Page 62 of Serpentine Valentine
And when the tears came in a hot, frantic rush before I could cut them off at the pass, my light slid off my leg to sit on her rump and tug me into her arms so I could cry against her breast. She held me too tightly, but I didn’t feel claustrophobic like I usually would have.
I felt cared for, protected.
Seen.
And even through the ferocity of my broken sobs, my mourning for every sexual touch that had come before hers, I whispered, “Lux mea.”
My light that shines in the darkness.
“With his venom irresistible and bittersweet, that loosener of limbs,
Love reptile-like strikes me down.”
—Sappho
Luna
I wokeup in the embrace of a woman for the first time in my life.
I also woke up smiling.
There was no disorientation when I opened my eyes even though a hangover would have been warranted after my drinking the night before. Just a calm, clear kind of awareness that had only ever come after I practiced my morning meditation.
I knew it was Lex behind me, enfolding with her body like both a blanket and a shield. Her limbs were heavy with sleep, her breath deep and even as it stirred my hair over my cheek. I could smell her and a new, different fragrance I recognized instantly asus. The aroma of salt-sweet sex clung to the sheets. I buried my face in my pillow as a smile claimed my face.
Last night had been…
I was a literature major, and I didn’t have the words. Everything seemed cliché. Could I say that sex between two women was life-affirming? I knew there was no hope of procreation, but it still felt that way. Maybe because I’d never been more alive than I was under Lex’s touch. Where Pierce had passed through me as if I was one of the ghosts that reportedly haunted this house, Lex seemed to excavate every inch of me, even the secrets that lay dormant beneath my skin.
Sex with Lex had been…yes, life-affirming. Yes, the best sexual experience of my life. Addicting, and that wasn’t a hyperbole. I found my used and pleasantly aching sex throbbed when I thought of all the ways we’d explored each other throughout the night. Already, I was dreaming of having her again.
I’d always believed I was just one of those women with a low sex drive, but the truth was, I’d just been racing on the wrong track.
Everything about Lex appealed to me.
I loved her soft roundness. The weight of her heavy breasts in my hand, the way her ass bounced back under my questing fingertips. Her taste was so different in each place, a sensorial exploration I mapped with my tongue. Sweet, almost floral at her neck and darker, where her body curved––inside the elbows, behind the knee, in the crease of her thigh and groin.
I hadn’t allowed myself to fantasize about sex with a woman, but if I had, I might have guessed it would be all softness and sighs. And we had that, sometimes, a unique kind of harmony. Moments when we pleasured each other at the same time, staring into the other’s eyes and breathing the same breath. Moments when we felt like one person and still, wholly, honestly ourselves.
But there were also moments of roughness. Nails sharp against plush flesh, teeth like punctuation marks punched into straining muscles. Shouts and grunts and orders that softened my knees like butter and made me so wet I leaked down my thighs.
It was all hot, all wildly arousing.
I wasn’t much of an artist unless you counted my hobby of photography, but it made me understand poets and painters. I wanted to trap this ecstasy in a portrait or print forever to relive again and again.
I allowed myself to bask in the morning afterglow for a long time, but eventually, I had to pee. We’d stayed up into the small hours of the morning, and Lex had done a lot of the heavier lifting––at one point, she’d literally hauled me up her body to sit me on her tongue––so I was careful not to wake her as I slid out of bed.
My clothes were still dirty, so I snooped through the antique, scarred wood chest of drawers until I found an oversized cream cable-knit sweater and a pair of tiny knit shorts that barely fit my more muscular behind. After using the toilet, I brushed my teeth with the same brush from last night and gave up on my mess of bedhead after a minute.
I had no doubt the Gorgon sisters knew exactly what Lex and I had been doing last night, so there was no point in trying to hide it. Besides, my lips were a raw pink from all the kissing, and I had three hickeys that made up a triangle on the right side of my throat.
The house was quiet as I walked past the second floor to the main, and I realized quickly it was because everyone was still in bed. The clock above the microwave said it was eight thirty in the morning, much later than I usually slept in, but it seemed the Gorgons were late to bed and late to rise.
I hesitated in the empty kitchen, unsure for the first time today.
My instinct urged me to make myself at home and start on breakfast. I was ravenous after all the sex, and the big bowl of fruit in the middle of the island countertop prompted me to make fruit compote for pancakes. It was a Sunday morning, and I didn’t have practice until late that afternoon.
But…I wasn’t really Lex’s anything.
