Homebound Ch. 01

I was soaked from my consumption of her lust and my eyes closed as she dipped into me. I groaned, my teeth clenching as she gently eased out and pushed back in. Her finger curled, pressing against the overly sensitive flesh inside of me and I groaned, pleasure dizzying me. Teeth nibbled on my nipple and I sighed, the combined sensations taking my pleasure higher and higher. She let go of my breast and found my mouth again, her tongue seeking entrance. Her thumb replaced her index finger on my clit, circling the tiny bud so quickly, my legs shook. She pumped faster, our kiss being broken by my rapid breathing and soft groans. I could feel myself cresting, my body reaching the peak already.

My hips undulated, lifting as she added a second digit to my tightness, effectively filling me. "Fuck," I muttered, the muscles in my legs taut, the sensations causing my body to become rigid. She quickened her speed, following the cues my body was giving her, my pussy tightening and my breath coming faster.

And then it hit me. "Oh, fuck, oh fuck!" I screamed, my eyes squeezing shut. Let me just tell you, I was not a moaner, let alone a screamer. I like to think I used to take my orgasms in a reserved, calm manner, allowing the pleasure to flow through me with peace and serenity. Not with Rachel. My body erupted, a fire exploding within me, spitting flames and whatever else. "Oh baby," I moaned, my head back, dizziness washing over me as the ecstasy forced the air from my lungs. My legs wrapped around her and my nails raked her back as I clung to her.

"Come for me again, Jo," she murmured, her lips brushing my neck and I groaned at the sensuality of her tone and her hot breath against my skin. She continued to pump into my need, her thumb drawing circles over my clit and her teeth nipping my neck. Just as I thought my body was ready to settle, another grand crescendo stole my breath and left me panting, my hips hovering in the air as she continued her efforts. My body thrashed, and I writhed beneath her, my nails probably drawing blood on the skin of her back as she relentlessly took me to a height I'd never reached before.

When I opened my eyes, she was watching me, her brows furrowed and her lips in a frown. She was leaning on her elbow looking down at me with unmasked concern. There was a blanket over us and I felt disoriented as I blinked several times. "Are you okay?" she whispered, her fingers brushing my face.

I nodded, reaching up to kiss her. "I think so."

"You can stay the night, if you'd like," she said quietly. I didn't say anything as I wrapped my arms around her. She snuggled into me and I breathed in her hair, the scent of strawberries filling me. We slept for a while holding each other. When I opened my eyes again, the sun was just beginning to stream in from the east facing window of her bedroom. I was on my back and her head was laying on my chest, one of her arms around my waist in a protective clutch. The feeling of home fleetingly took over me and a tear suddenly slipped down my face as I recalled a strange dream from the night before.

I couldn't remember it but it couldfeel it. It felt like home.

What the fuck? Protective clutch? Home? Who was I kidding? She told me from the get go she didn't do relationships. Even with her offer to spend the night, I knew better than to stay and allow her to wake next to me.

No matter how amazing our night might have been and how strong of a connection I felt with her, she made it clear the night before what her wishes were. I carefully lifted her arm, slipping out of the bed. She rolled around, snuggling the blanket. I threw my clothes on and grabbed my shoes. I stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching the rise and fall of her chest under the blankets I covered her with before I crawled from the bed. Her blonde tresses spilled over her pillow and her cheeks were tinged pink. I didn't want to leave, even as I turned and headed for the door, my chest hurt and my eyes stung.

I shook the feelings away the best I could as I slipped out the door and commenced my walk of shame.

****

*Bainbridge Island, Washington — June 1939*

The smell of ripened strawberries filled the air as Keiko Takeda knelt amongst the plants, plucking the fruit and placing them gently in the basket that dangled over her arm. The sun caused the aroma to be nearly pungent but Keiko was used to it. Growing up on the strawberry farm located on Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride away from Seattle, Keiko was used to the busy time. She helped around the farm as much as possible, working beside the other berry pickers and encouraging her younger siblings to offer their aid. It was early, the morning song birds still flittering through the sky and the sun not yet pressing over them. The sound of the rickety milkman truck echoed up the driveway and Keiko started toward the house.

Her mother was already on the porch, handing the milkman the empty wire basket but, this was no milkman. The woman who stood before Keiko's Mother was tall, chestnut locks running down her back and a vibrant smile on her face. Her pale cheeks were splattered with freckles and she used her hands while speaking to her mother.

Keiko was awestruck by the instant attraction she felt toward the woman. "Ah, Keiko, this is Abagail Smith. Her father has fallen ill and she'll be taking over his route while he recovers," her mother said before taking the milk inside.

Keiko nodded to the woman, who in turn stuck her hand out to shake. "It's nice to meet you, Keiko," she said, her voice soft. Her skin was silky and Keiko didn't want to let go of her hand, her crystal blue eyes watching Keiko with interest. Abagail bid her goodbye and headed to the milk truck. Keiko felt her heart flutter when Abagail's eyes met hers before she started the vehicle and headed back down the driveway.

***

Rachel Emily Moore — Present Day

Stretching, I reached across the bed for the body I knew wouldn't be there. I explicitly told her I didn't want her there when I awoke, and I shouldn't have expected that to change just because I asked her to stay after the throes of our passion. She probably didn't believe my request, which I completely understood. I made it clear my intentions were just casual and anything beyond that was out of the question.

Yet, as I sat on the edge of my bed, I felt an overwhelming pang of loneliness that never accompanied a night with a lover. She had been different. I couldn't place it and I didn't know if it was even true but I felt something with her. I knew it wasn't just the strange trembling her touch invited but something deeper that I couldn't place. I stood and ambled to the kitchen, a fleeting thought that perhaps she was sitting at the island, sipping coffee and flipping through one of the random magazines strewn on the coffee table.

I had a moment of contemplation after we left the club, opting to bring her back to my place without my usual reluctance. It wasn't something I did easily and my past sexual encounters had us either going to the woman's house or even a hotel. I liked my privacy and didn't want someone attempting to push my boundaries on not beginning a relationship. If they knew where I lived, it made things a little more challenging to end after one night.

That was what I was comfortable with and how it had always been. Relationships weren't my thing, I hadn't been lying about that. Nobody wanted to be with someone who was deep in the closet. A closet the size of a mansion.

That was before I met Jo. There was something about her that made my thoughts stall. And then there was the dream.

I pulled on my robe and located my cell phone and despondently realized I hadn't gotten her number. She wasn't in the kitchen nor anywhere else in the condo. I made myself a cup of coffee and stood on the balcony, resigned and dejected. Self dejected. I'd done it to myself. Why was she different? The thought made me anxious as I looked out over the bay. I couldn't think about her being different. I didn't know anything about her.

I wasn't even sure her name was Jo. I didn't know her last name, where she worked, if she worked. All I knew aside from the tantalizing feeling she elicited was she was drop dead gorgeous and gave me one hell of a one night stand. Then again to the thought of it being different. It wasn't the mind-blowing sex, it wasn't because she was the sexiest butch I'd ever lain eyes on, either. What was it? As I continued to plague myself with these questions, my cell phone began to ring.

"Hello?"

"Sis!" Kayla, my kid sister squealed into the phone.

"Hey, Kayla. What's up?" I heard her let out an exacerbated sigh.

"Can I come hang out with you today? I just don't feel like sitting around the house by myself," she finally said. I chewed my lower lip, moving away from the balcony and into the living room.

"Okay," I said, rinsing my coffee cup and heading to my room to get dressed. Our mother wasn't the most maternal figure in history and our father was usually quite busy with work. My family owned a large branch of supermarkets and with that, my father had a lot of responsibility toward the company. Much more invested in the company than his family. The best way to describe my mother would be self righteous, cold, and rigid. I did what I could to help my kid sister have the maternal figure I craved as a teen. "What do you want to do?"

"Well, I don't know. Maybe we could go to the mall," she offered.

I sighed, "Okay."

It would be easy to blame my parents for the way I was but that would be a lazy excuse, even if it is the truth. I was the middle child of four perfect kids, according to anyone my mother tells. However, little did anyone know, there were five of us, but I'll get back to that. My oldest brother worked within the company, the golden child of the five of us. My father groveled at his feet and I found it pretty disgusting but that's just me. The brother beneath him in age was busy out of the country on a mission for the Church at the time and also the apple of my father's eye. Then came my other brother, then I was next in the age line and I refused to work for the company, for the simple fact that it was expected of me. I went on to school and became a respiratory therapist. I made decent money but, as cavalier and shallow as it sounds, I lived off my parents on top of my salary. It was the least they could offer me in lieu of actual love and support.

I arrived at their million-dollar estate on the hill overlooking the city and the bay, their chosen residence until Kayla graduated high school. They had property all over the state of Washington and two homes in Oregon, where the store branched out, in case our father and my brother Mike needed to be down in that area. It was a massive six-bedroom house that they didn't need. Kayla was the youngest of us and she was entering her senior year of high school. They didn't need a giant house but they sure wanted it. I drove up to the keypad, tapping in the code before the gates allowed me to pass. The house was three stories high, a four-car garage attached by a porte-cochere.

My mother always loved exuberant and extravagance. I parked my car and headed up the polished cobble steps, entering the door without knocking. Everything from the real hardwood flooring to the crown molding was done with elegance and was expensive as hell.

I rounded the corner of the living room and found my sister, Kayla sitting on the couch, head bent staring at her phone. It was silent in the space, the only noise being the massive grandfather clock ticking and her fingernails tapping against the glass screen of her smart phone. Her long blond hair, very much like my own, was held up in a tight ponytail, her freckled nose and cheeks devoid of make-up.

It drove my mother nuts that Kayla was a tomboy and didn't adhere to our mother's beauty expectations. Kayla and I looked remarkably similar aside from her holding our father's jawline and her possessing our mother's piercing blue eyes. "Hey, are you ready to go?" I asked in the quiet of the room.

Her body jerked at the sound of my voice, phone dropping to the floor in her haste as she stood. When she met my eyes, she calmed briefly. "Oh, it's just you. You scared the crap out of me, Rach," she whispered, picking up her phone.

I found it odd for her to be so on edge and I watched her dubiously. "I'm sorry. Are you ready?" She nodded and followed me out to my little Toyota. I knew something amiss the moment she got in. My obnoxious, rowdy kid sister was suddenly demure, quiet, and reserved. I tried to lighten the mood with some music but she was busying texting, her thumbs running across her phone at the speed of light.

When we finally got to the mall, she shifted back to her playful self. "Do you want to get some school clothes?" I asked as we entered the massive building. She nodded and did a silly skip and then she was back to normal. We perused numerous stores and she gleefully picked out a handful of outfits.

Most of them were fairly androgynous, which she'd been leaning more toward in the last couple years. It drove our mother nuts and it was one of the reasons Kayla asked me to take her school clothes shopping. The cute little polo she held up to herself reminded me of Jo and the thought was disconcerting. Again, I didn't even know if Jo was her real name. I told her I didn't do relationships and had no way to contact her. What was I doing thinking about her? I had no right.

"What do you think?"

"It's perfect."

As we exited the store and headed toward the food court, she bumped me with her elbow, shopping bags dangling from her arms. "Thanks for this." We got some food and sat down, her depositing her five bags of new clothes onto an empty chair.

"You know, you could've gone through Mike's closet instead of spending three hundred bucks," I said. She kicked me beneath the table as she chuckled, her mouth full of food.

"You're such an ass!"

"I was being serious, and don't let mom catch you talking like that," I chastised. She blushed and shoveled more food in her mouth, her eyes diverting down to the table.

Our mother hadn't always been a stickler for cursing or a huge homophobe. She used to be a warm, loving woman with an abundance of patience. Shortly after Kayla was born, our mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had always been a churchgoer, but it definitely ballooned after the diagnosis, especially after she had a bad bout of sepsis and almost died. It was a slow-moving cancer and treatment worked, swiftly moving her into remission. This didn't halt her newfound relationship with God and she wanted our whole family to be as devout as she was. I was agreeable at first, but it was hard.

Especially after our youngest older brother came out of the closet.

"Well, if I don't get it out while we're hanging out, when will I have the chance? I mean, fuck, really?" Kayla taunted me. I laughed wholeheartedly before finishing off my lunch.

We got into the car and I decided to take us down the scenic route of Chuckanut drive. I knew Kayla had something she wanted to talk about, but I couldn't have predicted what dominoed afterward.

She kicked her flip flops off and put her feet on the dash board. "Get your feet off my dash, kid," I chuckled.

She reluctantly plopped them onto the floor. There was something eating away at her but I didn't want to press. I turned the stereo up louder and we both began to sing to whatever song was playing, laughing raucously.

When the song cut to a commercial break, she cleared her throat and looked at me. "Rach," she said. I could hear the trepidation in her tone and I glanced over at her. Her face was fearful, her brows furrowed and she was wringing her hands in her lap.

"What's up?" I finally asked. I turned my attention back to the road and I heard her take a breath.

"I...sis, I like girls. I...I think I'm a lesbian." The air literally left my lungs and I nearly hit the brakes. I hesitated way too long and she croaked, "I'm sorry. Please don't tell mom. Please, I'm so sorry."

I eyed the closest dirt shoulder and pulled the car into a spot, slamming it in park and turning myself to face her. "Don't you dare apologize for who you are, ever," I said, setting my gaze on her. Kayla's lip trembled, and tears were streaming down her cheeks as she nodded. The words I spoke were the words I needed someone to tell me.

"Okay," she mumbled before she broke out into a full sob. I took my sister in my arms and let her cry.

"You never have to apologize for something you have no control over. It doesn't make you a lesser person if you are. It doesn't make me love you less," I whispered, and she nodded, her head on my shoulder.

"I'm scared," she sniffled. "I don't want to end up like...like," she stopped.

"Like Matt?" I offered. She nodded again and pulled back from me, wiping her face on her arm.

"Kayla, I'm not going to tell anyone as it's not my secret to tell but you need to make that decision when you're ready. There is no rush, okay?" I said gently. She nodded again.

*

Like I noted before, there were five of us. Mike was the oldest, then came Mitchell, then Matt, me, and then eleven years later came Kayla, the surprise. Matt and I only had eighteen months apart from each other and we were very close. Mike and Mitchell had a similar age difference, Mitchell having four years over Matt lead them to not really connect as much as he and I did. On some level, I soon realized our camaraderie may have had a more significant link than our birth order.

Anyway, when our mother was diagnosed with cancer, she became extremely vocal in regard to things the church frowned upon, making snide comments about homosexuals being integrated into society. We lived on the outskirts of the city back then, in the small community of Lynden. I'd started to question my own sexuality when I hit my teen years. I knew I didn't find boys attractive and finally admitted to myself that I had a yearning for the same sex. Telling my mother or even my father was out of the question. I confided in Matt, late one night. I was probably fourteen.

He simply nodded, no words of encouragement or disgust. Just a nod and a swift digression.

It came as a shock when he took the plunge in front of our family one night two years later. It was a Saturday evening, our family gathering around the massive dining room table as we did once a week. Both Mitchell and Mike were there, making sure to be there even when they were both attending the University. Our dad said grace and we began to eat. Matt cleared his throat and scratched his short crop of blond hair. "I have to say something." When everyone was looking his direction, he took a deep breath and raised his head. "I'm gay," he announced.

My fork slipped from my hand, clattering onto the plate in front of me and I made eye contact with him. Mitchell lowered his glass of water and he watched our mother, waiting for her to say something. Our father continued to eat, as if Matt hadn't spoken at all. An eerie silence settled over the table. Even Kayla, who was only seven years old at the time, was quiet.

"Can you pass the broccoli, dear?" my mother asked Mike and he did as she asked. We all continued to eat, the statement hanging in the void above the table.

I saw Matt roll his eyes and push back from the table. "I said 'I'm gay.'"

My mother threw her napkin on the table. "No son of mine is a deviant homosexual," she shouted. She got up and walked away. The rest of dinner was shrouded in the same stillness.

Mitchell and Mike left after helping me with the dishes. Our father went up to his office without a word in our direction and I still hadn't seen my mother since her outburst at the table. I helped Kayla get ready for bed and headed to my room, which was beside Matt's. I heard our parents in there with him, mean tones in hushed voices. Matt was crying, and the sound caused my chest to tighten as I passed his closed door.