More Than Paradise Part 2

"Australia?" Tamsin toyed dazedly with a honey-kissed wave that had strayed onto her face. "For real?"

* 25 *

"Kangaroos. Boomerangs. You name it."

"Kangaroos. Oh! I'd love that." A puzzled frown drew Tamsin's ne eyebrows together. "I thought you couldn't take any more vacation this year. You're not just doing this for me, are you?"

"Not exactly, although I would. Actually, I have some news."

Charlotte gathered herself. She didn't want to sound too gleeful in the face of Tamsin's unhappiness. "Remember that job I applied for with the Sealy-Weiss Inst.i.tute?"

Tamsin's small heart-shaped face lit up and she bounced in her chair. "You got it? Oh, my G.o.d."

Charlotte could only nod. She'd own to Chicago for her nal interview the previous week and had received the call soon after. She was now a research biologist a.s.signed to one of the most prestigious teams in the country. And, as if that were not enough, one of the Sealy-Weiss Inst.i.tute's major donors, Belton Pharmaceuticals, was funding a multidisciplinary scienti c expedition to the Foja Mountains. Charlotte had been invited to partic.i.p.ate.

"I've been asked to go to this amazing place in New Guinea, kind of a lost world." She could hardly believe it even as she said it. "That's my rst a.s.signment. It's the chance of a lifetime."

"A lost world..." Steadying her winegla.s.s, Tamsin gasped out, "I'm so proud of you. I always knew you'd do something amazing one day. Like invent a cure doing that bizarre stuff with plants. You're such a genius." Tears began rolling down her cheeks and she wiped them against the backs of her hands and lifted her gla.s.s. "To you, Charlotte.

Congratulations. You're my hero."

Touched, Charlotte thanked her and took a quick sip of wine. "So, you see, I gured I could have a vacation in Australia rst. I've been wanting to talk to you about it, but so much was happening and you've been hard to get ahold of."

"I know."

"I was worried when you didn't return my calls." Charlotte had nally left a message yesterday telling Tamsin she urgently needed to see her and giving her a place and time. She had almost expected her not to show up.

"I'm sorry," Tamsin said. "I needed some time to think, so I guess I've been avoiding people."

"I'm not people," Charlotte chided gently. She wasn't going to say any more than that. Tamsin was already battling tears. "Now, where * 26 *

were we? Oh, yes. organizing for you to come Down Under with me."

She located her BlackBerry and consulted her travel le, looking for the e-mail addy for her agent. "I'm going to buy your ticket right now.

We'll go to Melbourne rst, then we'll Jeep across the desert to Ayers Rock."

The despondency ed Tamsin's face and her tear-drenched hazel eyes suddenly sparkled. "I've always wanted to go to Australia. I can't believe you're asking me."

Charlotte smiled. "Just say yes."

"Yes!" Tamsin beamed, then a ash of apprehension seemed to cloud her delight. In a strained voice, she said, "I'll have to pack."

Charlotte understood her anxiety. At the best of times the impractical Tamsin couldn't decide between Prada and Chloe, and she had no idea what a baggage allowance meant. "I'll help. I know more than you do about what's in your closet."

Tamsin shook her head. "It's okay. I can buy new stuff. I'll be ready in time, I promise."

"Don't be silly. You bought all that safari gear for the Tsavo trip last year. I'll come over and get you organized and then you can stay at my place till we leave."

"No." Tamsin gulped some wine and started chattering like she always did when she was dissembling. "I mean, thanks. But actually, I wasn't planning to go home for a while tonight. I thought I might hit a movie or whatever."

Since when did Tamsin Powell do late-night movies by herself?

A germ of suspicion took root in Charlotte's mind. Tamsin had been very evasive about seeing her since the breakup, and there was always some half-baked reason why Charlotte couldn't just drop by her house in Brookline.

She lost her temper. "No! Surely not."

Tamsin was the picture of shame. A miserable whine gurgled from her throat.

"She's still in your house!" Conversation at the tables around them ceased like someone had just red a gun in the air. Into the pregnant hush, Charlotte said, "You are coming with me right now and we are throwing that cheating s.k.a.n.k out on the street. Along with her crack-wh.o.r.e clothes."

An older woman at the next table remarked, "You go, girl."

As Charlotte dealt with the check, Tamsin pleaded, "I can't face * 27 *

her. Please, Charlie. Don't make me do it. She twists everything I say.

She makes me feel bad about myself."

Charlotte terminated this litany with an impatient snort. "So she calls you names and makes you cry. For Christ's sake, it's your home."

Another thought occurred to her. "And on that subject, where exactly have you been living for the past two weeks?"

"The Four Seasons."

Appalled, Charlotte took her cell phone from her purse and handed it to her fretful companion. "Phone them right now and tell them you're checking out."

* 28 *

CHAPTER THREE.

Lose the dress," Ash said.

She could not take her eyes off the deepening vee of creamy esh as Dani inched the zipper down the concave arch of Karlah's spine. The skin exposed had to be p.r.i.c.kling in antic.i.p.ation but Ash didn't touch. She wanted the elegant brunette to beg rst. Dani pushed the thin straps aside and dragged the dress down, her eyes locked to Ash's. Karlah wasn't wearing a bra. She didn't need to. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were taut and high.

Dani had already stripped to her panties, if that's what you could call the sc.r.a.p of lace glued to her crotch. Ash ran a caressing hand back and forth over the rm round a.s.s exposed before her, then hooked a nger inside the panties and twisted upward. She could smell sweet salty arousal from the ood of Dani's juices as the fabric strained against her c.l.i.t.

"Let's get rid of this." She snapped the imsy thong away. Twisting Dani's pale hair in her ngers, she forced her head back, exposing her slender throat. "You're really, really wet," she said, sliding the tip of her tongue down the life pulse just beneath the taut skin. "Maybe I'll let you get yourself off."

A shudder altered Dani's breathing. "And maybe I'll let you f.u.c.k me afterward."

"Would you like that?" Ash lifted her head to glance at Karlah.

"Want to watch me do your girlfriend?"

Karlah uttered a small "Yes," and Ash steered them farther into the bedroom.

A huge king bed with a noisy oral comforter stood near the * 29 *

windows. Ash pulled the cover aside and pushed her two companions down onto the pale sheets. Karlah's dark waves spilled over the pillows and her raspberry-tipped b.r.e.a.s.t.s scalloped like pale half-moons against the fading tan of her torso.

Dani crawled up the bed and knelt next to her, sweeping her platinum hair back so Ash could watch as she bent in for a kiss. Ash's throat felt tight and her breathing shallow. The walls of her chest squeezed her heart, making every beat reverberate through her body.

The tension at her core increased when Dani looked up and said, "I know what you want."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh." She rocked back onto her heels and pinched her peach-toned nipples between thumb and fore nger, one hand cradling each full breast. "You want these. And this." She opened her legs and tilted her hips just enough to display a compact blond mound and a neat rosy seam of esh.

"Looks like you got my number," Ash conceded thickly.

"Come on," Dani said.

"I can wait."

"What if I can't?"

Ash played along. "You better gure out how to get me interested."

Dani squirmed and giggled. She and Karlah started touching themselves, eyes closed, mouths parted, like they watched the same movies Ash did. Slightly disconcerted, but still turned on, Ash removed her jacket and slung it over the back of a shabby leather club chair. Like everything else in the room, it seemed out of step with the owner.

Ash would never have picked this bedroom, in this sedate Brookline home, for the private retreat of a woman like Dani Bush. Large, with an ornate plaster ceiling, the room was crammed with a random collection of antique furniture, threadbare Persian rugs, gilt-framed paintings of owers and country scenes, an old rocking horse, a dollhouse, and a scary quant.i.ty of lavender velvet drapery. Every surface was ankle deep in trinkets and mementos.

Ash sat down in the club chair and tried not to be distracted. She had the eerie sense that she was seeing the history of someone's life played out in a private code that took the form of inanimate objects.

The dressing table looked like a ea-market stall, the kind Ash would a.s.sociate with old people, not s.e.xy lesbians into threesomes.

* 30 *

It just goes to show, she thought as Dani began caressing Karlah's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, rst impressions could be misleading. Who, for example, would guess that Karlah had a tattoo of a small pig tucked in the shadow of her pelvic bone? Ash got a ash of her drunk as s.h.i.+t on a spring break and waking up the next morning wondering how the souvenir body art had ended up on her person.

Dani had a nipple in her mouth, sucking and teasing. Karlah moaned softly and opened her legs a little more. Dani gazed back at Ash. Slowly, deliberately, she slid a couple of ngers between her own thighs and worked them provocatively.

Holding her gaze, Ash unb.u.t.toned her s.h.i.+rt and let it hang open.

She trailed her hand down the white cotton of her tank, unbuckled her belt, and icked open the top b.u.t.ton of her pants. Both Dani and Karlah stared, trans xed, as she slid her hand idly down over her pants to rest on her crotch.

Dani seemed to gulp a breath, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rising and falling so sharply they wobbled. She lifted a couple of glistening ngers to Karlah's mouth, tracing them across her lips before slipping them inside. Droopy-eyed with desire, Karlah sucked intently, then pulled Dani down onto her and the two women squirmed against one another, kissing and stroking and sighing. Dani's golden tan glowed against Karlah's creamier coloring. Her voluptuous b.r.e.a.s.t.s crowded Karlah's.

She worked her way upright until she was sitting astride Karlah's belly, then leaned forward so her nipples swung low enough for Karlah to fondle and kiss.

Between gasps of pleasure, she twisted to stare at Ash. Almost solemnly, she wet her lips and asked, "Want to f.u.c.k?"

Ash eyed the are of her narrow waist and the pearish perfection of her a.s.s but stayed where she was, legs stretched indolently in front of her. "Soon."

With a knowing smile, Dani turned away again and tangled her hand in Karlah's hair. Head back, eyes closed, she surrendered herself to sensation for several minutes before sliding off and rolling onto her side. Face-to-face, breathing hard, and almost as one, the lovers reached between each other's thighs, their long, slender legs scissored.

A tight lump in Ash's throat began to melt, us.h.i.+ng liquid desire down into her chest and belly. Her tank felt like sandpaper against her nipples. They were always unbearably sensitive as she got hotter, never letting her forget for a minute that she needed to come, and soon. She * 31 *

could smell the brackish musk of her own arousal and the subtle scent her skin emitted when she craved release.

Her hosts writhed and ground against one another, their mouths locked, their breathing torn. Ash opened her zipper and shoved her hand between her thighs, clamping down, needing to slow her own response. She wanted to remain in the grip of this urgent aching need a while longer. Nothing made her feel alive like this did, every nerve end screaming, every hair bristling.

"I'm so close," Karlah whined softly to her partner. "I want your mouth."

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving, her face taut with concentration, Dani sought Ash's approval.

"Do her," Ash said. Unable to wait any longer, she got to her feet, stepped out of her pants, and got rid of her s.h.i.+rt and tank as she stalked over to the bed.

Both women drank her in for a few startled seconds, the usual response. Ash knew it wasn't about her spare, muscular physique or the b.r.e.a.s.t.s so closely molded to her chest that a few s.e.xual partners found them inadequate. When women with fancy lifestyles stared at her, openmouthed, it was always about the scars. She'd added quite a collection since the jagged hole in her gut that had ended her military career.

Thankfully, her accomplices in tonight's distraction refrained from killing the mood with awkward questions. With a purposeful air, Dani pushed Karlah onto her back once more and knelt between her legs. Parting the soaked mat of her hair, she exposed cabled folds of pink and red.

"That's right." Ash released a breath, rmly in the moment once more. "Let me see her."

Karlah bit down on her lip as a nger circled over her c.l.i.t, drawing the hood back slightly. Whimpering, she lifted imploring eyes to Ash and whispered, "Please."

"Very pretty." Ash meant that for the both of them. She drew closer and trailed the palm of her hand up and down Dani's back, pausing between her shoulder blades. "Now show me that cute a.s.s of yours."

She applied rm downward pressure and Dani complied, getting busy with her tongue, making sure Ash knew exactly how good everything tasted. The sound of her sucking and slurping, the sight of her a.s.s in the air, and the feel of her damp, pliant esh made Ash's pulse * 32 *

jerk within her c.l.i.t. A pounding, ooding pressure in her head seemed to compress thought, jamming her senses at a primal pitch. The smell of s.e.x, and the soft cries and moans crowded her airwaves.

She dipped into Dani's gleaming core and trailed a wet nger up and down along her crack until Dani bucked against her and brie y turned her head, xing her with a wild, intent look. With her other hand, Ash gave her what she wanted, burying several ngers deep inside her p.u.s.s.y. A little rough, a little short on nesse, but nothing tonight's plaything couldn't handle.

"Is this what you want?" she asked hoa.r.s.ely.

Dani made a noise but she had her mouth full again and it looked like Karlah was lost in bliss, about to get off. Ash's c.l.i.t thrummed unbearably and she squeezed her thighs together, applying just enough pressure to contain the inevitable. It felt so good to be inside a woman again that she almost keeled over.

The slippery warmth, the sight of her ngers disappearing into a body, the way the esh she invaded stretched and molded to take her deeper, only made her greedy for more. She withdrew slightly, rolled her thumb over her wet palm, and transferred moisture to the wrinkled entrance she wanted to explore. Dani responded to the implicit request by reaching around and parting the cheeks of her a.s.s.

Ash circled intently until all the re exive resistance dissolved and her thumb was welcomed inside. Dani's a.s.s clenched tightly around her, and through the thin walls that separated them, her thumb found her ngers and she kissed them gently together.

Dani made muf ed sounds and frantically jerked her hips. Ash obliged, easing back, then sliding in again. It wasn't enough. Dani pushed sharply against her, signaling how she wanted it. Ash pumped faster, f.u.c.king her with deep, hard strokes. She couldn't hold on much longer. Her briefs were dripping wet. Her c.l.i.t wanted what it wanted.

With her free hand, she pinched the tiny, throbbing head between her index and middle ngers just in time to hear Karlah lose it, rocking the bed with her shudders.

Dani gasped, "Yes. f.u.c.k me. Come on."

"Like this?" Ash drove deeper. Crudely. Ramming into her.