Chapter Fourteen
Gwen
Gwen squeaks as Beth lunges at her there amongst her blankets and sheets and pillows. But the sudden press of her body isn’t at all unwelcome. Gwen happily settles beneath her, accepting her weight and her kiss and making use of their hideaway beneath the blankets to run her hands everywhere, everywhere she hasn’t been able to yet.
Where they were both playful before, now they’re equally desperate, hands and teeth and tongues, grabbing and pulling and squirming against each other frantically, as if there isn’t a single second more and they’re to be ripped from each other in the next moment.
The thought slows Gwen’s pace. They’re safe alone in her bedroom, everyone else asleep, and they’ve nothing but time. As much as the desperate, feverish kisses stir in her belly and warm her from toes to ears, she doesn’t want this to be some fumbling mess between them.
She doesn’t want to think about tomorrow—about how this could be the first and last time they’re together this way. But she allows herself to know that this matters, and they must make the most of this moment, not toss it away in fraught panic.
And so Gwen sucks in the deepest breath she can amid all the teeth and tongue and fabulous sensation, and slides her hands purposefully, one still cradling Beth’s jaw as they kiss, the other skimming firmly down her side. Beth gasps at the pressure and her legs contract, straddled on either side of Gwen’s hips, pressing down tight. Beth pulls back just far enough for them to meet each other’s eyes.
“Um,” Beth says, lips plump and red, hair in disarray. They never bothered to try taking down their hair.
Gwen laughs, reaching up to smooth one of the dozens of flyaways from her face. “You’re beautiful,” she says.
Beth blushes further, lifting one of the hands braced by Gwen’s head to trace the line of her jaw. It shoots tingles up and down Gwen’s spine. “You’re beautiful,” she counters.
Gwen smiles and then lowers her hands, rucking up Beth’s chemise, raising a brow. Beth’s flush deepens but she nods, shivering as Gwen slides it up her torso, her fingers trailing along forbidden, newly freed skin.
And then the damn thing catches on Beth’s hair. They groan and laugh, stuck there beneath the blankets, Beth’s head lost in her chemise, pins poking them both.
“Christ,” Gwen mutters, giggling as Beth squirms against her, the sensation as playful as it is arousing. “Here, sit up.”
She maneuvers them both up so Beth is cradled in her lap, the blankets curled around them. She has enough room now to carefully lift the chemise away from Beth’s artfully piled hair. She tosses the garment away triumphantly and then looks back at Beth.
The candlelight glints off her skin in a soft glow. Gwen takes in the small swell of her breasts, the long line of her neck, the peak of her nipples, the dip of her navel. She’s like a goddess, and she’s there, in Gwen’s lap, staring back at her. What on earth does she do with her hands?
Gwen curls her fingers at her sides, itching to reach out, to run her fingertips everywhere, and trail them with her lips, taste every inch of Beth’s exposed skin until she’s a moaning puddle of want and mess and desire. But she can’t quite seem to move.
Beth blows out a little laughing breath, and Gwen startles as hands cup her jaw, guiding her mouth up. The press of their lips unfreezes her and Gwen lets her hands come to rest softly on Beth’s hips, delighting in the juxtaposition there between her drawers and the satin of her skin.
Beth sighs against her, lips parting to suck on Gwen’s bottom lip. Gwen finds her hands moving of their own accord, tracing upward. She trails her palms along Beth’s flanks, drinks in her slight shudder and the shifting of her hips against Gwen’s own. She slowly glides her hands around to rest against Beth’s stomach, swirling her fingers around Beth’s belly button.
Beth giggles against her lips but doesn’t break their kiss, and Gwen files her ticklishness away for later, too intent to explore the rest of her to settle there, despite the beauty in her laughter. She takes a deep breath against Beth’s mouth before raising one hand to cup Beth’s small rounded breast, her other gliding around to anchor on her back.
Beth arches, pulling away from her mouth only far enough to rest her forehead against Gwen’s. Gwen traces the edge of her nipple, squeezes, strokes, watching every reaction, repeating anything that makes Beth gasp or twitch or wriggle. It’s intoxicating, seeing that pleasure play across her face, feeling the aching softness of her skin, knowing that she can do this to Beth, can give this to Beth.
She wants to know what more she can do, what more she can elicit from this woman. So she leans Beth back, nosing down the line of her throat, pressing kisses to her soft skin. Beth moans as she lays a kiss against the top of her other breast. Gwen looks up, waiting until Beth meets her eyes before lowering her mouth to her nipple, glorying in the cry that escapes Beth’s lips.
Her skin is soft and slightly rough at once, and the sounds she makes—Gwen could settle here, stay just like this for the rest of her days if she could simply live in the press of Beth’s hips and the arch of her back and the soft delight of her flesh beneath her tongue.
But all too quickly Beth is pulling away, rucking Gwen’s chemise. Gwen tries to lean inward, not ready to relinquish this moment, this discovery.
Beth huffs at her. “Off. I want to touch you too.”
Her look is insistent, and though Gwen could spend the whole night simply learning the pleasure of Beth’s body, she can feel her own want growing. She can’t help but lift her arms, suddenly eager for more than the press of flesh against her mouth. Eager for the hips grinding into her own and the promise of them completely bare together.
Beth’s hands are careful but quick. Gwen laughs as she watches Beth toss her chemise high across the room before turning back to take her in. Gwen feels like perhaps she should be modest, but now that she’s known what it’s like to touch Beth, all she wants is to know her touch in return—can’t be shy when she wants those hands on her so desperately.
Beth doesn’t disappoint, immediately trailing her fingertips from Gwen’s clavicle down to her navel. Gwen shudders, but nothing tickles. There’s only a tingling pleasure and overwhelming sensation as Beth learns the planes of her chest. As those smaller hands curl around her breasts, touching her in ways she’s only ever touched herself. It’s different, and new, but utterly, gloriously wonderful and Gwen finds she’s making her own sounds now.
Their mouths crash back together as they squirm against each other. Their breath is hot and loud between them. Gwen finds her hands migrating down to Beth’s hips of their own accord, tugging at the laces of her drawers and loosening them until she’s able to shimmy them down her hips.
Beth lowers her hands to do the same, groaning when both of their drawers get caught against their thighs. Beth breaks from her mouth and shuffles off her. Gwen feels her loss both in warmth and the press of skin and hurries to copy her as Beth triumphantly tosses her drawers away. Gwen does the same and suddenly they’re fully naked.
Beth’s skin is beautiful, flushed and lovely in the firelight. They sit facing each other, chests still heaving as they look one another over. Beth’s small breasts and narrow hips fit her small frame, the curls at the apex of her thighs as dark as those falling from her half-pinned hair. The contrast of light and dark is bewitching and Gwen shifts closer without thought, running a hand up Beth’s leg.
The soft hair rasps against her palm and Gwen looks up to meet Beth’s eyes as she settles her hand on Beth’s hip. Beth’s eyes are blown wide, her lips plump, her cheeks pink. She looks so utterly beautiful it’s almost painful.
“You’re so pretty,” Beth whispers.
Gwen shakes her head. “You are.”
Beth giggles, blushing, and Gwen leans forward, pressing her lips to Beth’s neck and breathing her in. She slips her hand down, down, down from Beth’s hip. Beth shudders, her hands coming to grip Gwen’s waist, jaw going slack beneath her lips. Gwen hums at the warm wet between Beth’s thighs and gently pushes to lay her down against the sheets, the comforter now a lump in the middle of the bed.
She continues her exploration, mapping all the places that make Beth gasp, circling her fingers and making delicate patterns against the top of her. She delights in the squeaks and moans, in the flutter of Beth’s eyelids, in the little flare of her nose, in the wide, searching pupils that meet her gaze.
She sips kisses from Beth’s lips as she slips a single finger inside her, both of them stilling. Beth pants against her mouth. Gwen marvels at the feeling—to be so intimate, so close as to be inside another person, inside Beth. To see her unraveled this way, to hear the way her breath hitches as Gwen circles with her palm and slowly curls her finger, searches for the place inside Beth that she’s found before within herself. Finding that she can know her, can know what will make her happy and give her pleasure.
Can watch in fascination and joy as Beth tips over that crest of pleasure, back arching, legs shaking, breath coming in short gasps. She slowly pulls back her hand and Beth’s hips fall back to the bed, her body going lax as the wave passes. Gwen watches Beth’s eyes flutter back open. She tips her head forward again to meet Gwen’s gaze, eyes heavy-lidded. Gwen smiles and leans down to press kisses to Beth’s face, taking a moment to wipe her hand on the sheets before using both palms to cradle Beth’s jaw.
The smell of her lingers between them and Gwen hums as Beth shifts in her hold to catch her lips in a kiss. Beth seems to regain control of her hands and suddenly they’re everywhere, skimming up and down Gwen’s sides before one slips between her own legs. Gwen nearly falls onto Beth in surprise, a shudder consuming her body, a herald of what’s to come.
Beth smiles against her mouth and uses her other hand to shift herself upward, flipping them slowly until Gwen is pressed beneath her in a full reverse. She squirms against the sheets as Beth does her own study. Her hand is smaller, different; the rhythm, the movement, the feeling of her fingers inside of Gwen is strange and new and exhilarating. Pulsing pleasure lights up in her belly, her legs shaking, brought so close already to the edge by touching Beth and kissing Beth and feeling Beth atop her and inside her and around her.
She tries to prolong it, doesn’t want this to end so soon, but Beth’s finger crooks inside of her, her palm hard against the top of her, and Gwen falls over that cliff of pleasure, tight and pulsing and raw and magnificent. Gwen clutches at Beth’s back, gasping as Beth continues her ministrations. The pleasure lasts, waves crashing upon waves as her hips jerk and her back tenses and her belly clenches over and over until it’s so much she has to push Beth’s hand away.
She blinks her eyes open only in time to see Beth’s fingers slide from her mouth. She groans at the very thought—to have missed it, for it to have happened. The smell of them mingles all around and Gwen tries to come back to herself, to summon romantic words, something, anything.
All she manages is “Holy hell.”
Beth snorts and falls down onto her, pressing a smacking kiss to her lips before cuddling into her, her face buried in Gwen’s neck, legs laced between hers. Gwen breathes her in, wrapping her still-tingling arms about her back, hands splayed wide against her shoulders.
“That was wondrous,” Beth whispers, her lips brushing Gwen’s pulse.
It sends yet another shudder through her and Gwen wonders how anyone ever leaves their bed, if this is what it is to know someone else, to give and receive pleasure, to kiss and squirm and sigh. Why do they leave at all? Why not simply live like this forever?
“I love you” slips from her tongue.
Both of them still and Gwen clenches her eyes shut, mortified.
She does, she thinks, love Beth. How could she not, after what they’ve just done, after how it just felt, after how it feels now to lie with her here, skin cooling, pulse calming? When Beth is the first person she wants to speak to, first person she wants to see, and whose smile made her heart flutter long before they kissed? And now—the look Beth gives Gwen as she arches up, propping herself up with her arms on either side of Gwen’s head—it makes Gwen’s stomach flip, her toes curl.
“I love you too,” Beth whispers, leaning down to press her forehead to Gwen’s. “I want to stay right here forever.”
Gwen grins and leans up to catch her lips, cradling her face between her palms, content to do just that. The morning will come, with its light and its reality. But now, here in the cocoon of her bed, in their love, with nothing between them, is a perfection she’s never known, and she intends to savor it for as long as she can.