Chapter 268

Laura raced to the telephone the moment she got inside the door at home. She was going to call Sara at work, but first she checked her home voice mail. Surely Sara had left her a message there, especially after the message Laura had left on Sara's answering machine the previous evening from Dallas, after Ada had departed.

And Sara had left a message, the third one in the queue. Unfortunately, it was not what Laura had hoped for. Sara was very somber. She spoke slowly and very softly. Her voice was deep, very unlike her usual voice, and sounded somehow disembodied, denatured, even wooden.

"Laura... I know you won't think it's right to leave you a message like this," Sara said evenly. "I've thought about it, and I'm going to do it anyway. I don't want to see you. I don't want either one of us to go through that." [There was a pause here while Sara swallowed and composed herself further.] "Dee Dee told me about you two. [Another pause.] She drinks... smokes weed... snorts. I don't know how you thought she wouldn't spill it sooner or later. Anyway, she's jealous of me and likes to hurt me." [Another devastating pause, during which Laura could actually hear her own whimpering, which until now she had been unaware of.] "I want you to know I really did love you. I never loved anybody so much. But I don't love you any more. I don't want to see you. Please don't try to see me. It was a mistake. Let's leave it at that. Don't call."

The cloying, automated whine of the voice mail lady came on the phone. "End of message. To repeat message, press one. To reply, press two. To erase-"

Laura was so shattered that it was all she could do just to get her quivering hand to hang up the phone. After a few moments she noticed that her nearly silent moaning and whimpering had stopped. The tightness in her chest and stomach was agonizing. Silent tears were sliding down her cheeks, dripping off her chin onto her hands. Her throat was so tightly pinched that no sound could escape. She was sure she had never felt such intense emotional pain.

For an immensely long time, she sat like this, alone in her living room, unable to cry, unable to do anything but hurt. She knew she had brought this on herself. Her own recklessness had been the cause. Dee Dee had tempted her, but she should have been able to turn away. No one had ever meant as much to her as Sara, and she had thrown it away for a few cheap moments of thrilling sex.

She wanted to talk to her but knew it was impossible. Also unwise, given both Sara's admonitions and her own certainty that she would simply blubber and grovel and plead and beg and look altogether as despicable and contemptible as she felt. She remembered losing some boy, when she was a teenager, to a high school rival and feeling a devastating loss, as though she could not live without him. This was the way she felt about Sara. Only now she was no longer a teenager, no longer theatrically suffering the sharp though callow yearnings of adolescence, but a responsible adult who simply felt like she was going to die of this pain, this horrible agony of loss. I love her, she thought bleakly. I love her forever.

She cut herself short on this one, not letting her mind linger on it. Yes, you love her. Now you can love her in her absence. Don't think about it, at least not right now. You'll only feel worse. As if that were possible.

She had arrived home at 3 p.m. and at eight-twenty she looked at a clock and realized that she had no idea what had happened in the past five and a half hours. She was not hungry. She was numb. She looked at her face in the bathroom mirror and realized that she had been crying, apparently pretty heavily, but had little memory of it. Her throat, however, was sore from the tight sobs. Now she felt drained, giddy. Is it grief that makes you feel this way? she asked herself.

Again she plotted and had to stop herself. What would she do if I just showed up there, on her doorstep? Like when she gets home from work? There I am. Would she be cruel? Send me away? Would she let me in? Would she listen to my apologies?

Oh god, I hate myself. I want her to know how much I hate myself. Maybe I should call her and leave her another message, tell her how much I hate myself. How sorry I am. Maybe I should send her a letter. Maybe I should send her flowers. Ha, maybe that's it! Remember how happy Dawn was to get those flowers I brought? Maybe I could send her something else. A telegram. A simple telegram. 'I Love You. I Always Will. I'm So Sorry. Signed, Laura.'

Oh shit, no, she thought.

I can't do any of that. Something like that only makes things worse. It only hardens her and makes me look pathetic. What am I going to do? I have to do something!

But Laura knew it was hopeless. She believed Sara when she said she had truly loved Laura. They had touched each other's inner core, and not only sexually. She knew that under Sara's joking, happy-go-lucky exterior there was a flinty, tough, and resilient woman, a rock, a woman one could actually love and respect and adore, as well as desire. This was the woman Laura had offended, and she had done it not with some stranger or past lover but with Sara's own feckless but wildly sexy younger sister.

True, time could dissipate pain and anguish and feelings of rejection, even sexual betrayal. If Laura had cheated with someone else, that person would perhaps disappear, die, move, get hooked up in another relationship. But every time Sara looked at Dee Dee-whom she was constantly rescuing from the consequences of her own worst impulses anyway-she would see Laura writhing naked with her in bed, grimacing and screaming with Dee Dee's face between her legs. You couldn't go on living with such a vision.

Sara would not forgive it. Laura knew she never would. Some things, maybe, but sleeping with Dee Dee, never. Would I forgive it? No. A thousand times: NO.

Months of alternating between sodden remorse and piercing grief lay head for her, Laura knew. Worse, she had to return to work the following morning as if nothing had happened, as if she had not been crushed and left bleeding by this horrible event. She was in a daze, not having eaten since Dallas, having got little sleep, her insides feeling knotted and raw and clenched in the effort to conceal her pain, even from herself, though it gnawed at her like an evil, poison worm.

She was staring glassily at her desk top, daydreaming, abstracted, still vaguely wondering what she could do to set things right again, when Randi came into her office in the mid-afternoon. Laura looked up. Randi might not have this effect on everyone, but to Laura-even in this depressed, abstracted state-the girl was just as vivacious and ravishing as she had been the first time she had seen her. Randi could be a mischievous and coy little twit, but with her sexy long braids swishing around her shoulders and her beautiful face and tall, supple body, which Laura had so thoroughly devoured on many occasions, she was eye-candy and catnip rolled into one.

Laura smiled wanly at her. There were at least some consolations in life. Sex with Randi was as hot as it could get. Maybe they could work something out that would take Laura's mind off Sara.

"Hi there, you gorgeous creature," she said softly, hearing her voice emerge very husky and sexy. "Long time no see."

Randi smirked and flirted silently, like a small child with a secret. Her lengthy relationship with Laura had given her deep knowledge of the things about her that aroused Laura's desire. In fact, like a few other women Laura knew, Randi had that talent instinctively and could ignite fires in the most unsuspecting people, male or female, by a few well-chosen bodily movements. She also had an enchanting face that, even now when Laura was down in the dumps, gloomy, sluggish with lovesick pain, could pierce Laura's heart.

"It's going to be even longer next time," Randi flirted. "This is my last day. I came to say goodbye."

This news hit Laura like a ton of bricks. From feeling a pleasant, expectant glow (though still tinged by the ineffable, gnawing sadness she felt from losing Sara) and an agreeable tingle in her pussy at the prospect of rubbing flesh with the delectable Randi she was plunged into a further despair and painful shock. She knew better than to expect things to last forever, but she had always comfortably kept Randi in the back of her mind, especially since they had developed some space in their relationship and weren't constantly feeding on each other's body and emotions, as a friendly and deliciously sexy possibility. She had felt Randi thought about her now in the same way.

"Laura?" Randi came over to her desk, leaning down, so much so that her long, thin braids swished against Laura's forearm, and Laura could smell her sweet, warm breath. She was enjoying every second of Laura's dismay. "Are you okay?"

"I... I'm okay," Laura muttered, shaking the confusion out of her brain. "Last day? Are you kidding?"

Randi looked down at her. To look into her eyes, Laura's gaze had to travel up her body, across her jutting breasts, which was the way she had planned it. Laura loved those breasts. Randi knew it. Her eyes were flickering a message: Don't you wish you could have them again? Don't you wish you could just rip this blouse off?

Smirking with self-satisfaction and sexual allure, Randi stepped back a little. "I'm moving back to North Carolina. You knew I was from there, didn't you? I'm going back. I got a job in Charlotte. At a bank. They're giving me a better job than this one." She tossed her head arrogantly, fetchingly, her braids swinging around her lovely neck. "Won't have to work for that stuck-up cunt Shontay Gibson any more, either." She winked salaciously at Laura. "Maybe when I'm gone you can suck her little Neegro pussy for her and get her to lighten up a little bit, eh?" But then she sneered with contempt. "On second thought, it probably looks and smells like a rotten old prune. Not a sweet little black snatch like the one Laura is dying to slurp, right?" She looked down at her own crotch suggestively, baiting Laura.

Laura blushed. At the same time, she realized that two big tears were rolling down her cheeks. She had cried so much in the past eighteen hours or so that she had thought there was no water left in her.

"Oh, Laura, that's so sweet," Randi purred, leaning down again. "Are you crying because you'll miss me?"

"Oh god, yes. I will," Laura blurted out, meaning each word.

The combination of losing Sara, and now Randi, was converging inside her chest into a huge, horrible wail of pain. It was all she could do not to let it escape. Her shoulders were even shuddering with incipient sobs, but she stiffened her muscles with a ferocious act of will and got them under control.

"Gee," Randi said, "I didn't think you'd take it so hard. You been screwing that dwarf so often lately that I thought you forgot completely about me."

'That dwarf' was Randi's cutting description of Deshona, for whom she had long felt a fierce rivalry.

Laura sniffled. "Why North Carolina?" she asked, reaching for a kleenex.

"I just told you. I'm from there. I was raised there. I have a girl friend who works in a big bank. Charlotte is becoming sort of a banking capital, you know. She offered me this job."

"What about Nate?"

"What about him?" Randi said, waving her hand as if he were an afterthought. She leaned closer, whispering now in Laura's ear, rubbing Laura's shoulder with one of her firm breasts. "Between you and me, he never was as good as you anyway." She glanced down at the carpet next to Laura's desk. "Remember the time we were doing it right there when the dwarf came in and caught us?"

Laura rolled her eyes, laughing. "What is this, a trip down Memory Lane?"

Randi pouted playfully. "Bet you never bopped her in your office."

Laura gave her a half-grin and shook her head. "God, I will miss you so much," she said softly.

Randi continued to smirk and angle her long, curvaceous body in provocative poses for Laura, her hips tilted forward. "Sure you don't want to give me a going away party?"

"I'm likely to get us both fired if you don't try to be a little less tempting," Laura confessed.

"Correction," Randi grinned. "You can get fired. I am history. They can kiss my pretty little black ass around here, Rhonda Reardon included."

Laura could not help feeling both terrible and sexually stimulated at the exact same moment. Her bad feelings grew out of her realization that she was so vulnerable to this kind of temptation, and something very similar had occurred with Dee Dee, which had led to her losing Sara. The circumstances had been different, but this warm, hungry, sensual feeling that was spreading throughout her body as she bantered with Randi was exactly the way she had felt when trying to resist Dee Dee. She had failed then. The consequences had been disastrous.

Of course, there were no consequences for giving in now. She could not resist Randi either, and she desperately needed to forget, even if only for a few hours, the mess she had made with Dee Dee and Sara.

"I... I," she stammered, shuffling papers on her desk. "I... just came back from Dallas... so I really have to work the rest of the day. How about tonight? When are you leaving for Charlotte?"

Randi tilted her head. She was rarely hard to get, but she now enjoyed toying with Laura. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because I want to give you a going away present."

Randi walked over to the window and looked out, ostentatiously, showing Laura the smooth curve of her delicious rump under her skirt, and the long, smooth, shapely black calves of her legs. She looked coyly back over her shoulder, swishing her braids in a way that she knew made Laura's pussy ooze and flutter.

"Will I like it?"

"You've always liked it in the past," Laura whispered, holding her gaze.

"I'm not flying to Charlotte until Tuesday," Randi whispered back. She walked back to Laura's desk. "I don't know where you live now. You moved."

Laura wrote the address and a simplified map on a memo pad and tore off the sheet for Randi. "Six?" she said.

Randi leaned down again, very close, whispering in Laura's ear. "You know, we won't see each other for a very long time after this. I hope it's a very good present."

Then, before Laura could respond, she left the office, her beautiful ass swaying as she walked away. Laura could tell that Randi was very conscious of Laura's eyes on it.

Oh dear, Laura suddenly thought. What if Sara should have second thoughts? What if she should show up unexpectedly while Randi and I are fucking? What if she just sits out front in her car and sees her arriving, or leaving? Oh god, I can't go through with this!

But this, Laura knew in the back of her mind, was insane. There would be no second thoughts. Sara was not going to reconsider. Still, the thought of killing her chances twice, even in fantasy, had a way of deflating all her exciting expectations of a torrid evening in bed with this delectable girl, whom she could never accuse of being lukewarm. Randi was an enthusiastic and ardent lover, and Laura tried to remember that as she again fought the relentless demons of her depression.

But by the time Randi was out of sight, Laura could feel the sadness returning, seeping into her mind and her body, filling her pores, dragging her down.

Yesterday's kisses are still on my lips,
I had a lifetime of heaven at my fingertips.
Now all is gone, gone is the rapture that filled my heart,
Gone with the wind, the gladness that thrilled my heart...

She hummed this song all afternoon, as she worked. She could not kick it. Daydreaming, looking out the window, she saw not Randi's supple, desirable body, but Sara's face, her sensual, pillowy lips, her limpid black eyes, flickering with deep humor, alternating with fiery scorn.

Just like a flame, love burned brightly then became
An empty smoke dream that was gone with the wind...

Laura wanted to speak to her, speak to this... wraith, this specter, this beautiful fantasy face. She suddenly realized why people usually exacerbated these kinds of problems, instead of backing off, or easing up. The urge to communicate was too fierce, too implacable. You had to say something. I have to say something to her. I have to tell her how sorry I am, at least. I have to let her know how hurt I am, too.

But it was only vanity, Laura realized. The urge to communicate was very intense, but fundamentally, she understood, it was only her own vanity pushing her to get relief, to say 'I'm sorry, ' 'I love you so much, ' 'Please forgive me, ' 'I could kill myself for hurting you, ' et cetera. Vanity. Self-regard. Guilt relief. Just forget it, Laura, she told herself. If you were Sara, you'd just be waiting for such an opportunity. Kill this love twice, just to make sure it's really dead.

Randi arrived at Laura's condo at five minutes to six. Laura had only been home ten minutes herself, sorting through the mail, hoping for a phone message from Sara, even if it were a brutal and dismissive one. There was no message.

The second she saw Randi, letting her in the door, she felt the flood of sadness mixed with urgent sexual desire return. Randi could see something troubling in Laura's eyes.

"You okay, girl?" she whispered. "You look a little green."

"I... I'm fine. Just so glad to see you."

Randi's eyes twinkled. "If you're so glad to see me, how come I haven't heard from you in a month? You and that wild woman friend of yours come over and fuck the shit out of me, then you don't even call back. At work, you're always locked up in some meeting. I don't think you're going to miss me at all," Randi pouted.

"Oh, but I am," Laura purred, embracing her, running her hands up and down Randi's long body as she kissed her very slowly and thoroughly.

Randi kissed back. She slithered her tongue into Laura's mouth, exploring the under-flesh of Laura's lips, then inviting Laura's tongue back into her own mouth, sucking it playfully.

"I love the way you kiss," she murmured to Laura, her eyelids heavy, her sensual lips wet and parted. "Nobody kisses like Laura."

"I want to kiss every inch of your body," Laura purred.

Randi laughed. She grew coquettish. "You want to put your hand in my pussy, you bitch?"

"I didn't say that."

Now Randi pouted. "You don't want to? And pull my hair? And tie up my pretty titties. And do me with that thing Kim raped me with?"

"Whoa, now," Laura stopped her, putting one finger up to Randi's luscious lips. "Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves?"

Randi grinned. "Maybe. But I want it. What's the chance I'm going to get that again, back in North Carolina? Answer me. Ain't gonna trust nobody to do that but you, Laura. Guess you'll have to come visit." Her eyes twinkled. "If you aren't going to come and visit me, then you have to do it now."

Laura twirled several long strands of Randi's braids in her fingers, acting like she was thinking it over. "I really turned you into a nasty little devil, didn't I."

Randi smirked. "Yes." She nodded. "You did. Now... take me in that bedroom and do something I'll never forget."

They had already shared moments that neither would ever forget, but Laura, still suffering inwardly from the lingering, gnawing, painful emotions of her loss, was more inclined than ever to recreate some of those moments with Randi. Anything to take this pain away, she thought.

She kissed Randi's smooth dark cheek, then the edge of her jaw, then her earlobe, breathing into her ear. "I'm going to fuck you so well you'll be sorry you ever decided to leave," she whispered.

Randi threw back her head and laughed, exposing all of her delicious throat to Laura's lips. "Promises, promises," she laughed. Then she stopped laughing and looked seriously at Laura. "Promise me, now. The whole thing. No holding back."

Already her dark eyes were dancing with fires of sexual excitement, and Laura knew hers must be too.

"You know I never hold back, darling," Laura smiled, taking her hand and pulling her in the direction of the bedroom.

Randi, following Laura down the hall, had her blouse off by the time they reached the bedroom, and when Laura turned and saw her half-naked upper body, all smooth and dark and sleek and gleaming slightly in the dim light of the bedroom, the white straps of her bra vividly etched against the marvelous black velvet of her skin, she was quickly overcome by sharp physical hunger.

"God, you are so beautiful. How am I going to be able to live without you?"

"Why Laura," Randi said sarcastically, tilting her head quizzically, her dark eyes flashing with provocative glints. "I do believe you say that to all the black girls you get in here. We all know you just interested in our pretty black pussies."

"Mmmm, you have the prettiest," Laura murmured, grabbing her hand again and pulling her close.

Randi smiled warmly, changing the mood abruptly. "You know, it's great to be alone with you like this," she whispered. "It was fun with your friend, that wild woman, but I like this better. Just us. Just kissing and teasing. I brought you something. It's my going away present to you."

Laura pouted. "I'm the one who's supposed to be giving you something."

Randi's eyes flickered. "You are going to give me something. Did you forget?"

She went to her purse, which she had tossed onto the bedside chair along with her blouse, and came up with a pair of fur-lined handcuffs, dangling them in front of Laura's face. Laura felt an instant hot flush spread quickly throughout her body. She smiled.

"You're even a worse pervert than me, girl," she murmured to Randi, taking them out of Randi's extended hand.

Randi rubbed one wrist playfully with the fingers of her other hand. "Those other ones you got really hurt my wrists."

Laura ran her fingertip along the fur that completely line the inside of each cuff. "Well... I guess you won't have that problem with these," she winked. She tossed them on the bed and grabbed Randi's hand again, pulling her close once more. "I want you naked." She kissed Randi's shoulders, each side, next to the bra straps. "I want to kiss every inch of your body."

She let her lips travel down Randi's smooth chest to the valley between her breasts, still covered by the white bra.

"Ooohhh... Laura... that tickles!" Randi shivered.

"What happened to the red underwear? You know how it lights my fire."

"You don't need anything to light your fire, Laura. Just breathe on Laura a little and she wants to fuck, right?"

Laura slid her tongue into the crease between Randi's breasts. "When you're in the room I go up in flames," she purred.

Randi, pleased by Laura's feverish ardor, reached behind her back to unfasten her bra. "I never knew anyone as crazy about this body as you are, Laura," she breathed, panting softly now. "I don't know what I'm going to do without you either."

Laura's lips crawled back up to Randi's smooth black neck and she began to suck it. Giggling, Randi squirmed free.

"Cut it out, girl! You're giving me a hickey."

Her bra, now loose, collapsed and slid down her arms, exposing her delectable breasts, which swayed delightfully as Laura kept trying to suck her neck. Laura raised her hands to cup them and caught some of the bra fabric in her fingers as well. She pushed it aside and gently but passionately clipped Randi's large, soft black nipples with her fingers.

"I'll give you such a hickey that people will think you got a new tattoo," Laura murmured, sucking harder.

Randi giggled and tried to escape again. "I already do have a new tattoo," she laughed, wriggling away from Laura, her bra now falling to the floor, her enchanting naked breasts jiggling. "Look."

She dipped one shoulder and pivoted her body slightly so that Laura could see the swirly black rose just above her shoulder blade.

"Oh my god... too much ink on this beautiful body," Laura said, quoting Nate, who-Randi had once told her-had said this about her first tattoo, the ankh.

But she instantly bent forward, before Randi could again dodge away, and licked it, following her tongue with hot kisses. Randi paused to let Laura get her fill. She moved her shoulder a little under Laura's lips.

"I want to kiss your rose... and your ankh... and your-"

"What else?" Randi interrupted her, panting harder now, her black eyes pulsing with sex.

Now Laura was kissing up from the tattoo, over the top of Randi's shoulder, back down her smooth chest. She cradled both of Randi's exquisitely shaped oval breasts in her palms, kissing the upper slopes.

"I'm going to take your big, juicy clit between my lips and make you beg me to suck it," Laura whispered, looking up from under her heavy eyelids, panting herself too by now.

Randi looked down at her breasts in Laura's hands, waiting for Laura's lips to reach one of her nipples. "Go get that rope," she panted.

Laura ignored her.

"Laura... go get that rope of yours," Randi said, a little more urgently, taking Laura's head in both hands but not jerking or twisting it, letting Laura's lips continue to move inevitably toward one of her gleaming, thick black nipples.

Laura looked up at her and shook her head. She was half-tempted to give in, since Randi clearly wanted it, but she had done her best in recent months to steer clear of the rougher aspects of sex that she had indulged in with a few of her friends. Once or twice she and Randi had engaged in a little bondage, and Randi had experienced thrilling climaxes. Ever since then she had wanted Laura to repeat it, while Laura had been trying her best to be good, to restrain these darker impulses, to avoid the kind of depraved masochism and sadistic pleasures she and Karen, or Earlene, had often shared.

Moreover, the whole thing with Sara made her want to avoid it even more. True, Sara was not really uppermost in her mind at the moment, which was exactly why she had invited Randi over. But even though it was finished, there had been something about their relationship that was supremely wholesome; healthy, honest, sweet, and pure. No perversions, no degenerate prurience or twisted sexual needs on either part. Not that they wouldn't have got more adventurous later, Laura realized, if the relationship had lasted. I know I couldn't have resisted tasting that beautiful ass for long, she thought.

"Why not?" Randi intruded on her thoughts, her brow furrowing.

"I... stored it away when I moved here."

"Where?"

"In the... garage."

"Liar. I didn't see any garages out there. You don't have a garage, just a parking space."

"I mean... you know, I rented a storage garage and stored some extra things in it," Laura lied, since the rope was still in the drawer with all the other toys. God, now I can't let her see the drawer, she thought.

Randi's face fell. "You can't be serious."

To distract her, Laura now opened her mouth and sucked one of Randi's big, soft nipples into it, laving it with her tongue, slowly drawing the large bulb deep into her warm, wet mouth. Randi's eyes rolled up and she quivered.

"Oh god. Nobody ever made me feel this way by sucking my boob except you, Laura. Ohhnnnnnn... god, that feels good! You really know how to do that."

"I really know how to do it to the other one, too," Laura grinned, moving her mouth across Randi's breasts.

But Randi stopped her. "Get undressed. Let's get in the bed. I can't wait."

Laura raised her mouth to Randi's and kissed her hungrily. "It's been too long, hasn't it."

"Yes! Here, take this off."

She began unfastening Laura's clothes, while Laura just as eagerly began tearing at hers. The only problem was that Randi was already half-naked, and Laura had trouble keeping her hands off her bare, smooth flesh as well. In just a few seconds Laura was down to her underwear and had Randi's skirt off. She slid her hands under Randi's panties, clutching one firm moon of Randi's ass in each palm.

"I thought you wanted me to do all that stuff," she laughingly panted as she squeezed Randi's wonderful bottom.

Randi pulled one of Laura's bra straps off her shoulder, then the other, tugging down Laura's bra and sliding her own mouth down to Laura's naked breasts.

"I do," Randi laughed too, "but you don't have the rope. I wanted you to tie up my titties and squeeze them and suck them and bite them. When you did that once I thought I was going to die, I came so hard. I never came that hard before or since."

Randi's words, while she was busily licking and sucking Laura's own breasts, sent a hot, thrilling sizzle through Laura's pussy. It didn't sound so bad to her, from the way Randi put it. In fact, it was pretty arousing. She was almost sorry she had lied about the rope. What would a little light bondage hurt, especially if Randi craved it?

Laura pulled away from her long enough to shed her own panties and finish unfastening her bra. Randi skimmed her panties down her legs too. Now they were completely naked. Somehow being naked altered their rhythm, and instead of hopping eagerly onto the bed together, they modulated into a slow, sensual dance, coming together in a romantic embrace, their naked breasts touching, swishing together, then mashing together as their mouths met and their hands began exploring.