Judith Krantz (62 page)

While the tea tray was removed, Georgina went into her room. “Do come in and chat, Fernie. I just want to stretch out for a minute. I think I overdid the antiquing.”

“I’ll go to my room. Maybe you can take a nap.”

“No, honestly, I’m not sleepy, just footsore. And I don’t want Valerie to know you’re back.”

Definitely childish, Fernanda thought. She felt the same way. They were both like kids hiding from a strict governess. Ever since Georgina had arrived to join her husband at the Ritz, a few days after Jimmy Rosemont and Sir John had held the meeting with Jazz, she and Georgina had been trying to find time to spend together as they did during their frequent lunches in New York, but Valerie had made them into a threesome.

Fernanda knew that the sale of the ranch was going to take place in a manner organized by wiser business heads than hers. She was content to let Jimmy and Sir John proceed on their own. Just getting away from New York had lightened her heart and Georgina’s presence made her feel as if she were on vacation.

She didn’t want Valerie to know they were back from their antiquing expedition either, Fernanda thought, she didn’t want Valerie to know in the worst way. She didn’t want to … 
share
Georgina, she realized. There was a thrilling feeling of exclusivity when she was alone with Georgina that was ruined when Valerie, sensible, organized, capable Valerie, joined them, as she had done often in the last days. That must be the way girls felt about their best friends, she thought. She’d never had that kind of high-school best friend, the kind you whispered to about other girls, told secrets to, felt jealous of, as if she were a boy. She’d always been too occupied with her own
inner cravings to look around for a friend, there hadn’t been any other girls like her to talk to, or if there had been, they were as solitary and secretive as she.

She followed Georgina into the elaborate bedroom of the two-bedroom suite. Georgina had explained that she and her husband never shared a bedroom because he was so often up at odd hours of the late night and early morning, telephoning business partners all over the world.

“Come over here and sit down, sweet,” Georgina said, patting the bed. “I simply must put my feet up.”

“You don’t look tired.”

“I’m not really. I feel comfy, now that we’re here. I told the maid to keep the curtains drawn so there’d be some refuge here that was decently dim. All that sunlight … it’s a shock to my system after yesterday’s rain. At least, most of the time, New York is decently gray in winter.”

“Do you miss London?”

“A little. Or at least I did, until I met you. You’re such great fun, Fernie, such a mad rascal, such a flamboyant, heartless flirt, a wild child all done up like the most gorgeous fraud of a cowgirl. You remind me of someone I adored … of course, she didn’t look anything like you, but she was even more wicked.”

“Who was she?” Fernanda asked, feeling a sharp pluck of jealousy at the longingly reminiscent tone in Georgina’s voice.

“A girl at boarding school … Claire. She was older than I was … she must have been fifteen and I was only twelve … but we became great friends in spite of the difference in ages. I’ll never forget Claire.”

“Do you still see her?”

“I doubt if I’d recognize her today. I hear she’s turned into the perfect suburban hostess and the perfectly stuffy mother of four perfectly stuffy children … do promise me you’ll never do that, Fernie.”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to. I’m fundamentally imperfect.”

“When Claire was at school, she was different.
We were in the same house. I had the most agonizing crush on her … I used to watch her during choir practice and forget to sing. I never took my eyes off her at meals, I spied on her whenever I had a chance, I know I’ve never been so blindly in love.”

“In love?”

“Of course, Fernie, in love. Pure love, first love, the most painful kind, the kind you never forget.”

“And then she graduated and you never saw her again?”

“Oh, no … that would have been too cruel. No, one night, after I was in bed, Claire came to my room—the big girls could do all sorts of things that the little girls couldn’t do, like stay up late—and she shut the door and she came over to me and sat on the bed, just the way you’re sitting there, and she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She said she’d noticed me watching her and she wanted to know why. Of course she was just teasing me, she knew why perfectly well. I was too utterly tongue-tied to say anything, and then she kissed me on the lips … it was the first time anyone had ever kissed me on the lips … oh, she kissed me and kissed me, over and over again … she knew what she was doing.” Georgina’s voice was low, lulled, as if she spoke out of a trance of memory.

“She had the sweetest lips, Fernie, and after I dared to start to kiss her back, oh, a long time after, she pulled down my nightie and she started to kiss my breasts … I was just growing them and they were so tender and small, I used to feel them every morning when I woke up to see if they’d gotten any bigger overnight … and she kept on kissing my breasts, and playing with them until they felt as if they were swelling, and then she got under the covers with me and I could feel her hands reaching down between my legs and then she started to play with me there … so gently, so wonderfully, Fernie, no one had ever touched me there except … well, I did, all the time … but I didn’t know how different it would feel when
it was somebody else … it was … oh, it’s hard to explain, but nothing had ever felt so … so terribly
important
 … it was as if I’d never understood why I was alive, not really, until Claire touched me between my legs until … she didn’t stop, Fernie, not even when I started to … well, you know, I don’t have to explain. I didn’t have any idea what to do to show her how wonderful it was, so she showed me what to do to her, to make her happy. That was my first time. After that, Claire came to my room every time she had a chance, and I learned … I learned so many different things … I was a good pupil.” Georgina gave a low laugh. “Her star pupil.”

“What happened when—Claire left school?” Fernanda’s voice sounded strange to her, as if it came from a distance.

“At first I didn’t know what to do. I thought about her all the time, I did it to myself, of course, but it wasn’t the same … I needed it so much by then … I was thirteen—it was all I thought about, I could barely concentrate on my books enough to get by—and then I noticed a girl in my own form, a girl who watched me the way I’d watched Claire—and one night I went to her room …”

“Yes?” Fernanda asked hoarsely.

“And I made love to her, the way Claire had shown me. There’s always been some girl, ever since, until I left England, but there was never anyone who could take the place of Claire, no one who fascinated me so completely, no one I wanted as much, no one I had such a frightfully real crush on … until I met you.” Georgina’s low voice trembled, but she didn’t move from her recumbent position on the bed, didn’t make a gesture toward Fernanda.

“I didn’t … I had no idea … I’ve never …” Fernanda’s words stumbled and she didn’t dare to look at her friend. She was thrown into utter confusion by the surprise of what she had just learned, shock combined with an unwilling but irresistible excitement. Sitting in a chair in this shadowed bedroom,
listening to Georgina’s dreaming, beautiful voice as she pictured the scene between the two girls, she had become frantically aroused. But how was it possible? She’d never been attracted to another woman … naturally the thought had crossed her mind, many times, only to be immediately supplanted by another thought that told her it was only intellectual curiosity, everybody had such notions all the time, they didn’t mean anything.

“I know you had ‘no idea,’ you darling goose. Why do you think I told you about Claire? You don’t think I’d tell anyone else but you that story, do you? Fernie, you’ve never found the right man, have you? People think that you find men, use them up and go on to the next, but I know that you’ve never been made love to properly. Isn’t that so?”

“I … yes … but I think it’s … me … something wrong.”

“That’s impossible. Oh, my sweet, nothing could be wrong with you. See here, I know I’ve probably horrified you, telling you about how I feel about girls, and I know you’re nervous and uptight and have all sorts of theories against it, but what harm could it do to try … with me? Just as an experiment … just once? If you don’t enjoy it, we’ll never do anything again, we’ll forget it happened and we’ll still be best friends, I promise, because I love being with you so much. Let me just show you. You don’t have to do anything at all, you don’t have to move a muscle, and if you ask me to stop, I’ll stop … I’ll give you a beginner’s lesson the way I used to do, at school.”

As if she could refuse, Fernanda thought, as if she could possibly get up and walk out of this room, when she was having trouble with simple breathing.

“Lock the door,” Fernanda managed to say. While Georgina did so, she wondered if she should lie down on the bed, but she was too befuddled to move from her chair. She didn’t know how to do this, she thought wildly, and then Georgina came back, stood behind the chair and started to stroke her hair back
from her forehead with a touch so reassuringly tender that Fernanda gradually felt the tension in her shoulders relax.

“Yes, yes, that’s better. Oh, I’ve wanted to touch your hair for so long,” Georgina whispered, and cradled Fernanda’s head to her bosom. “I used to look at you at lunch and wonder how it would feel—so soft, so fragrant, softer than I dreamed. Come over to the bed, darling, that’s right, just lie back and let me look at you.”

She put one arm under Fernanda’s head and kissed her on the forehead. Fernanda shuddered with anticipation, remembering how Claire had begun her lesson, and she leaned her head back on the pillow, closed her eyes and allowed her mouth to receive Georgina’s kisses. That exquisite mouth, she thought, that marvelously shaped mouth that was never covered with lipstick, that warm mouth, that small, pointed tongue darting in such timidly inquisitive forays between her lips, not like a man’s blundering tongue that was often too big or too demanding.

She was aware that Georgina had stopped kissing her long enough to take off her clothes, and she began to unbutton her own shirt when she felt Georgina’s hand on hers.

“Don’t, let me do that. I want to be your slave.”

“What?”

“Your slave, darling. I want to wait on you, do everything for you, whatever you want, there’s no rush, we have all the time in the world. The longer it takes to make you happy, the better it will be. Oh, I like it to take a long, long time.
I like to be told what to do.”

“Was that what Claire said to you?” she muttered.

“No, I didn’t find out I wanted that until much later … may I be your slave?”

“Yes … oh, yes …”

“May I unbutton your blouse?”

“Yes.”

As Georgina slowly unbuttoned each button, Fernanda could hear her breathing come more quickly, but when Fernanda’s arrogantly splendid breasts were freed from the confinement of the silk, Georgina waited to touch them until Fernanda gave her permission. Only then did she caress them with the tips of her fingers that knew exactly how much pressure brought the optimum amount of pleasure, experienced, supple fingers that knew exactly how to draw a line of lovely promise across Fernanda’s breasts, closer, ever closer to the nipples, but holding back from actually touching them, so that Fernanda felt her nipples aching with tightness for a touch that did not come and that would not come if she did not demand it.

She lay tensed under the exquisite torture, arching her back and her neck and willing herself to wait until Georgina asked for permission. Georgina, her slave. But although she could feel Georgina’s warm breath on her breasts as she bent to her task, she asked for nothing, and Fernanda finally understood that a slave could ask only for certain things and that other intimacies were for Fernanda herself to demand. She licked one finger and briefly touched it to a nipple, in a signal of command, and Georgina’s open mouth immediately descended, fastening on the nipple with an adept but diffident suction that took infinite care not to suck her to the point of pain, as so many men did in their frenzy.

“We have all the time … the longer the better …” Georgina murmured, and Fernanda sighed in ecstasy. She had always wanted her nipples sucked for much longer than any man was willing to, and sucked like this, the sucking an end in itself, and not merely a way to stimulate her so that she’d allow them to enter her. She turned on her side, so that her breasts would fall forward in all their fullness, and abandoned herself to Georgina’s swollen lips and licking tongue and barely nipping teeth, thinking nothing of her slave but only of herself and her pleasure, for
here was no man with an urgent need, with a goal he had to reach, but only a beautiful, adoring slave she was allowing to please her.

Much time, luxurious, concentrated, sighing time, time without a preordained ending, went by before Fernanda motioned to the waistband of her trousers and Georgina obediently unfastened the one button, opened the zipper and tugged off Fernanda’s trousers. Fernanda was wearing bikini panties which she perversely left on, to test Georgina’s willpower. She had not touched Georgina’s naked body, but she gazed at it in wonder through half-closed eyes. She had never met another woman who had a better body than she, but petite as Georgina was, she had much larger, firmer breasts, a more dimpled, plump behind, a slimmer waist, and wider, fuller hips. No wonder she always looked too rounded in clothes. Naked, she was a goddess.

Now Georgina, who had not received permission to take off Fernanda’s panties, was directed by a pointing finger to put her mouth on Fernanda’s silk-clad crotch. Fernanda knew that the silk was wet through, and she wanted Georgina to feel the moisture with her lips, to tongue her through the cloth, to give her that sensation she longed for, yet not give it to her fully, on her naked mound. Not yet. Georgina put her mouth on the spot Fernanda had indicated, but just pressed her unassertive lips to the silk, the top of her smooth head bowed in submission. “Use your tongue, slave,” Fernanda whispered harshly.