The Messenger (A Lesbian Romance) by K.C. Blake Read Free Book Online Page B

With the sheet wrapped around her naked body, she looked so young that I began to feel a little guilty, but then I remembered the expert way she’d handled me. She was no innocent.
    She began to stir. For a second I was worried that she’d never intended for me to sleep over. I flashed back to all the times I’d made sure to let my latest encounter know that he wasn’t welcome to stay mere minutes after our fun was over. She opened her eyes. I tried to prepare myself to not take it personally if she told me I should leave, but if I’m being honest, it was the last thing I wanted to hear. I wanted to smell her skin again. I wanted to know everything about her. If I’d been a smarter woman, I might have realized that I was falling in love with her then.  
    She wriggled one arm free from the sheet and wrapped it around me. I can’t remember the last time anyone had made such a sweet and gentle gesture toward me. Her arm felt warm and good and heavy, like a security blanket.  
    “Hi”, she mumbled.  
    I couldn’t help but smile. “Hi.”
    “I’m glad you stayed.”
    She pulled me close. Without thinking about it, I ran my fingers along her back, a surprisingly intimate thing. It felt startlingly normal. I looked around her room. It was spartan, with only a dresser, one nightstand and a lamp as her furniture. The walls were adorned with art, and a piles of books climbed up the whitewashed walls. I felt like I’d woken up in an artist’s garret. She caught me looking.  
    “What do you think of those?” She gestured toward the canvases.
    I didn’t know if I should lie. They certainly looked pretty, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.
    “I… enjoy them.”
    She laughed.
    “You’re such a bad liar.”
    I thought that was interesting; I’d made an entire hugely successful career of doing things that could be considered a lighter shade of lying. We gently stroked one another for a few more minutes. A thought suddenly occurred to me, one that I wish I could’ve tapped a delete button on.  
    “Hey… the next time you come to the office, it’s maybe best that we don’t, you know, acknowledge one another”, I said, for some unknown reason.
    She stopped stroking me and raised her head. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, it wouldn’t look right.”
    “ Wouldn’t look right?”
    I knew I had to explain myself, but truthfully, I didn’t know what I was saying.  
    “Look, you might not understand what it is that I do, but it depends a lot on appearances, not only to my clients but to my staff. If a messenger came in, looking like you do, and acted familiar with me — “
    She pulled away and looked at me with equal measures of disgust and bewilderment.  
    “What do you think I’m going to do? Show up with a bouquet of roses or something?”
    “No, but you understand, right, it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
    She rolled over and sat up, clutching the sheet around her chest as though she was suddenly embarrassed.  
    “You know, I wasn’t expecting a relationship or anything, but I didn’t think you’d be such a… such a… tourist .”
    She didn’t even have to explain it. The word “tourist” cut me deep. Somehow, I needed to make her understand that this attraction, while primal and undeniable, was not based on some kind of ignorant assumption about who she was, just based on the color of her skin or her chosen profession. She had me so scrambled inside that I was saying things the exact opposite of how I meant them. I felt like my superpower had been wrested from my hands.  
    “You can show yourself out.”
    She got up, throwing the sheets behind her, and stormed into the bathroom. I heard the shower begin running. Although I was bewildered, and spent an embarrassing amount of time sitting up in Elena’s bed wondering what had just happened, I knew better than to be around when the water shut off. I hunted around for my clothes. Somehow, my panties had ended up clear across the