Chiaroscuro and Catgirls

"So... does that mean we're still... a thing?" I said. "Despite me being such a crazy, infantile, psychotic bitch?"

"You're none of those things. Viv. You were hurting. And stubborn, to be fair. And before you jump on me - I was stubborn and stupid. I should have kept trying to reach you, but I was too angry and upset. And.... and then I was too scared."

I swallowed, tried to find the courage to ask her to give me another chance. "Kirsty..."

"I know it's fast," she babbled. "And I know it's unwise. And I know it's been a disastrous beginning, and I know I haven't exactly covered myself in glory..."

"I want you to be my thing," I gasped, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush before she could realise her error and change her mind.

"Are you... sure?" she whispered, hesitant and gentle. "I'm... very difficult..."

"I want you to be my thing," I repeated, softer now. It was the truth, it didn't need embellishment.

I felt strangely calm. Whatever happened now, I'd said what I wanted to say.

She sighed.

"You're adorable, you know," she said. "My adorable girlfriend."

The words wrapped themselves around me, leaving me quite breathless, and going a long way to patching the worst of the damage we'd so stupidly done to us.

"Your psychotic girlfriend is blushing," I managed, sniffing.

"It just makes her even more beautiful when she does that," she said.

❧

And the strangest, most surreal week of my life began. I'd wake to brief but heartfelt messages from her - a description of the tropical birds whose morning squabbles woke her, or the colour of the sunrise over the dusty streets visible from her top floor suite in the Kinshasa Hilton. Fragments of dreams she'd had, brief recordings of music from the local radio in the little foyer coffee shop she sometimes composed her emails in.

(She didn't go outside, she said. Not unless it was to travel to a supplier site, and when she did that it was in a convoy with armed guards. That detail scared me a bit, but she seemed to view it as normal. "It pays to be prepared", was the way she dismissed it. But I could never settle until she'd let me know she was back at her hotel.)

Her stay got extended by two days, then by another three. I could see the building frustration in her manner; she said it was all just part of the game but I'd watch the way her jaw muscles clenched as she ground her teeth.

And I'd do my best to distract her, asking her questions about her day, about her work, about the people she was working with and the problems she was solving.

On the fourth evening after our reconciliation I asked her to show me the sunset over Kinshasa - and the glinting of the evening on the steel-blue waters of the Congo captured me.

The night before she was due to fly back, I showed her the wild, rough, post-Impressionist evening scene I'd painted, with fishing boats bobbing on lilac water, silhouetted in front of the giant red African sun.

And she'd laughed, and dabbed at her eyes, and called me a pest, and said it was going on her bedroom wall. And she'd told me she couldn't wait to take me in her arms and just feel me against her again.

Her flight from N'djili Airport in Kinshasa to Charles de Gaulle was turbulent; she called me once they'd landed and told me that they'd been wearing seatbelts for over four hours, and she'd been so desperate to wee that she'd seriously considered using her wine bottle.

I laughed until I retched at that image.

Her plane was due at Heathrow in the mid-afternoon.

"I'd like to come meet you there," I said.

"I'd hoped you'd still feel that way," she answered. "I'll call Felix and get him to come and..."

"No. It will take forever in traffic. I'll take the tube. It's not that many stops."

"Are you sure?" she said.

"I'm a big girl. I can meet my lover without help from anyone else," I said, with some acerbity.

She paused, then chuckled.

"Alright; point made. Sorry. I... tend to take over."

"I like that you do - sometimes. I like being... cared for. But... sometimes it's nice to be able to show that I don't need it or expect it. But I do appreciate it."

"I know you don't expect it. And I don't want to make you feel like a... kept woman, either," she said softly. "That would be utterly unfair."

"I'm not your kept woman. And I won't let you make me into one. I'll see you at Heathrow, okay?"

"I can't wait. Mwa, mwa," she said, and she broke the connection. She was always the first to hang up; she'd confessed that she hated being left with an empty line. I didn't mind it, so it was an easy thing to let her have.

I changed out of the tracksuit pants and vest I'd been wearing, opting for a thin cream frock and a sea-green vee-neck jumper to go over it. My short black blazer finished the look I wanted - smart casual but with a focus on still looking good for her.

Concealed under it was the only nice underwear I had left - my black lace bra and panties that I'd so carefully preserved for special occasions...

Like for welcoming my lover back to me.

❧

When I saw her walk through the gates at customs, I realised the true magnitude of how much I'd missed her, of how desperately I needed her touch. She smiled like spring as I skipped up to her and enfolded her; I refused to let awkwardness have time to take root, so instead I kissed her there in front of everyone without a fig given for decorum, and let out a soft little noise of happiness as her arms and scent surrounded me.

Her answering sigh and the way she clamped her arms closed around me said everything that my heart needed to hear.

"Oh God, I missed you so much," she breathed.

I slid my hands down over her delightful denim-clad bum; she shivered against me.

"Stop that," she whispered. "Stop that or I'll have an even bigger damp spot. And... I need a coffee," she groaned. "The machine on the plane broke. Felix is on his way but is delayed; we have twenty minutes. God, you feel good."

"Yes. I do. Come. I'll take your bag for you," I said, and she sighed in relief as I freed her of its encumbrance. "What's in here, rocks?" I said, teasing gently.

"Books and a laptop and... other things," she demurred. She stretched, wincing, and pushed her hair back behind her ears. "Coffee?" she repeated hopefully. "I'll even lower myself to take-away, I'm that desperate."

And I laughed at her and bought her the Americano she craved and sat on the stool next to her, staring (enraptured) at her as she sipped the loathsome brew and, slowly, came back to something approximating her usual self.

We found Felix near the exit to short-term parking; he grinned at me as he relieved me of Kirsty's bag. "Miss Ellie, Miss Fletcher," he said, smiling down at us both like some strange African saint.

And Kirsty surprised all of us - him most of all, I think - by hugging him. His eyes widened, but so did his grin.

"Felix," she said softly. "Thank you for being such a good friend."

"Let me get you girls home," was the only other thing he said to us.

The trip back to Fulham seemed like a languid dream; Felix Adebayo playing his discreet part in the front of the car while Kirsty kept a possessive hand on my bare thigh. She shot me one charged but furtive glance when I reached down to adjust her fingers to somewhere slightly less innocent than where they had been until then; her eyebrows twitched and she swallowed hard when I flashed a hint of what lay beneath the soft fabric of my skirt at her.

I was so wet.

I was cramping with need for her; I'd missed her more than I could ever have imagined, and we had things we desperately needed resolved, and all I wanted to do was get upstairs into her enormous home space so that I could undress for her and take her to bed and let her reclaim me like I needed her to.

She, of course, had more abrupt ideas for her homecoming; I'd no sooner slunk past her through her open door than she kicked it closed behind us and her arms were around me - one high, hand groping desperately under my blazer for my right breast, the other pushing up under my skirt to my soaked crotch.

"Kirsty!" I gasped... then I moaned wordlessly as she found her way past the thin, hopeless layer that was all that stood between us.

I arched back against her, grunting deep in my throat as she penetrated me. She pulled me back against her, forced her hand through the neckline of my jumper and under the fabric of skirt and bra to find my hard nipple.

"I am going to fuck you until you see stars," she gasped; I clamped my thighs hard together but she was insistent and her fingers were driving in and out of me before I could even gasp a shuddering breath or plead for a moment to get properly ready for her.

Her thigh was firm against my own bum and thighs, the denim rough against my bare skin, her hand hard and perfect between my soaking lips, her skin warm against my aching clit. I cried out in a mix of pain and ecstasy as she bit down (firmly but not too hard) on the exposed skin of my neck.

"Oh, oh God, oh God," I cried out as she took me - nothing sexy, nothing slow, just the sheer, unconstrained fierceness of her need to have me, to possess me...

It was desperately hot. I could feel the racing thump of my pulse, her panting breaths as she fought with my obviously infuriating clothes, the way my body reacted so... instinctively... to her. I was shuddering, shaking, convulsing against her, my fingers digging into her flanks as I tried, desperately, to brace myself, to hold myself steady for her...

She was pitiless, she was relentless, I was now nothing but her fuck-toy, her plaything, her rag-doll...

The first hard contraction hit me; I cried out as my stomach clenched, doubling me over, thighs skittering and shaking against the hand she had buried in me. She moaned behind me as my fingers clenched into her; her arm tightened around me, supporting me as spasm after spam rocked me.

At last I was able to slowly straighten, whimpering, skin alive with crawling tingles.

A breath, another panting breath...and then I pulled her out of me and span in her arms. I pinned her to the wall by her wrists, and began to kiss her with every bit of my soul, feeling her moans deep within me.

I could feel her shaking, grinding, writhing against me, so I forced a leg between hers, pressing in against her crotch with my thigh. I released her wrists, and put my hands to her waist to trip her button and unzip her.

A tug, a yank, and I had her bare. And then I caught her wrists again... or she let me catch them... and I pinned her... or she let herself be restrained, I didn't care, because I had my fingers along her newly bared, soaking lips and she was gasping and shuddering against me.

"Fuck me," she begged. "Fuck me, sweetheart..."

I slowly probed her; delighted by the way her entrance clenched as I slowly entered her, the long, slow alto moan that slipped out through her clenched teeth.

"Please, fuck me," she begged again, writhing.

"What will you give me if I do?" I teased her.

"Me," she gasped.

I curled my finger over in her; her entire body quivered.

"I want to eat you," I whispered into her ear.

"I'm... filthy. Later. Please," she gasped. "Just... just make me come for you, just... just be mine..."

"I already am," I breathed; she moaned as another shudder ran through her.

And then I slowly began to increase the tempo of the cunning little movements of my finger over her clit and into her. I felt her hunching forward, felt the way she began to buck and grind herself forwards and backwards as she tried to hump me deeper into her.

"Say I'm yours," I demanded of her.

"You're... mine..." she wailed.

"Say I'm only yours..."

"You're... mine alone..."

"I'll be yours forever, then," I whispered, as I kissed her earlobe and began to drive two fingers in and out of her.

And I held my lover tightly to me as she came, and shortly afterwards, came again.

I let her catch her breath as I clasped her to me.

And then I helped her to the bathroom, and turned the water on for her, then made my way on tottering legs to her bedroom. I stripped, wincing, and lowered myself onto the pristine white fabric. I laid my head on my folded arms, and listened to the sound of running water and her soft, out-of-key humming...

I closed my eyes, content to patiently wait for her to finish and come back to me so that I could have her again...

Soft fingertips ran down my back, rousing me from some strange blank reverie.

"You were dozing," she whispered. She crawled in next to me; I felt the wonderful sensation of her breast trailing over the naked skin of my back.

"Mm, I like that," I whispered. "You, naked, behind me. Sorry. I didn't mean to... I'm just... so tired..."

Her hand caressed my lower back and over the curve of my bum; I opened my legs ever so slightly. She made a soft sound in my ear, and teased a finger slowly down between my legs. I moaned in disappointment as she withdrew, she apologised with another kiss.

"I missed you," I whispered. And I smiled as she ran her fingers through my fringe, tucking it back behind my ear so that she could kiss me again.

"Nowhere near as much as I missed you, I think," she whispered back. "Sorry for being so rough with you; I... needed to have you."

"I liked it," I said. "You can do that to me; I like it."

"Mm."

Her skin was still damp from her shower; the scent of tea-tree engulfed her like a gentle miasma. I squinted at her against the soft backlighting from her designer lamp cluster; she seemed sombre.

"What is it?" I said.

"Just... thinking, I guess. Wishing I'd met you years ago."

I smiled. "We met at the right time for us. Mostly."

"True."

She leaned in again to nuzzle against me.

"So," she said softly.

"So?"

"I may have been... impetuous... during the layover."

I could hear the wicked smile in her voice.

"What did you do," I said, immediately suspicious.

"Nothing drastic. Well. I lie. It is drastic, but... not ridiculously drastic. Not out of this world drastic... by my standards, that is..."

"Kirsty."

She sighed out a breath. "Roll over," she said softly.

I complied, and frowned up at her.

"What is it?" I said. "You're being very strange."

"Tah-dah," she answered, as she placed a little cream jeweller's box in front of me. "I saw these and... and thought of you. I was going to give them to you earlier but... well, I got distracted."

I stared down at the box.

"Kirsty, no," I whispered. "What have you done?"

"Spoiled you rotten," she said, with a pleased smirk. "Go on. Open it. I hope you like them."

My hands were shaking as I reached out and slowly tripped the lid.

Inside, on a bed of black fabric, lay two marvellous, understated drop earrings - glittering blue stones restrained in fine silver metal on chains of lesser stones...

"Oh," I managed. "Oh God, they're beautiful. I love silver."

"They're not silver," she laughed.

"Um... white gold?" I guessed, my knowledge of metals running quickly dry.

"No, silly," she said, leaning in to fix me with her ice-blue stare. "As if I'd buy my lover such prosaic, common junk. They're platinum. Well... a platinum alloy, strictly. One I specialise in. Oh, and those stones are tourmalines from Sri Lanka."

"Oh my God," I whispered. "Kirsty, you can't..."

"I can, and I have, and I will. You will never stop me from spoiling you, Viv. So... best you give up now, sweetheart. You... you waltzed into my life and this is the result; this is part of who I am, this is part of what I am, and... and I need to be able to share it with mmm..."

I sealed the rest of her words away behind a mad, unconstrained kiss; clinging to her, letting her feel everything that I was in what I gave to her.

And then we clung to one another, panting. I knotted my fingers into her hair and held her hard to me; she made a soft little noise and dug her nails gently into my back.

"Put them on for me," she whispered, when she'd recovered her breath.

So I gently freed her, and then hesitantly freed the earrings from their bed. She took them, released the studs, and gently pinned the glorious items to me, one after the other.

"How do I look," I whispered, when she was done.

"Absolutely perfect in every expressible way," she replied.

I slid off the bed and slunk to her mirror. I stood there, staring at myself and the kings ransom I suspected I now wore.

"They're beautiful," I said. "Kirsty. You shouldn't have. Oh... oh, thank you..."

"It's like they were made with you in mind," she said, as she slid her lovely legs off the bed and joined me.

She stood for a moment beside me, admiring me openly in the silver surface of her mirror. Then she slipped in behind me, and wrapped her arms around me, one high under my breasts and the other low over my belly.

Her body was warm against my back; her breath curled over my shoulders.

And we stared at ourselves, at this strange, unlikely thing that we were.

And I marvelled at how inevitable it all seemed to have been.

She saw the smile, and, diving the reason, kissed my neck and tucked her face in against me.

"Early dinner? How about Thai?" she whispered.

"Please. That would be perfect."

"Come then," she said.

And my lover took my hand and, gently, led me away.

☙ Epilogue ❧

I nudged open her door. Viv was busy preparing for the evening; She was happy, humming softly under her breath as she arranged everything on her desk just-so. I grinned, amused by the little bit of neat-freak that had rubbed off on her.

"Here's your tea, sweetie," I said, placing it neatly on the little leather disk I'd bought her as a cosy. She gave me a distracted smile, and made a soft, delighted noise as I leaned in to kiss her on the neck in that manner that she loved so much.

"I love you," she breathed.

"I love you more," I answered as I always did; she rolled her eyes at me but the blush and pleased little grin always told the truth.

It was nearly time for her class; the five-hundred-or-so regular subscribers of her ridiculously-renamed "Chiaroscuro and Catgirls" channel would be waiting.

Her lights were set to soft/warm, and the new top-end laptop we'd bought for her seemed to be doing its duty well.

My girl had found her groove at last - painting when she wanted, being online when it suited her, and no longer scrabbling from moment to mad moment in a helter-skelter canter to stay... afloat.

And that made me happy.

I gave her one more glance, one more smile, before I retreated, pulling the door of the room we'd turned into her studio almost-but-not-fully closed so I'd still be able to hear her sublime voice even as I was busy sorting out my own coming week's admin.

And I slowly slipped away.

"Hi, it's Ellie," she greeted her subscribers as she always did; I grinned.

I'm jealous, see. I like that I'm the only fan that knows her real name.

I traversed our formal entertaining area and settled down onto our chaise-longue. I stared out through the tall windows at the sunset to the south-west, listening with one ear as I admired the glinting copper light on the wind-rippled Thames.

Then I took a slow breath and sighed the air out; a shiver rippled through me as my muscles relaxed after the long day.

We'd finally officially moved in together the day after my forty-first birthday - though long before that she'd simply stopped going home unless she needed something specific. We'd quickly worked out how to live with one another; she'd adapted to my neat-freak ways and I'd (after several deep breaths and a lot of wine) come to accept that having our massive flat feel lived in was... actually quite nice. It was nice to come home after a long week and hear her singing, and smell whatever she'd decided to cook us as I opened the door.