UNMENTIONABLES by Alyssa Linn Palmer

Valentine’s Day eve. Vee moved in just a few weeks ago, a huge step for both of us, and one I still worry about. Not about us, never. We’re solid. But about others, and their opinions, yes, sometimes. What is a woman of my age (late forties, if you must know) doing with a girl of twenty-one? My conservative-looking self with the punk rock Vee. She’s lean and leggy, scattered tattoos and a Monroe stud. Right now, her usually-blue hair has streaks of pink, ‘for the occasion,’ she said.

I have an article due tomorrow—what sadist gives Valentine’s Day as a deadline? —but I can’t figure out how to finish it. I have been spending the last hour pacing between the kitchen and the office, occasionally stopping to peer out the window and down the fire escape to the grimy alley below. Once I opened the window to hear the bustle of NYC, the honking traffic, the people. But nothing has worked.

On my next pace, back past the bedroom, a flash of movement catches the corner of my eye, a bit of blue. I pause, retreat, linger just outside the door. Vee is changing for bed.

She draws her shirt up over her head—one of her usual rock band tees—and I want to put my tongue to each of the stars tattooed up the side of her ribcage, feel each bump, each indentation. To kiss the red marks from her bra, which she barely needs. She bends at the waist to tug off her skinny jeans. I smile to myself and bite my lip to keep from chuckling as she curses and hops on one foot. They’re so snug round the calves that it’s always a challenge. I’ve had those myself, pulling vainly when she’s sprawled on the bed, wanting nothing more than to get her naked.

Vee flings the jeans into the laundry hamper, and her socks follow, one after the other, hitting the wall before falling in. This is why people talk; she’s over the legal age, but she still finds delight in simple, sometimes childish things.

I don’t care.

I do, but I’m learning not to, trying to follow her example.

Vee does a sudden shimmy, her fingers in the waist elastic of her boyshorts, and I snap back to attention. She looks over her shoulder.

I’m caught.

‘Alex…’ she calls, a smile widening, her stud glinting in the lamplight. Her eyebrow quirks up, an unmistakeable come-hither. Subtlety isn’t Vee’s thing. Though we’ve done this so many times before, my mouth goes dry, and my knees go weak. I’m instantly wet, instantly wanting.

So cliché. My mother would shake her head. ‘Oh, Alex,’ she’d say.

To hell with them all.

We’ve done it, Vee’s here with me, I’m here with her, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.

‘Stop thinking so much,’ Vee chides, coming forward to grasp my hand.

I start to speak, but she pulls me forward and wraps her arms around my neck, bringing her lips to mine, pressing her tongue past my lips. It’s wet and hot and fantastic and I can’t remember what I was worried about.

I flick her bra clasp and then cup her breasts, her nipples tightening under my palms. She shivers delightfully, letting out a low moan when I lightly pinch those hardened nipples. We shift and she lets the bra fall away.

Pale skin, so pale it almost has a blue tinge to it, one that isn’t a side effect of her hair colour. And those light pink nipples. I put my hands at the small of her back, silently demanding that she arch towards me, and I bend to flick one nipple with my tongue. Vee’s clutching the cloth of my shirt at the shoulders, and I drop one hand down into her boyshorts, clasping those slender buttocks.

It’s so easy to tease her sex, brushing my fingertips against its wetness. She squirms, but only to get closer.

‘Alex…’ she says again, but this time it’s breathy, needy.

We back up, towards the bed, and she falls back onto the coverlet, arms and legs like a starfish.

‘Clothes, Alex,’ she reminds me. I take a moment to unbutton my shirt and let it fall, and then my jeans—my much more sensible boot-cut jeans—drop too. Her gaze devours me, and she holds out her hand again. I kneel on the bed between her legs, and when she tries to remove my front-clasp bra, I pin her hand to the bed.

‘Not yet.’

Vee subsides, but only for now.

I want her underwear off. She helps, lifting her hips. I toss the scrap of fabric aside, bending again, kissing the jut of her hip bone, the hollow, the soft curve of her stomach just above what little is left of her pubic hair. She’d shaved it into a heart yesterday, just for a laugh, and she’s bare below the wisps. The dampness glimmers there, promising.

I hold her knees apart—not that she’d close them—and flick my tongue against that dampness, slowly, carefully, pleased at the quivering I cause. My sex is wanting, but I’ll wait for my own satisfaction. I want to hear her gasps, her moans, her pleading. I flick again, and linger this time, and her hips cant towards me.

This is us, so perfectly us. I can never get enough.

‘More,’ she demands. I comply.

She tastes like no other as I delve into her soft folds, flicking her clitoris, then lightly penetrating her before I withdraw, hearing her gasp.

I only give her a moment to rest before I return, and this time I mean to have her come. I hold her thighs open, my thumbs in the hollows on either side of her sex. Her heat, her scent, her desperate little movements… I’m close to coming myself.

Vee squirms more, and her breathing is heavy now, almost panting. She’s coming close to that cliff, to that moment of the rush, of the fall, of immediate pleasure. I want to prolong it, but she’s gasping little pleas, and I do as she asks. I slip my index finger into her, pressing up, against her g-spot, stroking hard. She clenches around me, her gasps becoming an ‘Oh God,’ and then, ‘Alex.’ She shudders and spasms, but I don’t stop, drawing out her orgasm as long as I can. She cries out again and I feel a new batch of spasms around my finger, another set of shivers. Her legs clamp around me as her hips arch up, seeking the most sensation possible.

Her chest heaves with her breathing, and her legs relax, and she slides bonelessly to the bed, reminding me very much of a cat in the midst of a deep sleep. But her eyes open and she smiles, the most beatific smile.

‘Weren’t you going to save that for tomorrow?’ she asks, her voice a whisper.

‘It’s close enough.’ I glance at the clock. 12:02. It is.

‘I had a surprise for you,’ she says, and I sprawl out beside her, still in my bra and underwear. ‘But it means getting rid of these.’ She fingers the strap of my bra. I sit up and undo the clasp, sliding the straps down my arms and off. ‘And these.’ She snaps the elastic of my underwear. I stand up and take them off, tossing both items into the hamper.

‘Always so neat,’ she teases. She sits up, pushing her hands through her hair, the blue and pink a charming mess. She rises from the bed and goes to the armoire, to her side of it, opening a drawer and pushing aside her underwear.

‘Sit down,’ she says, and I do, perching on the edge of the bed.

Vee turns, and in her hand is a neat little box, tied in a glossy white ribbon. She places it in my hands.

‘Open it.’

I don’t know what to think. It isn’t small enough to be jewelry. Or at least, I don’t think so.

I carefully tug at the ribbon and remove it, setting it on the bed beside me. She watches as I open the box, and I know she’s dying of anticipation. She loves giving gifts, seeing my surprise. As a result, I take my time.

There’s tissue paper, also white, and it crinkles as I lift the folds.

Lace.

White lace.

My breath catches in my throat.

Vee perches beside me on the bed, leaning in against my arm. She catches a fold of the lace with a finger and lifts it, bringing to our gaze delicate thong panties. Below it in the box is a bra, with lace cups and underwire.

‘Vee…’ I start. I can see the tag, and I know it’s expensive, more than she can likely afford.

‘I want you in it,’ she says. ‘I’ve dreamed of it.’

She rises and pulls me to my feet with her, handing me the thong. I step into it and pull it up, smoothing the lace at my hips. She lifts the bra and slides it over my arms, stepping behind me to do up the clasp.

Then she nudges me towards our ensuite bathroom. I see myself, her hands at my waist, a vision in white lace.

‘I want this under your wedding dress,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps?’

I am speechless.

But I know the right answer. I’ve always known, ever since I met her.

It’s us.

‘Yes.’

❤

Alyssa Linn Palmer is a Canadian writer and freelance editor. She splits her time between a full-time day job and her part-time loves, writing and editing. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America, the Calgary RWA, and RRW (Rainbow Romance Writers). She has a passion for Paris and all things French, which is reflected in her writing. When she’s not writing lesbian romance, she’s creating the dark, morally flawed characters of the Le Chat Rouge series and indulging in her addictions to classic pulp fiction.

Get to know her at AlyssaLinnPalmer.com or follow her on Twitter at @alyslinn

❤

text © Alyssa Lin Palmer 2017

photography ©  Jennifer Weihmann

used with permission; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

SCREW CHOCOLATE: 14 Queer Valentines To Help You Survive February 14 is a collaborative project by YYC Queer Writers. We get together intermittently to… write. Also, laud our lovers. Commiserate about our exes. Read each other what we wrote. Explain what we want to write. Try to justify why we aren’t writing it. Go home and write it. Come back. Share it… repeat.

TABLE OF CONTENTS  VALENTINES

Valentine 1: Mountains & Moments by T

Valentine 2:Karma, in Pronouns by Marzena Czarnecka

Valentine 3: The Long Commute by L. Sara Bysterveld

Valentine 4: It Happens Like This by Dana Stan

Valentine 5: Try by M. Jane Colette

Valentine 6: Sunrise by Brooke Nicholas

Valentine 7: Want by T

Valentine 8: Get The Fuck Up & Love by Dallas Barnes

Valentine 9: Elizabeth by Nola Sarina

Valentine 10: Instructions by PW Zelli

Valentine 11: Unmentionables by Alyssa Linn Palmer

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COMING:

Valentine 12: The Shy Girl’s Guide to Sexting by M. Jane Colette

Valentine 13: Delivery by Elisa Kae

Valentine 14: Alter Ego In A Red Tie by Lotis Cervantes