Chapter 6

“Lena, you’re entirely too lovely,” I gasped. I desperately wanted to get my hands on the feminine form molding itself against me, but I just couldn’t get over the hurdle. Conscience. Morals. And I’m tangled up with a sweet thing in a nightshirt and I just can’t get myself to think that I should see how far I could get because I know she’s swept up in the moment and what’s okay right now with two sets of raging sex drives could well lead to regret when the rush subsided.

Naturally that meant that when she moved more atop me, my arms dragged her into wonderfully arousing contact.

Like I needed more arousal at this stage of the game.

There was a break in the kissing. My Lena’s face, bright-eyed, inches from my own.

“Oh, Jay...” she sighed.

“Lena,” I replied. I didn’t have a lot of blood supply freed up to facilitate thought processes at the moment, as evidenced by my hands cupping the rounded cheeks of her ass.

At first, she moaned assent, her lips meeting mine, her hips pushing against me.

Then... “Oh, god, Jay ... Too much. Too much. Too soon...” and she rolled sideways.

“Oh god, this is ALL my fault ... I teased you...” she cried. Cried. As in ‘tears’.

She’d been the one to stop and now I had no idea as to what to do about it. I couldn’t let her blame herself, but how did I comfort her? My options – leave her to herself, letting her assign blame to HER actions, or just try and comfort her? I chose the second option, gently, almost tentatively putting my arms around her, just holding her as she sobbed.

“I’m ... I’m not a bad girl, Jay ... I’m not. This is all first time...”

“It’s okay, Lena. We both got carried away. If I need to let you have your own room, I can do that...”

“Noooooo,” she sobbed. “But I...” she drew in a deep breath. “Jay ... I need to think...”

“Okay. You go ahead and think. Do you want to be held while you think, or should we retire to neutral corners?”

“No. Hold me. Just like this. Well, maybe if we could just lay back a little. On pillows.”

We nestled comfortably. I held her gently, no roaming hands, no thrusting hips, nothing. Not that I didn’t think about it. Or not think. On a purely physical level, those motions would have been pleasurable.

Okay, I did succumb to the desire to touch her hair, idly playing with the ends where they curled near the curve of her jaw.

Silent. Let her decide when to talk.

Finally, soft voice. “Jay?”

“Yes, my Lena.”

“Why do you say ‘my Lena’?”

“Because you’re my best friend. And...”

“And more? More than just friends?”

“‘Fraid so. Makes all this very complex to me.”

“Me, too. You’re my friend, you know. Closest. Very closest. I never, ever want to lose that, Jay.”

“What makes you even entertain the thought that you could lose that?”

“If you think I’m not who you thought I was...”

“Okay, little dove,” I said, “What do I think you are?”

“Innocent. Not terribly disgusting to look at. Reasonably intelligent.”

“Uncorrupted. Cute and desirable. And smart.”

“Really, Jay?”

“Really. Whole different set of issues. I mean, two guys with a common interest, that’s one thing, but a guy and a girl, and there’s some physical attraction between them, that’s another set of issues.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want there to be issues, Jay,” she told me softly, “But ... L-word.”

“I’ll say it, Lena. Love. Okay?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Tragic, ain’t it?”

“Tragic?” she gasped.

“Mmm-hmm. I made you cry. Not exactly what I was going for.”

“Jay, truth, okay? Were you going for this when you started?”

“This what?”

“This ‘get Lena in a hotel room and go nuts with ‘er’. That ‘what’.”

“Assuredly not.” I sighed. “This is what I wanted NOT to happen. I thought ‘me and my best friend, doing that history thing’. Period.”

“That’s what I thought, too. I hoped you didn’t have an ulterior motive.”

“I’m pretty simple, Lena. Really. Motive? You happy. Me happy. Life goes on.”

She’d stopped the tears. Actually moved against me, although nowhere near the heated move from earlier. “Jay, you and me. Life goes on. I didn’t mean to lead you on.”

“Baby,” I said. Her eyes sparked when she heard me say it. “We’re male and female and I’m attracted to you and apparently you’re attracted to me and neither of us had to lead anything.”

“It’s supposed to mean something. Every step of the way, it’s supposed to mean something. Right up to where we were...”

“Where were we, Lena?”

“Very close to a place where there’s no turning back.” She turned her face down. “And that means something. It really does.”

“It should, Lena. I guess I got used to the idea that’s popular today, that it doesn’t mean something special.”

“I know all about hooking up and serial partners and ‘it’s just physical’ and all that and maybe if I wasn’t Lena, I could believe that. But I’m me, Jay. I get to be me. And I get to think that it means something.”

“You’ve never...”

She shook her head. “Closest I ever came was tonight. You kissed me, we kissed, I felt it all through my body. Jay, it was more than I was ready for. I lost it. Almost...”

“I know. I was there, remember...”

“So I was...”

“You were Lena, ever so desirable and exciting. I almost lost track of the fact that you’re my Lena, best friend and person whom I’m supposed to protect, not take advantage of.”

“You weren’t taking advantage, Jay.”

“One of us is supposed to be watching for traps, Lena.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“The way you kiss me, it’s a trap.”

“Love, Jay. You and me. It’s the first time I’ve been in love and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Not like there’s an instruction book, Lena. I thought I knew once. Apparently my version and her version didn’t match.”

“Did she read with you, Jay?”

interesting thought. I ran through the list of memories. Didn’t come up with ‘reading together’. Had several clips of ‘What are you gonna do? Read all afternoon?’ “No,” I replied honestly.

“I will read with you. Just like I walked with you. Just like tomorrow we will visit the battlefield and you’ll notice something and I will understand.”

“That’s the Lena I was expecting,” I said. “The Lena with the soft lips and the sighs ... I wasn’t expecting that one.”

“You don’t have to deal with her,” Lena said.

“I didn’t mean that I didn’t like her.”

She smiled a little. “I guess I liked being that Lena, too. But ... Jay. I wasn’t teasing you. We just can’t...”

“I understand.”

“Do you really, Jay? I mean, you’ve probably done that a lot, with a bunch of different women. You’re the first guy whose tongue’s been in my mouth. First guy who touched me like that. First guy I FELT...”

“You felt what I felt...”

“I suppose I did. I don’t know how I stopped. We would have mated.”

“Mated.”

“Yes. That’s what it REALLY means.”

“It doesn’t mean that to a lot of people.”

“It does, to me,” she said. She watched my eyes. “Bad part is, YOU understand.”

“How do you know I understand?”

“Because I know you. I know you after your divorce. I know that it was a violation of you that SHE didn’t think that.”

“I sort of knew that much about her before we got married,” I said. “I thought she and I had something different.”

“That’s what two people are supposed to have. Something different.”

She giggled.

“Now you’re laughing.”

“Yeah. We’re adults with morals. How novel.”

“Lena...”

“I know. It’s who we are. But Jay?”

“Yes?”

“It was VERY good. For me, I mean.”

“Oh, gee, Lena ... You had me at a hundred and ten percent.”

She smiled. “Us stopping, that doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to kiss me any more. Or hug. You have no idea how much I wanted to be hugged.”

“So you mean...”

She answered my question by the expedient of covering my mouth with hers. This time when our lips parted, she smiled at me.

“I love you, Jay,” she said. “But we have limits. I am not about to skip town one night and end up in your bed the next. We will be friends, just like we were friends before. Let this relationship grow.”

“Lena, that is just plain weird.”

“I know, but such are the rules. I can’t let myself, Jay. Not until something says that we are correct for each other.”

“Until then...”

“Stop worrying and kiss me some more.”

What movie? And try reading when your partner is subject to roll over and plant a good one on your lips.

Still, we have plans for tomorrow and there comes the time when the lights go out and you try to get some sleep.

“A kiss goodnight?” I asked.

She smiled. “You know it, Jay.” She slid over to my bedside, crawled over me, kissed me. “I do love you, you know.”

“I love you too, Lena. We’ll figure this out.”

She slid back to her bed, pulled the covers up as I watched, then she turned out the table lamp.

Sleep didn’t come. I tossed and I turned for what seemed like hours. A glance at the clock, though, told me differently. I normally go right to sleep. Today, tonight really, was just too much shock to my head.

I lay on my back, trying to will myself into slumber. I could hear the faint rustle of covers in the bed next to me, telling me I wasn’t the only one suffering.

Finally, a soft voice. “Jay?”

“Nnn-hnn...”

“You’re not asleep either.”

“No.”

“I know what’s wrong. Don’t misread this.” I felt the cool air hit me as the covers were raised and she slipped under them next to me.

“Lena...” I didn’t know if I have that much self-control, but I didn’t want to disappoint Lena. She snuggled into me.

“We were closer than this, earlier, Jay. Maybe this will let me sleep.”

“What about this?” I asked, turning towards her, enveloping her in my arms.

“Mmmmm. Even better.” A little kiss, then she buried her face into my chest.

Yes, sleep came. There was something about the innocence of her action that allowed me to drift off, like I was already into a pleasant dream state, the sweet smell of her fragrant hair filling my thoughts.

We parted during the night, naturally. I semi-woke when I rolled over a time or two, woke a couple more times when she repositioned herself, finding me, fitting against me.

It would’ve been easy to get VERY aroused, but somehow that wasn’t what happened. When she finally woke up, she scooted up, kissed me.

“I really slept good, Jay.”

“Me, too.”

“I hope I didn’t tease you all night.”

“No. You just sort of made things work right. Like...” I wanted to say ‘like you’re supposed to be there’, but I didn’t. “ ... just really comfortable and caring.”

Her eyes took an enigmatic cast. “Yeah,” she said with a gentle smile. “Like that. Let’s go find breakfast.”

We tidied ourselves up, got dressed, grabbed cameras and a daypack and left the room. We bypassed the free breakfast offered by the hotel for one at a little local diner up the road, enjoying fresh coffee while we waited for our plates to arrive.

“Honest answer, Jay,” Lena said, her eyes boring into

“Always, Lena. Or if I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you...”

“Last night. Did you stop because I’m not that pretty?”

“Are you SERIOUS?!?”

“Yes.”

“Lena, it was only the utmost amount of self-control ... when we first kissed, when we first curled up together ... You’re beautiful. Things that make you desirable, they’re more than looks.”