Punk and Zen (53 page)

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I don’t know why it took me so long to
admit, to know, what I guess was so obvious to everyone, even me when I wasn’t
so busy trying to pretend it wasn’t true.

But when we got upstairs, in my room, in
my bed where we groaned and cried and whispered the most solemn and holy of
promises to each other, and it seemed even the very walls glowed and echoed
back at us, I knew where I belonged when Samantha welcomed me to her, wrapping
herself around me when our bodies met, drawing me to her, in her, as we
continued the dance we’d started earlier, part of the dance we’d started so
long ago.

When her fingers scratched into my
back—long, intense, sharp lines down my spine—I swore I heard music (don’t
laugh too hard, but it was Vivaldi’s Suite in D Minor, specifically), and I
closed my eyes as I bit down lightly on her collarbone, then laid my ear against
the pulse that beat under her skin.

“Do you hear music?” she asked me, her
voice low and halting as her cunt moved gracefully under mine.

“I do,” I whispered into her neck and
kissed just under her chin when she angled her head. “I can hear your heart beating.”
She opened her eyes, diamond bright for me.

Samantha massaged along my ass, then
traveled up my back, tracing across my shoulders and up my neck. She cradled my
face. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” she said. “I missed you so
much…” She slipped her fingers down to touch the sword that still hung from my
neck, pressing it into my skin.

“Don’t…ever…leave me again,” she said, and
I was startled to see tears in her eyes. I instantly wanted to make that hurt
go away, so that she never cried for me, over me, again.

“No, baby,” I promised, “I won’t.” I meant
it. I kissed her eyes and tasted her tears and gently kissed those lips that
were so soft I was afraid of bruising them. “I never,” I kissed her chin, “want
to be away from you.” Taking one of her hands, I caressed her scars, her marks,
with my fingertips. I kissed the hollow of her throat, and as her legs relaxed
around me I slid down her ABC body.

I let go of her wrist and rounded my hands
over her flawless breasts, my lips tracing as much of her skin as I could,
tasting the slight sweat that covered her, until I finally, finally, reached
that place I’d wanted for so long. I reveled in the scent of her, of us, and as
I dipped my head to kiss the short light hairs that covered her, Samantha laid
her fingers on my head.

I glanced up across the tanned expanse of
her stomach, past the sharp definition of ribs and past her breasts, to find
her looking back at me, eyes dark, full of love and a hunger that matched my
own. She lightly drew her fingers through my hair, then ran them down the side
of my head until her thumb brushed against my cheek.

“Bring your hips up here.” She smiled at
me. “I want to taste you, too.”

I was surprised, because as much as I
wanted to taste her, I also wanted to know what it would be like feel those
tender lips wrapped around my clit, that perfect kiss, her tongue jammed in my
cunt.

But to share such marked intimacy? The
thought made my gut tighten with need and the rest of me shy.

I rubbed my cheek against her palm and
kissed it before I said anything.

“I, uh, I’ve never done that before,” I
admitted, watching my fingertips scratch lightly at the outer bounds of her
pussy, run lightly in the groove that marked her thigh. “I mean…” I didn’t
really know what to say; I shrugged and finally looked up to see her smile had
gentled.

“Me either,” she said, “but I want to—with
you.”

Wow. That was just so, so…I didn’t know
what to say, really, because as appealing as the idea was, it scared me too.
This was some whole new level of, well, of something, anyway. But…if I was
going to try to make a life with her, and I knew, the way I knew that my heart
was beating so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think, that was what I
wanted—a whole life together—I was going to have to either get over it or let
it go.

“Unless…you don’t want to,” she added, the
slightest of tremors marring her words.

No…I wanted to, I definitely wanted to,
but first I had to get rid of the shake I had heard in her voice, and I almost
flew back up her body to reassure her, half on, half off her.

“God, no,” I told her earnestly, staring
into her midnight-ocean eyes to convince her. I combed her hair with my
fingertips and carefully kissed her. “I’m just…you don’t have to do that,” I
said, looking deeply into her eyes again.

“Nervous?” she asked, smiling her
half-smile, that gentle, loving expression.

I had to kiss the corner of her mouth
where her lips quirked.

“A little,” I admitted.

“Then we’ll go slow.” Samantha sat up
slightly to wrap her arms around me and nibbled on my lower lip, which sent
shivers through me. I shuddered as I shifted carefully, sitting next to her.

“You’re driving me crazy,” she murmured
into my throat as I greedily enjoyed the slivers of sensation she shot through
me.

But it was time, more than time, to return
the favor, and I stroked across her waist, her ribs, the defining lines of her
as I gently pushed her back and forged a new trail down her body, headfirst.

I still lay to the side of her, and when I
returned to the place I’d started from, I hesitated—this was a completely
different angle and I was struck, struck hard, by how very vulnerable she was
to me, in her need, in her love.

So soft, so open, so damned defenseless,
and I wanted to cover her vulnerability, shield it from the world and keep it
safe. I felt so humble in the presence of the trust she showed me, my heart
caught up in my throat and lurched with it.

I outlined her edges again and rubbed my
thumbs lightly against her tendons. “You are so damned beautiful,” I whispered,
“you’re killing me.”

She shifted under me as I finally lowered
my head and kissed that open vulnerability with all the feelings that
threatened to overflow through me because I was just so in love with her that
my body felt heavy with it. I had never, ever, loved
anyone
the way I
love my Samantha.

She inhaled sharply and let her breath out
in a short gasp as my lips touched her, a cushioned descent between softness,
to touch down on the warm slickness of her, and I scraped my lower lip against
her clit, from base to head and back again, then kissed her as I would her
mouth. Oh, sweet, she was so sweet.

“Please, baby,” she said as she slipped an
arm under my waist, “I need to taste you,” and she literally shifted me over
her. God, that she was strong enough to do that—it sent a shock through me, a
combination of surprise and primal lust that made my kisses change from tender
to the raw need to have her, and, careful not to rest the full weight of my
body on her, I, thank God, finally, oh God, slipped my tongue inside her just
as she settled me over her.

“God…” she huffed out, the word blowing
hotly against my want before she wrapped her arms around my ABC hips
and pulled me to her.

Christ almighty, she spread my cunt with
her tongue and sucked me in. She reduced me entirely to the primitive, the
primordial, and our bodies pressed along their length as I wrapped my arms
around her thighs and drove farther into her, the scent and taste, the feel of
her absolutely gratifying as her lips moved me.

She reached up along my back and dug lines
into my muscles, moving me, urging me on and shifting lines of place, of
person, because I was so lost in her, lost in the feelings her tongue built in
me, in the creation of the third, the “us,” that I don’t know when I noticed
the pattern to the sparkling lines she drew on my spine.

She drew a single vertical line with her
fingertip, then stopped, rubbing her palm across my back. A vertical line with
a connected horizontal. A circle. An angled line connected to another. Three
horizontals and a vertical, then she again rubbed her palm across my back.
Writing. Samantha was writing on my skin what her tongue was spelling in my
cunt, what hers said to my mouth as I loved her, too, and told her in the same
way, her clit, swollen and hard, between my lips and under my tongue. I reached
for her arm, and she released my back to grasp my fingers, to entwine them with
mine.

She squeezed my hand and let go, to grab
my hips with gentle strength, then took her mouth away for one agonizing
second. “Fingers, baby…please,” she gasped before she plunged into me.

So incredible, so intense, I couldn’t help
but twist my head for a second as my lungs clutched for air before I buried my
fingers and mouth in her.

I’d gone way past riding the wave. I was a
drop merged in the ocean, we were the wave together as our rhythm synched and
every thrust, every roll of our bodies as we slid against and within each other
complemented, met, matched. We matched.

She’d been orphaned by cruel fate and me by
cruel intention, but when we were together, none of that mattered—we just wore
our scars differently.

As her legs tightened around and against
me I could feel my own mounting tension, a tremble in my stomach as I tried not
to crush her, and with my free hand I outlined “I love you” on her flexing
thigh, like she had on my spine.

There it was, that power holding us fast
in its grasp as we climbed and raced and built to that fine-line point that was
the clit that pulsed and grew between my lips and under my tongue, the pussy
that wrapped around my fingers with hungry love, and the lips and tongue and
hands that held my cunt entrapped, enthralled, always needing and needing only
her.

One more thrust, one more pull and
another, and instead of falling apart I was falling together, the pieces of me
I had thought dead or disappeared flying back to settle where they belonged,
where I belonged, and I was so fully complete that when Samantha came in my
mouth and tight on ABC my hands I thought I might simply burst with the
pure joy of it.

I kissed her pussy tenderly as I withdrew,
pressing my lips to her with adoration, with reverence, for what she had
offered, for what she had so willingly shared. I cupped her in my hand and
rested my head on her thigh. She bit lightly against my muscle before I just as
carefully shifted off her.

She sat up and I joined her. We wrapped
ourselves around each other, a warm tangle of arms and legs as we leaned back
against the wall and her lips searched for mine, then found them. I enjoyed the
feel of our lips, the combined flavor that was uniquely us, and Samantha let me
continue my languid exploration, joining me as we learned each other all over
again. I put that charm, that tiny blade, around her neck again—I had promised
I would when I got home.

I lay with my cheek drowsily pillowed on
the yielding plain of Samantha’s stomach, my fingers splayed along her ribs,
the other resting on her thigh. The soft hairs of her pussy rubbed against my
sternum as her legs warmed either side of me, and I curled between them.

When the lightest feather-touch of
fingertips ran through my hair, I kept my eyes closed. I was so comfortable and
warm I didn’t stir when I felt the sheets that we’d kicked to the bottom of the
bed slide up against me and fall softly around my shoulders.

I still didn’t move when I felt them tuck
around me a bit, because it was just so nice where I was, and I was so
peacefully tired.

But when the feather-light touch returned
briefly to my hair and was followed by a kiss on my forehead, I opened my eyes
in the early sunset.

“Kitt?” I blinked and asked sleepily. I
shifted my head slightly to see her, and she carefully sat on the edge of the
bed.

“Shh,” she soothed, “go back to sleep.”
She rubbed my arm lightly through the sheet, then stood.

“Okay…” I sleepily agreed and snuggled
under the sheet. Samantha shifted beneath me, but didn’t wake. The leg behind
me pressed tighter along my back as her hand came to rest on mine.

“Nina, do you want me to put the lamp on?”
she asked, standing in the doorway.

I opened my eyes again and shook my head.
“No…but thanks.” I gave her a small smile and closed my eyes.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

It was hard saying good-bye to Carlos and
Enrique, and I not only promised to keep in touch, I promised to visit—and I
ABC would, too. If there was some way I could work it out, I’d go back
to Spain; I loved it there. Hell, I wanted to live there.

In the end, we flew back to New York after
stopping for two weeks in London to hand in the demo, argue out a recording and
touring schedule, and work out new contracts since we’d now created a new
musical unit that wasn’t Adam’s Rib and wasn’t Loose Dogs, either, while Fran
had gone two days ahead of us to get the paperwork started—and believe me,
there was a lot of it.

Samantha had a lawyer—excuse me, a
barrister—she worked with, and in fact, it was the same one Graham used, and
offered to do introductions, but I’d already been working with Mrs. J (and
Jer’s last name was really and truly Jenns)—she knew my shit. Besides, I was already
ignorant enough about our own legal system, never mind working with a foreign
one, and frankly, she’d done great stuff for Adam’s Rib, all things considered.