The Muse (39 page)

Acting on instinct alone, Kate sank her fingers into Olive once more, as deep as they would go. She sought out and found a spot she recalled drove Olive crazy and rubbed hard against her walls as she suckled the swollen bud beneath her tongue. Though Olive managed to continue the blissful torment of her clever mouth, she also began to tremble in what was by now a familiar pre-orgasmic ritual. Encouraged, Kate moved her hands back to Olive’s thighs, pushing them open in a thoroughly lewd pose. She pinned one of her knees to the futon and held it there, then very carefully forced three fingers into her until she was buried to the knuckles. Olive moaned loudly, prompting Kate to push up onto her knees, away from her greedy mouth.

“Kate.” Olive whimpered. Her fingers slipped out of Kate, and she hooked both arms around her thighs for leverage. A wet kiss pressed against the side of her knee, followed by warm puffs of air from Olive’s rapid panting. “Yes, baby, lick me. I’m so close.”

Kate used the movement of her tongue and fingers in lieu of her words to let Olive know exactly how much she’d missed her and how glad she was to be here with her now. Olive was crying out and biting at the tender skin of her thigh before she’d even said half of what she wanted to say, but that was okay because even if they didn’t have unlimited time, at least they had the rest of the night. It was more than Kate had any right to expect.

Olive rode out the intensity of her release for an admirably long time before she finally patted Kate on the hip. “Kate, get up here.”

All Kate heard were the tears. Frightened by the quiet sobs that suddenly overtook the body beneath hers, she scrambled off Olive and struggled to turn around without disturbing their increasingly disarrayed cover. She swore as her ankle got tangled up in the sheet, pulling it off their bodies to expose her bare ass and Olive’s presumably weeping face. Panicking, Kate fought to cover Olive while rushing up to lie at her side. Instead she managed to roll off the futon and land on the hard laminate floor. Thankfully, the sheet stayed behind. At least one of them could preserve their modesty—and dignity.

Olive’s gorgeous face peered over the side of the futon, caught in the no-man’s-land between laughter and concern. Yet her cheeks still glistened with evidence of the tears Kate knew she’d recognized. Eyes wide, Olive said, “Are you all right?” Then, before Kate could answer, “After all that fucking, I can’t believe the dismount is what did you in.”

Despite her lingering concern, Kate couldn’t help but dissolve into giggles. She’d faced a lot of humiliation over the past few weeks, so this barely registered. Olive’s two-pronged response of concern followed up by a perfect one-liner reassured her before the notion of shame could even occur. Accepting the hand offered, Kate allowed Olive to pull her back onto the futon and beneath the sheet. She arranged the cover over their bodies so their heads remained out in the open and drew Kate into a thrillingly intimate embrace.

Kate kissed the corner of Olive’s eye, sampling the saltiness of her tears. When Olive let her eyelid slip shut, she pressed her lips against one closed lid, then the other. “You were crying,” she said. “So I kind of panicked.”

Olive slid her thigh between Kate’s and settled a hand on her hip, rubbing with her thumb. “I was just keeping my promise.” At Kate’s raised eyebrow, she said, “That we’d have a good cry together afterward.” She smiled, brightly, then sobered a bit, looking down at Kate’s collarbone as she traced it with her finger. “Honestly, it just hit me all of a sudden. What I’d nearly lost. How good this is—how good
we
are.”

Kate placed her hand over the scar at the center of Olive’s chest, feeling her own emotion rise again. What she’d nearly lost was staggering. How good they were seemed almost improbable. In a way, she still wasn’t sure she could accept that this was real. What about when Erato let them out of this room? Could she and Olive honestly build a lasting relationship out of a beginning this strange and tempestuous? She had no idea, but—she reminded herself as the tears threatened to flow again—at least for right now, in this room, she wasn’t alone anymore.

“Hey,” Olive whispered, and caressed her hip, then her inner thigh. She kissed away the lone droplet that had managed to escape from Kate’s eye, capturing it on her tongue with a murmured, “Shh.” Her hand crept between Kate’s thighs and stroked her soothingly. “I’m here now. We’re in this together, remember?”

Kate nodded, then muttered, “Shit,” when two more tears slipped out. She laughed when she saw Olive had restarted her own waterworks, a similar curse falling from her lips. “We are
such
girls.”

“We
so
are,” Olive said, and hugged her tight as she laughed and the tears seemed to flow harder. The hand between her legs continued its caresses, further confusing Kate. As though sensing her shift in mood, a single finger parted her labia and slid wetly over her highly sensitized clit. “The good news is, I love girls.”

And then—for the moment at least—Kate had nothing left to cry about.

Olive fell asleep after the sun went down, worn out from at least five orgasms and hours of hushed conversation between rounds of making love. She fought to stay awake until the very last second, hanging onto consciousness as though succumbing to her exhaustion was tantamount to abandonment, but Kate reassured her again and again that it wasn’t and that, in fact, Olive’s nap would give her the perfect opportunity to write. After all, their freedom might very well depend on her ability to keep making progress. Olive was only able to let go after eagerly accepting the idea that Kate should write, which actually compelled Kate to drag herself away from their little love nest, get dressed, and return to her laptop for another round of trying to finish The Damn Book. Within minutes, she was glad she had.

The words flowed. No, they
poured
out of her, tumbling onto the keyboard one after the next, filling up the formerly blank pages of her document as though she were simply transcribing the end of a preexisting tale. The heart-to-heart talk between Molly and Rose’s mother materialized on the screen just as she’d envisioned in her head, the fragments of dialogue and action she’d imagined for so many weeks finally coming together in a scene she was immediately and immensely proud to have written. Incredibly—and despite her increasingly unhappy bladder—she blazed through the entire thirty-five-hundred-word chapter with energy and motivation to spare, leaving her poised to tackle the very scene she’d dreaded less than twenty-four hours ago, but which she now felt completely prepared to write. The reunion. Complete with red-hot sex! Like she’d just enjoyed with Olive!

Humming to herself, Kate plunged into the literal and figurative climax of her novel. She was so engrossed in crafting the buildup to a perfect love scene she didn’t realize Olive had risen until a cautious hand landed on her shoulder. Deep in her fictional world, she gasped, nearly falling out of her chair as she was jerked back into reality.

Olive stood there in her half-buttoned blouse and panties, tousled and sexy from sleep. She was grinning, legs crossed in a manner that suggested she was mere seconds away from doing the pee-pee dance. “I’m so sorry. I tried calling your name.”

“No, it’s okay.” She reached for Olive and tugged her onto her lap but immediately regretted it. Her bladder screamed for relief from the pressure that had been building all day. “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah,” Olive said, and grimaced. She looped her arms around Kate’s shoulders and leaned in for support. “She has to let us out to pee, right?”

“If not, things between us are going to get really intimate, really fast.” Rubbing a hand down Olive’s back, she sat forward to indicate that they should stand. “Because I’ve got to
go
.”

“Me, too—at the very least.” Olive got to her feet, shifting in discomfort as an increasingly petulant frown took over her face. “I also need a shower, desperately. You do, too.”

Kate’s muscles screamed as she straightened her legs for the first time in hours. She could feel their mingled juices dried on her skin, along with lingering wetness mixed with fresh arousal from having Olive on her lap. Her hair was a mess, and she tried to flatten it with a hand that smelled distinctly like Olive’s pussy. “You’re not wrong.”

Olive bobbled from foot to foot. “Okay, so…unless you have another idea, I’m going to go knock on the door and tell that crazy bitch to let us out.”

Kate winced. “I’d leave out the ‘crazy bitch’ part if I were you.”

Olive left her with a peck on her cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” She walked to the door, took a deep breath, then pounded with her fist for a good three seconds. “Hey! Erato! We need a bathroom break.”

Silence greeted her request.

Now Kate had to hop back and forth, all the talk of using the bathroom working against her self-control. “She could be sleeping. Probably upstairs—”

Olive banged some more, so insanely loud Kate couldn’t imagine it not waking the neighbors. “I mean it, Erato! We’re in serious pain here. You can take us one at a time, if you want. Put bags over our heads, or whatever it is that sadists do to their
fucking prisoners
—”

“Shh.” Kate cautioned her, alarmed by both the volume and the increasingly hostile tone. “You’ll wake the whole building.”

Olive turned and gave her an incredulous look. “Would that really be a bad thing?” At Kate’s nod, Olive whipped around and grabbed the doorknob, rattling it noisily. “Listen, bitch,” she yelled, before yanking the office door wide open with a force that caused her to stumble backward a few steps. “If you don’t—” The threat ended as the reality of her role as the engineer of their escape seemed to sink in.

Kate was caught between feeling unsettled and immensely relieved. “Well, that’s kind of weird.”

With a fleeting backward glance, Olive shot out of the office. “Totally agree, and also, dibs on the bathroom across the hall!”

The sound of a door slamming in the hallway jarred Kate out of her temporary stupor and sent her jogging toward the master bedroom, shouting to Olive as she passed by. “Going upstairs!”

“I’ll meet you there,” Olive said, voice heavy with pleasure. “Enjoy—it feels divine.”

Kate giggled the rest of the way upstairs, even as she battled a serious case of nerves over the prospect of suddenly facing her jailer. Where
was
Erato? She’d never been a heavy sleeper, so it was difficult to imagine she would still be tucked away in bed after all the commotion downstairs. Half expecting to find her muse waiting for her in the bedroom, Kate exhaled audibly when she found her private domain unoccupied. She wasted no time visiting the toilet, which—as Olive had promised—was simply exquisite. Though she was tempted to turn on the shower, hopefully for her and Olive to share, she wouldn’t be able to relax until she knew where Erato was and
why
she’d decided to release them.

Hands and face washed, Kate left the bathroom and went to the place Erato was most likely hiding: the guest room. But it was empty. Oddly so. Erato hadn’t come with much, but the bag that had carried her extra clothing was gone. As was her fancy new laptop. Fresh linens were on the bed, which had been made with military precision. Kate stood in the center of the room and turned in a circle, searching for
some
sign that Erato hadn’t simply vanished.

“Kate?”

The sound of Olive tentatively calling out from the hallway sent an unexpected flood of relief surging through her veins. Even if her muse had disappeared, Olive hadn’t. “Right here,” Kate said, and walked out into the hall. “I think she might be gone. Like,
gone
.”

Olive held up an envelope with
Kate
handwritten on the front. “This was on the office door.”

She stepped forward to take the envelope, nervous about what might be inside. “She said she wouldn’t leave until I finished the book. Why would she have left?”

“I thought you
wanted
her to leave,” Olive murmured, not unkindly. “Maybe she decided to respect your wishes.”

Rolling her eyes, Kate unfolded a piece of stationery covered in impeccable, flowery script. She skimmed the first couple lines, then blinked. At first she could only state the obvious. “It’s a letter.”

“I see that,” Olive said in a gentle voice. “Do you want to read it out loud or would you prefer that I give you some privacy?”

Kate looped her arm through Olive’s and steered them into her room. “No need for privacy, but let’s sit down first. I’m exhausted.”

“I’ll bet.” Olive disentangled when they reached the bed, guiding Kate to sit beside her. She enfolded her in strong arms and encouraged her to lean back for support. “I have no idea how you’re still awake after all those orgasms.”

Kate yawned loudly and rubbed at her eyes, hoping to sharpen the blurry words on the handwritten page. “Me neither, all of a sudden.” A brisk shake of her head brought everything into temporary focus. She cleared her throat, eager to read Erato’s missive so they could clean up and then crash for a few hours. “All right…”

My dearest Kate,

If everything has unfolded according to my design—and it always does—then you and Olive are snuggled up, reading this letter together. Good! Contrary to what you’ve grown to believe, I am the veritable captain of Team Olive (that’s the proper usage of the idiom, isn’t it? “Team So-and-So” to denote support for said so-and-so? At any rate, I think she’s a doll).

Ironically, I’m not much of a writer, and this letter is a particularly challenging one to compose. I wish I could’ve told you good-bye in person, as I’ve always expressed myself better in real life than on the page (more irony), but this will have to do. You’ve wanted me gone from your life for a while now, so I suspect the heartbreak you once feared you’d feel at my departure is no longer a concern. I’m glad. That, too, is by design. After the suffering and torment I’ve forced you to endure, now that you have the woman of your dreams firmly at your side, how could you possibly mourn the loss of such a terrible pain in your ass?

First, an apology: I told you I wouldn’t leave until you finished, but obviously that wasn’t quite true. I know you have two and a half more chapters left to write, but whether or not you realize it yet, this book is as good as done. The rest will practically write itself. Enjoy the ride.