoris pierced. That’s over the line."

They spent the next hour playing and making love. At noon Jamie awakened from her stupor and looked over at her partner. "We should get up so we can get some lunch."

She rolled over with a moan. "I’m too tired," she whined. "You did me good, Baby. Too good."

"Come on," she said as she tried to pull her to a sitting position, astounded, as usual, by how tremendously heavy Ryan was. She got no assistance whatsoever, finally giving up and getting out of bed alone.

Starting the shower, she stood in the bath, waiting for the water to warm up. "Oh, I wish I had someone to shower with me," she said aloud. "I have some spots that are particularly hard to clean…"

"Need a hand?" a sexy, low, voice purred in her ear, while warm hands grasped her around the waist..

"You are sooooo easy," Jamie laughed.

"Only for you, Babe," Ryan insisted. "Only for you."

Ryan returned home from work a little after three, and just as she got in the door her pager went off. "Oh great," she muttered as she looked at the familiar area code. She flopped down on the loveseat in the living room, portable phone nestled against her ear. "Sara? Ryan. What’s up?"

"Hi, Ryan," Sara’s soft voice replied. "Nothing much is up, but the bar exam starts tomorrow, and after that I’m taking off for a long-delayed vacation. I just wanted to let you know in case you needed to get in touch about your search."

"Hey, that’s really nice of you, " Ryan said sincerely. "I sure wish you good luck. I remember when Brendan was taking the bar–he was a basket case!"

"I’m not much better," she admitted. "I’m calling everyone I know who isn’t taking it, just to keep my mind off of it."

"You can rest assured that I’ll never take it," Ryan laughed. "I do appreciate your concern about my search, Sara. I’m at the point now of having to contact all of the girls from the team, and that’s going to be a real bitch."

"Look, Ryan," she said. "I know we’ve been over this before, and I’m sure you’ve thought about it a million times, but is there anyone else you could have told? Even inadvertently?"

Ryan took in a deep breath and shook her head. "It wouldn’t have been too hard to figure out I was a lesbian, Sara," she admitted. "I was draped around some woman every chance I got. But I didn’t tell anyone about what happened between us." Ryan had been idly rubbing Duffy’s head during the entire conversation. Her hand stilled as she was hit by a thought. "I take that back, Sara. I told one person–Father Pender–but that was during Confession, and I’m sure he would never breach his vows and reveal anything he heard in that manner."

"No, I agree, Ryan, he wouldn’t do that." She paused thoughtfully and said, "It surprises me that your father hustled you off to Father Pender, too."

"Too?" Ryan asked, slightly puzzled. "You talked to Father Pender?"

"Talk is a little strong," she admitted. "My father marched me over there and stood guard while I went to confession."

Ryan sat in stunned silence, listening to her own heartbeat pounding in her chest. "He wouldn’t," she mumbled. "He couldn’t!"

Understanding the implication, Sara rushed to reassure her. "Ryan, Father Pender takes his vows very, very seriously. I know he’s a gossip, but he would never do something so horrible!"

"I find it nearly impossible to believe too, Sara. But it sure as hell adds up!"

Sara was quiet for a moment, letting her analytically trained mind consider all of the facts. "When did you tell him?" she asked.

"Umm…right before school started. Probably August sometime. I was in Ireland all summer, and I know it was after that. How about you?"

"Around the same," she recalled.

Ryan paused for a moment and thought about the timing. "Why so late? I would think your parents would have gotten over it by then."

Sara’s sigh was audible, nearly louder than her voice, which said, "They would have, if I had. When I was getting ready to go to Cal, I told my mother that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I told her that I just had to call you…" her voice trailed off, and Ryan thought she could detect some tears.

"What happened?" Ryan asked gently.

"She told my father. Apparently she hadn’t said anything before. He really flipped out and scared the living daylights out of me, Ryan. He’s normally so quiet and calm, but he was just wild!"

"What did you say to Father Pender?"

"I was so scared I don’t have any idea what I said! All I know is that he gave me a long lecture about avoiding temptation and told me that I had to resist my ‘urges’."

"Damn! He didn’t say anything like that to me," Ryan revealed. "He tried to get me to join that group that urges abstinence, but I think he could tell I thought it was bullshit."

"I rather doubt he would have tried to talk you out of anything, Ryan," Sara said fondly. "You were never the type who could be coerced."

Ryan thought about that for a moment, and realized that at 18 Sara would have appeared quite malleable. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a strong character, but she was always very focused on pleasing the authority figures in her life, something Ryan had yet to get the hang of.

"Well, Sara, it looks like old Father Pender is going to have a very pissed off visitor in about an hour, and he’d better be in a talkative mood!"

"Are you sure you want me to go with you?" Jamie was nearly jogging to keep up with her long-legged lover. They were cruising up the hill between Ryan’s home and the church, and the smaller woman was nearly out of breath.

Ryan slowed, doing her best to calm her racing heart. "I’m just so pissed off I want to throttle him!" she cried. "He’s like family to us! I swear, Jamie, if he admits this, I’m going to the Archbishop! I’ll not have him betray another person if I can help it!"

"Honey," Jamie said with as much calm as she could muster, "this isn’t the way to approach someone that you want to admit something. I really think you need to calm down."

Ryan slowed even more, acknowledging that her partner was correct, but feeling very out of control. She nodded once, shoving her hands in her pockets roughly, a decided slump to her normally proud shoulders. They walked the rest of the way in silence, but instead of going to the rectory where the priest lived, Ryan detoured to the church and sat down in a pew to gather her jumbled thoughts. Jamie sat right next to her, a hand on her back, providing as much solace as she could by her mere presence. It took about fifteen minutes, but Ryan finally stood and stretched, getting some of the accumulated tension out of her back.