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“You fell in love with me twice. Let’s build a life together. Say yes.”
“If I have sex with you once, it doesn’t mean that I’m saying yes.”
Luisa let herself sink into the mattress as Rose’s body pressed against her.
She knew that this was a terrible idea, but she couldn’t help it. It was always like this - she could never help it, and she couldn’t bring herself to care. She spread her legs just enough for Rose to settle between them and grabbed the other woman’s face in her hands, pulling her in for a kiss.
In seconds, her senses were overwhelmed.
The feel, smell, and taste of Rose after so long overtook her and she found herself fighting for breath, her hands shaking against the other woman’s skin.
Her mind couldn’t process what was happening. She’d seen it with her own eyes, watched in horror as the mask came off, she’d heard her voice, had seen her face, but still – nothing prepared her for the tangibility of holding her in her arms, of kissing her.
Rose was alive.
She was real.
Luisa squeezed her eyes shut tightly, trying to ward off those thoughts. She didn’t want to see, she just wanted to feel. She wanted to lose herself in Rose, just once, now that the possibility had literally risen from the dead.
Her kisses became desperate and her hands needy as they grasped as Rose. She just wanted her closer.
A thought burst into her mind, unbidden - the whole time she had been mourning Rose’s death she had been standing right beside her.
Luisa let out a whimper as the thought cut through her frantic attempts to keep it bay. Rose took it as a whimper of pleasure and redoubled her efforts, planting nipping kisses along Luisa’s neck.
She had been right there. All of those nights that she’d wept until she was sick, when she would have given her own life to be able to see Rose’s eyes one more time – bright and devilish and alive, she could have. She was. And the one person she depended on, who was there for her, it was her the whole time.
Trying to anchor herself, she tangled her fingers in Rose’s hair, grasping at the strands anxiously. She looked down and even though, rationally, she knew that Rose looked different, knew that things had fundamentally changed, she was still expecting red hair and was taken aback when she saw brown instead.
It was like the world had tilted on its axis. Everything was different, everything was wrong.
Six months ago, she would have given anything to bury her face in that long, red hair. Not twenty-four hours ago she had expected to let her fingers lose themselves in Susannah’s blonde hair. Now she didn’t know what to expect or what she wanted. Her mind spun.
She had imagined what it would be like to finally be with Susanna – she’d certainly fantasized – but more often than she cared to admit her mind had conjured Rose’s hands, not Susanna’s, to draw desperate, needy releases from her body.
Now she couldn’t decide if it was her grief working itself out or if on some level she knew.
Susanna. Rose. Susanna. Clara. Rose.
She wanted to cry out in both pain and pleasure, but she didn’t know which name to use. Her mind flicked rapidly between each name, each face, each identity, unable to settle on one. She didn’t know what was real.
She couldn’t breathe. Pushing at Rose’s shoulders she forced her backwards and sat up, trying to put some space between them.
“Luisa?”
“I don’t know what to call you, what do I call you?” she said, panting.
“What?” Rose asked, quietly.
“Who are you?”
Rose stared back at her, her blue eyes wide. Luisa thought she saw a flash of guilt, but it was gone so quickly that she couldn’t tell if she had imagined it or not.
“I’m me, Luisa,” Rose told her.
“I don’t know you,” Luisa replied.
“Yes, you do,” Rose said quietly.
“Do I?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair agitatedly.
“Yes.”
“The woman I knew was a liar, but she wasn’t a criminal or a-a…murderer. She was unfaithful – not evil. I watched that woman die,” her voice broke on the last word and she turned away, angry at her own tears.
Rose was quiet.
There was no way this ended well. Part of Luisa wanted the woman in front of her so desperately that it hurt, but the other part of her was screaming at her to run as far away as possible.
Then Rose spoke.
“The woman you knew…” she stopped.
Luisa fought the urge to fill the silence. Despite her instincts, it wasn’t on her to bridge this gap. The air felt heavy, and Luisa’s head buzzed.
“The woman you knew was all of those things. You didn’t know it, but she was – I was.”
Everything stopped. Luisa’s mind went still.
She was right.
She was all of those things before Luisa even met her. She was those things every moment they spent together.
Finally, Luisa shifted her gaze back to the woman in front of her.
Rose was looking back at her, open, unguarded – exposed. Vulnerability had replaced cockiness, and there she was.
Rose. All other personas, all other faces, fell away.
She was, without a doubt, a murderer, a criminal, a liar, but she was also the woman who got too competitive playing games, who snored when she slept on her back, who was ticklish behind the knees, who had trembled underneath Luisa’s hands as fireworks burst above them.
Those things were all real. They weren’t part of the act and somehow Luisa knew it. She felt it in her bones.
And, inexplicably, that mattered. It mattered enough that the panic and fear, the urge to flee, was muted, relegated to the back of her mind.
Tentatively, she reached a hand toward Rose. The other woman stayed very still, letting Luisa come to her. She knew that it wasn’t in Rose’s nature to be patient, so her willingness to let Luisa take her time spoke volumes.
She lightly brushed her fingers against Rose’s cheek. The touch was so light it was almost nothing, but Luisa still felt shivers arc up her skin, twisting into her skin like tendrils of electricity.
She let her fingers glide along the soft skin, relishing in the warm blush across her cheeks, not only because she was the cause, but because it was in sharp contrast to the frightening paleness of the image of Rose, eyes wide and unseeing, that was burned into her mind.
Letting her fingers trail into the softness of the other woman’s hair, she let them twist into the curls, a soft smile crossing her face.
“What?” Rose asked softly.
Luisa shook her head slightly. “I always loved it when your hair was curly.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Luisa responded. “It was always curly when you’d first woken up or just gotten out of the shower…or the pool.”
Rose smiled knowingly.
“The times you were mine,” Luisa finished quietly.
Shifting closer, she let her hand trail down the other woman’s neck, scratching her nails lightly against the skin. Rose shivered, and Luisa smiled. Maybe some things weren’t so different after all.
In no rush, her fingers wandered across Rose’s collar bone, and she was pleased to see a flush spread across the skin there. Her eyes followed her fingers, and she found herself counting the freckles they passed. She was sure that she could map them with her eyes closed, she’d spent enough time committing them to memory, and every single one was exactly where she’d left it.
It really was her. The world had turned upside down, but Rose still had thirty-seven freckles on the crest of her right shoulder, and that was more real than anything that had happened to her since she’d found herself sitting on her father’s grave.
She didn’t understand how to reconcile that both of those things were true – her father was still dead, and Rose was still the one that killed him – but she was tired, too tired to try.
Her hand came to rest on Rose’s chest, pressed softly between her breasts. Rose’s heartbeat quickly against her hand and Luisa felt that familiar rush of power and arousal spread through her.
There was nothing quite like the control she had over Rose in moments like this. She often wondered if she could survive on it for the rest of her life and never touch another drop of alcohol.
Without another thought, she leaned forward and captured Rose’s lips with her own. She savored the nearly inaudible whimper from Rose, and let her tongue run softly against her lips before deepening the kiss.
She threw a leg over Rose’s hips and settled firmly in the other woman’s lap, a hand behind her neck, preventing Rose from escaping the kiss.
There was something unmistakably reverent in the way Rose melted beneath her and Luisa pulled back slightly to look down at her. Rose’s lips were swollen, her flushed cheeks emphasizing her freckles, but it was her eyes that took her breath away. They swirled with lust, but beyond that admiration and something Luisa could only define as love.
“Me too,” Luisa whispered.
Rose swallowed hard.
Luisa gave in, kissing the other woman desperately, and Rose fell to her back on the bed, pulling Luisa down on top of her.
Something had shifted between them. It wasn’t so much repaired as reset. They could have simply been two women in a pool beneath the fireworks; all that mattered was that Rose was under her, blood pumping in her veins. The rest could wait.
For now.