Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [18]
They walked to the bedroom, bodies brushing lightly together as they walked. They left the lights on, undressed quickly and efficiently, and they turned to look at one another, and passion caught Rhoda by the throat and shook her. She looked at Megan, at Megan’s body, and she thought that she had never seen anything beautiful or so desirable. She moved toward the blonde girl, her hands outstretched, groping. Megan stood still, waiting. Rhoda’s hands fastened on Megan’s shoulders, moved down over her bare arms, slipped over silken skin to embrace Megan’s full and beautiful breasts.
They sank together to the bed, wordless, breathless. Their mouths met in a kiss, and their tongues tangled and the world went black and white and black and white. They kissed, and their bodies were drawn sharply together, breasts against breasts, belly against belly thighs urgently drawn against thighs, loins speaking love to loins.
Rhoda was caught up in it all, unable to think of anything, unable to do anything at all but surrender herself entirely to the waves of desire that dominated her. She moved on the bed, aching to embrace the totality that was Megan, mad to touch everything, to kiss everything, to give pleasure and get pleasure until the world sank under the sea. Her lips found Megan’s breasts and teased them into a turbulence of love. Her hands stroked the sheer silk that was Megan’s hips and thighs. Her fingertips were alive with the shimmering glory of Megan’s secret beauties.
Her hands were fierce with Megan’s breasts. Her mouth was busy, planting a trail of burning kisses along a perfectly formed leg.
Pleasure screamed in the night. The bed rocked urgently. The peak of passion was sharply etched, clear and beautiful, and sleep came fast on its heels.
CHAPTER FIVE
The weekend had the quality of a dream. Time was suspended, thoughts were never pressing. Sometimes they strolled together through Village streets, walking easily side by side. And no one could tell a thing by looking at them, Rhoda thought. They walked together like two friends, and nobody could guess that they were so much more than that.
The walks were an education in themselves. She had lived in the Village for several months, had walked back and forth over these streets, but when she went walking with Megan she felt as though she had done that walking with her eyes closed, or wearing blinders. There was so very much she had simply failed to notice.
The men and boys who loitered by the western rim of Washington Square at twilight. “Gay boys,” Megan told her. “Male prostitutes, mostly. Young ones who sell themselves to older men, for a meal or for money. They tend to have a more cavalier attitude toward sex than we do, kitten. They’ll go for hit-and-run love or even buy it on the market place. Pickups in filthy men’s rooms—that sort of thing. You rarely find girls like that. We tend to be more long-term in our love affairs, we sensitive lesbians.”
A small dark coffeehouse on Sullivan Street. “No one ever goes there, Rhoda. Not for coffee or companionship. I understand they sell mescaline there. It makes you hear sounds and see colors, it creates psychotic hallucinations. It’s not strictly illegal, like narcotics, but it’s only handled on the black market. I’ve heard they sell marijuana there, too, but I’m not sure of it.”
A subterranean bar on Barrow. “One of ours, honey. A dyke joint. That’s one of the more compelling names for girls like thee and me, you know. Dykes, lessies, butches, lady-lovers—they call us the nicest things. This place is more refined than most. No dancing and not too much in the way of a butchy element. A lot of the uptown career girls come down here, and it’s all right for a quiet drink. Places like The Shadows on Macdougal are so cruisy that you have to be very hard-up or very scummy yourself in order to tolerate them, but this place isn’t bad at all.”
A girl passing by. “Did you see the way she