More Than Paradise (4 page)

The despondency ß 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 ß 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 Þ 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 skank out on the street. Along with her crack-whore clothes.”

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

As Charlotte dealt with the check, Tamsin pleaded, “I can’t face

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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.”

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MORE THAN PARADISE

Lose the dress,” Ash said.

She could not take her eyes off the deepening vee of creamy ß esh as Dani inched the zipper down the concave arch of Karlah’s spine. The skin exposed had to be prickling in anticipation but Ash didn’t touch. She wanted the elegant brunette to beg Þ 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 breasts were taut and high.

Dani had already stripped to her panties, if that’s what you could call the scrap of lace glued to her crotch. Ash ran a caressing hand back and forth over the Þ rm round ass exposed before her, then hooked a Þ nger inside the panties and twisted upward. She could smell sweet salty arousal from the ß ood of Dani’s juices as the fabric strained against her clit.

“Let’s get rid of this.” She snapped the ß imsy thong away. Twisting Dani’s pale hair in her Þ 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 fuck 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 ß oral comforter stood near the

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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 breasts 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 foreÞ 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 ß 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 Þ 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 ß owers and country scenes, an old rocking horse, a dollhouse, and a scary quantity 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 ß ea-market stall, the kind Ash would associate with old people, not sexy lesbians into threesomes.

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MORE THAN PARADISE

It just goes to show, she thought as Dani began caressing Karlah’s breasts, Þ 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 ß ash of her drunk as shit 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 Þ ngers between her own thighs and worked them provocatively.

Holding her gaze, Ash unbuttoned her shirt and let it hang open.

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

Dani seemed to gulp a breath, her breasts rising and falling so sharply they wobbled. She lifted a couple of glistening Þ 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 breasts 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 fuck?”

Ash eyed the ß are of her narrow waist and the pearish perfection of her ass 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, ß ushing 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

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JENNIFER FULTON

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 breasts 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 shirt 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 breasts so closely molded to her chest that a few sexual 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, Þ rmly in the moment once more. “Let me see her.”

Karlah bit down on her lip as a Þ nger circled over her clit, 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 ass of yours.”

She applied Þ 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 ass in the air, and the feel of her damp, pliant ß esh made Ash’s pulse

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MORE THAN PARADISE

jerk within her clit. A pounding, ß ooding pressure in her head seemed to compress thought, jamming her senses at a primal pitch. The smell of sex, and the soft cries and moans crowded her airwaves.

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

“Is this what you want?” she asked hoarsely.

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 clit 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 Þ ngers disappearing into a body, the way the ß 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 ass.

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

Dani made mufß 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, fucking her with deep, hard strokes. She couldn’t hold on much longer. Her briefs were dripping wet. Her clit wanted what it wanted.

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

Dani gasped, “Yes. Fuck me. Come on.”

“Like this?” Ash drove deeper. Crudely. Ramming into her.

She was so close, she was shaking, every muscle tensing and pulsing. Her legs quivered from the strain of staying upright when they needed to fold. Blood raced through her limbs too fast to carry the oxygen needed and her head spun. She leaned her knees against the bed

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so she wouldn’t sink down in a heap. All she wanted was to surrender, to let it all wash over her, to lose herself completely.

The Þ nal shock of orgasm tore through her body, wrenching the breath from her chest and blossoming from her core to her extremities.

Her low animal cries merged with Dani’s small scream of release and sweat broke across her skin. She slumped down over the body beneath hers, gasping and shaking as she caught her breath. When Karlah began struggling at the bottom of the body heap, Ash carefully withdrew her hand from its warm wet sheath in Dani. Ignoring the weak cry of protest, she rolled off and fell ß at on her back against the cool sheets, unable to think, let alone move.