Punishment with Kisses (24 page)

“So, little girl, you think I’m just going to let you run off with my wife? That’s pretty rich coming from a spoiled slut who’s never even held a real job. What makes you think I’m going to let you two dykes walk off into the sunset?”

“You will if you don’t want to be branded a child rapist in the media, and dredge up your possible involvement in a murder for all your high society friends to see. How will business look then? Perhaps I should just go mention all this to your employees outside this door. Think they’ll look at you differently? Think that’ll affect your bottom line, Daddy-O?”

“You’re as much of a whore as your sister was. You got that from your mother. She was a whore, too.”

Something inside me snapped and I launched myself off the chair and pummeled him with my fists. He looked as shocked as I was at the violence inside me. I was ready to rail on, buoyed as I was on the truth, but much to my surprise, Father relented.

“Fine, you crazy bitch. You’re both whores and you deserve each other. You’d better hope nothing happens to your trust fund.” He was back in threatening mode now.

“Well, if you’ll recall, my trust fund came from grandmother, not you, and according to my attorney, there’s absolutely no way you can ever touch it.” Touché.

Father turned, walking back to his phone like it was an anchor in the storm.

“Be gone tonight. I never want to see either of you again.” With that, he got on the phone, buzzed security, and told the person on the other end to revoke my key card before I left the building.

Tabitha and I were free. I almost didn’t believe it so I drove cautiously back to the apartment, looking in my rearview mirror every few seconds. Was it possible Father would let us go without a fight?

It’s our four-year anniversary today. I couldn’t be more excited. I never thought I’d be in a relationship again, and yet this feels as real and true as anything in my entire life. My whole past, the girls, the orgies, the one-night stands, was all just a dress rehearsal for this. I thought I had tested my boundaries before, but sex toys and multiple partners have nothing on sexual exploration in a committed, loving relationship. I planned my outfit for tonight carefully. A red dress, boots cut up to here, and of course Nana de Bary. It was my sister’s favorite and my favorite, but most importantly, it was Tabitha’s favorite. When she grabbed me and pulled me close to her, inhaling the scent of my hair and my neck like a monk with the temple incense, I knew she was mine.

I went back last month to the site of where it all happened. Back to the estate, to my room, to the city I ran from. We could go back now. Father would no longer be looking for us, and there was no reason to be hiding out in this little coastal hamlet in Mexico. Father was dead. Heart attack, they said, but I knew, he was heartbroken. He lost all the women in his life years ago. What was left for him?

The estate went to me, so Tabitha and I kept it. Some day, maybe we’ll go back. But no time soon. Maria can keep the place occupied. I’m not ready to deal with Father’s ghosts as well. Tabitha and I are too happy to head back now. Tabitha is all I’ve ever dreamed of in a lover. She is all I’ll ever need. I stopped writing about sex parties and downtown dungeons. With Tabitha, every night was a sex party minus the crowds. Unlike Ash, I wasn’t the other woman, and now that it’s been four years, I’m certain that I am the only woman Tabitha loved.

The estate in Oregon felt so far away from where we are. So does my sister’s murder, even the Megan I was when I first came home from college that dreadful summer is but a faded memory, a speck in the corner of my eye that I can never pinpoint but never wash away either. I never once thought, while growing up, that I’d be doing siestas in Mexico, penning a novel in my spare time. Daytime brought mango shakes and surfing and helping Tabby—my new nickname for her—find organic vegetables in the plaza. Some days we just sit on the beach all day, reading sonnets and listening to the waves undulate over the sand. I want to lap up this life with her, to not miss a single minute. I spend my nights under the waning moon over this Mexican Riviera penning my novel, a true story of what happened to my sister. It never distracts me from bed though. Even the compulsion to write, to tell the world what happened to me that summer, is weaker than my desire to make love to this woman night after night. Tabitha is in my arms every night as I sleep, a feeling that I love, a feeling that tells me so much about who my sister was. This was the feeling she was willing to risk her life for. As was I.

They say lesbians experience bed death after a few months, but not us. Even as I was thinking starry-eyed about our years together, Tabitha was on top of me before I could even speak. She was devouring me, hungry from our afternoon apart. Sex and romance and desire all packaged into one holy alliance. I needed her with a ferocious desperation.

She didn’t have to push or pull. I was open and waiting the minute she asked. I pressed her head down, moving my pelvis up and down in rhythm to the song on the stereo, each bass drum resonating with my clit. She was hungry and wanted me and I couldn’t get enough, so I ran my hands over my nipples, urging her to put a damp hand up here herself. She didn’t. She flipped me over and entered me from behind with a ribbed strap-on dildo I’d never felt before. Ah, my gift. I could feel her maneuvering so the dildo hit my G-spot and it rubbed her too, and we both orgasmed simultaneously, Tabitha falling on top of me like a spent bag of potatoes. She was the most amazing lover I’d ever had.

I lay there panting for a moment, salty dampness tickling my tongue. Then I pushed up on her and rolled over, my breasts touching hers in perfect symmetry.

“It’s time for a punishment with kisses,” I said, wanting her to kiss every part of me for as long as I could stand. And she did, slowly, starting with my lips and lingering in my mouth for what felt like an eternity.

Tabitha moved one hand down under my buttocks and another on my crotch and rubbed in unison in a way that was both relaxing and arousing at the same time. My head lolled back and I barely heard her at first.

What dirty little thing was she whispering in my ear? I listened harder as I came again and again, and I realized what she was saying and it filled me with perverse desire.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said before pushing her head back between my legs. I was ready for round two.

Diane Anderson-Minshall is the co-author of the Blind Eye mystery series:
Blind Faith, Blind Leap,
and
Blind Curves
. She’s also the editor-in-chief of Curve, the world’s best-selling lesbian magazine, and was the co-founder and former executive editor of
Girlfriends
magazine and the co-founder and former editor/ publisher of
Alice
magazine.

The multiple award-winning journalist’s work has appeared in dozens of magazines, newspapers, and Web sites including the
New York Times, Passport, Film Threat, Utne Reader, Wine X, Teenage, Bitch, Seventeen, Femme Fatale, Diva, The Advocate, Bust, Natural Health, Venus,
and E! Online.

Anderson-Minshall is the former president of the board of directors for
Bitch
magazine; a previous Pride Grand Marshal in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana; and in 2006 was named one of PowerUp’s Ten Powerful Women in Showbiz, for her work with lesbian filmmakers.

Her essays have also appeared in several anthologies including
Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television; Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine; Body Outlaws; Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism; Young Wives Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership; 50 Ways to Support Gay & Lesbian Equality; On Our Backs Best Lesbian Erotica;
and
Tough Girls.
Anderson- Minshall is the co-editor of the anthology
Becoming: Young Ideas on Gender, Race and Sexuality.

She and her co-pilot of twenty years divide their time between San Francisco, Idaho, and Portland, Oregon, where they are active foster parents.