Blushing Maid, page 13
She smiled at me, but it soon turned into a frown once more when she noticed that I hadn’t seemed to perk up."
"So what’s up with you?" She asked. "You look upset."
"It’s nothing," I replied, shaking my head, not wanting to add to her stress on a night that already happened to be so stressful for her.
"I can tell when you’re in a bad mood," she pointed out. "There’s no point lying to me, come on. What’s up?"
I sighed.
"I’m just...sad," I admitted. "I’m sad we can’t actually be honest and out with each other, you know?"
"But you’re here," she pointed out, eyes widening, a little panic reading on her face, as though she expected me to pull out a rainbow cape from under my skirt at any moment and out the both of us to anyone who would listen.
"Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about that," I assured her. "But there’s just...it feels like there should be more, you know? That we shouldn’t have to be so hidden out. It doesn’t feel fair."
"But it’s what works," she reminded me. I sighed again.
"Yeah, I know that," I conceded. "But don’t you want to just be able to tell everyone here the truth?"
She looked around; she was surrounded by her people, the people from her class of society, the ones who had kept her in the closet in the first place. Even though she didn’t say anything in response to me, I knew that she was thinking no.
"Okay, sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up," I apologized to her. I reached up to touch her face to say sorry, and then remembered that I wasn’t allowed to do that, not while the two of us were out in public, at least. I dropped my hand back by my side, irritated with myself for reacting so emotionally. I needed to get a better hold of myself. I needed to learn what she had learned all those years ago, how to hold back even when you were around someone you knew that you couldn’t keep your hands off of.
"Not long to go now," she promised me. "And then we can get out of here, alright? We can go back home and..."
"And I can take you out of that dress," I remarked playfully, lowering my voice so that nobody could hear me. We could still speak to each other, right? I watched her cheeks as they darkened to a red, and grinned to myself. I loved that I still had this kind of impact on her.
"Yes, well, that too," she agreed, and I giggled. I loved seeing her like this. I loved seeing her as hot for me as I was for her, even though I knew she was right and that we should have played it a little closer to our chests.
"Alana?” Another man approached us, and I tried to hide my disappointment by taking a long sip of the champagne that I had been working on. I knew that I had to accept that she was going to be whipped away from me constantly over the course of the night, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. Especially when I couldn’t so much as hold her hand without everyone getting up in arms about it.
"I just wanted to ask about this piece..." he began, and Alana shot me an apologetic look as he led her away so he could get her opinion on a specific canvas. Leaving me all alone once more. And, while she might have grown up with people like this, they were all completely foreign to me. Standing there, in the middle of this gallery, all by myself, I suddenly felt more distinctly alone than I had done in a long time.
Maybe more champagne would help. And even if it didn’t, I was going to drink it anyway.
Chapter 19
Let's go away together
"I just don’t see why we have to hide everything!" I exclaimed to her, for what had to be the tenth time that morning. Alana shook her head at me.
"You know why," she protested. It was the day after her gallery opening, and I wanted to take her out for a coffee to celebrate a job well done, but she had refused, stating that if someone saw us together so early in the morning, they would figure out what was happening.
"Okay, but even for a coffee? I’m not going to touch you or anything..."
"Even for a coffee," she replied, and I slumped into the chair at the breakfast bar and sighed heavily. I knew I was being a bit of a brat, but could she blame me? I felt like every time I tried to actually be her girlfriend, she would have some reason to swing out and stop me in my tracks. As though she didn’t want anyone to actually know about us at all.
"It’s for Rick," she reminded me, coming up to me and taking my hand. It was amazing how much her touch could serve to soothe me, even when I felt like I wanted to flip a table.
"Yeah, but he has girls back here every night," I pointed out. "You can’t tell me that people don’t start to ask questions about that..."
"You know it’s different," she reminded me gently. "I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s easier for people to accept a man cheating on his wife than it is for them to accept..."
"To accept that the wife would rather be with a woman," I finished up for her. Sighing heavily, I shrugged.
"I know," I admitted. "I’m sorry. I just get so – it's not fair, you know?"
"Well, we have that trip coming up soon," she reminded me. "We don’t have to worry about it so much there..."
She was talking about a visit to France that we had planned together, for just after Christmas, but that was still months away and I couldn’t wait that long.
"How about we do another trip before that?" I suggested. She furrowed her brow at me.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we take a few days away, just the two of us," I replied. My brain was already rushing to fill in all the gaps, even though I could tell that she had some serious questions about all of this. I just wanted to be able to show her off, somewhere, even if it wasn’t here.
"Where?” She asked, and I racked my brains to come up with somewhere we could be sure nobody would know who she was. And then it hit me – Lexingville.
The town where I had grown up was so tiny and nondescript that nobody really gave a damn about what anyone got up to there. It would be perfect for the two of us to take a trip away together. I could introduce her to my parents, and the two of us could be an actual couple for a change. And it would get us out of the city for a while.
I transmitted this idea to her, and she furrowed her brow at me, even deeper than before, the lines on her face looking as though they were actively cutting into her flesh.
"I don’t know about that," she replied. "Aren’t small towns the worst place to go if you’re...you know..."
"If you’re gay," I finished up for her. Sometimes, she still had a hard time coming out with that word. I got it, I did – it could be difficult to accept this about yourself once in a while. And besides, I was so buzzing with excitement at the thought of getting out that I wouldn’t have minded if she had come up with a whole new language to communicate it.
"Yeah, but it’s not like we’re going to be rubbing it in anyone’s face," I promised. "It’ll just be us. Around other people. Able to actually be together. We can stay with my parents-"
"And you think they’ll be alright with it?” She fretted. I nodded.
"I don’t think they’ll care, to be honest," I told her. "I mean, they’ve spent so long just trying to get me to settle down with someone, I’m not sure that they’re going to care if it’s a woman or what."
She chewed her lip. I could see that she was running through all the reasons that she couldn’t do this in her head. I took her hands in mine, and lifted them to my mouth, planting a kiss on her knuckles.
"I love you," I told her. "And I just want a chance to be with you properly. Even if it’s only for a couple of days, alright?”
She took a deep breath. I knew that I had managed to get through to her. Finally, a smile appeared on her face, and she seemed to give herself over to the idea entirely.
"Okay," She agreed. "But if they turn out to be shitty about it, I’m turning around and coming straight home."
"They won’t," I promised her, and I pulled her into a tight hug; she was a little shorter than me, and I could rest my chin on the top of her head when I stood on my tiptoes. It always made me feel so strong, like I was her protector, keeping the rest of the world away from her so that she could stay perfectly safe.
"Thank you for this," I murmured to her, and she kissed my jaw.
"Wait until we’ve actually gone through with it," she suggested. "Then you can thank me."
"Agreed," I replied, and I leaned down to plant a kiss on her lips. And, all at once, the fact that we had skipped out on the coffee together this morning seemed like far less a big deal than I had thought it was.
Chapter 20
Open minded
"Okay, to be honest, I’m panicking," Alana confessed, as we sat there on the train and watched the countryside whip by outside. I squeezed her knee under the table – even though I knew that was far from the point, it was such a thrill to be able to touch her in public.
"You have nothing to worry about," I assured her. "My parents know you’re coming, and I’m sure they’ve figured out what we are to each other by now."
"And if they haven’t?”
"Then they soon will," I promised. I wished that I could just reach into her brain and take all this out for her. I knew how much she was struggling right now, but there was really no good reason for her to be in such a panic, and I hated seeing her in such a state over nothing.
Still, it was hard to quell the excitement of knowing that we were finally getting out of the city and into reality for a little while. It had all happened so quickly – only a week before, I had suggested the trip, and now here we were, in the process of making it.
Alana had been visibly nervous, but had only gotten audibly so since we had gotten on the train to go down there. No matter how many times I told her that nobody was going to give a damn about us one way or another, she was still freaking out, and it made me sad to see her in distress like that.
But we chatted all the way down, and I was pretty sure I had done a solid enough job keeping her distracted so she wouldn’t be in full-blown panic mode by the time we got there. And, sure enough, by the time we stepped off the train, she actually had a smile on her face.
"Okay, I’m looking forward to this now," she admitted. "This is going to be fun. Right?"
"Right," I agreed, and I put my arm around her waist; for the first time in forever, she didn’t pull back, even though we were in public. A few people at the station glanced in our direction, but they soon seemed to lose interest and returned to whatever had been keeping them busy before they had laid eyes on us.
"My parents said they would pick us up here," I told her, and I scanned the few people coming in to see if I could spot them – and sure enough, there they were. I waved to them happily, and Mom, in her usual way, waved like she was trying to flag down an aircraft from the sky above her.
"Billie!” She exclaimed, and she came over to me and gave me a big hug. I hugged her back. I hadn’t seen them in way too long; I supposed Alana wasn’t the only one a little nervous about the thought of people finding out about her personal life. I gave my dad a hug, and then turned to Alana with a big smile on my face.
"Mom, Dad," I announced. "This is Alana. My girlfriend."
There was a beat of silence, and for a moment, I thought they were going to freak out on me. But instead, a smile spread across Mom’s face, and she took Alana’s hand.
"Lovely to meet you," she replied.
"Can I help with your bags?" Dad asked, and Alana handed them over to him, obviously too stunned by how well they were taking this to think about saying anything else.
We held hands in the back of the car, and I marveled at how easy this had all been. I couldn’t believe it. They had actually just – they had just accepted it, like it was nothing at all. My parents had never been bigots, but they had very little to say on the LGBT community and I had assumed that was because they preferred to pretend like they didn’t exist. But here I was, dumping my girlfriend on them with little warning, and they were totally fine with it. Maybe I should have given them more credit. They were clearly more open and welcoming than I had ever thought they could be.
We arrived back at the house, Alana and my mom chatting about her artwork, and Dad and I conversing over the state of traffic on the way home – it wasn’t that we weren’t close, but Dad always liked to get the small talk out of the way first. As I climbed out of the car, it was hard to believe that this was where I had grown up. It seemed so small compared to where I was living now.
"So, let me show you to your rooms," Mom remarked – and that was the first indication that something might not have been going as smoothly as I had hoped it would.
"Our rooms?" I repeated after her, sure I had heard her wrong.
"Yes," She replied, as Dad took the stuff out the back of the car. "Alana, we’ve put you in Billie’s old room, and Billie, I’m afraid you’ll be on the fold-out bed in the guest room..."
Alana glanced over at me. I knew what she was thinking. Everything that she had been fearing about this was coming true.
"We’re fine to share a bed, Mom," I tried to offer her, but she shook her head.
"No, no, don’t be silly," she replied firmly. "I don’t want you girls keeping each other up all night with your snoring! It’s only fair that you get a place to yourself..."
But I could hear the edge in her voice, the one that undercut all that sweetness that she was trying to put out there for everyone to hear. She knew just what she was doing. She might have played cheerful and innocent, but I knew better than to think that my mother was really that oblivious to what she was doing. I looked over at Dad, but his eyes were sliding away from mine, and it was clear that he didn’t want to get involved in this.
"Fine," I agreed, bluntly. "Let’s go then, shall we?”
I felt my cheeks burning bright red as they took us to our rooms. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid as to think that they were just going to accept this right away. Luckily, at least, it was getting dark by the time we arrived back, so I wouldn’t have to worry about spending much more time with them.
Alana was situated in my room, and within a few minutes, I was lying on my back on the fold-out bed, as promised. I couldn’t believe this was happening. They had offered us something to eat, but I had turned it down. My stomach was churning too much to even think about actually eating something. I couldn’t believe they had done this to me – couldn't believe that they had humiliated me so utterly in front of the woman I loved.
There was a quiet knock on the door, and I was tempted to ignore it, thinking that it might be my mother coming in to try and talk about what had just happened – but then I heard a familiar voice whispering my name, and I got to my feet and opened it.
"Alana," I murmured, and I stepped aside for her to come in, glancing around to make sure that my parents weren’t hovering to catch us in the act.
"So, maybe they don’t know that we’re dating, then?" She remarked, and there was a tinge of amusement to her voice. I was glad that she found this so funny, because I felt like I'd been hit by a bus.
"Yeah, seems that way," I replied. "Guess they thought I meant girlfriend in the old-fashioned sense..."
"Even back then, it still meant dating," she remarked playfully. "It was just that people didn’t want to accept it and pretend with all their might that they weren’t."
"You seem to be awfully amused by this," I replied, and she shrugged.
"Hey, we still get some time away to ourselves, right?” She pointed out. "And besides, you don’t think it could be a little fun, sneaking around like this...?"
"Like what?" I asked, and I couldn’t help but smile as she wrapped her arms around me and pushed the door shut behind her.
"Like this," she replied, and she kissed me, and pushed me down onto the slightly creaky fold-out bed behind me.
The weight of her on top of me was all that I needed to make me feel at home again. Even though my parents seemed to have gone out of their way to make me feel like we didn’t belong, I had her with me, and nothing could take that away. I wound my arms around her and kissed her back, and soon, her hands were sliding all over my body, swiftly undressing me, taking off those comfortable clothes I had worn for travel.
"I’ve been thinking about this all day," she murmured, and I tried to shush her, but I was giggling so much that it was hard for me to get it out without giving away what we were up to. I knew that my parents were just a room over from us right now, and that if they caught us in the act, this little game of denial that we’d had going on was going to fall apart way too quickly for their liking.
Soon, she had me naked beneath her, and was kissing down my belly, to that spot she knew that drove me crazy – back home, we had vibrators and toys galore, but sometimes all I wanted was to feel her mouth between my legs, to give in to that helpless, delicious feeling of being wanted by her, of being had by her.
"Mmm," she moaned softly as she lowered her mouth down to my pussy, and just like that, everything else about this day seemed to fall away.
"Fuck," I gasped, and I reached down to hold her head in place and let her pleasure me with her tongue. She knew just what to do by now – we had done this enough times over that we knew just what it took to get the other person there, how it felt to make that happen. Her tongue was curious and gentle and soft and coaxed my clit out from under its hood so she could tease it; her lips sealed around my engorged nub, and she sucked lightly, making my legs tremble. Sometimes, when I’d had a really tense day, it was like my body was crying out for the release, and I would come harder than ever. This, I was sure, was one of those days.
She moved her hand up between my legs and dipped her fingers into my slit, slowly pushing them deeper as she increased the pressure against my clit. My entire body was starting to shake and tremble, and I was having a hard time keeping my voice down. I pressed my lips together, arched my back, and pressed my hips up against her face, needing more, taking more, wanting more...
When I came, it was like someone had lit a fuse between my thighs that fizzled out and blew within seconds. My entire body gave in at once, all the tension seeping from my muscles as everything centered on how good it felt to have her there between my legs once more. I gripped her hair, holding her in place, and she kept her mouth right where it was and allowed me to ride this sweet wave until I could take no more and I fell back from her, trying to catch my breath.
