Author: Regency
Title: Dance Me to the End of Love
Pairing: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Contains: all the inappropriate flirtation and all the smut, uniform kink, and possibly some mild exhibitionism. Whoops.
Summary: AU. Serena Campbell would rather be dead than at this wedding reception tonight. Lucky for her Major Wolfe is offering plenty of little deaths to get her through. But there are other things besides old memories that will make tonight difficult for both women.
Prompt: For mxquill on Tumblr who requested Berena as two miserable people meeting at a wedding au
Author's Note: Come flail with about Berena on Tumblr, at sententiousandbellicose. [ETA: Revised 07.08.2017]
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, settings, or stories recognizable as being from Holby City. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
Let the record show that Serena Campbell loathed the high ground. She held grudges that had outlived most marriages. She held grudges older than some recently-founded democratic republics. She loved a grudge; it kept her warm when betrayed confidence and trust might have left her cold. Embitterment was a perfectly valid pastime, she'll tell you, but she could never suffer the company of her own coldness for long. She was too warm-natured deep down and was perfectly happy to be known as such. But her reputation for warmth often left her in a bind. Take this monstrosity of a wedding she had forced herself to attend.
She could have easily refused to show her face at the ceremony and reception, given how roundly her ex-husband had mistreated her both during their marriage and their subsequent misguided attempts at reconciliation, but that would have left Serena open to accusations of pettiness, or worse, lingering feelings for the philandering reprobate she made the mistake of loving once. Serena had made herself scarce at Campbell family gatherings as soon as Elinor became old enough to attend on her own. She didn't know most of Edward's cousins by name anymore and likely wouldn't recognize them on the street if they greeted her. That didn't mean she wanted to be responsible for sending their oversize tongues wagging by her conspicuous absence. No, better to appear looking smashing, be utterly indifferent at the proceedings, and saunter out at a respectable hour on the arm of someone distressingly attractive. That was the game plan. Here I stand, dressed to kill, with only myself for company. I should have let Sian talk her way into being my plus one.
Serena had been subject to the stomach-turning exchange of custom wedding vows between Edward and his fetal bride before the eyes of a surely bewildered god. As she looked on in mute disbelief, she felt a rather spectacular kinship with every statue of Christ to have ever shed tears of blood. The nausea still hadn't entirely cleared up despite the several glasses of garish pink champagne Serena had guzzled trying to soothe it ('Red wine is just such a dull, old-fashioned drink, you know, Rena! You understand? Thanks, hon!' Serena wanted to strangle her). This wasn't a matter of Edward being some great lost love of hers; he wasn't and she was self-aware enough, woman enough, and experienced enough to place her past feelings for him where they belonged: in the bin of youthful naiveté and lust born of Shiraz-colored nostalgia.
Perhaps it was the unfairness of it that taunted her most of all. Serena had tried to be a good wife to Edward. She supported what ambitions he had, even as her own eclipsed his. She took care of Elinor even when she worked longer hours than he did. She forgave him for his drinking, for the other women, for his professional missteps that threatened to hobble her career in its budding infancy. She offered to attend marriage counseling. She offered a trial separation. Serena tried because Serena loathed failure, and he met her every effort with sighing indifference, or worse, open derision–when he was the one who proposed to begin with.
Serena had not been ecstatic to find herself pregnant at that point in her career. There were things Serena wanted to do that a baby would surely hinder. Even at that point, caught up in the thrill of Edward's charm and grand romantic gestures, she had been cognizant of the fact that this honeymoon between them couldn't last. She had sensed Edward's attentions beginning to wander and her own had very slightly begun to turn to the future, to London where she had been offered a position in the pipeline to Head of Surgery at Royal Hope Hospital. To a future that was Serena's and not Serena's plus one, and categorically not plus two). And then, there'd been a heartbeat on the monitor at her twelve-week scan and Edward had begun to make all the right noises and her mother had chivied her to hear him out. 'You'll never find a man who puts up with your moods like he does, Rena,' as her mother had put it. All of Serena's palaver about modern women not needing to get married to have a child had gone unheard, and it was possible she hadn't been as loud on the matter as she might have been once. She was going to be a mother, she had decided, and the idea of trying to do that on her own scared her as little had up to then. At least Edward would be there, she had reassured herself.
What a fool I was. Her self-deception hadn't served her well.
Despite catering to his ego and taking his name and bearing his child, nothing Serena attempted was quite enough to sate his restless need to roam. By the end divorcing him before he did her and her daughter irreparable damage was the only strategy left that allowed Serena some semblance of grace. He had hemmed and hawed, the right noises yet again, but he hadn't fought with any vigor to save their marriage or their small family on the rocks. It had all been a song and dance meant to give him the cachet of an upstanding family man setting his ambitious, high-flying wife free. See, Edward was as calculating a force as Serena, the difference being that he had no compunction about hitching his horse to her wagon for the pure hell of it, no matter how it hamstrung her. Because Serena was not for one second the goal; she was a stepping stone. How could I forget?
Seeing Edward hitch his over-the-hill wagon to his newborn colt of a wife who could offer him nothing of note in money or professional standing left Serena in the unhappy state of wondering what the point of it all was. If Liberty was Edward's picture of true love, why had he wasted Serena's time?
"I can't think about this right now," Serena said aloud lest she grow any more maudlin at this mixed-aged wedding dinner that could easily have doubled as somebody's sixth form spring formal for all the near adolescents bopping to the beat on the dance floor. She sought out another server in a Technicolor romper that Liberty swore was 'to die for, don't you think, Rena?!' Serena thought all the servers looked cold, personally. The only thing Serena was dying for was alcohol and her bed, and if a warm-bodied companion happened to join her there, all the better; she'd call it the coup of this deeply unpleasant evening.
She was just grabbing her umpteenth glass of truly sickening rosé when she spied a person of her own age whom she hadn't previously had the misfortune of being related to by marriage. And this one was a showstopper–in uniform.
Perhaps it was time for Serena to refresh her lipstick. She was feeling sociable of a sudden.
Bernie Wolfe had come to this wedding as Marcus' plus one as a peace offering to her soon-to-be ex-husband. Their divorce was getting down to the brass tacks of dividing their financial assets and things were taking a turn for the tenser. Bernie had hoped that helping him keep face with his work mates would get him to loosen the purse strings, so here she was at the wedding of a distant acquaintance, one Edward Campbell, to a noticeably younger woman perhaps ironically named Liberty. She hoped for the younger woman's sake she hadn't signed a prenup because this Edward chap seemed like a knob. This will all end in tears.
And Bernie knew from tears. She'd shed her fair share in confessing to her unhappiness in her marriage, then more still when her lover had parted ways with her, citing guilt at her hand in the marriage's dissolution. Oftentimes Bernie had taken for granted the difference in the lives she and Alex had led. Alex had no children, hadn't married the first man she found tolerable out of fear of discovery, hadn't run from the resulting family out of terror at all of the things she could not feel but should. Alex had fallen in love and wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Alex wanted a nice flat with Bernie and a dog; she wasn't fussed about children, had said more than once it didn't seem fair to have them herself when she'd go on risking her life until she couldn't. Alex Dawson yearned for a life that was simpler than reality could accommodate.
For Bernie reality included an increasingly nasty divorce that tied up her finances for months at a stretch. A bitter ex-husband who kept asking why and wouldn't, couldn't accept because I'm not happy, please let this lie as reason enough. Real life meant a baffled son who put the pieces together faster than any solicitor, than even his hyper-intelligent sister, though Charlotte had her reasons for not understanding right off. To her people were puzzles put together wrongly, forcing bonds where they didn't fit and shunning connections that screamed chemistry and compatibility and logic. It wasn't the open secret of Bernie's infidelity that caused the fragile bond between mother and daughter to break; it was the lying. A lie was tantamount to a betrayal of honor and, always proud of her mother's service, Charlotte cherished Bernie's vows of honor above all others. Her treachery, in Charlotte's words, meant that Bernie was no longer the mother she knew and Charlotte could not abide a stranger in her home.
So Bernie had packed up her clothes and found herself sleeping in Alex's welcoming bed, and then shortly thereafter, a four-star hotel. Not that that will last with our assets frozen. She picked Marcus out of the congregation and glared at the back of his head. Was it fair that he was getting in whatever barbs at her he could? Maybe it was, he was after all the wronged party, only Bernie had wanted this to be simple for that very reason. She had wanted simplicity so they all could make quick work of putting their slipshod lives back in order. Complications like this dragged out the proceedings and frayed the patchwork nerves of all concerned. The longer it went the less inclined Cameron was to be understanding. The less Charlotte was willing to tolerate her mother for the full length of an all-expenses-paid meal. The less all of this seemed worth the bother. Couldn't she have stuck out the misery a few decades more if she got to keep her kids' hard-earned love and respect? Not a day went by anymore that she didn't wonder.
Tonight, for instance. Bernie had made her offer to accompany Marcus in good faith, yet even Bernie's act of contrition was met with hostility when she decided to wear her dress uniform to the wedding in lieu of a dress. She hadn't been in the mood to go dress shopping and it was safe to say her personal grooming wasn't quite up to par after months decked neck to toe in desert camo BDUs. This way she gave the appearance of being squared away despite her life being fit for the wheelie bin. She'd thought it was a touch of genius, till the look Marcus had given her when she'd appeared at the door of their old house in uniform had chilled Bernie to the core. He truly hated the army and anything to do with her in it. The drive to the church where Edward and Liberty had wed had passed in stifling silence; the trip to the reception hall afterward, the same. By the time they reached the party Bernie had been gasping for a drink or just the presence of somebody who didn't find the organization to which she'd devoted her life to be worthy of such blatant disdain. She shuddered at the memory of it.
She'd found a fair few of the younger guests who wanted to fawn over the colorful collection of fruit salad on her chest and she humored them until the questions cut too close to the skin. It was inevitable that the curious would broach the discomfiting topics when the superficial had been exhausted. Could she shoot a gun? Quite well, yes. Had she ever seen someone die? Too often, regrettably. Had she ever killed? She'd excused herself and made once more for the open bar, bemused to find herself in possession of an empty glass and determined she wouldn't let herself be caught thus again.
She was taking a cherished drink when she felt someone brush past too intimately close for it to have been anything but deliberate. She took one more sip of this gorgeous Glenlivet the bartender had been sporting enough to find her before she ripped this lecherous idiot a new one. Any belief that her uniform might spare her the indignity of wandering hands had been sorely disproved hours ago and she was at her limit.
She slapped her hand on the bar, bracing her somewhat shaky posture to give her pest a good dressing down. She was prepared to make a scene. She would love to make one. It had been that kind of night.
"Excuse me, I don't who you think you are, but–um…Hello."
A woman–and what a woman–stood leant against the bar, resplendent in a reddish black evening gown. She was retrieving a flute of lurid champers from the bartender that clashed horribly with her nails and her lipstick and her short, chestnut hair. But then that sickly swill clashed with everything from the decor to Bernie's palate and Bernie was far from an alcoholic snob. The woman, and Bernie was doing a piss-poor job of not observing how very womanly she was in that dress, seemed to tolerate the iridescent drink perfectly well. She took a tip, her ruby red lips puckering at the rim, and sighed in evident pleasure. The sighing did magnificent things to her décolletage, Bernie couldn't help noticing, and the woman noticed her noticing, if her subsequent wink was anything to go by.
Bernie may have let out a whine. A small one, probably entirely drowned out by the racket passing for music piped out by the DJ with iTunes and a set of blown-out speakers across the room. At least she hoped it was. Let her have this one windfall tonight; she'd been good all day.
Bernie had come into her own aching for every seductive woman she saw in movies and on TV without words for what she was feeling except sick and wrong and no one can know. She'd seen her fair share of captivating beauties in far-flung locales the world over and been touched by many of them, the language of her desire universal when her tongue was clumsy and her bravery threatened to dessert her. Some she had been brave enough to touch in return, to kiss and undress when she could slip away from her comrades during leave. Always, in the end, she left them sleeping, because as when she was young she lacked the vocabulary to say she wasn't free, except then it was a husband she cared for and children she adored keeping her from keeping who she craved. Still, each of those women lived on in Bernie's memory, an amalgam of images and sensations; tastes, scents, shapes; breasts, hips, lips, and seductive glances. They were forever with her, in her lush, empty bed soon to be replaced by something much cheaper and here in this overcrowded ballroom.
She hoped after tonight this woman would number among them.
Serena had weathered pitying looks from three separate ex-in-laws and a smack on the arse from some decrepit lothario in a smoking jacket who reeked of joint cream and bourbon to reach the uniformed woman seated at the open bar.
She'd seen her slump on her stool, held erect by the sort of carriage that even defeated was never quite bowed. She was tall for most women Serena had met, taller than Liberty and even Serena herself. Her dark blonde hair was swept up into a simple high and tight bun that bared the freckled nape of her neck. The marks a girl could leave on a neck like that. With permission, naturally. Serena was confident she could talk this big macho army medic around, given half a chance.
Her RAMC uniform was a tailored and starched affair that nipped in at the waist to emphasize her athletic physique; shoulders straight under insignia-decked epaulets, scapulae formed heaving wings beneath her navy blue coat, firm arms strained the seams of her tapered sleeves as they angled forward to hold her cherished drink, an enticing bum gave her otherwise featureless skirt character. In short, the army had done bloody well by this woman, and Serena never could turn her back on a soldier.
Once the soldier set eyes on Serena, she became certain she wouldn't have a need.
"A woman in uniform. Now there's a sight for sore eyes."
Her soldier had settled one hand between her nylon-clad knees and was peering up at Serena through an unruly fringe, the one bit of her that wasn't neat as a ramrod pin.
"I could say the same for you."
Serena took the unoccupied seat in front of her, taking caring to flourish the skirt of her dress to reveal a sliver of thigh. Her soldier's glinting eyes latched onto it hungrily enough to leave teeth marks. "This certainly isn't a uniform."
"Doesn't stop me from being happy to see you." She dragged her lascivious gaze up Serena's body slow as molasses, alighting on her figure as unpredictably as the ball in a ping-pong match. Serena looked her fill in turn and suppressed a lewd shiver that emanated her from her core at the sight of her sinewy hands and sturdy wrists. She might just let this woman pin her down and have her way with her; she was surely strong enough.
"A flirtatious military woman, must be my lucky night."
After a moment of distraction, the uniformed woman took a drink. Her deep brown eyes were bright and smoldering. "Or mine."
"What's your name, soldier?"
The blonde woman's lips quirked and Serena received an indulgent look for her presumptuousness. Good, she preferred to have her way when she could get away with it, though she couldn't help wondering which of them would be giving the orders tonight.
"It's Bernie. Bernie Wolfe."
The name twigged as significant to Serena, but not enough for her to ask for clarification. Autobiographies could wait for breakfast; they'd need something to talk about, wouldn't they?
"Interesting. Bernie. Is that short for anything? Bernadette, maybe?"
Bernie crinkled her nose in an adorable moue of distaste. "Berenice but nobody calls me that. It–it doesn't suit me."
"I disagree. It suits you very well. Classic and beautiful as the woman who holds it. Serena Campbell." They exchanged a lingering handshake.
Lips pursed and ears flushing vividly pink under her hair, Bernie watched her with a cautious, wanting air. Serena would need to be patient, this one wanted more than she knew to ask for.
"That uniform suits you equally well." Serena raised a hand and after receiving a nod of permission, touched Bernie's rank insignia. "I admit my military knowledge is minimal, but my nephew is something of a military history aficionado and he likes to tell me bits of trivia about the armed forces. If I'm recalling correctly, this must mean you're a major in RAMC. Am I right?"
Bernie's lips twisted upward and she tipped her head in an approving nod. "You're correct. Well spotted."
Serena's face split in a grin. "Wonderful. I do like a ranking officer. Something about all that power and authority appeals to my rebellious side." She sipped her champagne and nearly forgot to suppress her disgust. Had failed entirely based on Bernie's nickering laugh. Serena had little choice but to laugh, too. She hadn't been prepared for her conquest to be sweet as well as dashing. "It looks good on you." I'd look good on you, she thinks, doesn't say.
Bernie nodded again. "Thank you."
She began watching Serena as she had previously, fervently yet exuding indecision. She took a gander at the other guests who had begun to pair off and slow dance around the happy couple. Serena needn't check over her shoulder to know Edward looked an aged fool; she had no further interest the proceedings save a dim hope the girl would someday leave him a penniless, broken shell of a man when he inevitably blew this new marriage to hell. Revenge is best served by the successor. Liberty could have him.
Bernie flicked her fringe out of her eyes and seemed to make up her mind about something Serena couldn't possibly guess. She hoped it wasn't to leave.
It wasn't.
She plucked delicately at Serena's fitted bodice, blunt nails just grazing the swell of her breast as if by happy accident. "I like your dress, Serena." Serena liked the way Bernie uttered her name, an intimate susurration she rolled over her tongue as if sampling its flavor.
"Thank you, I bought it especially for the occasion."
"To seduce a hapless army major?" Bernie crossed her arms and angled her body toward Serena's, seemingly intent on getting as close as good manners permitted. She smelt of some ripe dripping fruit and starched, military corners. Were Serena to lean forward just so she could nibble her fill of Bernie's marble jawline, leave herself a primrose path of love bites to Bernie's mouth in case she forgot her way. But who could forget?
"Wouldn't that be just the thing? But no, it's to make my former in-laws horribly uncomfortable and my ex-husband seethe."
"Are they here?"
"Oh, yes, all of them. Even my daughter is pottering about someplace, likely fawning over her new stepmother."
Bernie reared back. "You were married to the groom?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Serena eyed her speculatively. She'd had some unpleasantness in the past from partners not so keen on her bisexuality. Better to know now, disappointing as that would be. "Is that a problem?"
"Not if it isn't for you."
"Good girl." She tipped Bernie's head away from her to plant a kiss on the beauty mark just underneath her jaw and was rewarded with an all-consuming flush and explosive exhalation for her trouble. "I like your adaptability."
Bernie dropped a hand to her thigh and let it wander until it encountered bare skin at the slit in her dress. She is keen, Serena surmised. All signs of a flustered Bernie Wolfe bled away and Serena knew she was looking at a woman in her element, a soldier on a mission, and Serena was that mission. Bernie drew her hand down her thigh and around to the back of her knee, grasped the handhold to drag Serena toward her. Serena had to catch the edge of her seat to keep from being pulled clear off. Bernie eased into the gap between Serena's legs, acquainting her with the equally muscular thighs concealed by her unimpressive skirt. Those quadriceps just don't stop, do they?
Serena only realized she was breathing heavily when Bernie leaned down to ask her if she was faring all right in this heat–Bernie was the only heat. Serena was more than all right. A big macho army medic making herself at home between her legs, a night to remember in her future; Serena had no complaints.
"But how are you, Major? Are you equal to the task at hand?" She outlined Bernie's colors where they traversed her left breast, peering from beneath her lashes coquettishly as she accidentally stumbled on Bernie's nipple beneath her coat and Bernie hissed in warning. "Oh dear, I think my finger slipped."
Bernie's eyes bore into hers to the exclusion of any other party and Serena found she was much less concerned with entertaining the aghast than keeping this woman's attention. "Slipped?" questioned Bernie.
Her hands drifted up the sides of Serena's thighs, heavy with intent, nails scraping along the silky fabric of her dress, catching against hidden skin, cupping like a priestess bowed at an altar every curve they found. Serena's legs spread fractionally as Bernie gripped her arse in the hand nearest to the bar in a gesture that dared to be very nearly discreet. Bernie leaned down to murmur hotly into Serena's ear, "Damn, my hands must have slipped."
Serena bunched the hem of Bernie's skirt between her fingers. "Don't let me stop you. Keep slipping."
Bernie lowered her head to Serena. "I'm told I can adapt to any situation, anywhere…" She brushed her lips against Serena's. "…anytime, with anyone. I'd hate to ruin my reputation with all these…slips." She kissed Serena deep but soft, hugging her around the waist so they were pressed together from mouth to thighs. Serena sighed into her kiss, whining softly at the introduction of Bernie's tongue brushing against hers, at her teeth nipping her in censure when she tried to take control. Nobody seized control from Bernie Wolfe without her permission. "I'm always looking to improve, so if you've any suggestions, I'm all ears."
Staring at her kiss-slick lips, Serena had many, many suggestions, and a hotel booked not fifteen minutes away. She had not been joking about the game plan.
She was just about to extend Bernie an invite to her luxurious suite at the Savoy when Edward's blasted wife descended like a blonde atomic bomb to defuse the glorious tension simmering between them. "Isn't this cozy? Rena, you should have told me you liked girls, I could have set you up with my great-aunt, Beth. She's a real hottie."
Bernie laughed, a braying bark that cooled Serena's offended ire instantly. The look they exchanged was equal parts dumbfounded and exasperated.
"I'm quite invested in the 'hottie' I'm talking to at the moment, but thanks, I'll keep your great-aunt in mind." Unlikely since Bernie Wolfe would be occupying her fantasies for months to come. Serena couldn't remember the last time she'd been this wet from a single kiss.
Only Serena's firm, repeated pronouncements that she and Bernie were 'fine, thanks' got the blushing bride to go on her way. Bernie kept silent the entire time, her coal dark eyes glittering mirthfully at Serena's annoyance. She'd taken her seat when it became clear that Liberty planned to wear out her welcome; only the possessive placement of her hand on Serena's leg denoting their connection.
"Can you believe her? Great-aunt?!"
Bernie caressed the sensitive skin behind Serena's knee. "She's trying to get a rise out of you. There's no way she's more than twenty years your junior."
"It's make-up, it packs on a decade, trust me. I've seen her fresh-faced, she's thirty if she's a day over seventeen. But enough about her. Do you dance, Major Wolfe?"
Bernie pouted her lips, pensive. "With the right woman I'll do anything." She traced nonsense patterns up Serena's hamstring.
Serena was reluctantly moved by her sincerity, blinking past pulsating lust to nod toward the dance floor. "Then it's a mighty fine thing you found me." She offered Bernie her hand and wiggled her fingers. "Come on. Let's make trouble."
Their hands linked, Bernie followed Serena out on the cramped dance floor where the happy couple had made themselves scarce. She took Serena in her arms and began to sway the two of them to some ballad that struck Bernie as vaguely familiar, though pop music was far from her forte. Cameron regularly ribbed her as being the last to catch on to music that had gained and lost popularity years earlier. A side effect of her remote deployments and personal taste; once Bernie discovered something she found suitable to her she was unlikely to deviate from it for anything less than an existential crisis (see: her marriage and its subsequent implosion).
"Is this Captain & Tennille?"
Serena pulled back to check if she was kidding. "I don't know these specific singers, but you're probably at least a few decades off from those two. The song's Leonard Cohen."
"Oh!" Cohen. Bernie knew Leonard Cohen. "Of course." She was reasonably sure she knew Leonard Cohen. "That's the one who did that one song–To Ramona, was it?"
Serena levied an unimpressed right eyebrow. "That's Bob Dylan. Cohen did Hallelujah. You do know that song, don't you?"
"Everybody knows that song." Bernie was sure she'd heard that word used in at least a few songs. Possibly in church?
"Uh huh." Serena wound her arms about Bernie's neck while Bernie dropped her hands to Serena's waist. "You are very lucky you're pretty, otherwise that mix-up might be a deal breaker."
Bernie brought their lips together, gentle but firm, working her mouth over Serena's with increasing passion till her mouth came away kiss-bruised. "Just pretty?"
"Pretty, among your other remarkable qualities."
Bernie let her hands drift lower than appropriate, just skirting the shape of Serena's backside already so exquisitely outfitted in this dress. "Such as?"
"Hands," Serena sighed.
Bernie stroked her fingers up Serena's back to the dip of her dress where nothing separated her nails from tickling Serena's heated skin. "Just my hands?"
Serena arched her spine, bringing their breasts together through layers and layers of fabric in a delicious clash of hypersensitive flesh. Bernie shivered. She was going to eat Serena up in or out of this damned dress.
"You really needn't fish for affection. I intend to show you all I admire in you, very soon."
Bernie dipped to kiss Serena's neck as Serena had kissed hers. "Don't wait too long. A girl might find a better offer."
Now Bernie was on the right page. She may have been pants at Name That Tune, but bodies she could handle. As for beautiful women, practice made perfect. Serena drifted deeper into Bernie's arms and they danced cheek to rouged cheek. Bernie committed Serena to memory, all those soft curves pressed into Bernie's; her heady, mouth-watering scent swamping her senses; her tantalizing voice and her playful, unforgettable face.
"You're a capable dancer. I wasn't expecting that. I hope that extends to all manner of physical activity."
Bernie was only partly sure that was meant to be a compliment instead of a come-on. Not that she was inclined to reject either.
"I attended both an all-girls school and Sandhurst; you wouldn't believe how much dancing both require. I had to be good, so I became the best."
"You're very sure of yourself."
"Only my skills. Good on my feet, unbeatable with my hands." She gave Serena a cheeky tap on the arse that made her jump and then laugh.
"I just bet you are." She combed her long fingers through the wispy hairs at the base of Bernie's skull, twining them through her fingers in way that distracted Bernie with the gentlest, most intentional tugging. Bernie bit back a moan at the thrumming heat it stoked inside her, already simmering from Serena's flirtatious ministrations. She reminded herself firmly that good things come to those who wait. But I am getting so sick of the waiting. "I never did ask you: friend of the groom or friend of the bride?"
"Neither. My, erm, ex brought me along to keep face. I think he and the groom are acquainted."
"Ah, remind me to ignore him on the way out. Louse tend to flock together."
"Marcus isn't as bad as all that. I'm the troublemaker."
"Have I let trouble get a hold of me?"
Bernie took her on another turn about the floor. "I hope so."
Serena lay her head on Bernie's shoulder as they found themselves a nice spot near the French doors to sway gently in tandem. Bernie found she could very comfortable holding this woman. Perhaps more than was wise. The one rule that had dominated her liaisons with women thus far had been the understanding that none of it could last. Alex had been her first exception. Perhaps not the only one?
The casual intimacy of the moment was shattered by the groom's approach. He was a tall, stocky fellow whose eyes lingered on Serena's figure longer than Bernie would have liked. He wasn't remotely Bernie's cup of tea. He had height on his side, though, she could give him that. She made a considering noise and nodded toward him to warn Serena of his imminent arrival.
Serena rolled her eyes. "For crying out loud, Edward. What could you possibly want?" All seduction drained from her voice to be replaced with acrid disdain. Bernie didn't have to guess that their parting had been anything but amicable.
Edward crossed his arms, glancing between the two women over his glasses. "Elinor wants us to have a dance."
"Like hell she does. That ploy might have worked when she was twelve. What do you want?" He harrumphed, his demeanor screaming that Serena was being the soul of difficulty when it was him that had intruded. Bernie instinctively disliked him for it.
"Just wanted to meet the wife of my old friend, Marcus." He stuck out his hand. "Pleasure to have you, Bernie." They shook hands briefly and Bernie let go as quickly as was polite to return her hands to Serena's waist.
"Wife?" prompted Serena, a subtle narrowing of her eyes the only sign of what was sure to be a damning tirade. Serena didn't strike Bernie as remotely mild-tempered.
Bernie felt Serena slipping through her fingers and dug her fingers into her bodice to keep her near as she began to put distance between them. "Soon-to-be ex-wife, actually. We're in the process of divorcing. It's been difficult on both of us and we thought coming out tonight might help us reconnect as friends." That was never going to happen now, this cinched it. Edward's intervention had Marcus in a snit written all over it. I could have been more discreet, granted, but I shouldn't have to lie. She was sick of being considerate of Marcus' feelings while he trampled over hers. Whilst none of this was ideal, it didn't have to be a misery for everyone.
"Separated, not divorced."
Bernie let go at Serena's frosty tone and folded her hands in front of her. "Not yet."
Serena grunted her dissatisfaction and addressed her ex-husband, "You heard her. Now go tell himself to mind his own business and let us get back to enjoying each other's company. That trick won't work twice." She cut off Edward's next remark with a stern head shake and gave him her back.
"Sorry," uttered Bernie miserably as Edward left them alone and returned to the head table where the wedding party was seated plus a few hangers-on, Marcus among them. Bernie's was fuming under her remorse. She had so enjoyed flirting with Serena.
"Right. I could have used some warning that your husband was in attendance."
"Soon-to-be ex-husband."
"Not soon enough." Serena massaged the bridge of her nose. "I would gravitate toward the soldier with a husband playing nursemaid from the cheap seats."
"He isn't the boss of me."
Serena let that statement fall by the wayside, her only response a flare of irritation. "Will this affect your divorce in any way? I don't want to cause a problem for you."
"I couldn't be in any more trouble than I already am."
"For the sake of the good time we're having, I'm going to assume the situation is self-explanatory. You'll warn me if there's something else I need to know?"
The hairs on Bernie's arms stood up. There was a subtle change between them, a shift of something. The possibility of them was coalescing into a certainty, but only if Bernie played by Serena's rules.
"Yes. Of course I will."
"Then, you owe me another dance."
Bernie held Serena extra tight as they danced again and Serena nuzzled into the side of her neck, inordinately pleased to be held by somebody who seemed to have an inkling of her worth. She was burning sensitively tonight, she was aware, and she didn't want to scare her soldier off being territorial when all she'd dangled in front of the woman was the possibility of a night of passion. That Bernie happened to be mid-divorce was none of Serena's concern. She clearly thought Serena was worth the risk of complications and far be it for Serena to turn her away for seeing what she wanted and doing what it took to obtain it. That she herself was the ultimate goal was immaterial; Serena was a tart for ambitious, driven women, had been all her adult life. As part of the NHS she was seldom spoiled for choice. She was going to take her prize home with her tied up in a bow. Or maybe those safety handcuffs I bought online last year.
"That's Edward, then."
"And I assume the brooding shadow I don't recognize in the corner is Marcus."
"He isn't usually like that. He's quite kind and caring most of the time. I'm the one that messed things up."
"You don't need to tell me," Serena assured her again.
"I'm the reason we're getting divorced."
"I'm assuming it's not because you're bisexual."
"No. Very much a lesbian." The word tumbled awkwardly from her mouth, as if she hadn't said it much, if ever at all.
"I trust that isn't a new development."
"I've known a long time, much longer than I was prepared to say it or live with it. And then one day I couldn't hold it in, and the only thing to do was to change my life, and hurt everybody I love in the process."
"That can't have been easy."
"It's not. Don't let the movies fool you. It's the hardest thing I've ever done and I've performed a successful atriocaval shunt."
"My, that is impressive. That's only been done, I think it's thirty-one times with six survivors?"
"Thirty-two and seven with the patient making a full recovery. Touch wood."
"You are some kind of maverick." Serena couldn't help but admire the guts of undertaking such a risky maneuver, and the skill required to succeed at it. She tugged fondly at Bernie's tie. Why couldn't I have fallen in love with you when I was young?
"When properly motivated, there's not much I won't try."
It's twice she's said that now. Take the hint, go in for the kill. So Serena went in for another kiss. "Let's see if I can't light a fire under you."
Before she could get this most favored venture underway, Bernie caught sight of something troubling over Serena's shoulder with a repressed sigh. "Mr. Liberty inbound at four o'clock."
"You're kidding."
"I wish I was."
Bernie stepped back to give the former couple some room to talk, looking thoroughly put out to do so and Serena couldn't fault her. She cupped Serena's elbow and kissed her cheek before letting go. "Another drink?"
"An officer and a gentleman? How could I refuse an offer like that?"
"What's your poison? Something tells me the rosé isn't your usual." She managed to stay just on the polite side of snide.
Edward cleared his throat, which Bernie did not acknowledge. Aside from ceding the floor she didn't acknowledge him at all. Serena was going to shag Bernie Wolfe until she came screaming, and then she was going to go about wooing her until she stuck around. No one could say Serena didn't know a good woman when she saw one.
"Well-spotted. What's yours?"
Edward tapped the toes of his closed-lace brogue on the floor. Serena grit her teeth behind an indulgent smile. She wanted to know everything there was to know about Bernie. Even the parts she was ashamed of. If she kept vexing Edward like this, Serena might even overcome her deep-seated antipathy to marriage and marry her outright. Anyone who can see past the huckster charm to the snake within must be worth a chance.
"I like the oldest whiskey I can get my hands on."
Serena tenderly tweaked a gold button near Bernie's navel. "Duly noted. Make mine a red wine if you can pry it from the bartender, preferably Shiraz."
"Anything for the lady."
"I like your style, Major."
"And I yours. Back in a tick."
Bernie gone, Serena turned to her ex for another tête-à-tête. "What do you want? And can the unassuming facade, you heard me last time."
"I want to know what you're playing at."
"I'm playing at nothing. I'm playing at getting a date. Isn't that what you said I ought to do, Edward? Find someone nice and dependable who could support my ambitious nature?" She pointed to Bernie's retreating back. "Look, such a person actually exists. Married to you, I had to wonder."
"You know what I mean, Serena. Don't wreck somebody else's chance at a happy ending to take a jab at me."
"First of all, I never know what the hell you're on about since it's typically codswallop, so no I can't say I have any idea what you mean. Secondly, not everything is about you. Envision, if you can, the remote possibility that my choices could be about me."
Edward set his jaw. "I'm saying, don't use her to make a point. My friend's still hoping they can work things out."
Serena didn't bother to seek Bernie's husband out in the buzzing after-dinner crowd. She'd had her fill of other people's husbands for one evening. "I don't think I'm breaking any confidences to say the feeling isn't reciprocated. Tell him to cut the apron strings and back off. You should also take that advice while you're at it."
"I know I did badly by you–"
"Putting it mildly, Edward. I put my career on the line for you, again, and you couldn't even stay off the booze for a full quarter. You're not even a subtle drunk; it's a wonder you've lasted in medicine this long." Serena would be in her grave fuming over his continued ability to surf past disciplinary action and leave her holding the bag and the shame.
"We can't all be wunderkind surgeons and administrators."
"Can you at least be competent? Hell, I think anyone with any sense would settle for supportive and faithful, neither of which are traits you seem to possess in adequate quantities, and yet the women flock to you. Guess there's no accounting for taste."
He took a deep, steady breath that belied the growing color in his face. He could go round after round with her when they were young and he could be bothered. He had wasted so very much of her youth being treacherous and apathetic to the collateral damage of his treachery.
"I want us to be friends, for Ellie's sake."
Serena was rocked back on her heels by her former husband's unchecked nerve. "You care about Ellie's sake exactly as much as is required to piss me off. It's been that way since she was a toddler. I say no, you say yes; tale as old as time. She's a big girl now, makes her own choices. I won't have my arm twisted into making peace with someone who seems to be in constant, happy war with me. This mess is what you made of us; learn to live in it. Congratulations on the happy occasion."
Serena left Edward standing on the dance floor to meet Bernie drinks in hand. She was carrying her whisky and a beautiful glass of red. Serena could have proposed to the woman were she not already married. Nobody's perfect. She eyed Bernie's long, long legs in the snug, sheer nylons that came as part of the uniform. Some people are very close, nonetheless.
She downed half her wine in a single go. Oh thank god, I haven't ruined my taste buds with that monstrously mauve unction.
Bernie shot her a sympathetic look. "I think we should go while the getting's good. Looks like they're about to toss the bouquet. "
"Rena!" cried that damned nightmarish voice yet again.
"Here we go," she intoned to Bernie in a stage whisper.
The bride raced out of the fawning crowd on a cloud of organza and fancy color diamond embellishments. "Come on, you might just catch yourself a bouquet. Wouldn't that be adorbs? And you," she indicated Bernie, "should stick around to catch the garter. You both could get it, could be a sign!" Serena was firmly convinced that Liberty was a bubbly automaton rather than a flesh and blood human being. Nobody could be that sincerely oblivious to the resentment and discomfort emanating from her and Bernie in waves.
"Thanks but no thanks. I find I'm feeling a touch lightheaded. Bernie?" She grabbed the soldier's arm. And a fine arm it is, Serena observed once more, giving Bernie's bicep another admiring squeeze for acting the anchor on her behalf.
Bernie leapt at the chance to make a hasty exit. "The same, I'm afraid. Age catching up to me, and I've got to keep an eye on our Rena, haven't I?" Smug smile firmly in place, Bernie tugged a scowling Serena away from the woman in white before she ended up drenched in red. Whether that would be wine or blood was anyone's guess.
"You said something about running for our sanity?" Bernie prompted out of the side of her mouth as they hotfooted it in the opposite direction.
"Gladly. I really could use the fresh air." She could use a private place to kiss Bernie senseless for doing all she could to keep Serena sane tonight.
Bernie knocked back her drink in one gulp and left her tumbler on a passing drinks tray. "I go where you go."
Loyal and easy on the eyes. She certainly ticks all the right boxes. "Thought you might. Follow me." They tipped out the French doors that opened onto a courtyard consisting of a fountain of stone doves and the entrance to an eight-foot high hedge maze run through with gardenia blossoms. Serena led Bernie around the circumference of the candle-strewn fountain to the mouth of the maze.
"You want to take a stroll through the hedge maze at dusk?" Bernie examined the maze skeptically. "You won't get us lost, will you?"
"Let's just say, I know my way around a bush."
Bernie's eyebrows drew together underneath her fringe, an expression not altogether indistinguishable from that of a startled puppy. Her sputtering was met with Serena's devious snickering. "I can't believe you said that."
"I've been dying to use that for the last half-hour, but I haven't had the chance."
"You're lucky you're pretty or that 'joke' might have been a deal breaker."
"I'll take my chances." Serena snuck her arms around Bernie to steal a close-mouth kiss that persisted till Bernie relented and kissed her back. When they parted, Bernie kept her eyes closed a moment longer, a small, contented smile playing across her lips. Serena worked to memorize that expression, how Bernie glowed when treated to an ounce of affection. Serena kissed her again before it could fade away. Whispering, she asked, "You up for an adventure?"
Bernie opened her eyes and let Serena see the fire burning in them. "I'm up for you."
Serena and Bernie forged courageously into the dimly lit maze with only each other to hold on to. Serena thought she was coming out quite ahead in the deal.
"Have you been here before?" Bernie asked, ducking a low-hanging bough that snagged her bun.
"I've been invited to my share of weddings. This is a popular venue."
"Had any other solicitous majors with you, then?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
Bernie would, a little. Purely ridiculous idle jealousy, she knew, but she didn't like the idea of other soldiers wooing Serena under the starlight. Don't be ridiculous, she chastised herself. She isn't yours. But if a woman could be, she'd want that woman to be Serena.
Serena only laughed and shook her head. It wasn't really an answer and Bernie was relieved. She'd rather not give the green-eyed monster burrowed inside any more fuel to subsist on. Better not to know.
With Bernie's hand in hers Serena led them through a series of turns that addled Bernie's usually fine sense of direction. They came to a dead end where a freestanding bird bath and a stone bench were centered under the bountiful overhang of a tree. Walls enclosed them on three sides and moonlight was the only illumination but for the golden cast of candlesticks in covered sconces mounted on the walls.
Serena guided her through the foliage. "The staff love their white candles here."
"It's makes for a romantic the atmosphere." Bernie rubbed her hand on her skirt to dispel the sweat gathering on her palm.
"To a point. They're not much good for seeing and I like to look my lovers in the eyes." Serena splayed her hands across Bernie's sternum and walked her backward to the nearest leafy wall. Bernie couldn't make out Serena's expression at all.
"Should we….That is, where…?" There was only a bench on the other side of the clearing and a birdbath that would topple before supporting either of their weight.
"Problem?"
"No problem." Bernie'd had sex in much more unusual places than a garden, though a hedge maze was a new one for her. Serena was new for her.
Bernie flipped their positions to pin Serena against the wall of foliage. "Hello."
"Hi."
They came together in a rush of too many teeth and fleeting smiles. Bernie couldn't get past how lucky she was to get to kiss Serena, her seductress for the night. Her smiling lips, her dimpled chin. Serena offered up her neck to be worshiped and Bernie complied with gusto. Serena clung to her shoulders, whimpering at every kiss Bernie's planted along its length.
She raked her hands up Serena's stomach to her breasts. Serena's breath stuttered. Bernie smirked into her skin, skating the razor edges of her teeth over her collarbones to her tender breasts and back, scoring her skin with blooming welts she soothed with a lap of the tongue. She tugged Serena's snug, lined bodice out of the way to wrap her mouth around a peaked nipple and twist.
Serena let out a wordless cry and dragged her forward by the neck, thrusting her chest in Bernie's face for more. Bernie hummed and reached behind her Serena to grab her arse, slotting her knee between Serena's thighs to let her grind out her frustration. The heat of Serena's insistent arousal seeping through her skirt and nylons made Bernie flush and sweat. She was burning up in her uniform, but she didn't want to take a hand away from Serena's skin to take anything off.
She dragged Serena into a searing kiss, biting at her lips as Serena rode her leg, choked whimpers spilling out, and her eyes glassy and blown wide.
"God, Serena." She kissed her again, clutching her face with the force of her lust. Oh, what she would do to this woman given time. "What are you doing to me?"
"I think I should be the one asking that question, don't you?" Serena rasped. She darted forward to steal another kiss, towing Bernie in and yanking unceremoniously at her accouterments as she coaxed Bernie's tongue to play against hers and sneakily unzipped her skirt. Bernie blinked down at the garment pooled around her ankles and shoes. She was left in a half-slip and top.
"How did you…?"
"Not my first trip to Lesbos, I have to say." She swung Bernie back against the wall in a surprising show of strength, only pausing long enough to free Bernie's feet of her discarded skirt and pitch it toward the bench a yard off. "Wouldn't want to make a mess of you. What would the other guests say?"
"Who?" Bernie muttered, disinterested, and distracted seeking the zip closure for Serena's dress between bouts of nibbling her ear lobe and nosing the fragrant space behind it.
Serena guided her hand to the side of her silk bodice. "Just there."
Bernie stripped her out of it quickly. "What should I do with it?" It felt like water in her hands, probably expensive, she didn't want to ruin it. She wanted to see Serena in it later, knowing she'd seen her out of it, had her out of it.
Serena nodded toward the bench. "Let's see your aim."
Bernie tossed the dress carefully and it landed safely on top of her skirt.
"Nicely done. Hope you can navigate your way around me that well."
Bernie wrapped her in her arms to get her hands on all that skin just barely concealed in a sheer slip dress and knickers. She found it even harder to believe Serena hadn't dressed to seduce a hapless army medic when she was all of Bernie's fantasies poured into satin and lace, hand-delivered for Bernie to enjoy.
"Look at you." She skimmed her fingertips along the backs of Serena's thighs, tickling along the shifting route of muscles playing under her skin. Feeling a notable tightness, Bernie worked her thumbs into the pressure points of her hamstrings, eliciting a puff of relief from Serena.
"Oh, that's nice, but what did you do that for?"
"You're straining in your heels." Bernie's were positively conservative compared to Serena's atmospheric stilettos. Not that she wasn't loving the view.
"If someone weren't so tall, I might not need the extra height. But I think I can do something about that." Serena made quick work of unbuttoning her jacket and blouse without separating her nipping teeth from the hinge of Bernie's jaw. She loosened Bernie's tie and left it to hang from her upturned collar. Bernie let out a guttural moan as she worked her way to her ear and neck. Her stomach tightened in anticipation. Her breasts ached, nipples stiffening at being exposed simultaneously to Serena's touch and the open air. through her thin, utilitarian bra. She buried a hand in Serena's hair to hold her in place when she happened on a spot that had her seeing stars, her knees wobbling dangerously. "Steady on," murmured Serena, her hearty chuckle warming her throat.
"What–"
Serena held an index finger to her lips in a bid for silence. "Shh."
Bernie reached for her instinctively when she pulled away, only to get her hands, dexterous and capable, holding onto Bernie's like they were all she held dear. Surgeon's hands, Bernie reasoned. Serena was a surgeon, like her.
Serena coaxed her into the deepening shadows. The twinkle of fairy lights couldn't intrude this far; only starlight lit the corridors of the maze beyond where they crept, their footsteps kicking up zephyrs that disturbed the flower petals littering the stonework path. Swallows cooed in the distance. Crickets sang. Bernie's heart skipped a beat when Serena glanced back at her, as if to check and see if she'd gone despite the constant contact.
They passed the birdbath with its murky, reflective water. Skirted tangles of vines to find the park seat backed up to a wall where a bust of a woman's faded features sat recessed. Serena pushed her down onto the garden bench where it was nestled in the farthest reach of their hiding place, and climbed onto her lap. Bernie's hands fell to her waist.
"This all right?" asked Serena, nose to nose with Bernie. Bernie could just make out the lines near her mouth and the crinkles near her eyes that said she smiled as much as Bernie thought.
"Uh huh, anything you want."
"I just want you."
And Bernie had been wanting variations on the theme of Serena Campbell all her life.
The heady, futile thing of desire was that it could not be negotiated with or refuted. It told its own stories, needing no bards or scribe. It wrote its limericks in inflamed cheeks and pouting, anticipating mouths, heaving chests and aching breasts, dilated pupils, a trembling, clenching center. Desire wrote the book of arousal, chapter and verse. Desire, once it existed, was a bastard to kill. It would outlive cockroaches, survivalists, and the Bubonic Plague at the end of all things, desire. Bernie had lived this universal truth, stewed in unfulfilled need that seeped out beyond her control in rapt glances lingering where they oughtn't to be. That manifested in shuttered friendships and miserable, misspent nights trying to find fulfillment where it could never be, with the wrong touch.
Tonight, she was positive she had finally stumbled on the right one.
Bernie had known too much deprivation to refuse what Serena offered. One more night or many nights; Bernie would take them gladly. She didn't think there was a power left on earth that could make her refuse this woman now.
Serena drew her in by the lapels of her open coat. Bernie laced her fingers in the delicate weave of her knickers and pulled them flush hip to hip. Serena's coarse pubic hair was just tangible through the lace. Bernie raked her nails over her mound and nudged her underwear aside to find Serena swollen and wet, and the musky scent of her arousal mouthwatering. She buried one finger inside her unceremoniously, then another, just to watch Serena's eyelids flutter shut as she ground down on Bernie's hand in search of relief.
"Get these off," she bid and Serena's knickers soon joined the rest of their clothes in being forgotten. Serena's knees knocked together as she stood to comply. Blood rushed to her cheeks and lips and Bernie ordered her back astride her thighs. She sat eager for Bernie's next command. "Come here."
Serena met her halfway in a bruising kiss. Bernie squeezed her arse until Serena groaned in obvious delight at just enough rough handling. It wasn't only the uniform Serena had a taste for but the firm hand that wore it. A firm smack across each arse cheek evinced a breathless moan and even more forceful lip lock.
Bernie buried her face in Serena's neck and her fingers between Serena's thighs, and locked her securely in her arms when the intrusion left her trembling. She curled her fingers just so and drag them over that spot that rendered most of her lovers incoherent before long. She pumped her fingers in and out of Serena, each gleaming with the evidence of her arousal. Bernie stroked the pad of her thumb over Serena's clit. She gushed over Bernie's hand, lurching forward with a muffled whine that just resembled Bernie's name.
She was already so close Bernie didn't see her lasting long. She'd just have to make it good and quick.
Bernie clapped her arms around Serena's waist to pull her good and close. Showered her in kisses that glanced of cheeks and chin and shoulder. Stroked a finger through Serena's folds from front to back, then added another to double the sensation. Serena only grew wetter and more impatient. Bernie hushed her and pressed her fingers inside Serena again, this time deeper and spread wide. Serena canted her hips forward, silently demanding.
Bernie added another finger at Serena's urging, and ground the heel of her palm into Serena's clit in a slow, firm circles. Serena brought their heads together so they could lock lips as much as Serena's constant movement allowed.
Serena was a talker during sex. She encouraged and prattled and berated and praised with her entire body. She clung to the back of Bernie's neck and kissed her cheeks, grabbed possessively at Bernie's hand when she found an angle she liked, moved her when she didn't. She knew what she wanted and needed and found no shame in teaching Bernie the same.
"There, Bernie. There!"
Serena's nails scratched across her back in time to the tightening of her body around Bernie's fingers. Her name was a panted refrain, interspersed with "don't stop, god please don't stop" in a pitch that verged on inaudible.
She writhed in Bernie's lap, grabbing Bernie's arm to press her deeper where she needed her touch. Her spine curved with the restless undulating of her hips and all through Bernie watched her face in utter fixation. The tension in her brows, the tightening of her jaw, the ecstatic smile on her lips as she came closer and closer to her release. Serena completely gave herself over to it, her moans growing louder the faster Bernie drove into her, and the rougher she thumbed her clit and gripped her arse. Bernie caught a nipple between her fingers and gave it a sharp twist, spurring Serena into an orgasm so powerful it propelled her straight into Bernie's chest. She came with Bernie's name on her lips.
Serena's chest heaved. The thin straps of her slip dress slid free of her shoulders, exposing her clavicle to Bernie's gaze and exploring lips. Serena hugged her neck, sighing at every caress, while bestowing Bernie with a crown of kisses that would keep her in high spirits for days.
She cradled Bernie's face in her palm. "I had a feeling you'd be good with your hands, but I had no idea."
They passed the next few minutes exchanging languid kisses that made Bernie's blood roar and sing in Serena's key. Serena picked the bobby pins out of her hair to Bernie's grumbling consternation. She relented at Serena's fascinated response when she shook her hair down into her face. Serena brushed her fringe out of her eyes.
"I like you like this."
"I thought you preferred me all squared away."
"I want you however I can have you." She brought their lips together again and twined her fingers in Bernie's wild hair, using it to hold her where she liked her: head back, throat bared, blinking like a ground dweller faced with the sun. And there was no question Serena was the sun in this analogy.
"Have me, then."
Serena toed off her heels and lowered herself to the ground to kneel between Bernie's legs. "Permission to proceed, ma'am?" Her eyes were twinkling, the minx. Bernie's smile belied the butterflies doing somersaults in her stomach.
Serena lifted the hem of Bernie's half-slip very slowly, letting her thumbs graze the hypersensitive skin of her inner thighs. Her nylons added an extra something to her touch, the whisper of silk a kind of promise between Serena's skin and hers.
"Hold-ups? My compliments." She kissed the scant inches of skin bared above the band of each stocking. Bernie had worn them because they were all she had packed, the remnants of some long ago romantic interlude that never was. They were more than living up to their potential.
Serena nipped along her flexing quads to the delicate space where thigh met hip met sex and breathed her in deeply. Bernie breathed in controlled bursts that felt like cardiac arrest. "A girl could get used to that."
"I can think of one in particular who wouldn't mind a repeat performance."
Serena swatted the inside of her thigh just sharply enough that all it did was make Bernie squirm. "Cheeky."
Bernie thought 'gagging for it' was a more appropriate description, personally.
"While I still have my sanity, Serena."
Serena dragged her tongue from the inside of each stocking-clad knee upward to the apex of Bernie's thighs where only her sensible knickers separated her blatant arousal from Serena's notice. Her touch. Her tongue.
Serena rubbed her cheek against her nylons. "What good is sanity in a place like this?" She worked her fingertips under the band of one hold-up. "I think I'll take these off your hands." She worked the first free with the deft touch of someone accustomed to handling delicate things; there wouldn't be a single latter in either of Bernie's nylons when she was through. Serena bestowed a kiss on her ankle when the first came off; on the removal of the second, she bussed Bernie's bony knee. She resumed the journey north with yet more ardent kisses that filled Bernie's heart to bursting with deep-seated affection she couldn't place.
"Serena, please." Her voice only grew more strained. Bernie clutched the edges of the bench to keep from reaching out. Her thighs spread in invitation of their own volition. Serena hummed and the vibrations radiated all the way to Bernie's cunt.
"Hush." She hooked her fingers over the waistband of Bernie's underwear and dragged them down her legs. The went the way of her own: vanished, forgotten.
Bernie lost the ability to support her head and let it fall back to stare at the twisting branches of the trees above them. Dusk painted the green leaves black and grey and candlelight overlaid them in gold. The flashes of light dotting her vision were entirely Serena-induced. She lit Bernie up from the inside.
Without hesitating, she spread Bernie open and buried her head between her thighs. Bernie bit back a shout at the first suckle, the first swipe of her probing tongue through her folds. Serena applied herself to sex as she applied herself to seduction, with total abandon, and Bernie would reap the handsome rewards.
Serena circled her clit with the tip of her tongue, stoking the tension in her abdomen gradually, as her fingertips traced her inner thighs to keep her from falling over the edge.
"Are you teasing me, Campbell?"
Serena dragged the flat over tongue over the whole of her clit and sucked so hard Bernie's hips bucked as she shuddered all over. She then gentled her ministrations, nosed around the circumference of the sensitive nub and withdrew. "The word you're looking for is edging, and yes." Her purr hissed across Bernie's tender flesh, eliciting another unconscious moan.
Bernie was reduced to rasping, "Okay." Anything Serena wanted to do with her was in bounds. Bernie was entirely her creature.
Bernie quickly lost track of how many times Serena coaxed her to the precipice of coming only to draw her away from it. She had stopped begging, as it only made Serena lighten her touch to a taunting grazes and nuzzles. And if Bernie dared to reach down to bring herself off Serena threatened to stop altogether. Bernie no longer had any idea who was giving the orders, only knew that she'd heed any command that would get Serena to keep touching her.
Finally, when Bernie was twitching with exertion and this side of hoarse from pleading very softly, Serena kissed her, low and intimate, and took pity on a poor soldier.
Serena twisted three fingers deep inside Bernie and crooked them just the way Bernie craved. Her thighs shook. She breathed in ragged gasps. Serena dragged her upturned knuckles over that sensitive spot inside her again and again, alternating between thrusts and flicks of her tongue over Bernie's clit. She didn't have to tell Bernie to come. It was out of her control.
Bernie cupped a breast and arched her back. The muscles in her abdomen tensed. Her thighs clenched around Serena's head and hand. Her nerves tingled. Her lungs expanded, contracted. The world narrowed to just the sensation of Serena touching her, of being touched and stroked and fucked and mercilessly played like a violin string.
"Oh, god." She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice. "Oh, fuck. Fuck me."
Serena coaxed her, hummed, sped up her ministrations, dragged Bernie shaking toward the edge, and bodily push over with a final long, suck of her clit so powerful Bernie curled up over her bobbing head.
"God," she panted, falling backward. "Serena." She couldn't stop saying her name.
Serena lapped at her entrance as she fluttered around Serena's fingers, driving a smattering of abortive wails out of Bernie's mouth. "Bloody hell."
She didn't need to see Serena's smile to know it was blinding.
Serena brought her down slow, dotting her stomach and hips with a constellation of chaste kisses. Bernie raked her hands through Serena's hair, pretending they weren't trembling with the aftershocks zipping along her nerves. It would be a lie to say Bernie had never been this affected by sex with a woman, but it had never felt quite like this.
Serena kissed a trail up Bernie's abdomen, taking brief detours to dip her tongue into Bernie's navel and trace the wealth of shrapnel scars marring her chest. She left them unremarked on but for her gentleness in caressing them. She splayed her hands behind Bernie's back and rested her head on Bernie's chest where her heat still beat too fast for calm. Serena's influence.
They clung to each other on the stone bench until Bernie's back began to complain of being stretched over the unforgiving surface. She stayed silent as long as she could just to keep a hold of the other woman. In her experience, the minute she let go, that was when the fantasy ended. Eventually, the cold of the night began to intrude on their sanctuary and they both began to shiver. Serena rose first to begin the arduous process of getting dressed.
She had that boundless self-confidence in her body that made her pottering about a joy to watch. Her heavy breasts and soft stomach, her thick thighs and the tiger-striped flare of her hips. The scars peppering her shoulders like so many waning moons on her back. The Cesarean scar she wore like a badge of honor. She inhabited her skin like a soldier. Bernie had loved a few.
"See something you like?"
"I see a lot of things I like."
Smirking, Serena adjusted her slip so it reached down to her knees again, covering all manner of treasures in the process. Bernie mourned the loss and got up to begin dressing herself. Turned out, she'd been reclining on Serena's dress and Serena's hadn't been sure how to get her to move.
They began dressing in silence, their backs to each other but for the odd, sheepish glance. After all that intimacy, it seemed impossible that anything could be strange between them again. Bernie wasn't in the habit of staying for pillow talk; this was untried territory for her.
Serena patted down her short hair till she was almost presentable but for all the less than discreet marks Bernie had streaked across her skin. She didn't regret a one, but pursed her lips in a show of regret just the same. Serena followed her eyes to her cleavage and winced, then let it go with a casual shrug.
"Ah. Well. Considering what we've been up to, it's the least of what I'll need to cover up before I report to work on Monday." Serena touched Bernie's collarbones with equally unconvincing remorse. "That'll leave a bruise. Sorry." She considered Bernie's expression. "That wasn't…You're okay, right? With…all of this. It wasn't too much?" It's the first indication Bernie'd seen all night that Serena wasn't an irreverent about their hookup as she seemed.
"Once you've had a shag in the middle of an air strike, too much doesn't enter into the equation much anymore," she said when what she meant was, 'You were fine. You were fearless. You astound me.'
"An air strike? Well, I'm sure there's a fascinating story there and I'd love to hear it over coffee, but maybe the return of my knickers might be in order first." She ruffled the folds of her skirt. "It's getting a touch breezy down under, if you catch my meaning."
Bernie pursed her lips. The scant garment was trapped just under her hand entangled with her own. "Are you very attached to them?"
Serena straightened up from putting on her shoes. "Did you rip them?"
"Ah, no. I sort of wanted to keep them."
"I don't think they're your size."
"Not to wear, more of a token."
"You want my underwear as a souvenir." Serena's expression was unreadable.
Bernie colored. "Um. Yes. Is that weird?"
Serena gave it some thought. "A little sexy, actually. Find me before you leave and I'll give you more than that to take home with you." Serena kissed her into groaning submission with a more than friendly grope under her shirt for good measure. "And I'm keeping your nylons."
Serena could keep her nylons, her underwear, and her hotel key if she was feeling particularly covetous. Denying Serena wasn't in her skill set; what's more, Serena was well aware of this fact. Bernie tucked the scarlet knickers in the hidden pocket of her coat, for safekeeping.
Once mostly dressed, Bernie made a halfhearted attempted to return her hair to its former high and tight condition to no avail. Serena had sunk her hands in Bernie's unruly locks whenever she tried, swearing she preferred Bernie all disorder in uniform, by the by. All the better to cover the love bites Serena had left behind, Bernie resolved, a small grin of triumph tucked into the corner of her mouth. She would grind her thumb into marks Serena left on her skin just to feel the sting for days. The pain would help her remember the pleasure the other woman had brought her.
Serena was grousing over getting leaves out of her bodice while Bernie walked ahead to ensure the coast was clear, a task Serena had assured her was unnecessary but that habit necessitated on Bernie's end. Her liaisons had only rarely been in secure locations and nearly always clandestine.
So when she spied Marcus having a fag near the fountain, there was a part of her that had expected it. Something had to go tits up on the landing. It was just that Bernie forgot the rest of the world when it came to being with women. Experiencing intimacy she didn't usually get to have yet craved to distraction cast everything else in shadow, and only waking from it would remind her that she still wasn't free. Not yet.
Marcus took stock of her and she could guess what he would make of what he saw. Nylons gone. Coat off. Hair in disarray. Bernie's compact was in her purse in the coat check but her sense memories of Serena's teeth weren't soon to fade; she must have been a mess of post-coital bliss and passion marks. She swallowed and made to brush a strand of Serena's hair from the jacket she carried over her arm.
"I thought you would have left by now."
"I didn't know I'd been dismissed."
"I didn't think you'd want to stay since it didn't seem as though you were having much fun."
"Seems like you had enough fun for both of us."
Bernie blinked rapidly. She listened for Serena's cantering footsteps but the maze behind her was quiet. "Like I said, I assumed you'd gone home."
"And that makes it okay in your book? I'm not looking, shag who you like!"
"It's not like that. We're getting divorced, why does it matter who I take to bed?" 'It still won't be you,' she didn't say. He still wanted her and she didn't feel the same. There was no middle ground to be found in the space between.
He ground out between smoky exhales, "A little courtesy would be nice."
Bernie dipped her head. She understood and had she not met Serena tonight, she might even agree. She supposed her affair with Alex had moved the goalposts for her; in her heart, her marriage was over, it was time for whomever came next. "I'm sorry. I didn't think."
"You never do. As long as we've known each other, it's been about you. What's good for your career. What you need. I've gone along. Twenty-five years of me just going along as you drift farther and farther out of reach. It took me until tonight to realize that was by design."
He didn't entirely have the wrong of it, but he was mistaken about why she had wanted to get away from him and from their marriage bed and home. Malice never had any part of it. If anything, she had hoped that distance might keep them together. She had been sure in early days that it might induce her to love him and their life together as she should.
"None of this is about hurting you. I just want to live my life as myself. I–there's nothing else to be done."
He extinguished the stub of his cigarette on the rim of the fountain. "Did it have to be his ex-wife?"
She balked, "I didn't pick her out a catalog, if that's what you're thinking. It just worked out that she chatted me up and I was amenable. I like her." She more than liked Serena.
"You hardly know her."
"I like what I know," she snapped. "I…Look, I'm sorry if you felt humiliated. I'm sorry this is all a shambles; I never wanted any of that. What I'm not sorry for is coming out. I wish I'd done it when I was younger, I really do. But then we wouldn't have Cam and Lottie, and I can't regret them. I just can't pretend to be someone else anymore."
"Is it something I did?"
"That isn't how it works," remarked Bernie, voice matter of fact. "I've felt this way about women for as long as I can remember, I just had a lot of reasons to think I couldn't pursue it. I realized in Afghanistan that I was fooling myself and that I didn't need to do that."
"What about the family we built? Doesn't any of that count?"
"It all counts! I'm not writing it off, I'm just saying how it's going to be from now on. I'm giving you the answer you wanted. I'm a lesbian, Marcus. I'm gay and I'm relieved I get to say that out loud." She met his eyes as best she could, trying to pour all the honesty she could muster into her own so that he could see this wasn't an excuse. This was the world, this was Bernie, formerly his Bernie. Now she was just herself, on her own, making her own way. He rubbed his jaw and grimaced into the middle distance. Maybe the truth makes me unrecognizable. Her eyes stung.
"I messed up with the affair, I take the hit for that. I messed up lying to you about how I felt and buggering off to parts undisclosed to hide from the truth. l do care about you, Marcus, and I love our children. I just can't keep living a life that isn't for me. I let fear rule me for too many years; that's not what I want my children to see in me, somebody too scared to be happy."
"So you're doing it for them."
"No, I'm doing for me. This isn't me playing at altruism or anything, this is me taking my life back before it's too late."
"And what about my life? What about the life we built together?"
"It's still there, in part. The kids are still there. The memories are still there."
"What are they worth if you were never happy?"
"I was happy as I thought I deserved. Our life together wasn't a fabrication, it just wasn't what I needed."
"And that's it?" he asked, as though 'it' weren't everything. Bernie's truth, her ability to look herself in the eye. Her peace of mind. Her self-esteem. Her joy. It was everything and he could not understand that.
"I think it is," she said at last. Some bonds weren't made to be salvaged.
"I need to get out of here." He was radiating hurt whereas she was employing every emotional tool at her disposal to keep hers in.
"I understand."
He left her standing in the courtyard under the phosphorescent glow of the fairy lights. Bernie clutched her jacket in her arms. She wasn't ready to put it back on and be Major Wolfe yet. She wanted to be without the army and its expectations of rank for a minute longer.
Serena appeared behind her as Marcus vanished inside the venue to give her a bracing rub on the back. "Need a ride home?"
Bernie nodded, chin tucked into her chest.
Serena kissed the side of her neck, a gesture free of intrigue and brimming with fondness, a tiny gesture meant to buoy her spirits. "Come on, love. I'm going your way."
They linked arms and drifted back to the ballroom in time to see the newly wedded couple departing for their honeymoon amid a shower of birdseed and well wishes.
"I could do with some room service right now and bottle of good champagne…"
"You're in luck. There's a honeymoon suite at the Savoy with my name on it. Care to join me for a night cap?"
"I was thinking breakfast, but a nightcap is a start."
Serena hugged her arm. "A women after my own heart."
Bernie very much hoped so.