The knock at the door surprises you. Gail's not supposed to be here for another two hours—you've just gotten home from work and haven't even started getting ready for your date tonight. Dinner at some upscale restaurant across town, and then dancing. Quiet conversation, gentle teasing, and then movement, something to ease the almost painful tension that's grown between the two of you over the past few weeks. The chance to fit your bodies together, to move together to the thrum of the heavy bass of the DJ's track, without crossing that line that the two of you have drawn.

A line made up of reminders whispered by the voice at the back of your head. All "she's never" and "not ready" and "first time." The promises you made yourself to go slow, to take care of her, to listen and most important of them all, not to hurt her. All the reasons that every time you find yourself on the line, every time you find your fingers itching with the need to touch, to feel her skin, her warm, soft, delicate flesh beneath your own, you pull back. You take a breath and a moment and you put some distance between her body and your own, her mouth—her perfect lips—and yours and you try to remember yourself amid the heat and the desire and the perfect, perfect scent of her.

God, you want to know more of her.

You want to know all of her.

You want to know every curve and line of her. You want to memorize every mark and every freckle. You want to know the way her breath catches when you discover her most sensitive of secret, hidden places. Behind her knee, perhaps, or along the lines of her rib cage.

You want to make her blood sing, the same as she does for your heart.

But you can't.

Not yet.

She's not ready.

Oh, she feels it, the heat, the wanting. You know that.

It's apparent in the way her breath quickens as you kiss her, the way her kisses become more and more desperate, teeth and tongue and heat. You know it from the way her hands grow bolder, the way they travel up and down your body, grasping at your hips, at the muscles in your ass. You know from the way she clings to you as you lay on the couch, lazily kissing and slowly, slowly feeding the fire that burns between you, the way she arches into you, the way her hips roll and buck against your own.

She feels it, but she's not ready. She's not ready, and the decision, the crossing of that line in the sand, it has to be hers.

And hers alone.

You open the door, and there she is, Gail.

Hours early and definitely not dressed for dinner and dancing. No, there's no slinky dress tonight. No skin-tight sequined number or heels that do things to her calves that should be goddamned illegal.

The police officer is just standing there in a pair of black yoga pants and an oversized grey tunic under her heavy winter coat. Her hair is pulled up into a loose ponytail, and her face is clean and free of any make-up. She looks so young, and so innocent. And you feel your heart trip a little further down into the infinite ocean that is loving this woman.

"Hey," she says as you stand and stare at her, at the way the ends of her hair curl up where little wisps have escaped from the ponytail. She's showered recently, her hair always does that, little unruly curls, when she showers and lets it dry naturally. She started to get ready for your date tonight, you can tell. But then for some reason, she stopped. Stopped and drove over to you.

And now she's standing here, on your step, before you.

"Hey," she says again, and the tremble in her voice brings you back into the moment, settles you back into the what-is instead of the what-might-be.

"Hey," you answer back, and move so she can come in out of the cold February air, "what's up? Our reservations aren't until eight."

But instead of answering, she kisses you. Tangles her fingers in the hair at the nape of your neck and walks you backward into your home, mouth working devastatingly against your own as you go. And then suddenly you're pressed up against the kitchen island while her tongue darts and twists in your mouth and one hand settles against your hip, tracing the curve of your body there, intimately. Possessively. Leaving no doubt as to the thoughts racing through her mind as she destroys you.

"Gail, Gail," you gasp, trying to catch the breath she stole right out of you, and bring your hands up to her shoulders, "honey, stop. Hold on."

And after a moment, after another kiss, and another, and one more, she does. She stops. Steps back and gives you a moment to breathe, to draw in a shuddering breath that does nothing to ease the burning in your lungs. She's far enough away that your bodies are no longer touching, but every point where you could feel her warmth, her strength, against you feels the loss. Feels the ache and the itch of wanting her back, pressed up tightly against you again.

But for both your sakes, you need a moment. You need to collect your thoughts and catch your breath and get your body under control so that you can find the strength to make sure this doesn't go too far.

"Gail," you whisper, drinking in the sight of her. Hair mussed where you ran your fingers through and scratched at the base of her neck, chunks falling out of her ponytail to cascade gently down to her shoulders. And there's the slightest swelling at her bottom lip from where you may have gotten a little too hasty and a little too excited, and let your teeth catch against the delicate flesh there.

She's beautiful. Cheeks flushed and breath fast, the slightest tremble in her fingers as she struggles not to touch you. The way she bites at the corner of her lip, shifts her weight ever so slightly from one foot to the other.

"Gail," you start, "what—"

But she jumps over your words.

"I'm done waiting," she says, this blonde bombshell who's fallen into your life and brightened every corner, "I'm done waiting and wanting, I'm done pretending it's enough to kiss you and touch you and then go home, or sleep in the guestroom or on the couch."

The breath she takes is slow, and deep.

"I'm done, Holly," she states firmly, softly, "I'm done. I want you. I want you and I'm ready for everything that means."

There's a fierceness to her that you've never seen before, a steel to her spine that lifts her words, holds them heavy, but sturdy in the air before you. A gift, maybe, or a promise.

Her jaw is fixed, like someone used to taking blows, and her eyes are steady. And you know who hurt her in the past, you know everyone who hurt her, and for a minute you just want to go and knock them down. That this beautiful woman could be steeling herself for your rejection, that anyone could not want her.

But that's for another moment.

That's for another time.

There are lines here, too, to walk, and you need to know that she's doing this for herself, for her. Not for you, not because she thinks she has to or because she thinks you need her to.

But because she wants to.

Because she's ready to.

"Honey," you say, and reach out to brush a wisp of hair from her eyes, "are you sure? We don't have to—we can just go out to dinner like we planned—"

But you don't get to finish your statement.

Her lips are upon your own, swallowing your words and the last, last, last threads of your self-preservation.

"Holly," she says in-between nips at your mouth, "I want you."

Before you realize what she's doing, she's kicked off her boots into the corner of the kitchen, her socks following immediately after.

"I want you. I don't want to go to dinner and try not to pull you into the bathroom with me, or go to the club and feel you up against me in a crowd of a hundred people."

Her voice is steady, unwavering, as she shimmies out of her yoga pants. They end up somewhere in the hall, and for one ridiculous second you wonder where they landed but then you can't bring yourself to care any more because the most gorgeous woman in the world—your girlfriend—is standing before you without any pants.

Fuck the pants, the little voice inside your head tells you.

"I want to feel your skin against mine," Gail says as she inches a hand up, up, up and under your half-open button-down shirt and scratches gently at your belly button, "with nothing between us. I want to feel you on top of me, and under me. Fuck, Holly," she says, punctuating every syllable of your name with a step closer to you, until she's right before you again, her body just a breath away from your own, "I want to sleep with you, have sex with you. I want to fuck you, and I want you to fuck me."

Your mouth goes dry, a desert at high noon, as she ghosts the words over the skin of your neck before latching on, attaching her lips to that spot just above the line of your collarbone. You know she can feel the shudder that the feel of her lips and tongue on your skin causes, but you could not care less.

You've wanted this woman since the moment you saw her, all attitude in her dark uniform, and resigned yourself to a permanent empty ache. She was everything you dreamed of. Everything you couldn't have.

You've never been happier to be proven wrong.

You've made it as far as the couch.

"Trust me," she says, and you look into her eyes, so clear and blue and deep. Like oceans you are more than willing to drown in. "Trust me," she says, her voice soft, but unyielding, velvet and steel.

And you do.

She steps into you, kisses your lips gently at first, cautiously. One last chance for you to hold back, to slow her down, to starve the fire she was building inside of you. Inside of both of you.

But you couldn't.

You can't.

She backs you into the island and suddenly her hands and mouth are everywhere. Fingers in your hair, on your neck, up under your shirt to knead at the heavy flesh of your breast. And her mouth, burning a trail over your face, from your lips to your cheek, the line of your jaw, that place just under your ear where her tongue brushed as it curls and licks and flicks at your earlobe.

Your hands are on her before you even give them permission, before you even remember what you want to do to her. You pull her in closer, right up into you, your palms groping at the round softness of her ass, feeling the silky fabric of her panties, the only barrier between the pads of your fingers and the heat of her flesh.

You lift a hand to pull her roving mouth back to your own, and you fit your lips against hers. You've kissed her before. You've spent hours exploring the curve of her lips, the sensitive crook of her grin. You've tasted her tongue, you've felt the warmth of her breath spill into your mouth.

But nothing compares to this. To the fierceness of her kisses, the determination of her mouth against yours, the desperation in the way she nipped at your bottom lip, slipped her tongue inside the wet heat of your mouth to wrestle with your own.

It is intoxicating.

She is intoxicating.

Suddenly your legs can't hold you anymore, not against the powerful emotion, the wave of sensation at feeling her body against yours, her lips against yours, her hands upon your skin. Suddenly your knees tremble and hands shake as you pull them away from her and grip the countertop, as you hold on to the sturdy stone, a lifeline keeping you upright.

"Gail," you whisper into her ear, "Gail, I can't, I'm going to—"

But she feels the way you tremble, the way you can't quite keep your wanting under control, and she smiles.

"You okay there, Hol," she asks, the pleased smile on her face betraying her innocent tone.

She's wicked, this woman. She knows exactly what she's doing to you, exactly why you're gripping the counter hard enough to turn your knuckles white.

"Let's move this somewhere—," she starts.

But you interrupt to finish the thought. "—bed," you say, "let's move this to bed."

You want to see her on your bed, you want to see the way her pale, pale skin contrasts against the deep maroon of your bedsheets. You want to see her spread out in the center of your bed, to see if she looks as perfect there, as at home, as she does in all your fantasies. All your dreams.

But she pulls you forward, and walks backward into the living room, before pushing you down onto the big, soft sofa you have in there. It's a sofa perfect for napping together on quiet Sundays. Perfect for laying together and exchanging slow, lazy kisses while you each get brave and braver with your hands.

It's a couch the two of you are quite familiar with.

But not for this.

Not like this.

She pushes you down into it, so that you're sitting in your favorite spot, head thrown back against the pillowed cushion behind you, and feet planted firmly on the floor. And you just look up at her, at this vision of sex and love. Her red cheeks, the blush of arousal that stains her neck, disappears under the soft fabric of her shirt.

She's beautiful.

She's yours.

"Off," she says, and pulls at the old pair of jeans you slipped on when you heard the doorbell. They come off easily, and they, too, end up who-knows-where in the room as she tosses them behind the couch.

And then she looks down at you, Gail does. Looks down at you, at the arm you have up behind your head, and the other, playing with the collar of your shirt. For a moment her mouth goes slack, and you feel the wanting all the way into the most secret places of your womb. The pull of it, the gravity of how intensely she wants you.

It's written all over her face, it's engraved in the way she licks her lip, the way her fingers clench, just waiting to feel your skin again.

She wants you.

She's almost lost in her wanting.

Fuck if that doesn't make your blood burn. If that doesn't make your heart race.

Fuck if that's not the sexiest thing you've ever seen, this powerful, strong woman standing over you. This woman with a wit like lightning and a wrath like thunder, at a loss for words. Over you.

You reach out for her hands, to pull her down onto you. But she resists, and takes up the two tails of your shirt instead.

"I want to see you," Gail says, and pulls, the buttons slipping out of their holes.

You're bare beneath the worn flannel shirt, your bra discarded into the hamper when you hopped into the shower to start getting ready for tonight's date, and you inhale sharply as the cool air of the room hits your nipples.

She lets the fabric of your shirt drop, leaves it to hang from your shoulders while she looks at you. While she drinks your fill.

It's the first time she's seen your breasts.

It's a line the two of you haven't crossed before.

Gail crosses it now. Settles herself into your lap and takes the warm weight of your breasts into her hot hands. Her touch—you wonder for a moment if tomorrow you'll find the lines of her fingerprints burned into your skin. And then she's rolling your nipples under her thumbs, rolling and pinching, just the slightest, until they're hard and aching under her touch.

You can't help it, you can't. You can't stop yourself from arching your back, arching into her. Into her hands at your breasts. Into the weight of her against you in your lap. And she smiles at you. Wide and free. All the way up to the corner of her eyes, which sparkle in the dim lights of the room.

She smiles at you, and you recognize something dangerous, something delightful in her expression.

Still, though, it takes you by surprise when she lowers her head. When she lifts your breast just the slightest and brings your nipple into her mouth. And God, it feels good. The gentle rasp of her tongue over the tip of your breast, the warm wet heat of her mouth, the playful tug as Gail wraps her lips around the tight bud and sucks.

You throw your head back against the couch as your world shrinks down to this room, this couch, this woman on your lap and the pleasure she's kindling inside of you.

"Fuck, Gail," you say, and run your hands through her hair to catch her eyes as she works her mouth over your breast.

Cool air settles over your wet breast as she slowly pulls away, and for a minute, you're afraid that you've upset her, that she's stopping. But then she lowers her head again, and takes up your other breast. And the combination of feeling, the cool evening air over the one, the inferno of her mouth on the other, it's almost painful. This beautiful sensation that walks the line between pleasure and pain, between too much and just enough.

Oh, but it could never been too much.

And it will never be enough.

You know that now.

You were made to love this woman. You were made to be loved by her.

You know she's never done this before, not with a woman at least, and still she's got your hips rolling and your eyes fluttering and your pulse racing.

God, but you love her.

You lay your hands on the small of her back, just up under her tunic.

Just over the elastic band of her panties.

You can feel how she arches, just the slightest, into your touch, and it emboldens you. You slip your fingers past her waistband, until your palms each rest atop the soft, firm flesh of her ass.

Gail moans into your breast as you begin to roll and knead, as you begin to massage the muscles beneath your hands.

"No," she says, as you try to slip off the pair of tiny black cotton panties she's wearing, as you try and slide them down over her hips and past her thighs, "no."

She gives a final nip at your breast and lifts her head, reaching back to cover your hands with her own.

"No," she says again, "not yet. I want you. First, I mean, I want you first."

Her pale, pale skin flushes just the slightest as she looks at you with open, honest eyes. Electricity sparks through every part of your body, hot and white. Straight down into your wet, wet center.

You nod, understanding her meaning. You nod and try to remember, try to think back. You've slept with your fair share of women, some experienced, some not. But this feels the most magical, the most monumental. This woman in your lap who looks at you lustily and licks her lips.

"Okay," you answer, "but if … just—" you trail off.

What is there to say.

She wants you, and you want her back.

Desperately.

And she wants to explore you first, to learn you first.

The beauty, it wrecks you.

She doesn't say anything. She just pushes your shirt down off your shoulders, but doesn't pull it off. Your arms are trapped now, somewhat. Half-in, half-out of your sleeves. Just enough room for you to reach out, touch her skin.

And then she pulls at your panties again, urging you to lift your hips, to help as she slides them down over your ass and past your thighs. And you do. You can't do anything but.

She kisses you again, soft and sweet. And then deeper, slanting her mouth hard against yours and taking.

You're so wrapped up in the kiss, you almost don't notice her hand sneaking, snaking down your side. How it pauses to play over the lines of your ribcage, the curve of your hip. How it stops, just hovers right over the patch of hair above your sex, combing through it gently.

And then her fingers dip gingerly, cautiously into the wet, wet, wetness of your sex. Gliding over your hard, aching clit. Swirling to gather up your arousal, to slick over you as she thrusts her tongue into your mouth, and draws it out again.

The pad of her finger taps gently over the tip of your clit before she adds another and begins to stroke, hard and slow, over the sensitive skin surrounding it. Just barely brushing against you, like a promise of something beautiful, something monumental to come.

She works you up so quickly. All of a sudden you're gasping for breath, pulling your lips away so you can gulp in enough air to warn her how close you are. How you're hanging onto the edge, clinging to it.

Gail smiles and bites at her bottom lip. She's this gorgeous mix of cocky and nervous, and if you weren't struggling not to thrust up into her hand, into her body, you'd think it was the most adorable thing you've ever seen.

But you can barely think. Your hands tremble as you run them down the line of her spine.

Suddenly your lap is empty, suddenly the warm weight of her is gone.

She stands over you, in the vee of your legs, and kisses the top of your forehead before slowly dropping down to her knees before you, leaving a trail of kisses down your body as she does.

Your lips, your collarbone.

The top of your breast, a nipple.

Ribs, belly button, the curve of your hip.

Your mind catches up, reads her intention.

"Honey—Gail," you say, a whisper from your dry, dry throat, "you don't have to, I mean—"

But she stops you with a finger to your lips.

"I know," she answers you, slowly running her fingers along the inside of your thigh, "but I want to."

She looks at you, eyes bright and shining. Confident and curious and wide with wanting.

"I want to, Holly," she says again, and smiles. Biting just the slightest at her bottom lip.

And then she laces a hand with yours, and slowly kisses her way from your knee up, up your leg. Up until her mouth is hovering over your wet, dripping sex. She uses her free hand to pull you forward just the slightest, right into her, and then gently parts your folds.

"God, Holly," she whispers, and you're not even sure if she knows she's spoken, "you're beautiful."

And then delicately, softly, she lays her tongue flat against you. Just covers you with her mouth—your pussy, your clit, your lips, everything. Just getting a feel for you. Tasting you. Your wetness.

You know how turned on you are, you can smell it, you can smell your arousal all the way up by you. And you hope she knows that it's all for her. Knows that every drop is for this amazing, beautiful, gorgeous woman on her knees in front of you.

The woman you love.

And that's the last thought you have before Gail starts to move her tongue, starts to swipe with hungry licks over your clit. God, the heat of it, the rasp against your most sensitive flesh. The way each long, slow lick is punctuated with playful teasing of the tip of her tongue over the tip of your clit.

She alternates between firm pressure and light, light, barely-there touches. Between fast and furious, and slow and deliberate. She builds up a beautiful rhythm of contrasts that has you struggling not to buck up into her mouth, to not reach down and press her closer to your body, to thrust into the delicious pleasure she's curating with her tongue.

You feel yourself begin to tremble, to shake, and you wonder if she can tell how close you are, if she can feel your control slipping, slipping away.

But when her tongue stops its stroking, when she gently wraps her lips around your hard, pulsing clit and suckles, just the slightest, you know.

She knows.

Her tongue teases again over the tip of your clit as she applies that constant, devastating pressure against the shaft, and suddenly you're coming. Suddenly you feel the tense, tense wire within you snap and everything goes slack. You can feel yourself flood over her mouth, her chin. Can feel your arousal spread beneath you as she continues to work her mouth over your clit, to ride you through the contractions, the sensations, until it's too much and you tap at her shoulder, gasping.

You damn near come again when you feel her tongue slip along your folds, dip into the burning heat of your pussy to clean away your arousal, all the evidence of what she's done to you, to your body.

When she finally lifts her head, as you pant and struggle to come back to the world, her face is glistening, and her smile is wide and happy and free. Wicked, even, as she stretches up to kiss your lips, still covered in you.

"Now that's a date," she says, collapsing onto the couch next to you, waiting for you to recover.

You laugh, and cough, your lungs not quite used to breathing again yet.

"It certainly was," you reply, and reach over to twine your fingers with hers.

Just another minute or two, you think, and then it's your turn.