Chapter One
She had often wondered, even marvelled at how a woman so slight and small could feel so strong beneath her fingers. Her flesh so smooth and supple, but radiating a heat that suggested an intricate connection of muscles and blood vessels bubbling away quietly just a fraction below the surface of her skin. When she closed her eyes she could picture, even feel, tiny fireworks exploding underneath her hands. A result of her touch.
“I am so, so in love…with what you are doing right now,” Cheryl managed to rasp out amid a barely concealed moan of pleasure.
“Oh really?” Kimberley replied, Cheryl sensing the amusement in her voice, despite her friend’s position at her back.
She dipped her head to press a kiss against the base of Cheryl’s neck, her honeyed locks tickling the other’s face as she did so. “Well, you needed it. Your back is so knotty.”
“Mm, like a tree,” Cheryl agreed, reaching her hand up over her head to grasp at Kimberley’s face and capture her lips.
“Or an old rope,” Kimberley whispered between the kiss.
“Or,” Cheryl paused while she searched for another simile, taking the opportunity to continue her assault on Kimberley’s mouth.
“Or…fffack, something else that’s really knotty,” she turned in her lover’s arms, the conversation abandoned as lust once again took over.
But while Kimberley embraced her with every bit of fervour she had just hours earlier, the moment was abruptly short-lived.
“Cheryl… I can’t start this again,” she lightly admonished when the Geordie raised brown eyes in puzzlement. “I told you. I have that appointment at three. We can’t get into this again now.”
“Oh yeah,” Cheryl sighed as she rolled over onto her back with a sigh, brushed her hair distractedly from her eyes. There was no point hiding her disappointment. Even if she tried, Kimberley would know. Kimberley always knew everything about her. Sometimes even before she did. Like this. Like now. That’s just the way they were.
“Can’t you, ya know…” she trailed off, lightly grazing her fingers up Kimberley’s thigh, “reschedule?”
For a second Kimberley wanted to do just that. Give in to the soft eyes staring back at her with unabashed desire, give in to the lurching sensation brewing somewhere in her gut. Just give in and forget about appointments and schedules and time and everybody else in the outside world and just carry on loving Cheryl until her body physically ceased to function.
But Kimberley wasn’t like that. Kimberley was responsible and reliable and nearly always on time. She wasn’t the kind to let another down for the sake of her own wants and desires. She was the go-to girl when things were wrong and you needed a hug. She was the voice of reason when tempers flared over fluffed lines and late-running recording sessions. She was always there to offer the advice you wanted to hear, the kind that cheered you up, regardless of whether it was necessarily what was needed to be said.
Because Kimberley Walsh liked calm waters. They made for an easier life and contentment all round. And if everyone else was happy, then, and only then, could she allow herself to relax and be happy too. And only once had she broken her own rules, had she allowed her friend, her best friend of nearly six years, to climb into her bed in the middle of the night, to bore her pleading eyes into Kimberley’s heart as her hands searched for some kind of comfort, some kind of acceptance that someone did indeed love her, would never leave her.
And she knew it wasn’t right, there in that stiflingly hot hotel room with an emotionally drained married woman seeking out her body, for reassurance more than anything. But it was there that she finally lowered her defences just long enough to let what she had always known out of her heart, spilling into the darkness between them as every last whispered longing came to be realised.
She had only acted selfishly once. But it had led to this. And surely it had been a moment worth taking?
“I can’t,” she offered Cheryl a shrug and a sad smile as she slid off the bed. “I would if I could, you know that, but this is the only time the designers could do.”
“Hmph” Cheryl responded with a non-committal grunt of disapproval that their afternoon had been cut short for work. Work that didn’t even involve Cheryl.
“Babe, you’re not angry are you?” Kimberly glanced back at the bed while slipping in to her skirt hurriedly.
“No. No babe, not at you,” she quickly reassured. “Just a bit disappointed, that’s all. Was hoping I’d have you to myself for a bit longer. I had all these plans.”
“Oh yeah?” Kimberley raised her eyebrows with a knowing smile, sensing the seductive tone creeping into Cheryl’s voice.
She finished dressing and walked back towards the bed as Cheryl crawled over to meet her. She grabbed hold of each of the girl’s hands and tugged them around her own waist, dragging Cheryl up onto her knees as she did so.
“Well, you’re just going to have to keep them on hold until tomorrow, aren’t you? I’m free all day, so you can have your way with me at your leisure.”
And with that Kimberley planted what was usually the first of many goodbye kisses onto awaiting lips.
Cheryl paused for a millisecond, taken off-guard before returning the kiss with renewed passion, tangling her hands in Kimberley’s hair, drawing her as close as possible as their mouths meshed together again and again.
When Kimberley broke away briefly it was just long enough to see the flicker across deep pools of mahogany.
“What is it?” she asked, holding Cheryl away from her slightly to view her better.
“Not tomorrow,” she replied quietly. “Ashley’s back tomorrow.”
Kimberley instantly dropped her hands to her sides and took a step back from the bed. “Right,” she offered wanly, trying and failing to wipe the frown from her face.
For her part, Cheryl did her best to ignore the glaringly obvious, reaching once again for her lover’s hand in a vain effort to recreate the mood that had seeped from the room.
“Kimberley,” it was barely a whisper, soft and soothing like her thumb that was stroking Kimberley’s hand.
“I didn’t know it would be so soon. He hurt his foot in training or something. They want him to get it x-rayed over here.”
“Right,” Kimberley said again, not really caring about the explanation being offered, although subconsciously joining the dots that Cheryl’s injured husband flying home would mean Cheryl wouldn’t be available for a while. Not in the way she had come to enjoy, to need so often.
“But-” she felt Cheryl’s hand against her cheek, turning her face so that she was forced to stare back into those deep soul-searching eyes. The ones she had yet to refuse. Could never refuse, she imagined. “I could probably meet you for lunch on Friday. Maybe for an hour or two.”
“An hour or two?” Kimberley murmured, stepping away from Cheryl’s administrations and into the coldness. Alone. That was how it was going to be again. At least until the next time either Ashley or the girls had work commitments away from home. She might as well get used to it now.
“Well, whenever you can fit me into your schedule, yeah?” and with that she picked up her bag to make her exit.
“Babe, don’t be like that. Please.”
And it was almost enough.
“Kimberley,” the pleading strains, she couldn’t stand it.
“I’ll call you later, Cheryl. I’ve got to go,” she managed to husk out before the tears started to sting from behind her eyes.
It wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t worth crying over the inevitable. She had gotten herself into this situation after all. Because of that one time. That one moment of selfishness the year before, where it hadn’t been Cheryl she needed to say no to, but herself.
Because she’d been tired of fighting what she knew deep down she had always wanted. And because she’d become more aroused then she’d ever been when Cheryl had moaned into her ear just how much she needed her. And because at that moment, in an oversized bed in an LA hotel room with failing air conditioning, she hadn’t imagined that Cheryl would ever take him back.
