Chapter 293

At the end of the week, Laura almost hated to go home. It wasn't so much because of Ada and Marie, though she would have died for another night with each of them. But their partners would be returning, if they had not already returned, making things much more complicated for both of them.

Her fear of returning was due to her certainty that she would now come face to face again with Makeeda, and whatever was causing this vague anxiety and dread would finally be made plain. Makeeda had somehow mysteriously changed between the time she had left Laura the song on her voice mail and her return from her club engagement in L.A. Laura had been happily in love, and then had been plunged into the deepest misery and pain by Makeeda's evasive ambivalence.

She still did not know what was going on, and she flew home full of trepidation at the thought that she would now find out. It did not, somehow, help that there was a message from Makeeda on her voice mail, though ordinarily she would have died with happiness to discover one.

"Laura. It's me. Call me when you get in. You have to call before Sunday morning, 7 a.m. After that... too late. Call me."

It was a very brusque and emotionless message, just the kind Laura dreaded, and it made her heart fall even farther. Furthermore, this warning that she must call before Sunday morning or it would be 'too late' filled her with alarm. What could that mean? Too late? Was it over between them? How could it be over when they had barely started? She knew Makeeda felt about her the same way that...

Or did she? Oh god. Laura was afraid even to pick up the phone.

She had a drink to calm herself, and paced her condo from front to back many times. God, I love her! she realized. How can she be so cold? How can I call her without breaking into tears? But she realized she had to get it over with. After fifteen minutes of pacing, she steeled herself for the worst and went to the phone, standing instead of sitting so she would at least feel agile and ready to dodge the hardest blow.

She realized halfway through dialing that she would probably have to leave a message too, since it was already Saturday evening and Makeeda would be at work. But to her surprise, Makeeda answered.

"Oh hi, Laura. I'm glad you could call before tomorrow morning." So cold.

"I thought you might be at work. I... missed you."

Makeeda let that go by. "How was Dallas?"

"Oh... just work work work. I... thought about you the entire time."

"You didn't call." Makeeda's voice was not accusatory, only factual. "You said you were going to call."

"I... didn't know if you wanted me to call. You've been so... distant."

"Sorry. A lot on my mind. Look, we can't get together because my agent got me this three-week engagement in Tokyo." Her sterile voice suddenly brightened. "Can you believe that? Oh god, I'm so excited. The Japanese are very big on jazz, you know. They hired me to sing in this great club in Tokyo. For three weeks! Oh god, I thought I might have heart failure when she called and told me. They're paying for my flight, my hotel, everything. I have to leave early tomorrow morning. That's why I said to call before then."

"I'm so happy for you," Laura said. She truly was. It meant she wouldn't see Makeeda for three more weeks, but that might not be all bad since she had sensed that their meeting would be somehow unpleasant, if not a calamity, for her.

Makeeda's tone changed. She became genuinely solicitous, and her voice softened. "I know you are, Laura. I believe you," she said, much warmer now. "Thank you for being happy for me."

A hint of the feeling Laura knew Makeeda had had for her in the beginning came through in her voice. This brightened Laura a little. "I hate not seeing you. You know it doesn't have anything to do with sex." Laura was blunt. "I love you. I can't stand not seeing you."

As usual, this confession made Makeeda uncomfortable. She paused. Laura could hear her breathing nervously on the other end of the line. "Tell you what," she finally said. "I'll call you from Tokyo. I'm not sure of the time difference but I'll figure it out and call you when you're home."

"Don't be like me, okay?" Laura teased her. "Don't say you're going to call if you're not."

"I'll be busy, you know. Singing... rehearsing. All that. I'll try to remember."

Laura noticed that her 'I love you' confession had simply been swept away and buried by this talk of Makeeda calling from Tokyo. "I'll die if I don't get to see you soon," Laura said, plaintively.

"Laura, don't make it harder," Makeeda snapped, though softly, not nastily.

Laura swallowed. She realized that her pulse was beating wildly in her neck, and that she was flushed and even sweating a little. She was glad Makeeda could not see her in this state. "I won't," she said, also softly. "Please call me when you get back."

"I'll call you while I'm over there. Look... don't be upset, okay? Really. Don't be upset."

"Okay," Laura sniffled. She wanted to say something deeply moving and penetrating before they hung up but could think of nothing. She could not say 'I love you' again. "Have a good flight, okay?"

"Twelve hours. How can that be good?" Makeeda gave a phony laugh, realizing too that this was a painful moment in a painful conversation. "I'll try. See you when I get back."

"Yes," Laura said, hanging up. Feeling empty and unloved.

But she told herself again to be strong. Be strong. No whining. If she doesn't love you, you'll survive. She told you how important her career is to her. You know her relationship with Diane fell apart over it. You know that. And you really are so thrilled for her that she got this Tokyo job. Aren't you? Don't be selfish, now. You can hold her and kiss her when she gets back.

"I hope," Laura said glumly, aloud. She had another drink.

The next day, as if to make matters worse, though it was no fault of hers, Sara called. In her haste to pack for Dallas and her maelstrom of emotions over Makeeda, Laura had completely forgotten to tell Sara she was leaving town. She wondered in the back of her mind whether her lapse was intentionally unintentional, as if she were getting back at Sara for her nurse by not telling her.

But the sound of her voice, independent of Laura's emotional turmoil over Makeeda or her veiled hostility to Sara's current flare for her odious nurse, suddenly plunged Laura back into the warm, cozy, and almost volcanically sexy feelings she had long enjoyed with Sara. We've had such good times! A warm, throbbing glow filled Laura's body. We've had such great, sweet, emotional fucking. It feels so bad to lose it all.

Sara may have felt the same way. "I was worried about you," she said, her voice full of concern. "I... miss seeing you."

Laura came up with an elaborate apology, most of it true, about her trip to Dallas. "I miss you too."

And she did. She missed Sara palpably, with a heavy longing in her chest, and a warm ache in her pussy. She did not see any contradiction in this to her feelings for Makeeda, which were more intense and urgent, but no less genuine. She could not stop loving Sara instantaneously, simply because Sara was now sharing her body with someone else. Sunday had always been their special day together, and they were probably still feeling the pull of it.

"Why don't you come over?" Sara suggested. Even though her voice, uttering this invitation, suddenly sounded a little odd and stagy to Laura, she clearly meant it. "Come on over here and spend some time with me."

"I guess I could," Laura said softly. "I'm pretty tired, but it would be great to see you."

Sara brightened. "Good! I'll put on a pot of tea. See you in a few minutes."

But Laura took her time. She moved as if she were walking under tons of sea water, at the bottom of the ocean, moving in slow motion, her mind and body filled with conflicting feelings and thoughts. It was hard being in love with two women at the same time, women so different, one who seemed on the verge of completely rejecting her, so peremptory and distant, while the other had been openly sleeping with someone else, sort of daring Laura to feel bad about it. It was hard even to negotiate these complicated emotions. She moved as if in a daze, driving an hour later to Sara's apartment and having, when she got there, the curious sensation of being dropped down from the sky here in Ocean View without the memory of driving there herself.

"Well, look who has finally arrived," Sara said as she opened the door, crossing her eyes and making one of her hysterically funny faces. "I guess I'll have to heat up the tea. I expected you an hour ago."

"Sorry," Laura mumbled. "Couldn't get it in gear. Maybe it's jet lag."

"From Dallas?" Sara cracked. "That's like walking down to Walgreen's and back."

Laura followed her up the stairs and into her apartment. There, sitting on the sofa in Sara's small living room, the same sofa on which Laura had sat a hundred times, was a tall, lovely, and very dark-much darker than Sara-woman wearing blue jeans and a pink tank top, with an easy, languid smile that seemed both friendly and laced with mysterious, potent sensuality. Laura instantly concluded that this must be Sara's nurse, her new fuck-buddy, and that Sara had purposely not mentioned that she would be here for fear it would keep Laura away.

Sara could see Laura's consternation, though Laura was trying to hide it. "Laura, this is Sheena Patterson. Sheena... Laura. Sheena's the nurse I told you about at work."

Laura smiled uncomfortably. "So I figured." She went in measured steps across the room and took Sheena's shapely, warm, black hand. "So pleased to meet you, Sheena."

She knew Sara would expect her to be jealous, and touchy, and overly sensitive about this meeting, and so she did her best to be the opposite. You're not catching me in your little sly traps, Sara Paige, she thought. Why would you invite me over when she's here?

Nevertheless, she felt mighty uneasy. Two things nettled her. One, she could not help feeling that they had cooked this up together. Why don't you come over and spend some time with me, Sara had said on the phone. But they had planned this; not, Laura conceded, just to see her discomfort, but really to draw her into an event, a sexual encounter, that would at once soothe Laura's fears about betrayal and also make them feel better about so radically changing Laura's and Sara's past relationship. Laura had never realized Sara could be so devious, and yet there were often hidden parts of a person's character that rarely appeared until forced out by necessity. Look at Marie, for example, she reasoned.

Two, Sheena Patterson, Sara's nurse, was the kind of woman Laura would have hungered for no matter where she saw her. Not only did she have that lazy, molten smile and alluring, I'll-bet-you-want-to-fuck-me eyes. She was also very black and smooth, with long, well-shaped arms and shoulders, completely visible due to the thin straps of her tank top, and full, swelling breasts under it. Long and slender with full breasts, very black. A combination Laura was exceptionally vulnerable to. Of course, Sara knew nothing of this since Laura had been careful not to let her eyes stray. Sara knew little about her previous girlfriends, and when the actual temptation to stray seriously had finally come, it had been Makeeda who totally captured Laura's heart. Makeeda, who looked very little like this stunning Sheena, the nurse.

All these reflections happened in the space of less than a minute, and since Laura appeared vaguely abstracted anyway-the jet lag excuse she had given to Sara-neither Sara nor Sheena seemed puzzled by her silence. Sheena smiled again and moved a little to the side on the small sofa, as if to offer her a seat there, and Laura felt too embarrassed not to take it.

"Be right back with tea for all," Sara announced, heading for her small kitchen, which was just around the corner.

"Make it Calistoga for me, Sara," Sheena called after her. "I'm tea'd out." She smiled, very friendly, at Laura. "Sara is a tea nut," she half-whispered, leaning toward Laura. "Tea for everything."

"I know," Laura smiled back.

"Oops, I'm sorry," Sheena said, genuinely abashed at having brought up something that clearly everyone hoped would remain unspoken; that is, Sara's and Laura's prior relationship. "Of course you do." She placed the four long, tapered, black fingers of one hand on Laura's bare arm, an intimate gesture that Laura found curiously arousing. "I guess... you've had lots of... tea," she half-giggled in a low, throaty voice.

"I've had my fair share," Laura said, with a tight smile.

She was wondering if she ought not to stand up and leave right now. This was not going to work. She felt like she was being used, somehow. Not by Sheena, but by Sara. And she had not yet even contemplated the weird feelings she would have if it indeed did come to a sexual threesome. Much as in the abstract she would love to fuck with them both, she also knew the turbulence of her emotions would make true pleasure impossible.

Just at this uncomfortable moment, Sara reappeared with a small tray containing full tea cups for her and Laura and a bottle of Calistoga water with a glass for Sheena.

She sat down in the chair across from the sofa and they sipped for a few minutes without speaking. Laura was amazingly uneasy. What was expected of her? Am I supposed to simply get up and go into the bedroom? It's all so transparent.

On the other hand, she was sitting close enough to Sheena to inhale the fresh, healthy scent of her lovely long body, which made it impossible for Laura to ignore the invitation that was being subtly extended. No wonder Sara was vulnerable to this woman, she thought. The way Sara had described it, Sheena had definitely been the aggressor, flirting with Sara in the halls, trying to get a date. And Sheena was so attractive and had such alluring sensuality about her that it was a wonder Sara had resisted as long as she had.

"So... how's work?" Laura finally said, lamely. She knew the very awkwardness of this question would make it clear how uncomfortable she felt, and perhaps make them equally uncomfortable.

Sara pursed her lips and made a funny face. For some reason Laura did not now find her faces as funny as she had in the past, apparently because she felt Sara had got her here by deception and guile.

"Work is work," Sara said in a clipped voice. Then she smiled, smiling first at Laura, then at Sheena. "Sheena works for a plastic surgeon down the hall from me. She's the one with the stories. Nose jobs. Boob jobs. Ear jobs. You want to tell her some of your stories, Sheena?"

Sheena shook her head. "Too boring."

Well... fine, Laura thought. Maybe when I finish my tea it will be time to go. You two have a wonderful time together, okay? Just hop in that bed and fuck your little ears off, and don't mind me. I have a good Jane Austen book at home I'm going to start reading.

"Maybe you won't mind if I tell her one," Sara said.

Sheena grinned and stood up. It was hard to gauge from her sitting position, but Laura believed Sheena might be an inch or two taller than she was. She could not resist a brief peak at the girl's bottom, which was not spectacular, not Jane's for example, but was still nicely rounded and firm in her blue jeans. Sheena frowned at Sara and headed for the bathroom.

"Make it a short one," she said, "so I won't have to hear it."

Sara made a sour face in her direction, but Sheena didn't see it, being already around the corner. Sara looked at Laura.

"Why are you being so cold and prim and withdrawn?" she said to Laura under her breath. "You aren't like that. Be nice. I told her all about you."

"Did you tell her what we used to mean to each other?" Laura said, regretting it the second the words popped out of her mouth.

Sara looked chagrined and guilty. She could not help it, Laura realized. She might have told herself reason after reason justifying her actions, and yet when it came down to it she still felt a little guilty. "I think we still mean a lot to each other," she said evenly. "I thought maybe if you met her you'd see why I... you know, did what I did."

"She's very lovely," Laura said, meaning it. "I'm simply trying to adjust. Things are not quite the same between us. I think you know that."

Sara nodded and bowed her head a little. "I know. But they could still be very good." She paused and looked bashful and shy, like she must have looked as a fetching young school girl. "She and I are thinking of going to Jamaica on a vacation. We thought you might like to come along."

There were a thousand ways Laura could respond to this, and she seemed to rifle through them all before she could trust herself to speak. Then, before she could utter a word, Sara's amazing pillowy lips were on hers, Sara's tongue was slipping through her teeth, Sara's hand was on her breasts through her clothes.

"Don't be this way, Laura," Sara murmured as she kissed her. "I know you're hurt. I know you're feeling a little rejection. But it isn't true. It's the same thing you were feeling when I was seeing Lina, when she came to visit. Remember? It doesn't mean I don't love you. I know you have other girls. I'm not blind and stupid. You still love me. Why can't we be a little more... open with each other? Sheena is very open and accepting. She wanted to meet you. She wants us all to be friends."

Laura had a hundred conflicting feelings while this was happening. She resented Sara for making plans with Sheena that formerly she would have made with Laura. Why aren't we inviting her to go along on a vacation with us? she wanted to ask her. She was uncomfortable with Sara bringing up her, Laura's, other lovers, something Laura had always taken great care to hide. She felt resentful somehow that the two of them wanted to make her, obviously, their own little ice cream sandwich.

There was also the matter of her feelings for Makeeda, which she preferred not to dwell on at the moment. It made her kind of a hypocrite, she realized, to be spitefully baiting Sara about infidelities when she herself was all torn up with love for another woman.

On the other hand, Sara's ineffably soft lips on hers had the effect they always had, making her pussy flood and her blood race and her heart melt. I can't resist this woman, she thought. I never could. And Sara knew Laura was succumbing, yielding. She began sliding her hands under Laura's top as she was kissing her, pulling it up, fiddling behind Laura's back with the clasp of her bra.

"You want it," she breathed in Laura's ear. "You want it with us. I know you do. We will be so good together."

Her fingers came up to Sara's cheek. For the moment she had completely forgotten that Sheena was in the other room. The old, familiar, warm surge of potent emotion that always accompanied her sexual encounters with Sara had taken over.

"Sara... it's been so long..." Laura breathed, feeling her body come alive under Sara's fingers, knowing her anger and confusion could not prevail for long.

"I has been too long," Sara murmured back, now unfastening Laura's bra and bringing her hand back around to Laura's naked breasts, just as Sheena walked back into the room.

Both of them saw her, but Laura pretended not to notice, closing her eyes, while Sara quickly dropped her mouth to one of Laura's nipples and began to tease and suck it.

"Ohhhh!" Laura sighed, stretching on the sofa.

She felt the cushion next to her give as Sheena sat down next to them. Without a word, she joined Sara in helping lift Laura's top over her head, then removing her bra completely. Now Laura was naked from the waist up, and for the first time in many long months-she could not really remember how long it had been, but it seemed like an eternity-both of her naked breasts were being squeezed and sucked at the same time by two different gorgeous women. It was almost enough to make her come on the spot without any further aid.

Her eyes fluttered open long enough to watch their sensual lips on her wet nipples. Her fingers flittered through their hair, stroked their arms and shoulders. Sara was wearing a shirt, but Sheena's shoulders were bared by her tank top, and Laura felt a hot little flame spurt up in her pussy as she stroked the woman's beautiful smooth black skin.

"Ohhh!" she sighed softly again, twisting as the sensations in her breasts grew more intense.

She felt lips grazing her cheek and again opened her eyes to see Sheena's sensual mouth approaching hers. Their eyes caught only briefly before Sheena's mouth pressed down on hers, but it was long enough for Laura to let her know that whatever her earlier attitude had been, she was now completely theirs and looking forward to a hot ride. She let her mouth fall open immediately and responded hungrily to Sheena's kiss.

This emboldened Sara, who quickly began to unzip Laura pants, while still sucking and tonguing her nipples passionately. She had her hand under Laura's panties almost immediately, two of her fingers sliding down to Laura's crotch and pushing into the squinchy wet soup of Laura's pussy quickly.

"Unh!" Laura gasped, feeling a hot squirt of sexual urgency suddenly shoot through her.

Sheena kissed her hard, stabbing her tongue deep into Laura's mouth. Sara was busily pulling Laura's pants down her legs, and her panties too. She slid off the sofa onto the floor, while Sheena's mouth traveled down Laura's neck to her breasts, which she began to stroke and suck even more heatedly than Sara had. They both seemed to feel that drawing Laura deeply into the sexual triangle as quickly as possible would ensure that Laura did not change her mind, though that was the farthest thing from Laura's intention. All she wanted was for this to continue.

"Unhhhh!" she gasped again as she felt Sara's incredible mouth on her throbbing pussy. "Oh! Unhhhh!"

And yet it was very uncomfortable here, awkwardly draped across Sara's small sofa while the two of them caressed and kissed her body. She took Sheena's head between her hands and pulled her up face to face. Sheena smiled.

"I want to go in on the bed," Laura panted.

"Of course," Sheena smiled again.

Sara, who heard Laura too, looked up from between Laura's thighs. Together she and Sheena stood up and pulled Laura to her feet, walking her between them to Sara's small bedroom. Understanding the excitement of the moment, they both had half their clothes off before they even reached the bed. Laura, who had been dying to get her hands again on Sara's body after so long a delay, nevertheless could not keep her eyes off Sheena. She was lean and sleek and dark like a lithe cat, her black skin gleaming, her breasts full and beautifully shaped, her large nipples black as coal.

Laura knew she would get her chance at those delicious nipples soon, as well as Sara's large dark cupcake nipples that always made her blood race and her mouth water, but for now she was theirs, and she lay down on the bed between them, with Sara behind her and Sheena in front. Sheena was kissing her mouth again, while fondling her breasts, and Sara was nipping and sucking her bare shoulders and squeezing her ass cheeks and pressing those amazing naked breasts into Laura's back.

"Laura... you're very beautiful..." Sheena panted to her as they kissed, twisting Laura's still-damp nipples in her fingers. "I'm... so glad I got to meet you."

"I'm glad you did too," Laura panted back, her eyes rolling up briefly as Sheena again dropped her mouth to her breasts.

Behind her Sara had moved slowly down, knowing from experience how Laura loved to feel those full, beautiful breasts pressing against the flesh of her back as Sara dragged them across it. Sheena was again sucking and pinching Laura's nipples passionately, while Sara had kissed her way down to Laura's ass, which she was now nipping and sucking as she had earlier been doing to the backs of Laura's shoulders. Both of them seemed to be avoiding her pussy, which by now as throbbing and pulsing and oozing with fuck-hunger. She knew they were doing it just to get her into this state, but she felt like screaming to them: It worked! I'm ready. Fuck me, please! Do it now!

Sheena slipped lower, abandoning Laura's breasts for the rest of her body, kissing Laura's midriff and her flat, smooth belly. Laura's thighs yawned open to receive her long, svelte body as she slid down, knowing that what she craved was finally arriving. At the same time, Sara slid up to Laura's face, kissing her, looking down at her adoringly as if to let Laura know that her pleasure was the only thing that mattered at the moment, that she was deeply thrilled to be able to make love to Laura like this with Sheena's help.

She scooted even higher in order to dangle her magnificent naked breasts in Laura's face, knowing how Laura worshipped them and how sometimes she, Laura, could come while sucking them and having her pussy stimulated at the same time. And that was just what began to happen now as Sheena had reached her destination and begun skillfully and tenderly exploring the aching, blossoming folds of Laura's open pussy.

"Ahhnnnnnn!" Laura sighed, looking up into the swaying, amazingly beautiful globes of Sara's breasts dangling above her mouth.

Sara gently teased her by letting the bulging, dark, huge bulb of one delicious nipple brush Laura's lips as she groaned from the pleasure of what Sheena was beginning to do to her cunt. Laura chased it with her lips, then her tongue, but Sara giggled and kept it just out of reach.

"How badly do you want it?" she murmured to Laura, smiling, her dark eyes now pulsing with hot sex too as she got more aroused by the situation, and Laura's clear excitement.

"Ohhnn! Ungghh!" Laura groaned as Sheena's tongue lashed her exposed clit and then stabbed deep into the sopping wet furrow of her pussy. "Oh god... this is how bad I want it," she gasped, letting both hands sweep and up and capture Sara's swaying globe, then feeding Sara's bulging dark nipple into her mouth hungrily.

Sara's playful giggle turned into a hot moan in midstream. "Ohhnnmmmmm... oh Laura!"

Laura sucked the big soft bulb heatedly, but even her passion was interrupted by the flashes of sharp pleasure Sheena was arousing in her frothing pussy by her mouth, and now her fingers too.

"Unhhhh! Ungghhhh! Oh! Oh!"

Her body flexed and tensed up, and a sharp quiver shook her flesh. But she still held Sara's large wet nipple in her mouth and again began to suck and gnaw it hungrily.

"Careful..." she heard Sara say to Sheena. "Laura comes fast."

Oh, you are so right, and you know me so well, Laura thought, feeling her whole body surge with the foreknowledge of a huge climax that was only a few more seconds away. Her body was alive and straining with need, her pussy pulsing wildly from Sheena's increasingly passionate love assault, which now included her fingers probing Laura's tight, greasy sleeve, as well as her tongue working Laura's clit frantically, and her thick sensual lips sucking it quickly from time to time.

But she realized that Sara was also getting very aroused from the fierce sucking and squeezing Laura was giving her dangling breasts. No longer was she smiling and teasing Laura with them. Instead, she was panting seriously, and even gasping, and pushing her firm globes into Laura's face, biting her lower lip, whimpering a little when Laura sucked especially hard. Even though Laura was feverish with hot fuck-hunger herself, and closer and closer to a ripping climax as Sheena turned up the heat on her throbbing pussy, she still had enough control to release Sara's wet, hardening nipple from her mouth and quickly fasten on the other one, pulling Sara's other firm breast over to her lips again with both hands.

"Unnnhhh!" Sara groaned as Laura sucked the marvelous soft dark bulb deep into her mouth. "Oh god, Laura!"

But things were unraveling too fast for Laura to keep it up. Sheena clearly knew what she was doing. She knew Laura was going to come, and very soon too, and she poured on the passion to make it happen. There was no way Laura could prolong this sweet pleasure, or keep her body from hurtling into the abyss of a killing orgasm. It arrived with little further warning. She felt her body seize up, her flesh everywhere stiffening and clenching, her breath paralyzed in the depth of her lungs. Even though all this sexual trauma she could still feel Sheena's tongue stabbing into her pussy, and Sheena's phenomenal lips on her clit.

Sara's large, slippery, wet nipple slipped out of her mouth as a choked and gargled cry sought to escape, unsuccessfully. And then Laura was coming in hot furies, her body convulsing and flipping uncontrollably as both Sara and Sheena tried to hold her and help her get the most out of this excruciating orgasm. She whimpered and whinnied but could not cry out, so stunned and breathless was she made by the fierce shocks.

But then it finally released her. "Auunnggghhhhh!" she almost roared. "Unh! Unh! Auunnggghhhh! Mmnnngggeeee!"