NB. I'm afraid that the rating change might feel a bit abrupt to some and yet…the heart wants what it wants.
"There….right there….." Myka words were barely audible. "God, don't stop."
Helena took a second to redirect herself, not that she didn't instinctively know exactly what the agent needed from her. She had no intention of stopping. The Victorian knew within seconds of touching and tasting Myka that she would never have another lover. Her lascivious boast had backfired and it was she instead who had been ruined by this creature with both hands in her hair…the one pulling less than gently. And if she wasn't exceedingly careful, the sounds coming from the agent were going to sweep her away in a river of ecstasy before she had given the woman the attention she so richly deserved. Helena slowed herself, albeit with some difficulty, focusing on what Myka was saying, waiting to hear her name again.
"God, don't stop…don't stop." The pitch of her voice rose a half step.
Myka's earthiness reminded her of things she found challenging at first but became addicted to quickly. Wagner, pipe tobacco, claret. It seemed that this would be no different. Helena had been in the habit of comparing women to wine in her previous life and this practice came back to her immediately. Most of the wine in her past had not been from Bordeaux but from the Champagne region—light and airy. Easily dismissed and forgotten. It left little after taste on the palette. Myka was different. Complex. Subtle. Something to be returned to again and again, like a favorite passage in a novel.
She was also surprisingly vocal beneath her. Helena had assumed that she would be as quiet and introspective in the throes of lovemaking as she was in her favorite easy chair in the warehouse library. Suspecting that she herself was the catalyst for change in the agent, and considering Myka's lack of experience with the fairer sex, Helena pushed the woman at the tip of her tongue to tell her what she wanted. What was the point of all the relative sexual freedom if a lover couldn't communicate what she wanted? So she encouraged the agent to respond to her verbally from the time they had fallen onto the bed together by whispering and talking near constantly as she undressed and caressed her. Fortunately for Helena, Bering was either a quick study or a study in contrasts.
Either way, she needed to hear her name now. It was imperative that Myka acknowledge who was doing this to her, who possessed her. She slowed herself to a near halt, knowing that it would elicit a reaction from the woman beneath her. And it did.
"Please, Helena."
The white hot bolts were shooting through her now and she worried that her own approaching orgasm would distract her from what she was doing to the woman with whom she had fused so seamlessly. Her arm, looped under and around the agent's right thigh, hand firmly on top of it, acted as a seismograph, picking up small tremors and alerting her to the nearness of the oncoming volcanic tide. This was the crux for the artificer. She was inventing. She was creating an experience for the woman she loved and for herself. It was what she excelled at. And she was rewarded for her efforts when Myka pulled again—longer and harder than before. The crescendo of her low moan followed, and despite the best of intentions and the fact that Myka wasn't touching her, it was happening. She felt herself rushing over the falls with the woman who arched underneath her, who was drawing her up to hold her through the most excruciatingly beautiful seconds either one had ever known. So Helena held her.
It was minutes before either could summon the power to speak.
"I don't know why I am surprised that you were able to do that to me," the sweat-slick agent smiled, pushing her hair off her forehead. "You've been looking at me with that cat-that-ate-the-canary look since Atlas House. If I had known what it meant, I might have burst through your door sooner." She looked as though she had just emerged from a sauna, her skin shining in the dim light of the motel room. A sliver of streetlamp cut across the room through the pulled curtains, lighting a strip of the worn bed and its luminous occupants. Myka was serious though, and reverent as she touched Helena's face, lightly tracing the edge of her brow and cheekbone with the tip of her index finger, all the while staring into her eyes with a kind of understanding that Helena had come to expect from her.
"If I thought that I might have gotten away with it on that very day, do you think anything could have stopped me?" Helena hovered slightly above her, millimeters away from her face again. She was breathing Myka in and memorizing her contours, taking care against the probability that her life would wrest the woman away from her like it had taken Christina.
Myka let herself be breathed in and memorized, certain that if this one woman knew her as well as someone could be known that she would always feel this way. Safe. Complete. Happy.
Alone in the room without Helena she felt much less so. Morning had come too soon and, without the few hours of sleep she normally subsisted on, her head hurt from the conundrum. Jesus.
Why had Helena left? The curt responses to Pete had been born of her quick assumption that she had been abandoned again by the Brit. She slipped the recovered undergarments back on and looked again for a note—some assurance that the woman she may or may not have fallen asleep on at 5am had not decided to reclaim her hetero-normative lifestyle. It was a losing battle perhaps. Myka considered how appealing the life of Emily Lake must seem to Helena. The Warehouse had taken so much away from her and left her so broken. The reasonable response to a threat was flight, thought the agent, ergo, Helena's response was reasonable. Now Myka felt the burden weighing her down. She had scared Helena away again. If only she had given her more time, not pressed her to say something she wasn't ready to say or leave behind the safety of the suburbs. As she pondered it, she realized her mistake: in point of fact she had not pressed Helena. Well, except for the barging into her house thing. But she never pressured her to leave behind the pseudo family she had committed the last five months to. They hadn't spoken of Nate since leaving the front steps of his home.
Myka found herself headed to the bathroom and the hideously tiled shower surround. She couldn't repress the urge to cry and the best place to do that was the shower. She needed to feel the blast of the spray rinsing the tears away so that she could focus on the future instead of the past. She needed to get moving and meet Pete at the diner anyway. From there, she would figure it out.
The lime encrusted shower head made it unpleasant going at first, but within minutes, the hot water on her skin had made her feel like she was cleaning the cobwebs from her mind as well, that she could martial what little energy she still had after her night with Helena to find her and convince her not to run from her truth anymore.
The door of the motel room clicked shut but it wasn't until she heard the sound of the heavy bag thudding to the floor that she was certain.
"Myka darling, what are you doing in there without me?" Helena was leaning in the bathroom doorway, looking every bit the dashing vision though still in her clothes from last night. Myka had drawn the curtain back, relieved at the sight of her. Suddenly aware that Helena was looking at her expectantly, Myka knew she didn't have to convince the author of anything.
Before she could reply, Helena was discarding a boot and sliding her jacket off as she spoke.
"And in answer to the questions you've yet to ask…"
The other boot hit the floor.
"First, I didn't wake you to come help me pack because you looked so like an angel this morning, I couldn't disturb your sleep," Helena arched an eyebrow as she continued, "and I know that you were exhausted."
Helena's hands were at the buttons of her shirt now.
"Second, yes, that is coffee you smell. I stopped on the way back." The wry smile returned.
The sound of the curtain being pulled back was followed by the sensation of hands on her waist and the familiar shape behind her.
"Last, darling…yes, I will ride up front with Pete to the airport."
Myka had all the answers she needed.