Her body was a furnace. Small moans ripped from her throat, getting ever stronger when Bette drifted her mouth down to her neck, kissing her along the nape of her jaw.
But it wasn’t enough.
Not for either of them.
Before Emily could say they should leave, go back to Bette’s place, or better yet find a room in the hotel, Bette was dropping to her knees.
“I’m going down on you.” Bette glanced up at Emily. It wasn’t a question. It seemed completely undebatable. Not that Emily would protest. Not in a million years.
Bette hitched the dress up to Emily’s hips, which she grabbed with shaky fingers and watched as Bette pulled down her panties, letting them pool at her high-heeled feet.
“Lift up your left leg,” Bette instructed, her palm smoothing against the outside of Emily’s leg, her fingers inching ever close to her inner thigh. “And put it over my shoulder.”
It took all of Emily not to shiver and shake, not to stumble away from the wall and lose her balance, not to snap her head back and close her eyes wondering if it was all a dream. Because how could it not be? Bette Bridge was kneeling in front of Emily, ready to eat her whole. And in a public space no less. This was the craziest thing Emily had ever done.
Yet, she did exactly as she was told, staring at Bette’s salt and pepper hair as her face drifted closer.
Oh fuck!
That feeling was glorious. The first touch of Bette’s tongue against Emily’s wetness was like no other. No words could describe it. No feeling could compare. And then all those other touches—the way Bette’s fingers gripped her thighs, the way Bette’s breath came hot against her pussy, the coldness of the stone against Emily’s back…she could barely breathe.
Bette needed no instruction. She found Emily’s clit on the first try and began circling it with her tongue, over and over again, pressing against that delicious bud of nerves.
“You’re so wet,” Bette muttered, dropping her tongue. “I fucking love it,” she added, slipping her tongue between Emily’sslick folds. It was like a game. The more Bette lapped at her, the harder Emily’s hips rolled and then all of a sudden, Bette would stop and move her tongue away, back to Emily’s clit.
The process went on and on until Emily practically started grinding herself against Bette’s face, gripping the woman’s hair for support.
Bette dug her nails deeper into Emily’s thighs, the slight pain of it adding to the pleasure, and then Bette wasn’t just dipping her tongue in and out, or teasing her clit, she was sucking, her whole mouth working over Emily’s burning core.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a tidal wave of pleasure slammed right into Emily, almost knocking her off her feet. She groaned so loud, that Bette yanked her head back and looked up at her with wide, panicked eyes. “Ssh,” Bette said,
Emily didn’t care about being quiet. She cared only about what had happened, how she had felt, and how she was going to repay her debts. But then voices sounded around the corner, one raspy and the other sweet and high-pitched. Voices that sound far too familiar.
Doctor Meissner and his wife, Gabi, were heading right for them.
“Fuck!” Emily muttered under her breath, lifting her leg off Bette’s back. She grabbed her panties from her ankles, yanked them back on, and straightened her dress. Who knew what state the rest of her looked like. “We need to go.”
Bette whipped her head back to the garden entrance, her eyes wide but smiling. “You’re right. We need to get back to the gala.”
“The last thing I want is to go back in there,” Emily said, rolling her eyes, unable to keep the smile off her face.
9
BETTE
Bette pressed her palms against the edge of the sink, fingers curling over the worn wood as if she could physically hold herself together. What the hell had she been thinking kissing—okay, they’d done more than just that—Emily Sharp in the back garden of the Vesper Cover Hotel?
Oh right, shehadn’t. That was the problem.
She had let herself slip. Let those feelings, her loneliness, and her absolute lack of common sense override every rational bone in her body. She, Betty Bridge, senior physical therapist, walking textbook of restraint, had gone and done the one thing she swore she would never do; she’d slept with a colleague, a patient, a woman who had somehow crawled under her skin and refused to leave.
Bette sighed loudly, staring out at the Torrey Pines swaying lazily in the late morning breeze. It had been so easy, too easy, to let herself slip into the moment, to pretend, just for a few stolen hours, that she was someone else—someone who wasn’t still nursing the wounds of a bitter divorce, who could laugh and tease and flirt without feeling like a weight was sitting on herchest. Someone who didn’t know exactly how this kind of thing ended.
But she did know.
That was exactly how Bette had gotten burned before. She’d let Reba in, allowed the woman to take up house in her heart, and at the same time let her ex-wifedestroy the life she’d built, the one she’d thought, she would have forever.
Bette stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing out her coffee mug. The water ran too hot over her fingers, but she didn’t pull away. She just stood there, jaw tight, watching the swirl of coffee and soap disappear down the drain.
