Once again, my apologies for the long gaps between posting, and to those of you who feared I might be abandoning this story. I have no intention of doing that, and there is lots more adventure to come. In my defence, I have been involved in creating two major shows and have not had any time off. Also I have been doing a lot of the research and writing for one of them, which an Arts Council dude said was 'the most intelligent piece of outdoor theatre he'd ever seen' – so my creative brain has not been idle, just otherwise engaged.

Just like Katie, having a French girlfriend has been improving my language skills, but thanks once again to blueeyedfrog02 for being a great teacher. Big Love to SJ, and I thank the rest of you for your patience. Et maintentant l'histoire…

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20. The Birth Of A Fucking Universe

Katie

I woke up lying on my belly with the sun streaming over my body. As I blinked my way back to consciousness, I struggled to remember where I was. I felt a gentle weight slung across my back and I turned my head to identify its source. It was Effy, sleeping peacefully with her arm wrapped lazily around me. Oh God, Effy. Memories of the night before came flooding back over me in waves, making me shiver and sparking an instant pool of wetness between my thighs. Whatever I had expected to discover at the end of my odyssey, the reality had blown all preconceptions into smithereens. Oh God, Effy. She had made love to me so exquisitely I wanted to weep at the though of it. She had drunk her mother's champagne from my navel and told me that she loved me. After that we had talked and shagged and cuddled half the night. I couldn't stop touching her. I didn't want to let her go. I couldn't stop looking into those ridiculously blue eyes and grinning like a fuckwit. Despite the exhaustion of my journey, I had to keep kissing her over and over again.

Like I couldn't believe my luck. Like I couldn't believe she had finally let me love her. Like I was afraid it was all going to shatter like frozen blood in the harsh light of day. Like I had to prove to her that there was no coming back from this. Like I had to be spectacular, so I could fuck my way into her heart.

But it was Effy who was spectacular. Fuck, no wonder Freddie had been so in love with her. The ripple of guilt I felt about taking her from him faded quickly as flashback after flashback shuddered through my frame. As I looked at her beautifully content face next to me, there was none of the usual 'morning after' anxiety. What had happened between us was simply just too fucking beautiful not to have been for real. Even so, I was loath to disturb the moment. I lay there in perfect bliss until my body started to complain and I was forced to change position.

I slid round onto my side with my back to my fabulous lover, and attempted to get a handle on my surroundings. Effy's arm slipped round my waist and she unconsciously pulled me tighter, and I was filed with an enormous sense of well-being. I felt like I belonged here. Here in this fantastical house, where some kind of space-age heat deflection system was keeping me from roasting to death in the morning sun. I refocused my eyes to take in the jaw-droppingly breathtaking view outside the wall of windows. The view matched my mood, as I felt like I was both physically and emotionally floating on air. I felt Effy starting to stir beside me, and as I rolled around to face her, my eyes caught something scrawled across one of the huge panes of glass. Effy must have gotten up in the night, for written messily across the window in a rather fetching shade of purple lipstick were the following words.

"Je t'aime, Katie Ford."

My heart ripped itself in two as I read them. First the soaring elation at the unequivocal declaration of her love, and then the instant and devastating shattering of that euphoria as I was presented with the evidence of my own deception. I had betrayed her. Effy had risked everything for me, and all of it was based on a lie. Though in truth, I had never used anything I knew to damage her or her company, I doubted very much she would be able to see it like that when the truth came out about my identity.

I had meant to tell her, I really had. I had wanted her to make her final decision with a full knowledge of all the facts. But then she had started kissing me and my body had demanded the lion's share of the attention, leaving my poor little conscience a solitary protester shouting into the wind as the corporate bulldozers of lust ran riot over it's territory.

As my eyes grazed over my alias, my muscles seized, and my body slipped into a kind of paralysis as a raging fear began to consume my consciousness. Should I confess? It was only what she deserved, but how could I be sure how she would react? This was just too fucking good. Having tasted her, the thought of a life without her seemed completely impossible. Could I really take the risk of losing her now, when it was all so new and so fragile? Maybe I should wait a little while, and allow this love to settle before introducing such a shadow. I wanted to be good, to be the moral person I had always prided myself on being. But the fear of losing this extraordinary woman just as I had found her, was a fierce and powerful beast. One that eventually proved stronger than me. In the end, it was Effy who forced my hand. She began to kiss my shoulder, and the sweet sensual sensation was enough to ease my muscles from their paralysis. By the time her kisses reached my neck, my pussy was already soaking for her. By the time she tasted my lips, all thoughts of moral fortitude had evaporated.

I surrendered to her mind, body and soul. If I couldn't explain to her why my mission had become meaningless the moment I had realised that our 'enemy' was her, then perhaps I could show her why. Show her how much she mattered to me. Show her that our love transcended such trivial considerations. Show her that the truth could not be told in words, but that she already truly knew me through her touch.

When I felt her tongue trace across my lips, I immediately opened myself to her, and felt a fierce aching in my cunt as soon as she accepted my invitation and pushed herself into my mouth. My thighs clamped around her leg as I shuddered underneath her. Effy responded to my wantonness by becoming more aggressive, and I swore breathlessly into her neck as her hands began a rough possession of my tits. My legs fell apart for her, and I arched up towards her. She could do what the fuck she liked with me. Oh God, I had missed this glorious sense of abandon. Although it was a blasphemy, I found my thoughts turning to Anna. She was the last, and only other person to make me feel like this, and also the reason I had become too guarded to ever feel it since.

Until now. Until Effy. With her hand hovering over my cunt and her mouth sucking hard upon my tit, I was begging her to fuck me. I wanted to give her every little ounce of me. I wanted her to know that what we had found was way more important than the lie. I wanted her to own me, as if by letting her take me completely she could cleanse me of my sins.

"Oh please, Effy. God, Effy," I moaned. "I need you inside me."

Despite the raging storm of my desire, I took the time to watch her as she entered me, and it nearly killed me. I had never seen her look so happy as when my wetness enclosed her fingers and she began sliding in and out of me. It was humbling, and yet at the same time a massive fucking turn on and my hips thrashed away to their own little dance as I tried to capture more of her within my walls.

So it's just friction, right? The motion of flesh upon flesh. The stimulation of nerve endings designed to send pleasure signals to the brain. So it's just fucking, right? I've done it a thousand times before. Everybody does it. Some people make babies with it. Other people just make orgasms. Some people have to fake them. Some people destroy their lives with it. Other times it's only there to kill the boredom. It's nothing big or fancy or special. It's just a thing we do. C'est juste un truc qu'on fait.

The hell it is. Not now. Not with her. Effy was losing herself in me. I could feel it in every one of her fervent thrusts. I clung onto her back as she forced herself deeper and harder into me. I couldn't control the noises coming out of me, but if I'd had an interpreter, they would have been revealed to be finely crafted love songs in her honour, expressing my complete and total dedication to the cause. They would have been prayers to her magnificence, offering myself as a willing human sacrifice at her hands.

Our eyes locked, and a connection of lightning like energy fizzed between us. This frantic primal clashing of bodies became elevated to a spiritual experience. This could only ever be right. Whatever sins we had committed on our way to this moment simply had to be forgiven if this was to be their outcome. Whatever sins we had yet to confess were surely too insignificant to deflect us from our path. My father's stupid schemes meant nothing. I would have found my way to her anyway. I needed to find her. I needed to have her fuck me so completely, I could finally find my way to love.

My legs were trembling and my heart was pounding as Effy's keen blue eyes watched my reaction to every thrust. I was a long way past reason as my body flipped and bucked and strained beneath her. The sensations she was stirring in me became my whole life. I only had one purpose and that was to come for her, to let her fuck me into utter screaming abandon. I felt a glorious tension begin to spiral outwards from my cunt. That indescribable feeling when you know you're going to come. When even though the violence of your bodies might be rattling the foundations, you feel a sudden and yet intense momentary calm, before everything erupts and shakes you to your core.

Effy caught me in that moment, and it was like looking into the eyes of a wild animal. Not in an 'I am fierce and I'm about to devour you' kind of a way (though she was about to devour me seconds later) but in the sense of two completely different species meeting and somehow finding a way to understand each other.

I remember one time I had been out at some fashion party or another and I'd come home so pissed I actually got the taxi to drop me off at the wrong hotel. I couldn't be arsed trying to find another cab, and my hotel was only down the road, so I decided to walk instead. As I staggered down the street dreaming of being able to kick off the heels I'd been wearing for hours, I was distracted by a sudden noise off to my left. I adopted my fighting stance and peered down the alleyway, unable at first to determine the cause. And that's when I saw him, a beautiful urban fox. At first we were both as startled as each other, but then as we sussed each other out, we both began to relax until we were simply staring at each other not in fear but in fascination. I suddenly felt very privileged that this beautiful, unknowable creature of the night had elected to share this moment with me. Eventually he grew bored, and with one last twitch of his ears, he was off again about his business, but the energy of the encounter followed me round for days.

And that's how it felt with Effy that morning. She too was wild, unknowable and beautiful, but as her eyes penetrated me every bit as deeply as her fingers, I felt like she was allowing me access to places no one else had ever been. That ours was a unique and precious alliance that no one else would ever fully understand. As she hurled my body into a concussively powerful orgasm, it felt like every part of me exploded with it. Effy had taken what I had offered her, and now my shattered pieces were hers to gather as she wished.

"Je t'aime," she informed me, as she placed tens of perfect tiny kisses across my shattered frame.

"Je t'aime aussi," I replied, because out of all of this, that was the fundamental truth. I loved her, with all of my explosive heart.

Was it such a crime? The desire not to spoil the beauty of this perfect moment? It wasn't like I wasn't going to tell her. I would tell her, but I couldn't bear to lose her. I just needed a few days to let us grow a little stronger in our love. Yeah, I'll tell her. I'll tell her in a bit, and it will be OK, because she loves me.

We made it as far as lunchtime having barely uttered a word to each other, but in those few hours so much had been said. Our lips and teeth and tongues had carried all the eloquence we needed. We had communicated flesh to flesh, and a wide and varied conversation had travelled through our pores. Every touch had only confirmed what my body had told me during out first night together. That Effy and I belonged together. That this was the way that things were meant to be, and all our noble attempts at denial had been destined to crumble in the wind.

In some ridiculous way, it felt like I had always been her lover. The way we moved together and the way we settled into each others arms already felt familiar and safe. My brain fast-tracked me several months into the future, and was already picturing scenarios of us living and working together. It was already projecting a future filled with fun, success and happiness stretching onwards for years.

Crazy fucking stalker or what, right?

Most of that day and the next were spent in bed, with Anthea keeping us fed and watered. I can't imagine my mother being so supportive of an international shagathon. I think she likes to pretend the sexual parts of our relationships don't exist, which is a spectacular feat of denial on her part where Emily is concerned. I'm surprised that poor blonde can still manage a catwalk. Anthea's grin, however, seemed to grow wider every time she visited us laden with yet more delicious food and drink. God knows, we needed the energy. Effy was insatiable, and around her I felt insatiable too. If it was even possible I felt like I was falling more in love with her with every kiss. She seemed to become more beautiful with every fabulous fuck, as if she was releasing years of burden and becoming someone new, becoming the woman she was meant to be. I knew I was going to have to make an effort not to try to domesticate her. Not to try to change the very qualities I had fallen for. I had to try to love her, but still give her the freedom she so obviously needed.

She was lying collapsed on my chest after another brutally gorgeous shag, when I attempted to broach the subject of the outside world.

"Do you have any plans today, Babes?" I asked her. "I can't keep you all to myself forever."

"Actually, I do," she said, lifting her head lazily from her favourite place between my breasts.

"Enlighten me," I said, as she stared smirking into my eyes.

She leant down and whispered in my ear.

"I plan to fuck you in the Jacuzzi," she said.

If it is possible to die from too much lust, then I swear this girl is going to kill me.

"That sounds like an excellent plan," I croaked.

Effy slid off me, and grabbed us some towels and a couple of robes before leading me to the top of one of the slides that spiralled round the lobby.

"You seriously expect me to go down that thing?" I said, raising an eyebrow at her.

"It's fun," she shrugged. "I'm offering you something beautiful."

Yes you are, you wonderful fucking creature, you're offering me a second chance at life. Without further hesitation, I stepped onto the top of the slide and abandoned myself to gravity. She was right. It was fun. I may have shrieked like a girl on my way down, but when I reached the bottom, I just wanted to run back up the stairs and do it again. Effy came sliding down just after me, looking exceptionally pleased with the massive grin on my face.

"Just wait till you try the one from the top floor," she laughed. "That one rocks."

"Can we do it?" I asked her, consumed by my new-found enthusiasm for play.

"Jacuzzi sex first, slides later," she declared, and who was I to argue with her logic?

The jacuzzi was situated on a corner of the ground floor terrace, and whilst Effy busied herself switching it on and messing with the settings, I casually wandered over to the edge. There were no railings or anything so what I was expecting was a step down to another level, but when I peered over I saw nothing but the steep rocks of the gorge plummeting away below me, and my head began to swim.

"Jesus H Fucking What The Fuck Christ!" I yelled as I leapt backwards from the edge.

"What's up?" asked Effy casually.

"Someone would fucking kill themselves if they fell off there!" I exclaimed.

"They would," she smirked. "Which is why we try not to fall off there."

"Shouldn't there be like a safety rail or something?" I asked, now having backed myself right back up against the doors.

"Sans risque la vie n'est rien," was her reply.

"Isn't that like against the law or something?" I insisted.

"Anthea doesn't care much for the law," laughed Effy. "In her public work, she is meticulous about safety because she has to be, but in her own private space she believes she should have the right to do whatever she likes. I guess it's in our blood. Tony works in earthquake zones, and I work with dangerous explosives. We're not exactly risk-averse, are we?"

Sometimes it's easy to forget exactly how dangerous some of the bigger pyros are. Like anything, it's what you know I suppose. Once your mind has calculated those risks for you, you don't have to keep recalculating them. I'm quite happy standing in a shell site in the middle of enough gunpowder to blow my fucking leg off, but that unprotected drop was still freaking me out.

"There is a safety barrier," said Effy, " but we only ever put it up if we're having a party or we've got guests."

"Am I not a guest?" I said indignantly.

"No," replied Effy, walking right over to the very edge.

She turned and held out her hand to me.

"You're family," she smiled.

I started to walk towards her. What else could I do? She was offering me something beautiful. I had to force myself to go the last metre or so, but finally I ended up in her arms.

"I've got you," she said softly. "We're not going to fall."

She leaned in to kiss me.

"I can't," I said nervously. "I'm scared."

"Just close your eyes, it will be fine," she promised me.

"I can't close my eyes," I protested. "What if we fall?"

"We're not going to lurch off sideways just because we close our eyes," smiled Effy. Our other senses will protect us."

She leaned in again, and this time I let her take my lips. The sensation was so gorgeous, that I let my eyes drift closed instinctively. Wrapped in Effy's arms, with her tongue playing gently against mine, I began to let go of the fear and let the thrill of it wash over me instead. We carried on kissing for several minutes, and no unexpected harm befell us. I felt a weight being lifted from my shoulders. I felt free. I opened my eyes and pulled away from her. Taking her hand I turned us till we were standing with our toes right up against the edge. I stared happily down into the splendid abyss below. She was right. I had taken some of the biggest risks of my life for Effy, and because of her my heart was bursting with life.

"Cette vie, c'est quelque chose, non?" I said.

"Je pense que je commence enfin à vivre," she replied.

We looked at each other, and a deep dark desire flashed between our eyes. In a moment of pure complicité, we both retreated from the edge, flinging off our robes and jumping into the jacuzzi. For a while we did nothing more than lark about, splashing each other and trying to dunk each other beneath the foaming bubbles, but it wasn't long before the sight of a naked, wet Effy provoked its natural reactions, and I grabbed her arm and pulled her down until she was straddling me as I sat on the underwater seats round the edge.

"Merde, je t'aime comme une folle," she exclaimed with her arms wrapped round my neck, and her wet hair falling around her face. It was too much for me, I grabbed her bum and pulled her hard against me, delighting in the gasp it caused her to emit. Our mouths flew together like crashing stars and we consumed each other with a cosmological fervour. The bubbles buffeted my back as I grabbed handfuls of that gorgeous hair and flung myself without regret in to deeper and deeper kisses. I could feel Effy moving above me, her thighs clenching around my own as she ground down on me. After repressing my desire for her for so long, I was not very good at holding back. I slid one strong arm around her back, and with the other I began roughly grasping at her breasts. Fuck me, they felt good in my hands. Effy gasped and moaned into my mouth as I touched her, and she was turning me into a raging beast. She was showering me with open-mouthed kisses as both my hands travelled down towards her thighs. I began to massage her muscles, which were taut with effort from thrusting against me. I had relay teams of shivers running riot on my spine, both from the sensation of the bubbles being fired into my back, and from the way Effy was making me feel. This was a fabulously sloppy, reckless kind of lovemaking. Neither of us were trying to impress the other with our skills. We were too caught up in the moment, too caught up in each other, too caught up in the rush to worry about anything like that. This was where the boundaries between lust and love disintegrated. This was love without the safety barrier, and it was fucking epic.

I used my hands to push her legs apart, and then entered her swiftly afterwards. She became even more deliciously careless, thrusting down onto my fingers and releasing a cornucopia of 'putain' themed curses as the friction sent her higher. It was pretty safe to say that Effy loved sex. Her body made its own demands and she followed it willingly. It was one of the reasons that made her so fucking addictive. Watching the pleasure she drew from my actions was a release in itself. She was riding my hand with complete abandon, her head thrown back and her back arched hard against me. Oh God she was so fucking beautiful. In amongst the heavy breathing and the curses, I thought I heard something that sounded like "I'm going to play," but I wasn't sure. Fuck, I'm going to have to learn more French. But I didn't have much time to worry about it, as her blue eyes grabbed mine like they were tractor beams and I knew she was going to come.

I kept pushing into her as I felt her begin to climax. Oh fuck, the sounds she was making were ripping me apart. She was out of control. She was magnificent as she orgasmed brilliantly above me. If I didn't know better, I'd swear she was fucking shining, she was so radiant. This Free Effy was the most beautiful phenomenon I had ever witnessed. I felt like I was present at the birth of a fucking universe or something. The power exploding out of her was annihilatingly brilliant, as blindingly beautiful as an atom bomb. As she took my humble gift of love and turned it into something majestic, she was the only thing that I could see.

I certainly didn't notice the figure that had appeared behind us on the balcony. The figure that crept up on us and spied on our moment of glory. It was Effy who noticed him first, falling down from her high whilst I was still blinded by her.

"Qu'est que tu fais ici?" she said dreamily, and I realised she wasn't talking to me.

I span around to see my lover's ex-boyfriend staring helplessly at us.

"Fuck!" I exclaimed, as I sank down under the water to hide my body from his view, completely at a loss as to how to handle this situation. I felt a momentary flash of empathy. It can't have been easy for him to see what he'd just seen. I remembered the pain of discovering Anna with Anton, and I was shaken by tremors of powerful guilt.

Effy, however seemed to have no such problems, and she climbed out of the tub to face him, naked and completely unashamed.

"Pauvre Freddie, toujours trois pas derrière," a new voice joined the encounter.

It was Anthea, leaning smirking against the doorway. I was sure the crafty old fox had led Freddie deliberately to his doom. Her words shocked him out of his stupor and he and Effy began arguing where they stood. Despite being naked, Effy was far from vulnerable, holding her own against anything he threw at her. What the fuck was I to do? Just sit here hiding in a sodding Jacuzzi whilst they dissected their relationship? There was only one thing for it. I took a deep breath and hauled myself out of the water. I watched Freddie's eyes rake involuntarily over my body, he was only human after all, but I bluffed it out and marched right up to the pair of them. I pulled Effy towards me and gave her a brief but loving kiss.

"I know you're capable of fighting your own battles, Babes, so I'm not going to interfere," I said through a veneer of calm. "But Freddie, if you hurt her I will personally throw you off this fucking cliff."

I heard Anthea laughing as I went to rescue my robe and my modesty.

"Celle-ci," she said. "Je l'aime bien. Garde celle-ci."

I had to physically drag her away from the argument, which she appeared to be viewing as some kind of spectator sport. As soon as I got her into the kitchen, she went straight to the fridge and cracked us open a bottle of Blanquette de Limoux. Effy and Freddie had started yelling at each other and their voices drifted across the lobby. Anthea started laughing again at something Effy had said, that I hadn't quite caught the meaning of.

"He hates that," Anthea smirked, once she had settled down. "When she gets really pissed off with him, she starts arguing in French, and he doesn't have a clue what she's saying."

"Well he should learn," I said without thinking.

I had never seen Effy and Freddie argue before, and I was still taking in the information that this was not a new occurrence.

"Bit late for that I think," grinned Anthea.

"Well, I shall have to make the effort to study hard for when she yells at me," I replied.

"Now that's something I'd love to see," she said with an evil grin. "Not that I want you girls to fight, but you have to admit it would be a hell of a match."

"You don't even know me," I said.

"I know what you can do," replied Anthea.

"What can I do?"

"She was different when she came back to me this time," replied Anthea, suddenly serious. "It was obvious that something was wrong, but it was also clear that something was very, very right. And it would appear that something is you. Effy's always been strong enough to illuminate the darkness she carries round with her, I just don't think she's ever realised it. But I think you can light her fire. I think you can make her shine."

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La Francais…

1. C'est juste un truc qu'on fait. – It's just a thing that we do.

2. "Sans risque la vie n'est rien," – Without risk, life is nothing.

3. "Cette vie, c'est quelque chose, non?" – This life, it's something, right?

4. "Je pense que je commence enfin à vivre," – I think that I am finally beginning to live.

5. "Merde, je t'aime comme une folle," – Shit, I love you like a madwoman.

6. "Qu'est que tu fais ici?" – what are you doing here?

7. "Pauvre Freddie, toujours trois pas derrière," – Poor Freddie, always three steps behind

8. "Celle-ci," she said. "Je l'aime bien. Garde celle-ci." – "This one," she said. "I like her. Keep this one."