In the Distance There Is Light (12 page)

Underneath my panties, I’m alive as I’ve ever been. My pussy lips throb and pulse as though there’s no tomorrow—maybe, for that particular part of my body, there is none.

Dolores trails her finger along the waistband of my panties, leaving an expanse of goosebumps in its wake. I want that damned piece of fabric off me, but, somehow, I know to let her guide this, to let her lead me into whatever comes next.

My breath is coming in short gusts and my brain is dominated by a lust so pure, so focused, I fear there might be part of me missing after this is over. Or maybe that’s what I’m secretly hoping for. I want to disappear. Lose myself in this moment, in Dolores’ exquisite touch, in her love for me—because I have no doubt she loves me, and I love her right back.

Her finger travels south now, over the fabric of my panties. She strokes my lips and I offer myself a little more to her. I buck up my hips, wanting to make my desire as clear as possible, though at this point there’s no more chance of being misunderstood.

Her fingers skate up and down and the sensation is so divine, so full of promise, I huff out a moan again. All this softness, this delicate dedication to me, is not missing its effect. I want to beg her, but what we are doing here tonight, needs to remain as wordless as possible. No talk, just action. Affection. Emotion. Pleasure.

Pleasure.

The very thing that seemed the most unattainable and which I’m luxuriously bathing in now.

My esteem for Dolores only grows as her fingertips finally curve underneath my panties and she starts tugging them down. She is a woman free of prudishness, of guilt, of anything that might stop her from doing this.

When my pussy meets the air, the engine that’s been steadily humming inside of me is revved up another notch. Every nerve ending in my body stands to attention as Dolores sidles up to me, flanks my side with the warmth of her body and, at last, traces a finger along my bare, wet lips. She’s perched up on one arm, looking at me, ready to enter me.

Then she does. She slides inside of me. Slowly, deliberately, gauging. And that’s when I truly disappear. There’s no more pain in my world. No more loss. Only Dolores’ finger inside of me. When she slips out and adds another, slowly stroking me, I throw my head back into the pillows, bare my neck to her. She kisses me just below the ear and I can hear her breath, her arousal in it.

Dolores’ fingers thrust high and deep inside of me, fill me, and empty me at the same time. Every time she delivers another thrust, some of the pent-up tension flees my muscles, a morsel of pain gets unstuck from where it has lodged itself deep inside of me. The longer she fucks me, the more I lose myself, but the more I become myself again. But even in those moments of sweet bliss, of divine physical sensation, I know that this feeling won’t last. That it’s fleeting. Glorious, but passing. A short bout of relief. A reprieve from my doomed reality. Maybe that’s why I seem to feel her fingers everywhere.

Those kisses she’s planting on the sensitive skin of my neck pierce all the way down to my soul. A layer of sweat forms where her body meets mine, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as she fucks me, her fingers curling inside of me, taking me, stealing from me what I’m so desperate to lose. This second skin I’ve grown since Ian’s death. This armor around my heart. It all comes crumbling down as she hits that spot inside me, repeatedly, and she coaxes from me a pleasure so base, so animalistic, that the world seems to cave in around me as a climax washes over me, starting from somewhere deep inside of me, the place where I’ve been holding all my pain. As I climax, losing control over my muscles for an instant, stepping out of my body while pure pleasure takes over, I let out a guttural groan, one straight from the heart, tears rolling down my cheeks.

Dolores gently slips her fingers out and as soon as I’m empty of her—because that’s how it feels—I want her again. I can’t stop my tears from falling. They’re coming out in big, heaving gulps now. I haven’t cried that much anymore the past few weeks, and it’s as though my body wants to make up for that now. As though it’s trying to say that I still have a shitload of grieving to do, no matter how exquisitely I let Ian’s mother fuck me.

“It’s okay,” Dolores’ whispers. She’s still flanking me. The hand with which she fucked me on my cheek, her thumb stroking me. “Let it all out.”

She holds me while I cry, until my tear ducts run dry, and I feel raw and empty and sated.

“I’m sorry.” I’m not really apologizing. It’s more something automatic coming from my mouth as I wipe some of the tears from my cheeks.

“Don’t ever say sorry for crying.” Dolores kisses me on the cheek.

“I don’t really know what else to say.” I manage a bit of a chuckle.

“How do you feel?” she whispers.

I turn on my side, facing her. “Like I owe you something.” I give her a quick smile before pressing my lips to hers.

She puts both her hands on my cheeks and pulls away from me a bit. “Sophie, please, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I do owe you this.” I bring a hand to her belly, the way I did before, when I started all of this, but it’s not the same anymore. Most of the fire inside of me has been extinguished. Though I can hardly consider that fair.

Dolores reaches for my hand, presses it against her body. “You don’t.” Her tone is insistent. “Not now.”

Not now?
Does that imply she’s expecting us to do this again?

“I just thought… I—” I have no idea what I’m supposed to say.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Dolores’ voice is buttery soft. “But it’s okay. I promise you. It’s more than okay.”

I decide to let it go, following Dolores’ lead—again. “For what it’s worth, and despite that river of tears, I really, truly enjoyed that.” I can’t keep a hint of bashfulness out of my voice. Because we can’t go back anymore now. After that quick kiss this morning, it was almost ridiculously easy to pretend it didn’t happen. However, knowing what I know now, the memory of it must have been doing some work in the background of my mind. We slept together in the other sense of the expression. Dolores’ fingers were inside of me. She made me come so hard I howled, the echo of my scream still reverberating somewhere in the house.

“I know.” She kisses me on the tip of my nose, almost innocently.

“Where do we go from here?”

“To sleep would be my suggestion,” she says matter-of-factly.

I feel myself mellowing again, recovering from the shock of orgasm and the subsequent onslaught of tears. I melt into Dolores’ embrace a little more. Why does life feel so much more bearable in her arms? The world like not such a hopeless place?
 

“What about when we wake up?” I whisper. My body is exhausted by the shedding of tension, but I’m not sleepy. My brain is too alert, trying to process too much.

“When we wake up, we’ll take a shower. Then we’ll see.”

“We’ll need to talk about this in the cold hard light of day.”

“Only if we want to.”

“There’s just some things I want you to know. I didn’t crawl into bed with you tonight with what just happened as the outcome I was hoping for. I had no such intention. It just… happened. However lame that sounds.”

“Tell me this, Sophie. Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes, of course, but—”

“No buts. It’s too late for buts. Or for any other negative emotion you might experience. This is something that happened between us. Something that made us feel good. Something that will help us sleep at night. Try looking at it from the bright side.” She presses her lips to my scalp.

Try looking at it from the bright side.
An expression so quintessentially Ian’s, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“I’ll try.” It’s easy when I’m ensconced in Dolores’ loving embrace.

“I have an early day tomorrow. We’re setting up a new show and I need to be there when the pieces arrive. Will you be all right on your own? You’re welcome to join me. We can always use an extra pair of hands at the gallery when it’s set-up time.”

Ian loved going to his mother’s galleries when new pieces had just arrived. He’d often leave work early and give Dolores and her staff a hand.

“What time does the alarm go off?”

“Six,” Dolores says.

“You may have to use force to get me out of bed, but yes, I’d like to go with you.” I already have no clue how I’ll catch any sleep tonight, how I’ll silence the stream of new thoughts coming my way after what just happened. There’s no way I’m staying home alone here all day tomorrow, working on what’s supposed to become a novel, but is really just me fretting about everything under the guise of trying something new. Being out of the house will do me good. Using my hands will do me good. I’m suddenly flattered that Dolores asked.

“I’ll use my imagination to get you out,” she says, a chuckle lurking under the breathiness of her voice.

Chapter Eighteen

“Sophie,” Dolores whispers. “Do you want to get up with me?”

When I open my eyes, for the very first time my initial thought upon waking is not that Ian is dead, but that I slept with his mother.
Oh fuck.

“Er, yes,” I murmur, because I need to get out of that bed pronto.

My body is still exhausted, but my mind is instantly wide awake. Memories of last night assault me. I was the one who started it. I was the one who put my hand on her belly. How can I possibly face Dolores—and myself in the mirror?

I jump out of bed and just stand there in the dark for a while, not knowing what to do, so thrown by my own actions, by being in this bedroom, which has been such a place of comfort and which I have now made into something else entirely. Did I really agree to spend the day with Dolores? I would have last night, while under the influence of a, frankly, mind-blowing orgasm. Dolores watched me climax. She
made
me climax. Ian’s death has really fucked me up well and good.

“Do you want to shower first?” Dolores asks.

Only then do I realize I’m standing in her bedroom fully naked. Dolores is still wearing her tank top, and her underwear for that matter, while my garments are spread about the room, like a filthy—guilty—reminder of what happened here last night.

“I’ll use the other bathroom.” I don’t say anything else, just hurry out of the room.

When I reach the guest bathroom, I don’t look in the mirror, but hop straight into a spray of scalding hot water, as if the hotter it is, the more it can wash away what happened. Because none of this, not a single second of it, can be construed as acceptable. I can’t even write this to Ian in a letter he will never read.

There’s no way I’m going to the gallery with Dolores.

I stand under the cascading water for long minutes, scrubbing my skin raw and, eventually, putting my hands against the wall to catch my breath because my motions have been too frantic. It’s too early, I didn’t get enough sleep. Ian is dead. I slept with his mother. Well, not technically his mother. Oh yes, I’m making the distinction now, even though Ian never did.

I asked him once whether he considered Dolores less of a mother to him than Angela, who had given birth to him, who shared DNA with him. Ian got so offended by that, claiming that, even though Dolores had never been able to legally adopt him—because, on paper, Ian always had two parents—she’d been a million times more a parent to him than his biological father, who didn’t care about him enough to not move to England shortly after the divorce, when Ian was only five years old.

Right at this minute though, I’m finding it, for the very first time, terribly convenient that Angela and Dolores never married. But as I turn off the tap and inhale gulp after gulp of steam, I know that a piece of paper doesn’t make a difference.

I slept with Ian’s mother. It’s as dreadfully simple as that.

“Sophie?” Dolores says. She’s standing in the doorframe of the guest room when I exit the bathroom. “Do you want breakfast? We can grab something next door to the gallery later if you don’t feel like it now.”

How can she even speak to me like this? Like nothing happened? How can she expect me to spend the day with her? Or is this what lesbians do?

“I don’t think I will join you after all, Dolores. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hold you up. You go on without me.” I somehow manage to make my voice sound even and free of tremors. I wrap the towel tightly around me—as though she hasn’t seen, and felt, all of me yet.

“Are you sure?” She gives me a funny look. “Will you be all right on your own all day?”

“Yes. No.” The stammering begins. “I should probably move out. I’ve been here long enough. This is all wrong.”

“You’re freaking out. I understand. Just… don’t do anything rash. Let’s meet for lunch. I can come home or we can meet wherever you want. Let’s talk first.”

How can she be so calm about this when she had her fingers inside of me last night?

“Okay.” I just want her out of this room, out of my sight. I don’t want to be reminded of what she has let me become. A pervert. Someone who degraded the memory of her dead partner by sleeping with his mother. A harlot.
 

“Sophie.” Dolores’ voice has lowered to a whisper again. “Please remember, it was just sex.” She gives me a slight nod, then walks out of the room.