Mary Weaver - The Bookseller Pt. 04

All your life you want escape. It turns out all you want is to go home, which may be here in the palm of this woman's hand. Her fingers deep inside you, beating out a signal you can follow to the place made ready for you. This is why you sailed through starless nights and dull days, walking dry streets that no matter where they were only led you in circles. Night after night your darkened brain told you you belonged elsewhere; here. There was no trace of it until all at once you came upon it. Continents rise through you, homelands swimming to the surface, deep salt water running and gathering to streams, streams to rivers, whole oceans that swing according to the pull of her fingers inside you. You may wreck on this shore but you won't need the boat anymore.

Weaver was drowned with pleasure, flat on her back on Cabot's sheets. Cabot rode the cadence of Weaver's breathing; they held each other as the tide rolled in. Cabot found the centrepoint and resumed the beat there, feeling the other woman twist against the bed, stretching to accommodate the flood, arching her spin, widening herself, reaching for something above her head. Weaver's cry was as sudden as something breaking and spilling. She clutched at Cabot as she came, fingernails nipping at her skin, one hand catching in her hair, anything for purchase as she rode down onto Cabot's hand, rose, rode down again. Cabot growled, something halfway between a groan and a laugh, and smiled into Weaver's kiss, laughing quietly into her tumbled hair.

She brushed Weaver's hair from her face and throat, kissed the sheen of sweat there. Weaver pulled her face down to hers and they rested for a moment, faces together. Weaver sighed. She kissed the corner of Cabot's mouth, murmuring something indistinct.

"What did you say?" Cabot asked.

"I said, again."

Later, Cabot dozed despite herself. The sun was setting and the room filled slowly with shadow, like ink dripped into a glass of water. In a minute she would get up and light a candle. Now she lay, slight under the sheet she has pulled over them. Under the cover, Weaver's legs were warm and smooth beside hers, one of her arms thrown lightly across Cabot's belly. She was, Cabot realized, fast asleep. Dreaming, in fact: her eyes darted about under her lids. With some women, Cabot almost preferred this part, the stolen hour before lamps and stoves must be lit, water boiled, clothes put on, shoes found, and so on. With others, it was a mercy that everyone had somewhere else to be, eventually. There is no heart's content. Cabot sat up.

She swung her feet to the floor.

She stood, and lit a candle.

Weaver woke alone in an unfamiliar bed in a dark room. There was an unfamiliar slickness between her legs. Unfamiliar salt on her mouth. When she stirred and sat up, there was a small dull pang and although she had not forgotten it came back all the same, and she shivered. She stood beside the bed, thinking. She found Cabot's shirt, inhaling the scent of her, feeling gooseflesh swarm over her skin, her cunt tighten. The down the stairs she went, hand on the wall for guidance in the warm dark. There was a dim light at the bottom, and she remembered the way.

Cabot was in the armchair, sitting with her feet up on an ottoman with a book open in her lap, a cup at her elbow. A candle on the side table cast a yellow corona over her, as though she wore the light rather than a shirt for warmth. The light limned the curve of her neck, the lines of her face, the long flat muscles of her shoulders and forearms. Her head was bent to the book and for a second Weaver saw the younger woman, the girl still in her face and her long hands. She turned unworriedly as Weaver came to her, closing the book and setting it aside. When they kissed, Weaver stooped down to give it, and she was lightheaded with her own power to part this woman's lips and teeth, to find her tongue and the taste of her mouth, the silk of her skin under her palms as she cupped her face in her hands.

Cabot's hands snaked around her waist as she straddled Cabot's thighs, sliding her hands over her tense belly, cupping the rapturous weight of her breasts, her collarbones, her shoulders, doing it all over again as they kissed and kissed again, shot through and tingling with desire.

Weaver found the cloth of Cabot's trousers, moved away, returned to it. She skated one hand across the trousers, found the groin, dragged a guilty finger down the inside seam, smiling into Cabot's groan. She felt drunk, lightheaded, pressed harder against the fabric. Their shadows on the far wall slid over books and paintings, equally debauched.

"Do you feel me," she whispered, nipping at Cabot's earlobe.

"I swear you've done this all before," Cabot replied, breathless.

"Never, I promise."

"A natural."

"Can you feel me?"

"Yes." Cabot slid a finger between the lips of Weaver's cunt, tipped the clit, grinned into Weaver's neck as she hummed. Weaver found the top fly button, undid it. The second, undid it.

"Do it, then," Cabot urged.

The third, undid it. The fourth and she slipped her hand inside Cabot's loose trousers, found the wetness there. Cabot closed her eyes and kissed Weaver again, stroking the small of her back, her breasts, any skin she could reach, straining towards her body as Weaver's hand brushed her. And when Weaver's hand found her she gave herself up to the pleasure as it swallowed her, sinking into this woman's fine strong body, the scent of her, the cloak of her hair and her soap-smelling skin, the switch and catch of her breath. Her strong hands, deft and deliberate. The warmth and weight of her, her nearness, the tension she gathered in her hands like cable wound around a drum. Weaver felt Cabot tighten, and the shudder begin, and she smiled with her eyes shut as her lover bucked against her, lost.