Chapter Text
Twenty minutes later Jeanine and I walk into a small restaurant and find a table in the corner of the room. We order a couple of sandwiches and exchange small talk for the first few minutes.
“So how about you, are you seeing anyone?”
I grin to myself, I had wondered how long she was going to be able to last without asking me that. “I’ll admit to a fling or two. But, as you well know, I’ve never really been one for one-night-stands and affairs going nowhere. I need more than that, much more.”
“Only total surrender,” Jeanine recalls aloud. Our gazes lock and I recall the first time she gripped my wrists with a force I hadn’t anticipated, and how soaked my panties had been when she tore them off me moments later.
I watch her lips spread into a feral grin and something warm and fuzzy spreads through my veins. Between us - the essence of us - it was never really about how she controlled me in the bedroom, but how she talked to me during and afterwards, her eyes full of life and a sparkle in her voice. My memories of us are much more drenched in laughter than they are in the moments of exquisite pleasure I needed her to deliver.
“Let’s see how wet you are,” Jeanine had said. “Let’s see just how much you want me.” It was a revelation to both of us at times.
“Tris.” Jeanine’s voice calls me back to the present.
I notice her plate is almost empty, while I’ve barely touched mine. I also notice that, beneath the slight quarreling tone of our conversation, and the mild annoyance seeing her raises in me, I’m enjoying Jeanine’s company a lot more than I had ever expected to. I’m wise enough to realize it’s mostly nostalgia—that deceptive emotion coating this entire experience in a dazed, easy glow. For all the hurt we caused each other, it, still, is the memory of our happiness together that prevails.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I tell Jeanine I need to answer it. She waves for me to go ahead so I press the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hello Ms. Prior, I just wanted to let you know you're 2:30 meeting has been cancelled.”
“Oh, okay.” I avoid Jeanine’s gaze, I feel her trying to gauge my reaction. “Thank you Andrea.” I stare at my phone for a few seconds before shoving it back into my pocket.
“Stuck with me?” Jeanine asks.
“Looks like it.” I glare at Jeanine, at the dark- blue suit that hangs from her long limbs so elegantly. At that glint of mischief in her eyes that’s still the same as the day I met her.
“I’m not going to lie, Tris. I’m glad you got out of that particular meeting. I’d much rather spend the evening with you.” She pins her blue eyes on me. “That is, if you want to, of course.”
I’m not interested in opening up old wounds. It’s just that, I guess, I never thought seeing her again would destabilize me this much. The tether between us, though thin, is still there. I can still feel part of her deep within me. I nod my head slowly.
“How about a stronger drink?” Jeanine flashes me a crooked smile and, in it, I see that, despite the time she had to prepare for this meeting, it has thrown her as well. She’s already standing from her seat.
“Sure,” I say, but just for show because, just like always, Jeanine has taken charge and, in her mind, I’ve said yes already. It’s funny how, despite the year or so we’ve spent apart, we so easily slip into old, well-worn roles. Shouldn’t she be more of a stranger by now? Should time not have erased most of what we had between us?
“Tell me about Tobias,” Jeanine says after we’ve relaxed back into our seats at a local bar. Any other person would politely inquire about my deceased ex. Perhaps phrase it differently, or at least less like a command—but not Jeanine Matthews.
Sweet, kind, Tobis. So vanilla it hurt—but not in the way I needed. Before Jeanine, he would have been perfect for me. “You ruined me for a lot of people.” I say with a sly smile on my lips.
“Oh sure, blame me.” Jeanine responds with an equally playful grin. “Any other woman would thank me, by the way.”
“As I’m sure many have.” When I heard Jeanine was relocating to New York, I imagined how she would look in the eyes of woman after woman, the way she had looked to me, that city the perfect playground for someone like her, a pang of jealousy would chase up my spine. But at least, if she was in New York, I wouldn’t risk running into her with a new lover. A sight I would surely not have been able to take.
“Ha.” Jeanine puffs out a sigh of indignation—I still know that one so well. “There's only one.”
The sun dips behind a faraway building, casting Jeanine in a pale-orange haze. I get lost in mapping her face with my eyes and an unknown amount of time passes in silence. “Oh, Tris,” she whispers. I see something pass in her eyes, something dangerous and familiar, but the bartender arrives with a second round of martinis, and by the time he’s gone, the intensity in her gaze has also disappeared. We sip in silence, both of us caught up in our memories of each other.
“Tell me what you’re thinking right now.” A game we used to play regularly. It always led to Jeanine acting out the exact fantasy she had me describe to her.
“I’m too old for your games now, Jeanine.” I have a lazy smirk on my lips and, beneath my skin, a sudden heat bubbles.
“It was worth a try,” she shrugs.
“Was it?” I steal a glance at Jeanine’s fingers. They’re long, perfectly manicured, a coat of deep red varnish painted on her nails. I've always thought she had the most beautiful hands.
“Where's your place?” A sudden urgency has taken hold of Jeanine's limbs and her voice sounds a bit tighter than before. “I’m only asking because I’d much rather do something else with you than sit here and get drunk.”
When I first started to work with Jeanine —back in the day when she was still the leader of Erudite— she spoke the exact same words to me. We’d worked on a Factionless case together that had touched us both, and had needed to go out for drinks after in a bar just around the corner from Erudite Headquarters.
“You remember well.” I slant my head sideways, the first sign that I may possibly be interested in flirting back.
“‘Fondly’ would be a better word for it.” Jeanine drains her glass and plants it on the table with a demonstrative thud. “Back in the day you were much quicker to say yes.”
I’d felt attracted to Jeanine from the first time we met. That smooth voice. That determined look in her eyes—as if anything other than the best wasn’t even an option. The way she wore business attire, pulling off pantsuits as though they’d been invented solely for her. By the time she spoke those words to me then, I would have gone to the moon with her. In addition to the instant physical attraction I felt toward her, she had pleaded my case to be transferred from Dauntless to Erudite with such fervor, it nearly surpassed my own.
“What can I say? I was young and still so easily impressed.” I shrug my shoulders nonchalantly.
“Hm.” Jeanine’s eyes narrow, “I disagree.” She stares at my still half-full glass. “I think, that particular day, what you needed more than anything, was for someone to sweep you off your feet.”
“Cut to Jeanine Matthews, who swept me off my feet in the first thirty seconds after I met her.” The expected flirty reply from Jeanine doesn’t come, so I search her gaze. A solemn expression has crept onto her face, its moodiness intensified by the low light around us.
“We were such different people when it ended. So much changed...” She continues staring into space and I wonder what she's envisioning. She never did give me specifics when it came to why she left me. All I ever knew was she thought it was for the best. When the faction system failed, it nearly destroyed Jeanine in the process. And, as I think back on it now, that's when she pulled away from me too.
“What kind of person are you now, though, I wonder?” I lean back in my chair and spin the stem of my martini glass between my fingers.
“Evidently not the kind who can persuade you to invite me to your place with one well-aimed, smoothly delivered sentence,” she quips. “...Not anymore.” There is a longing in her eyes, and it stirs something deep in my chest.
I lean forward and chase the olive around my martini glass with my toothpick. “You’re so much more than that Jeanine… Always were.”
“I’m not playing games with you right now, Beatirce.” Jeanine’s voice has gone as serious as her facial expression. “What would you like to do?” She shuffles around a bit in her seat. “I feel as though we have a chance here, time for something unexpected… to get reacquainted, perhaps. I don’t know.” She emphasizes this with a swift shake of her head. “I don't know.” The faintest amount of light reveals small pools of tears in her eyes as she looks away.
I see the pain it caused her to leave me again. I can tune right back into my fear as well: the fear that she was abandoning me because she was somehow ashamed of me. Since then, I’d made a life for myself, independent of Jeanine. What did she get? I made myself believe she had the life she wanted. The freedom to work all hours, to meet all of her goals before forty, to be as successful as she could. The right to choose herself above everything and everyone else.
In front of me, as the evening grows more black, I no longer see Jeanine Matthews the posh politician and business woman. I see a woman with her heart on her sleeve. She locks gazes with me and my heart drops to my stomach. She still has me, she's always had me.
I fold my arms together on the table in front of me. “This is emotional for me too. There was so much… passion, between us… Then you left. You left me.”
“I’m sorry Tris, I truly am. I, I wasn't strong enough to handle it all…” Jeanine tilts her head and blinks away tears. “I also hadn’t expected you to have this effect on me, still.”
“Let’s go home.” I say the words so simply, as though it comes naturally, and I sit in silence for a moment. Jeanine stares at me for a moment, as though she’s waiting for me to take it back. I quickly drain my drink and pull some cash out. Jeanine doesn’t say anything but rises from her chair, signaling the man inside that we want to pay. I leave a few bills on the table before he even arrives and tells me the amount. I feel as though I can’t wait to get out of there, as though, if I stall, something will happen that will make me change my mind—and I don’t want to change my mind. I want to drive Jeanine to my home, I want her in my bed.
“Are you not over the limit?” She asks when I unlock the car. She gives me one of her stern grins—practiced to perfection on dozens of people throughout the years, no doubt—and I just shake my head and continue to climb into the driver’s seat.
What am I doing? Surely a couple martinis are not enough to justify this sort of behavior? But I want her. Beneath the first shock of spotting her now shoulder-length blonde hair, it was already there. That first crackle of desire. The need to see that look in her eyes. That thirst for her, always so present, always so difficult to deny.
I park my car in the underground lot of the apartment complex, when we get out, the sound our shoes make on the concrete sparks another memory. Jeanine had taken me to a dinner party at Candor’s Headquarters and had by mistake—I believed—ended up in the building’s parking lot.
“Well, now that we’re here,” Jeanine had said, hiking up her eyebrows the way she does, before slamming me against the wall and sliding her hand up my skirt under the harsh neon lights. The total surprise of it, along with the possibility of someone walking in on us, and the thrill of how she always so easily did what she did to me, had me trembling at her fingertips within short minutes. A climax I’ve always remembered and relived more than a few times through memory.
When we step into the elevator I half-expect her to shove me against the wall and start kissing me there. But, this is a year after we signed our divorce papers, and all the boundaries we once carefully set have vanished. When I look at myself in the shiny metal of the door, I see a different woman—outside and in. Yet, I want her too. I want someone to do that to me again. To take away all the things that always simmer somewhere in the back of my brain, to take away that longing that’s been building in my gut. I only want Jeanine to do it . She’s no means to an end. She’s my ex-wife. The only one who ever knew me well enough to take me to the place I needed to go. Because the things I want, you don’t just ask of someone. Or, at least, I guess you could, but I think it would take away half the pleasure.
The elevator cabin is silent, apart from a buzzing hum, and the sound of our breath, coming as regularly as always. Yet, beneath my skin, my blood is sizzling. I start making up a list of all the things this is not, but I realize quickly that I don’t need to. I don’t need to overthink this, or think about it at all. That’s the whole point of inviting her to my place. The best part of this entire elevator ride, which is about to come to an end, is that I get to experience both sides of the thrill. I know Jeanine and the familiarity between us reassures me; yet I haven’t seen her in over a year and there’s the excitement of newness crashing through my flesh as well.
Do I still love her? I ask myself as we exit the elevator and I guide her to my door in the furthest corner of the hallway. If I do, it’s in a totally different way than before. The love that remains after the hurt has been dealt with. A more sedated, stable kind of affection based on memories and shared experiences and the life we once lived together but, no matter what we do or how hard we try, we can never, ever get back… Can we?
As soon as we walk into my apartment, which is large and boasts full-length windows on one side, Jeanine starts scanning her surroundings. The curtains will have to remain open, of that I’m sure already, but she’s also looking for props. I wonder if I would be offended if she unearthed some sort of toy from her bag, a flogger perhaps, or handcuffs. If I would be able to forgive such presumptuousness. But not even Jeanine Matthews can rise to that level of audacity, and I remember what she used to say to me, “You have no idea what you give me when you take the pain.” But I did, and I still do.
“Drink?” I ask, tossing my keys on the counter and opening the fridge.
“Just some water, please.” To my surprise, Jeanine dodges my glance when I look at her.
“Are you okay?” I try to make my question sound casual as I snatch a bottle of water from the fridge and pour its contents into a glass.
“I don’t know, Tris.” Is she having second thoughts? What was I expecting anyway? A re-run of our first date?
“I think I know what you want from me, but I can’t read you like that anymore. Too much time has passed.” She takes the glass I hand her and deposits it on the desk she’s leaning against. “I’m also not sure we are people who can just do this once and walk away, especially with the history we share. I’m only speaking for myself, of course. But this, for me, can never be casual. Not with you. I...” Jeanine trails off.
“What are you trying to say?” My heart is thumping away beneath my ribs.
“I do have regrets. What if you were the one I let go? After you, my life did not become what I wanted it to be, and you know why? Because, yes I’m good at my job, and I met all of my goals, and I made much more money than I could ever spend, because what would I possibly spend it on? Myself? I’m always working, anyway, because when I come home at night, to my gorgeous house in Manhattan, there’s no one there… You're not there.”
The person standing in front of me is so far removed from the Jeanine I expected to encounter in my house, I need to blink and take a second to collect myself. “Why don’t we sit for a bit?” I gesture at two chairs flanking the window.
“I’m sorry, Tris. I know this is not what you signed up for.” Jeanine sighs when she crashes into the chair, and there’s nothing regal about her posture anymore. It reminds me of the day she told me she was leaving. She looked as though her spine had shrunk several inches, and her voice had lost all of its liveliness. Jeanine never had to tell me she was hurting, I always knew well before she had the nerve to fess up.
“I didn’t sign up for anything.” I sit down opposite her, trying to find her eyes, but she keeps looking away. “You’re a bit young for a midlife crisis.” I try a joke.
“It’s you.” The words come out as a whisper. “I usually don’t feel like this. Perhaps because I don’t allow myself to. Or because I don’t have time for self-pity, but mainly because I’m not the type to dwell and look back like this on the choices I’ve made. But seeing you…” She shakes her head. “I could have been there for all of it—your first big business venture, the first social movement you organized —but I walked away.”
“Please stand up,” I ask, leading by example. I extend my hand and wait for her to take it. She does, letting her fingers brush over mine before truly grasping them, and pulling herself up.
“If I were you, I’d kick me out as well.” A hint of a smile breaks through the sadness on her face.
“I’m not kicking you out.” I always wanted you to stay. “Who knows why we make the choices we make, Jeanine? All we know is that they make us into the person that we’re meant to become. You’re a hotshot New York City business woman, which is, by the way, quite a sexy thing to be.” At last, I am rewarded with the first hint of her trademark grin. “And as you just said, you’re not someone who looks back often, so look to the future. One of the big advantages of the life you’ve lived so far, is that you have no strings attached. You can be or do whatever you want.” Jeanine’s grip around my fingers grows firmer, yet I’m the one who leans forward and initiates the first kiss.
“For example, you can do this.” I tip my head and inhale her scent before pressing my lips to hers. I wish I could say her scent roused a million memories from my soul, but I’ve lived another life since she left, and the smell of my ex-lover is as new to me as all the rest of this.
“I need to know how you feel,” Jeanine says, as we pull back from what I can hardly describe as the passionate lip-lock I had hoped for.
“How I feel?” Despair clings to my voice. “Confused, horny, ready…” I ramble. “I want you, Jeanine. That’s how I feel, it's how I've always felt.”
“You want me for the person I once was to you.” Jeanine brings her face closer again.
“I want you for who you are,” I correct her gently.
She kisses me again, leaving me breathless. “You want me to tie you to that bedpost over there”—her eyes dart away from me for a moment—“and push five fingers inside of you.”
It’s exactly what I want, but I’m not sure I should just give myself away like that. It doesn’t really work that way—never has.
“Most of all,” Jeanine continues, “you want me to stop talking.” Her blue eyes bore into mine, and I can tell she’s getting there, that she’s getting herself ready.
Almost imperceptibly, I nod, and I feel everything falling away. The time we haven’t seen each other, the pain we caused each other that has colored our memories, and, perhaps in both of our cases, altered our view on life as well. Because isn’t our life made up of the people that we love? The people that have the power to change something fundamentally about us? No one has ever had as profound an effect on me as Jeanine Matthews. She knows it too. I see it in the way her facial expression is changing. Eyes that seem to look straight into my soul. That knowing, lopsided smile. Even in the way she tilts her head, exposing the length of her neck, as ever, a question in the slant of it: are you ready?
In a flash, her hands are on the back of my neck, pulling me in. The kiss that follows is much more invasive than the last. There’s nothing exploratory or cautious about it. It’s a declaration of intent. The way Jeanine claims me with her tongue now is how she’ll claim me with her fingers later.
When we break from the kiss, I already feel out of breath and as though my knees are giving way. Not even the best sex I had with Tobias comes close to this thirty-second kiss from Jeanine. Apples and oranges. There’s no use comparing the two.
“You’d better undress and bend over.” I can hear it in Jeanine’s voice as well. She’s found herself again, put herself together—or, at least, that’s what I choose to believe in that moment.
When I scan her face, I can tell she's been waiting for this, wanting this, just as long as I have. Her command takes me back in time instantly, to my early twenties, when commands like that were part of my everyday life. I obey; her words, as ever, controlling my fingers.
With Jeanine’s eyes on me, I unbutton my blouse and let it drop to the plush carpet. Of course, my body has changed. Whatever my shirt was hiding is on full display now. The scar I had received after a car accident, the new tattoos I'd collected and the strength I'd fought to keep in my arms and abdomen. All evidence of the days that have passed. I slip out of my pants first, feeling too self-conscious to unhook my bra immediately. All the while, Jeanine’s eyes are scrutinizing my every move. Her gaze follows my fingers, which were set in motion by her words. Although she’s not touching me, she’s all over me already.
A quick arch of her eyebrows when I stand before her in just my underwear. Just a reminder that I had better get on with it. I bring my hands behind my back and unclasp my bra, holding the fabric in front of me with a protective gesture.
“This is not a striptease,” I expect her to say, because that’s what she used to say. But Jeanine remains silent. I even detect a glimmer of understanding in her eyes when I hesitantly look at her before letting the bra slide off me. It erases some of my trepidation and I’m quick to dispose of my panties, their fabric soft on my legs as they drop to the floor. “Bedroom. You know the pose.” Jeanine breaks the silence and follows me into my room.
I bend over so my torso rests on the mattress and my backside sticks out, free for her to do with as she pleases. This kind of trust does not come easily, I think, as I bury my face into the duvet. But I trust her nonetheless to have my back. When the rustling of the sheets subsides, once I’ve found a comfortable spot, the room goes silent again. Jeanine doesn’t appear to move for long minutes as time seems suspended. My nakedness arouses me, adding to the anticipation that started bubbling in my blood the second she said the words. What is she thinking when she looks at me like that? Are her panties drenched beneath the trousers of her designer suit?
At last, I hear her move and the air around me changes. Perhaps she’s taking off her blazer, rolling up her sleeves… or just taking a moment to reacquaint herself with my behind.The lone finger she traces up the curve of my ass in the next instant sends a jolt of electricity straight to my clit. I brace myself for a slap any second, my muscles going taut, but it’s still just her finger running over my skin in circles, creating a pattern I can’t possibly decipher. When her finger retreats, I brace my core again, getting ready for impact, but again, she stalls. Her finger is wet now—spit? water? arousal?—as it travels along my butt cheeks in intricate patterns that catch the breeze of the air-conditioning. It meanders closer to the split between my cheeks, lingering there, promising more, but not yet delivering.
I vividly remember Jeanine’s patience—in and out of the bedroom—and how it made me squirm, but to be subjected to it today of all days, is almost too much. The need raging inside of me translates in a frantic pulsing in my clit—the kind that gets me so agitated I could come just lying there. Of course, the time apart has not erased my knowledge of how that would go down with Jeanine. I also want her hands on me—not just a finger—when I come. So, instead of focusing on what’s to come, I let my mind wander to what I’ve missed.
The very first time Jeanine’s hand connected with one of my butt cheeks, even though we’d sort of discussed it, had come as such a blistering, mind-numbing shock, I couldn’t even cry—and Jeanine never holds back when she spanks, not even that first time. “I know you don’t need to be tickled,” she’d said, her voice dry, her facial expression matter-of-fact.
Now, her finger is inching closer. Not to my tortured clit and throbbing pussy lips, but higher, where I’ve never had anyone explore me except Jeanine. Not because I clung onto the silly, sad notion that that particular entrance would always belong to her—nothing romantic like that—but because it simply never happened with the people I dated after Jeanine. It never even came up.
I suppose that, what tethered me to Jeanine—and the memory of her—so closely was how she’d totally surprised me with it. How I’d never seen it coming. Mostly, because—as she liked to point out back in the day—I never even realized I needed it. In that respect, I’ve never forgotten my first. And no one could ever be my first again. Her finger applies gentle pressure, but doesn’t intrude. I know Jeanine, she’s just making her intentions known. As if she needs to. Then, nothing again. Her finger is gone and I only feel the cool breeze of the air around me caressing my skin. And, out of nowhere, my need for her surprises me again. I’m shocked into complete submission as I lie there, waiting for her, for her to do whatever she pleases with me.
“Get up,” she says, her voice low and dark.
I take a deep breath before pushing myself up, blinking away the feverish dizziness behind my eyes. Jeanine has taken off her blouse and stands there in just her suit pants and her bra. My eyes are glued to her skin. It still seems to stretch so smoothly over her belly. There’s even a hint of ab. But Jeanine doesn’t give me much time to indulge in the view of her. She has a different view in mind. “Face the window.”
As I do, I hear her unbuckle her belt, and it’s as though I can feel my clit swell to the size of a baseball.
“Hands on the glass, ass out.” I relish in the soft swishing sound of the leather slipping from the belt loops of Jeanine’s pants. I copped a good look at it earlier. It’s thin and caramel-brown. Jeanine once told me she liked that color touching down on my skin. “It contrasts nicely with the pink it leaves behind,” she said, and all I could do was gasp for air. I’m gasping for air now as well as I plant my palms on the cool glass of my bedroom window. My room is on a fairly high floor, but no floor is high enough to take away the feeling of being watched.
As much as the first time Jeanine spanked me with her hand hurt me, it didn’t come close to what she could do with a belt. Head held high, I peer through the glass. Jeanine catches my gaze in the reflection.
“Let’s give them a show, baby,” she says. She moves behind me and there’s her finger again, marking the spot where she will slap me. It’s as though my body remembers everything she ever did to me. And Jeanine hasn’t forgotten either. Obviously, she still knows where my delicate spot is—the sensitive patch of skin that, when hit by her belt, will cause me to groan the hardest. She’s made all of her intentions very clear now. I know exactly what I’m in for. I’m ready.
So is she. With a devilish whack, the leather connects with my flesh. And it’s been so long since I felt something like that, that the tears well in my eyes instantly. I used to be able to hold them back much longer.
“Fuck,” I cry unceremoniously, and my hands slide down the window a little bit. But, totally in character, Jeanine doesn’t give me time to reflect. She lets the leather crash down again, on the same spot, and I feel the walls of my pussy contract around nothing.
“Mmm,” I hear her groan. It’s her way of expressing approval. As eloquent as Jeanine is in her daily, professional life, she goes really—eerily—silent in the bedroom.
Whack . She focuses on my other cheek now. The leather rains down in a blast of lashes I can’t keep count of. My skin stings; tears stream down my cheeks. My reflection in the window is red-faced, out-of-breath, crazy-eyed. Through my tears, I see Jeanine’s body prepare for another slap. Her muscles go rigid, and then I don’t see anything anymore as my eyes close with the impact.
Then, I hear the belt drop to the floor, but I know better than to move. I know Jeanine is admiring her work now, scrutinizing every mark she left on my flesh. Her finger is there as well, tracing pink lines I can’t see. It hurts when she repeats the motion this time. The skin of my ass is as tender as my heart when she left me. Though my heart took a lot longer to heal than this will.
Jeanine inches closer, glueing herself to me, the front of her body covering my entire backside, pressing me against the glass, her lips close to my ear. “Is that what you wanted, Beatrice?”
My knees go weak at the gravelly sound of her voice saying my given name. I can only nod silently. I can only obey and agree.
Her eyes find mine again in the reflection of the window. “Answer me.”
“Yes,” I say, but my voice is but a ragged whimper. There are no lessons to be taught here anymore. The pair of us reflected in that window sums it all up perfectly. I commit the image to memory—Jeanine’s blazing eyes, her fingers curled possessively around my shoulder, and my own face: so ground down but so at peace.
“On the bed,” she says, but doesn’t immediately make space for me to move. She pushes her body into mine a bit longer. Another clearly stated intention. Before pulling away, Jeanine pushes her nose into my hair and inhales deeply, and the gesture, the intimacy of it—and the memories it triggers—floors me more than any belt ever could. She lets me turn around, but still lingers in my personal space. I can tell she’s struggling with something, and that she’s also trying hard not to disturb the atmosphere too much. Unexpectedly, she grabs me by the throat, and forces her tongue into my mouth. I eagerly take it, latching on, so in need of tasting her, of touching her, of yes, loving her.
“Go on,” she says, when she brusquely lets go of me, as though appalled by her own desire to pull me in for that kiss. “You know the drill.” And that I do. I eagerly shuffle onto the bed, lie on my back and curl my fingers around the railing, my wrists close together so she can tie them up easily. When Jeanine makes it by my side, her pants are gone and she sits in front of me in just her underwear. A no-frills white bra and black panties—judging by her underwear, she certainly didn’t dress with this outcome in mind, which pleases me.
Jeanine loops the belt around my wrists and then around the railing, fastening it tightly so the sides of it cut into my skin a little. There’s no point in complaining about that. She knows it would only be for show and would only make me wait for my much-needed climax longer.
“Spread your legs.” She crawls backwards on hands and knees until she sits between my legs, all of me on full display. “Wider.”
I let my legs fall open, showing myself to her, and the air on my swollen pussy lips feels good, but oh I need to come soon.
“You really want this, don’t you?” Jeanine’s eyes are locked between my legs and with every word she speaks it’s as though something of her caresses my clit, even though there’s only air between us. She’s not touching me in any way—only looking with that piercing gaze of hers. “You want me to fuck you so badly, don’t you, Beatrice?” Her eyes cut to me. What does she see? Her ex tied with her arms above her head, just like old times?
“Yes,” I say, my voice much more defiant than before.
“How many fingers, Beatrice?” This question comes as a surprise, and as a brusque reminder that she must be trying to adjust to the circumstances too. Because she never used to ask me. “Three?” She chuckles. “Nah, three is nothing for you. I know that much. Four perhaps?” She tilts her head, letting her gaze drop down again in the process. “Or do you want everything, Tris? Hm?”
Jeanine’s words connect with my clit, making it throb even more violently. “All of it,” I grumble. “Are you sure, Beatrice?” The way she keeps repeating my given name frazzles me, as though she needs to say it to re-establish the connection between us—as though she’s trying out a shortcut to reach the level of intimacy we once shared.
I study Jeanine’s face and the movement of her body. Over the years we were together, she tied me up like this countless times, and she never—ever—let me catch a glimpse of what was happening behind the mask of her face. But I see it now. I see her need. The raw desire in her eyes for me to want her, the desperate need to be needed. I see the new cluster of tiny wrinkles around her eyes, and how that one line bracketing the side of her mouth has deepened with regret.
But I also realize that I could be wrong. That this person sitting in front of me in panties and bra—peering down at my most intimate parts—whom I haven’t seen in such a long time, is not necessarily someone I know anymore. I can guess at what she’s thinking and feeling all I want, all I’d be doing would be fulfilling my own need to know.
And this is why I always needed Jeanine the most. Because she made the thoughts stop in my head. She compressed the moment to only exactly what it needed to be: abandon, surrender, letting go. In the flash in which she finds my eyes again while wriggling her fingers, I realize—because I still can—that because we’re not the same people anymore, my level of abandon has not reached its peak just yet. Jeanine knows, that’s why she’s talking to me like that. “Yes,” I say, my eyes on hers. “I want all of you. And you know it.”
I can tell she’s starting to get transfixed by the wetness between my legs. My desire for her is so strong, I can smell myself. Earlier, I was worried about the absence of lube, but I know now that won’t be a problem.
Jeanine goes silent, her face folding into a focused, solemn expression. She’s about to get down to business. But, as always has been the case, in what we do, it’s the in-between moments that come to mean the most. The tremble in my voice, and now, today, also in hers. The way she pressed her body into my back earlier. Her taunting, but telling words. This instant of anticipation when she folds herself toward me. All of her—although it hardly appears that way—at my service.
When, at last, she puts a hand on my lower belly, the entire expanse of my skin breaks out in goosebumps. I bite back the impulse to spur her on, to make her do what she’s about to do faster, but it’s all part of my eventual pleasure, all a crucial part of the process. As though she doesn’t need to look where her fingers are going, Jeanine rests her eyes on me while, her one hand still on my belly, her fingers enter me. I don’t know how many, but I know it’s not one or two. For that, the invasion is too big. I’m spread too wide. I gasp for air, everything around me momentarily suspended, as Jeanine’s fingers slip deep inside, and remain there for what feels like forever. Doubtless, she’s trying to make another statement, but this is the moment during which my brain stops processing. The moment I give myself up to her. The hand resting on my lower belly feels as though it’s located close to my clit, but no matter how close those fingers actually are, they’re not nearly close enough for touching. The merest flick now would send me over instantaneously.
“Your clit is for quickies,” Jeanine used to say. “I want to earn your climax.”
Then her fingers start moving, minute movements deep inside of me, driving up the heat traveling through my bloodstream.
“Oh fuck,” I groan. “Oh, Jeanine.” And then, as though me saying her name has stirred something inside of her too, she ups the pace for two or three strokes, before pulling out and slipping in more. I’m not in a position to see, I can only feel, but I’m guessing at least four, perhaps even five of her fingers are pushing in. They don’t go deep—not yet—but I feel as though I have most of Jeanine inside of me. As though, in those seconds when she moves her fingers, those brief moments of nothingness in my brain, she never even left.
“Relax,” she commands. But it’s hard, because I know what it means. I’m fully aware of the exact sort of ecstasy it will lead up to. The kind I had deemed erased from my life with the slamming of the front door.
Jeanine is fucking me with her left hand and her other hand starts moving away from my belly. Not to my clit, because that would be too easy, but much lower, to the spot where she made her intentions known earlier. Her eyes narrow when a finger darts around my entrance there, as though she can’t believe how far my wetness has spread, how, even with five fingers inside of my pussy, it’s still seeping out, pooling where she needs it now. She looks away then, because her eyes are needed elsewhere. I want to keep looking at her, if only at the movement of her shoulders as she pushes deeper inside of me, but my eyes fall shut the instant I feel a finger circling my sphincter.
Ever so slowly, Jeanine spreads me wide, and I can feel her knuckles pass the rim of my pussy. I lay wide open for her—only ever for her—and the sensation that engulfs me is almost unbearable. It sums up the emotions of this day so well. Seeing her again. The memories. The regret. The altogether too-much-ness of it all. So unexpected but, in the end, so damn good. No one has ever taken more from me than her. And no one has ever touched me in the way she always could—the way she’s doing now. Because Jeanine was never afraid to go there, and take me with her in the process.
Tears run down my cheeks as I give myself to her completely—but not as completely as she has in mind just yet. My poor neglected clit is about to explode, but what turns me on the most is the extremely inhabited feeling of Jeanine’s fingers inside of me. I can’t move. I’m completely at her mercy. So much of her is inside of me that she’s becoming a part of me again. All the lines blur. The past, the present, the future… It all floods together in a blur of memories and sensations. How could I go another year without this? Jeanine’s finger is tapping—as though politely requesting entrance—but there’s nothing polite about how she enters me there, too.
She’s got me now, I think. Wrists tied and filled to the brim. But then I don’t think anything anymore, because tiny earthquakes are taking place inside of me, originating in my cunt, around those long slender fingers of hers, and spreading, like hot waves of lava, throughout my flesh, over my limbs, saturating my blood. I’m hers, always, and she knows it.
To come around another woman’s fingers is incomparable to anything else. It levels me in ways I didn’t know existed until the first time Jeanine let all of her fingers slide inside of me. In a few brief moments, it resets parts of my psyche that can’t be reached any other way. Every muscle in my body goes rigid, while my brain relaxes to the maximum. Until the process is reversed, and, after the climax, my muscles go limp and my mind takes on an awareness so keen, I can see everything with brand new clarity.
What I see tonight is Jeanine sobbing in front of me. Carefully, millimetre by millimetre, removing herself from me, her muscles in control but her face wet with tears. In that instant when our eyes meet again for the first time, the aftermath is so clear to me, it feels like a stab in the heart. Once all of Jeanine’s fingers have retracted, leaving me feeling physically empty yet satisfied, she rushes to where my hands are tied and loosens the belt. She kisses the marks the leather left and lays down on top of me, pushing me all the way down onto the mattress—shoving my tortured behind into a moist puddle of my own wetness in the process.
“My god, Beatrice,” she whispers in my ear and clings to me desperately. And it’s just a few words which could mean so many things, yet I know exactly what they mean. My flesh is still buzzing from the climax, but my mind is clear. One year ago, our choices and outside voices pushed us apart, but time has not taken away everything. This night, in this bed, we’re Jeanine and Beatrice again. One year older, but, fundamentally, when it strictly comes down to the two of us—to our very best moments—we, together, are unchanged enough to try.
I wrap my arms around Jeanine and she lifts her head kissing me passionately. My own cheeks feel just as wet as Jeanine’s look. I smile at her, because although I feel the words sitting at the ready in my throat, I need a few more seconds of silence. In this unguarded moment, Jeanine is more herself than at any other time. Time has gone by, but it has not erased us. I see that and much more when I look into her misty eyes. Her fingers dig deep into the flesh of my back, clinging onto me—onto someone she let go, but should have held onto.
“Maybe you should come to Chicago more often.”
She grimaces through her tears, half-smiles before her lips thin out into a distressed pout again. She’s at a loss for words, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time. “Maybe I will,” she manages to say after a while.
The next morning when I wake up early, because we never did take the time to draw the curtains, Jeanine is still fast asleep beside me. I take in her relaxed face; her lips are slightly parted, her eyes a bit baggy from all the crying.
Last night, Jeanine and I got caught up in long hours of reminiscing, lying in each other’s arms, while avoiding drawing conclusions. Until we fell asleep, naked, our fingers and toes lightly touching, just like they always did. What should my first words be to her when she wakes up? I can’t stop looking at her. Her hair is pointing in all directions and her one cheek is a bit wrinkly from lying on her side. It reminds me of lazy Sunday mornings when we had an entire day stretched out in front of us. The immense feeling of comfort to be spending the day with someone you love, doing the things you love, unencumbered, free in the union we then, still, chose.
My wrists are still a bit stiff, despite Jeanine’s incessant stroking of them last night, after the fact. When I stretch myself out, my butt cheeks sting in the most satisfying way, and my pussy feels tender. I think of the time we have left, the few hours between now and her leaving for the airport. Would she really consider visiting me here in Chicago? If all the things she said last night are true, she just might. As much as I love watching her sleep, time ticking away from us gets the best of me. Jeanine’s lying on her back, the duvet half thrown off her, and I remember what it was like to wake up beside her every morning. A small but significant blessing, because what better way to start the day than clasp eyes on the woman you love? The woman who taught you more about yourself than you ever deemed possible? After she left, waking up was always the hardest part of the day. But I’ve dealt with the emptiness of those mornings. Time has, for once, softened the memories that needed it most. And look at me now? On my own path of success, and happily in bed with Jeanine Matthews. The most crucial of our differences dissolved as the days have gone by.
I trail a finger along her collarbones, only hesitant for a split second before dragging it down across her torso, to her left nipple. It’s still limp with sleep, but not for long. I encircle it with the tip of my finger, but I need more. I rearrange myself so I can take it in my mouth. As I wrap my lips around her nipple, Jeanine expels a light groan, followed by, “Good morning to you too.”
Her voice—although sparingly used, always an important instrument in our love-making—instantly undoes me a little, and I let her nipple slip from my wet lips to look at her. “Morning.”
Jeanine’s face breaks into a smile that makes my heart sing. A grin so un-self-conscious and free, it makes me realize I have fallen in love with her all over again. “You should probably do it, you know,” I hear myself say.
“What?” Jeanine pulls me close to her, until my ear reaches her lips. “Book my next ticket to Chicago, you mean?” Her voice is a horny whisper, full of promise of things to come.
I nod, my cheek now against her full lips. I turn my face toward her fully, to look into her eyes. No more words are needed now. I lean in to kiss her, and this kiss, this morning, with early sunlight illuminating us, and the memory of last night in our hearts, is one that travels all the way through me, it's divine sensation settling in the pit of my stomach. I won’t fall in love with Jeanine again because I already am, I always have been. Perhaps it started when she loosened her belt from her trousers—although that would mean reducing the moment to one of physicality. To merely the promise of something to come.
And if I know one thing, back then and now, it was never promises keeping us together. And it was never just the scorching scenes in our bedroom we managed to create. It was—is—much more than that. Then and now. Because how do you forget a love like that? The life we shared, the companionship, the deep friendship and understanding that connected us much more than Jeanine tying me up ever could, they were the hardest to lose.
How Jeanine was there for me after rough days—and in my profession, a lot of days are heartbreaking—not just with savey business advice and a shoulder to lean on, but how she knew the right, lighter words to say to cheer me up. How she could disarm me by arching up her eyebrows and pulling her lips into a silly grin. How, when I came home, I’d find her making an intricate dinner just for the two of us.
“How about next weekend?” Jeanine asks when we break from our kiss. My bruised pussy lips are pulsing again and, despite knowing I need some time to recover, I already want her again. I feel it in every bone of my body. Jeanine is inventive, she’ll find a way to give me what I need. She always did.
“Can’t wait,” I say, as I feel a tear stinging behind my eyes. Because this love of ours is greater than time. It’s greater than the sacrifices we felt we needed to make. The sum of it is more than our separate desires. Maybe we didn’t see it then, but I clearly see it now. I shift my weight so I am sitting up, straddling her, and get lost in the blue-gray of her eyes.
“I’ll stay at the Regis Hotel downtown. I love that place,” Jeanine says, running her hands up and down my thighs, a coy smile on her lips.
“Nuh-uh.” I shake my head and tap my finger against her chest, then lower myself to kiss her. “You’re staying with me.”