"I can't believe it," he said. "Two heroines from my books, together for the first time."
Nora's sharp, luminous green eyes traveled up and down Margo's toned body. She was used to looking for little things that made a world of difference--the shape of a potsherd, the curve of a cuneiform. So she didn't miss the way Margo's pupils dilated when she looked at her, the way the top button of her shirt was casually undone to reveal the creamy tops of her ample breasts, or the blush that crept from her cheeks down to her neck.
She moved closer to Margo, putting her slender hand on the other woman's thigh. "I really appreciate you going to all this trouble for me," she breathed. "You didn't have to."
Margo blushed even brighter. "It wasn't just your brains and confidence that intimidated me," she admitted. "You're so gorgeous..."
Nora smiled, and brought her lips to Margo's. Their tongues
"You've got to be kidding," Nora said, from behind Bill's shoulder. "Tell me you're not putting your weird girl-on-girl fantasies about your wife into your book. Tell me millions of people are not going to read this scene."
"Think of it as a compliment," Bill suggested. "I just want to tell the world how amazingly sexy--"
Nora snorted. "Sure," she said. "Like that scene in Thunderhead with me and Sloane. Naked. In the stream. That was just a compliment too, right?"
Bill sighed. "I got it wrong, didn't I? See, this is why you have to tell me things."
"You got it wrong," Nora muttered.
For one thing, it hadn't been her who'd kissed Margo. It had been iMargo, grown bold on sisterhood and wine, who'd pressed an awkward kiss to Nora's lips. And it had been Nora who clung to her for just a moment, savoring the unexpected softness of Margo's mouth, the heat of her body, before pushing her gently away.
It broke her heart to see how Margo curled up into herself, drawing back from Nora as though even the proximity would be unwelcome. "Sorry," she said. "Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. It's like at that meeting--sometimes I don't think before I--"
Nora took her hand. "It's okay," she said. "It's just...we can't do this. I mean, there's Bill..."
"Do you think he'd care?" Margo asked. "I mean...really?"
"It doesn't matter if he would," Nora said. "He doesn't uknow/u."/i
"Okay," Bill said patiently. "So what idid/i I get wrong?"
She stared at Bill's laptop, and thought of Bill composing the scene with a sly grin on his face, moving around bad caricatures of her and Margo like toy dolls, all creamy breasts and slow blushes and deliberate seduction. She thought of coming home late, disheveled, unashamed, and Bill waiting for her with a fresh sex scene on his laptop that no reality would ever match up to. She thought of Bill watching them, every movement made a thousand times more awkward, more unreal, by his eyes.
"Nothing like that happened," she said. "And cuneiform doesn't have curves."