Sunday Snog: Making Memory

Today's the start of Victoria Blisse's Blisse Kiss with Heart event. Every single author who's offering a snog is also giving away a gift - and I'm no exception! My winner (randomly selected from all comments on this post between today and next Saturday) will receive a print copy of the ménage anthology Treble, which includes my story Wild About That Thing as well as five other fabulous tales. Don't forget to include your email address in your comment.

Victoria asked us to provide a kiss excerpt from a story dedicated to charity. Of course, as you all know, I've had a number of stories in Coming Together collections - but I thought I'd share something older. The snippet below is from my story "Making Memory", which appeared in the 2009 release I Do: An Anthology in Support of Marriage Equality, published by MLR Press. Proceeds from this wonderful collection (edited by Kris Jacen) go to the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, to fund the continuing fight for equal access to marriage for people of all orientations.

"Making Memory" features a woman-woman connection, but it's not really a lesbian story. Busy executive Nicole is on her way back from visiting her Alzheimer's-afflicted father, stricken by how far he's been diminished by the disease. A flat tire on a rural Maine road results in her spending the night at Maggie Benson's Bellweather Inn. The Inn's closed for the season, but widowed Maggie is happy for some company. As the two share their respective sorrows, they draw closer.

"Making Memory" isn't really romance, and it's not erotica either, at least not by the popular definition. But it does include this kiss.

It was a wonderful room, on the third floor, with a glorious view of the moon-silvered sea. Iron bedstead with handmade quilt, warm braided rug on the polished maple floorboards, old-fashioned chiffrobe with a full-length mirror. I hung up my suit and pulled a T shirt over my head. Then I turned out the light and sat among the moonbeams, gazing at the swelling ocean. Numb, emptied, blissfully void of pain.

I must have slept, for I was wakened by the creaking of my door hinge. I turned from the window to see Maggie standing barefoot in a pool of moonlight. Her hair floated loose around her face. A simple, sleeveless cotton nightgown hung from her shoulders. She looked young, and somewhat confused, as if she was not sure how she got there. She took another step into the room. I rose to meet her.

"I couldn't sleep," she whispered, as if there were others slumbering in the house. "I kept thinking about Jack. And about you."

Then, as if we had wanted to do this from the beginning, we kissed. Neither of us took the initiative. It was a spontaneous impulse, a reuniting of two halves into the glorious whole. A drawing together, like magnets, or lightning pulled to water.

Her lips were sweet on mine, shocking and yet strangely familiar. Her hands traveled under my shirt, seeking my breasts, which she cupped and kneaded like bread dough. Her touch ignited me, recalling hungers that I had tried hard to forget. I brushed my fingertips over her nipples, poking stiff and girlish through her gown. She sighed, a sigh so deep it seemed that her soul was escaping her body.

Entwined, we stumbled to the bed, prostrate in our mutual need.

She smelled of fresh bread, flowers and the sea. Her skin was velvety soft, warm and welcoming as clean sheets dried in the sun. I shivered when she touched me, all my senses newly wakened as if from a long sleep. She moaned when I touched her, half-animal, half-human, arching upward, offering all to me.

I will not recite the litanies of our lust, her tongue, my fingers, our breasts pressed together, hearts beating in synchrony.

She must have been as much a virgin in the art of pleasing a woman as I was. I was surprised by her knowledge and her daring. "We loved to experiment, Jack and me," she whispered. "There wasn't anything that I wouldn't let Jack do."

From Maggie, I learned again the language of the body, that I had pretended was gibberish after Michael left me. I learned again to give and receive, to be at once subject and object, to relinquish false modesty and scream with the joy of release.

Later, we lay together in the waning moonlight, my head on her shoulder, while she stroked my cropped hair back from my brow and told me more stories of her love. "Jack always said that memories are fine things, but that the making of memories was the only thing that matters." Our woman-scent hung in the air around us, and I felt again that lovely stirring in my sex.

"Well, then, my darling Maggie, shall we make some memories?"

***

Be sure to visit Victoria's for links to all the other participants in the Blisse Kiss with Heart. Every blog you visit gives you another chance to win!

And if you like my snippet - or if you believe that every person deserves the right to marry - why not pick up a copy of I Do? It features M/M and F/F stories (more of the former than the latter), many of them a good deal hotter than mine!