Earth Angel (29 page)

“Want me to do it?”

“Absolutely not. How am I going to learn if I don’t practice?”

“You don’t need to learn,” Gwynne said. “I can do it.”

Abby traced the edge of the cotton cups. “I want to learn so I’ll know what to do next time.”

“You can practice another time,” Gwynne suggested.

Abby fingered the clasp, feeling how the two pieces fit together. “Quiet. I’m concentrating. Pretend I’m being suave and I’m expertly undoing your bra. One-handed.”

She crawled onto Gwynne’s lap and pulled at the neckline of her sweater to look down it. Unfortunately she seemed to only want a visual to help her with the clasp. Or maybe that wasn’t her only reason, since she doubted she could see much detail in the dark. The moon was bright, but it wasn’t
that
bright. Her hands went up her shirt again, focused on her task.

“I’ve actually never taken off another woman’s bra before,” Abby said, fumbling with the mechanism.

“Never? How is that possible?”

“I guess it never came up.”

“If I found myself in that situation, I’d make it come up.”

“I’m sure you would.” Abby wiggled against her, changing position to get a better angle. “I can do this, though. I just have to figure out how this clasp works.”

Which at this rate was going to take until morning. Gwynne groaned, fighting the urge to help. The next time she was going bra-less. “In the interest of speeding this up, I’d like you to know there are no bonus points for doing this one-handed.”

“That’s what you think.”

Abby demonstrated what she could do to Gwynne’s breast if she had a free hand. Gwynne shivered, and this time it wasn’t because she was cold.

“I’m sorry I’m not better at this,” Abby said softly, her bravado finally slipping. “You probably didn’t think I was a lesbian when you first met me, with the way I dress, and now I can’t undo this clasp…”

“No, I did,” Gwynne reassured her, straining toward her touch.

Abby abandoned the clasp and pressed her thumbs to the tips of Gwynne’s nipples. Gwynne gasped as electricity lit a spot deep inside her. Abby pushed her sweater up and kissed her through her bra, licking at the peaks until there were two damp spots on the cotton. Gwynne arched her back. She reached for Abby’s sweater, intending to yank it over her head, but Abby stopped her.

“Are you still focusing on my suaveness?”

“All this talking is making it hard for me to focus on how suave you are,” Gwynne said, feeling a little light-headed.

“Then focus on how talented I am.”

“Talented?” She shouldn’t tease if Abby was worried about not living up to some mythical lesbian standard, but it was hard not to when she
was
so incredibly talented, even with her charming bra ineptitude. There was just something about even her awkward touches that made her want to lie back and see what she would do next that was guaranteed to turn her on.

“Fast?” Abby suggested, tugging again at her bra while her free hand continued to stroke her breast with a gentle insistence that made her tingle and tighten to the point of pain.

“This is fast?” A desperate sound escaped from the back of Gwynne’s throat, half moan, half laugh. God, how did she end up under a blanket with someone who was so fun to be with? Who was weird, and optimistic, and genuinely nice? And crazy. Crazy in a good way. A very, very good…

Abby finally gave up on her attempt to undo the clasp one-handed and tried with both hands. “Aha! Got it.” She stripped off Gwynne’s sweater and the bra and captured one of Gwynne’s breasts with her mouth.

Gwynne caught her breath in a sudden, involuntary inhale.

Abby had no problem getting the rest of Gwynne’s clothes off, and Gwynne stayed remarkably warm as Abby crawled all over her, shoving a cushion of clothes between her and the blankets. She passed warm and was well into hot by the time Abby wedged herself between her knees and pushed her legs apart.

As Abby sank down and lowered her head, the ends of her long hair swept against her inner thighs. Gwynne tightened with anticipation. She knew what was coming, but still, the shock of Abby’s warm, wet mouth made her jump.

Abby stayed with her and stroked her with a rhythm that made her absolutely crazed, made her writhe and moan and spread her legs farther apart and thrust her hips toward her, needing to get closer, so focused on the moment that she no longer knew where they were. She was burning up and all she saw was Abby, her eyes lowered and her hair hanging in her face and her aura swirling around her, aquamarine with sparks of rose, tangerine, and bright golden angel’s light, the colors shifting as Abby hummed and moaned with pleasure. Gwynne’s eyes closed and her neck arched. Her breath came harshly, frantically, out of control. When the scent of Abby’s arousal reached her, she lost her mind.

Abby didn’t wait for her to recover. She pushed her over the edge again, pushing her deeper this time, bringing her to where she was shrieking and gasping, pushing her beyond where she thought she could go. She was spent, but Abby went after her again and again, the colors of her aura spinning and swirling into a blur of searing white-hot infinity, waking surge after surge of power that left her quivering uncontrollably. She couldn’t bear it anymore, and yet she craved her touch and clung to her with her inner muscles, begging for it, because dying at her hands was all she wanted to do.

* * *

Gwynne stirred, and Abby curled closer, unwilling to be separated from her by even an inch. It was warm in her arms, and perfect, and she didn’t want to break the profound peacefulness of their sated energy.

“Are you in your clothes? Again?” Gwynne complained, apparently not onboard with spending the rest of the night doing the drowsy bonding thing if they could be naked instead. “I’m going to start thinking you don’t want to take your clothes off for me.”

Like she hadn’t done just that an hour ago. Well, most of her clothes. Gwynne had gotten pleasantly distracted before she finished stripping everything off her, and by then Abby had come so hard they’d forgotten all thoughts of clothing.

Now the temperature had dropped and she didn’t mind having on a sweater. “It’s cold.”

“Not that cold.” Gwynne reached under Abby’s sweater and unhooked her bra on the first try.

“Show-off.”

Gwynne pushed Abby’s straps over her shoulders in an attempt to take off her bra without removing her sweater. “Help me out here.”

Abby completed the maneuver and handed her her turquoise lace bra as a reward for being thoughtful enough to leave her the warmth of her sweater. Gwynne took the bra and dangled it off one finger.

“Turquoise. I like this one,” Gwynne said, swinging it back and forth. “It reminds me of the first time I got you naked.”

“You remember which bra I wore?”

“You
don’t
?” Gwynne stopped swinging the bra and opened her mouth.

“I do, but…I think you have a thing about bras.”

“I think I have a thing about
you
.”

Abby blushed. “I believe I heard mention of a red pushup bra in your past…”

“Ancient history.”

Abby hunkered down inside her sweater. She didn’t want to be another conquest. “Am I going to be known as the girl in the turquoise lace bra?”

Gwynne dropped the bra. She took her by the shoulders and kissed her with breathtaking tenderness, kissing away her insecurities. Abby’s heart melted—a painful kind of melting. She molded herself to Gwynne’s body, aching to be closer, frustrated by the physical barrier of their solid human bodies that didn’t dissolve into ether.

“You don’t get a bra nickname,” Gwynne said, moving her lips against the corner of her mouth with little kisses.

“Why not?”

“Because I give bra nicknames only to my exes.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bright and early the next morning, their car was fixed and they were on their way to the mountain. By midmorning they were on foot following hundreds of angels up barely discernible game trails and slipping on pine needles, praying neither one of them twisted an ankle. At least Abby was praying. Hiking was not something she did for fun, and this was a seriously steep slope.

Several hours of hiking later, they hadn’t encountered a single human being. The angels were singing yet another round of some Roman marching song, but Abby didn’t have the breath to join in—especially not in Latin.

She unsnapped her pack and let it slide to the ground, then collapsed beside it. Gwynne sat next to her and dug out Abby’s water bottle and opened it for her.

“Drink,” said Gwynne.

Abby had to wait until she stopped panting before she could attempt to swallow her water without choking. “If I survive this, I’m going to start going to the gym.”

“I’ll join you,” Gwynne said, breathing hard herself.

“You have softball.”

“What…I can’t do both?”

“Maybe I should try softball too.” Abby paused. It was hard to talk without wheezing. “Because I never want to be this out of shape again. I can’t…” She gulped some more air. “…breathe.”

Gwynne gingerly pulled off one of her boots and showed Abby the painful-looking blister on her heel.

Abby winced. “Does it hurt?”

“Yup.” Gwynne found moleskin and stuck it on while angels flitted through the pines, leaping, spinning and somersaulting, laughing with barely contained excitement, waiting for them to get back on their feet. “You know what would be annoying? If it turns out Elle’s taking us the back way and there’s a road we don’t know about on the other side.”

Elle separated herself from her friends and hovered above Abby and Gwynne. “There is no road. This is the trail other people take—the UFO hunters and the peak baggers—although why anyone would want to bag this modest a peak is beyond my comprehension.”

A hawk cried overhead and Elle glanced up sharply, as did several other angels. They watched it circle until at some unknown signal they all returned to what they’d been doing before.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Elle said, “we’re almost there.”

Gwynne put her boot back on and they continued up the mountain.

An hour later they emerged from a stand of aspen into a clearing with a panoramic view of the plains far below. The air smelled like ozone, poisonously sweet. A faint trace of shimmering, iridescent blue-gray and lavender arced high in the sky, touching down on the mountain and wavering in and out of sight.

“Can you see it?” Abby breathed.

Gwynne took her hand. “It’s beautiful.”

She raised her hand to her lips and kissed her palm with only the barest touch. Abby shivered. So gentle, but intense. And that had better not have been a kiss goodbye. Because this was it. They were at the bridge and there was no more time to debate the wisdom of what they were about to do. Abby laced her fingers with Gwynne’s.

A songbird flew past, trilling as it headed straight for the angels’ dazzling, nearly invisible bridge, and dropped dead from the sky.

Another bird careened out of the way.

In the dirt, an angel cradled the small, broken body.

* * *

They positioned themselves on the bridge, one on each node, countless angels holding hands to form one long chain that stretched farther than anyone could see, disappearing into the sky like a stairway of stars toward the heavens.

Way at the other end, where the bridge was anchored in the Angelic Realm, was an angel who formed the first link of the chain. Here on earth, Elle and Sapphire were the last two angels in the chain, leaving one empty node a foot or two off the ground. Sapphire held out her hand, waiting for Abby to join them. Abby gave Gwynne one last squeeze and let go so she could take her place on the last node.

There was no node for Gwynne.

Abby gripped Sapphire’s hand, expecting to feel the flicker of connection she’d felt the last time, but there was nothing. She hesitated.

Gwynne approached the bridge, closer than looked safe, and blew her a kiss. It wasn’t a jaunty, lighthearted gesture, the way blowing a kiss ought to be. Instead, her eyes were downcast and a muscle worked in her jaw as she pressed her fingers to her lips before she reluctantly raised her eyes, her gaze boring through her, and sent the kiss.

“We can do this,” Gwynne said. She reached for her hand but stayed where she was, far enough away that they wouldn’t touch unless Abby wanted to.

Abby looked at her outstretched arm and took a deep breath. “We can.”

From her position a foot above the ground, Abby bent her knees and started to reach for her. Electricity arced between them, jumping across the space that separated them, shocking them before they even touched. In the split second before Abby could instinctively pull back, Gwynne had already launched herself at her and held her in a fierce hug, her arms tight around Abby’s waist, her head to her chest. Abby braced herself for electrical overload, but it never came. Instead, everything around them went still. No birdsong, no angelic choir, no wind whistling through the trees.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” Gwynne whispered, still alive.

The angelic link rushed through her like a stream of musical notes forming a chord. The chord wavered, teetering on the cusp of dissonance. Abby held her breath. Her fingers tensed as if they were on harp strings and could physically wrest the vibration under control. Her lungs screamed and the chord reasserted itself and stabilized. Abby reeled with light-headedness, sure that she would fall if Gwynne weren’t holding her.

Gwynne was alive. Gwynne was alive and Sapphire was beside her and they were part of this endless chain of angels. The rightness of that filled her with an overwhelmingly pure, aching sweetness. And deep within that sweetness, a whisper of angelic essence woke inside her, tingling in her spine. The essence spiraled and hummed and spread through her whole body and finally she gave in to the unbearable urge to stretch her arms out to the sides, still part of the chain, until the muscles between her shoulder blades reached their limit. Huge wings, immeasurable times the size of her body, swept open like a cascading fan with ribs of blinding white light. Silence echoed in a vast white emptiness.