Wake-up Call – Chapter 71

Teasing Brian is fun.

Watching Rachel push to get out of her shell and interact more with us is heartbreaking.

Joking around with Alec is both things.

And so, after my latest rooftop scene, after a day of confronting things too near to my trigger event… Having dinner with them is exhausting.

Because I've felt one too many things. I've gone through highs and lows I rarely imagined I could feel outside of life-and-death situations. I have… I have pushed through hurt, and pain, and memories of happiness that became raw wounds after what came later. I have…

I have been Lisa Wilbourn, and Sarah Livsey, and even a bit of Tattletale.

So I manage to keep my façade up through a pizza dinner in which Rachel remains as silent as ever, except when she forces herself to let out a short reply or interjection that she thinks will fit the atmosphere, even if it's painfully obvious (to me) how much it takes out of her to do so. How much hesitation, how much second-guessing, how many aborted attempts at participation.

I don't think she herself knows. I don't think she truly understands how much harder it is for her than for everybody around her, she just… she just believes we are trying harder than she is, or that we did until we learned, or that we stumbled upon a secret code long ago. And I think I shouldn't tell her otherwise. Not now, not when she's finally trying new things, and exploring, and feeling safer with us after every time her brave attempts aren't met with ridicule.

So, I won't tell her.

Not now.

But, one day? Maybe years from now, after she's almost there, after she's overcome the parts of her that held her back while we supported her, encouraged her, and stayed by her side… I will sit down with her, and I'll tell her how proud I am of her. How heartbreaking and inspiring it was to see her become the woman she will be.

She'll likely punch me.

And it will be worth it.

"Liz?" Tay asks, sitting with her back against the corner of my room into which my bed is ensconced, her right leg bent at an angle and resting against the wall, the left laid straight and bare on my mattress.

And I… lying beside her, hands resting on my belly, eyes closed as I pretend to relax and rest, open them and turn toward her with a smile on my lips.

"Yes?"

"Time for you to be an emotional limpet," she says.

And she slowly slides down the bed to lie beside me, to drape a long leg over mine, her short pajamas making me wish I'd had the foresight to wear something like them just so I could feel the silky skin of her thighs, of her calves…

Of her.

"This isn't necessary," I almost whisper.

And long fingers thread through my blonde hair before she cups my cheek and tenderly turns me toward her. Toward green eyes looking down at me from my right, and a gentle smile that shouldn't be there, that she shouldn't need to—

"Really?" she says, with that damnable eyebrow of hers punctuating the question.

"I…"

And she kisses me.

Softly. Tenderly. Deeply.

Her chest presses against me as her mouth opens and prods me into doing the same before her tongue languidly comes in, tracing the contours of mine, her leg sliding between my thighs, her hips pressing on my side, her chest over mine in a way that makes it clear none of us are wearing a bra as my right arm gets trapped beneath softness and warmth.

"Tay…" I breathe out when she allows me to, when her tongue retreats and my lips are left alone to feel the ghost of her even as I swim in the darkness of my closed lips as her scent envelops my thoughts, my very being.

"This can be anything you want," she whispers, something heated and dark in her tone despite the kindness and caring underlying the words. "I can hold you as you fall asleep. I can play with you until you forget everything you want to forget. I can be everything you need, Liz, if you let me."

A low, keening whine that I suspect Rachel's dogs will complain about escapes my lips as my legs close around the soft, slender thigh between them, and I turn slightly so I can better press against my lover, my girlfriend, my fiancée, and everything of mine she ever wants to be.

Her lips take mine once more, pressing small circles over me before she leans down and sucks my lower lip between hers, pulling on it, tracing her tongue along me in maddening slowness that makes me anticipate her wet touch before it arrives as a moan tears its way out of my throat.

She brushes my hair behind my ear, and then she… she draws me. She runs her fingertip over every ridge and crease as it heats up, as I can feel the burning tingling of a blush responding to her touch, summoned by it.

As I bend my head back, over my pillow, as she advances over me.

And I can't say anything. I can't accept or reject her proposal. I can't tell her that I'm all right, that she doesn't need to do this, to push herself after the day she's also had, the things she's also had to confront. I can't tell her that the only thing I want is for her to be whole and by my side.

In part, because I'd be lying to her, and I have done my fair share of that today.

So I…

My arms wrap around her body and pull her closer, and then she moves faster, harder. Her thigh pushes up into something that is increasingly wet and heated, into me, and I moan yet again as my body responds faster than I thought it would.

And… this is a bad idea. Sex… making love with her shouldn't be about this. Shouldn't be about me being broken and Taylor comforting me, because… Because we've already been there for each other when it's happened before. We've already stopped and held one another, just allowing emotions to pass, and wreck us, and… and letting them do so, because we felt safe. Because the other was there. Because…

I grab her hair and [pull].

And she gasps in a way that makes something below my belly clench, and damn her for being so sexily predictable.

But now she's in front of me, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed, and…

And I need to say [something], or she will push, and I will melt under her.

And would that [really] be so bad?

"Tay… I love you. I love you, and I'd never dream to reject you, and I need to change out of my pajamas, because what you just did to me is [unfair], and I want you to kiss me, and lick down my body, make it up to me until I go cross-eyed—"

"But?" she asks, cutting me off as her lips turn into a smirk that makes me want to remind her who's supposed to be the smug bitch between the two of us.

Sorry, Rach. I don't know why I keep bringing you up in these circumstances.

"But… I don't want to taint this. I don't want to make love to you while feeling like I do right now, and it's silly, because it [would] make me feel better. Cared for. Safe. All those things you make me feel when we're naked and close, and—and what the Hell [are you doing?"]

A very arched eyebrow makes me feel like I just asked a very stupid question.

The hands pulling up the hemline of her pajama top make me feel like my brain is shutting off.

The bare stretch of pale skin between the long-sleeved, dark green shirt and the black shorts makes that not a feeling, but a reality.

"A little help?" she asks when the top is bunched over her shapely, perky, beautiful, soft, and did I mention shapely already? I mean, I think my vocabulary may be woefully inadequate to describe Taylor's breasts, and that's after reading the whole Merriam Webster's dictionary, so maybe I should branch into other languages? I'm sure the French must have [a lot] of words for breasts. I mean, they have the Pompadour champagne glass, and that's supposedly modeled off a mold of the Marquise de Pompadour's breast, because the king of France was, shockingly, a horndog, and—

[Lisa Wilbourn's mental derail—]

That's rich coming from [you].

[Lisa Wilbourn's deflection—]

Okay! Fine! I am staring at Tay's tits, and the way she's looking at me with that amused half grin of hers is [doing things—

Lisa Wilbourn's frequent usage of the unspecific term 'things—']

You're a spiteful little asshole, and I should never have taught you just how satisfying it can be to hold onto a grudge.

[Familial resemblance due to—]

Stop trying to make me laugh! I am too busy with my brain crashing at Tay's—

"Liz?" she finally asks, that eyebrow of hers doing the [thing].

[Lisa Wilbourn's frequent usage of the unspecific term 'things—']

Fuck. You.

Also. Taylor's breasts now, banter later.

So I reach up with tremulous hands before I make the executive decision to sit up on my pillow, leaning on the wall behind me for support before I take the bottom hemline of Taylor's soft, green top in my hands, remembering how I blushed when I bought it for her and thought about how adorable she would look with the baggy long sleeves contrasting with the tight shorts peeking from beneath the dark soft, almost flannel-like texture of this weave that shimmers in the low, dimmed lights of my bedroom at night, the warm bulb casting everything in something inviting and comforting.

And Taylor's eyes…

She keeps looking at me, her smile firmly in place, and when I tug at her top she obediently raises her arms, so I lean forward, and my grey pajamas glide over her smooth skin as I almost embrace her while pulling up the green shirt up her arms, her head quickly reappearing to peer up at me with that very same smile even as we are close enough to kiss yet again.

But we don't.

No. Instead, as soon as her hands are free of her sleeves and she drops her arms to leave me holding an empty shirt, Taylor grasps my shoulder and stands up, her breasts rising up, brushing the sides of my face as she straightens up and her soft belly presses against my chin while I keep following her mesmerizing eyes.

And then it's not warm, inviting skin that caresses me, but clingy, black fabric. Her shorts.

And Taylor lets go of my shoulder to grab the waist of them, tugging it away from her slender hips as she bends down, pulling them along the way until they reach her knees and I'm faced with her sex, with the sparse black hair, the [scent] of her.

The scent I've had engulf my thoughts so many times. The scent that is branded inside of me with yearning, and desire, and…

And love.

So, when long fingers clasp my chin and tug me up, to stare into her eyes rather than into lower lips flush with warmth and glossy wetness…

"Stand," she says.

And I do.

Her hands trail down my sides, and I hold still until she signs for me to raise my own arms as she also pulls my top up, as fuzzy gray pajamas reveal my own body to her, inch by agonizingly slow inch until they cover my head and I gasp as Taylor takes advantage of my blindness to lean forward and lay a single, impossibly tender kiss on top of my right breast.

And then she pulls up, my hair cascades down my back as it's freed, and the light comes back.

And she's right in front of me, above me, looking down as her hands ghost up my arms, under my sleeves, the fabric bunching over her wrists until she frees me of it and bares my torso entirely to her.

She leans forward to kiss the side of my neck, making my toes curl as my shirt falls to the bed below, and her hands go down at the same tortuously slow pace as her lips until she rests them on the dip over my hips, pulling me closer, our breasts flattening against one another before she goes for the waist of my pants.

And travels down my body.

She first trails kisses along my collarbone until she reaches the hollow of my throat and briefly sucks on it. Then down she goes between my breasts, her chin parting them far enough for her cheeks to brush between them as she looks up at me with lidded eyes.

Next? Next she turns to my right and kisses the outside line of my belly. Then she does it with the left, always leaning back away so she doesn't even brush against my middle line, against the hollow, shadowed indent on my body that yearns to be kissed, licked, [teased].

But she doesn't.

Not until she's face to face with my navel and she kisses a slow circle around it, each time her lips meet my skin lingering more than I thought I could withstand as her eyes close and she hums, making me shiver to the tune of her wordless song.

And then she grasps the waistline of both my pants and the panties beneath them, the elastic thing digging into my soft body in a way that maybe hints at me needing a bit more exercise than I would like, and…

And pulls.

The elastic rolls down over my hips, over my cheeks, and Taylor pulls slowly. So slowly that I think she stops when the first curls of blonde hair peek past dark fabric, but she doesn't. Not entirely. She's just… devouring me with her eyes, making me twist my hips even as I try to hold still for her and fail miserably to do so.

She looks up at me, between my legs, smirk and eyebrow firmly in place, and I shudder.

She, in turn, pulls.

And my sex is bared to her. My wet lips meeting cool air, almost making me cry out as she leans forward to kiss right [beside them], the heat of her cheek a tangible thing washing over them, making me thrill at the hint of a touch that doesn't come, that—

"Lift your foot," she murmurs.

And I do so, stepping out of my clothes, naked before her.

Her hands go back to my waist, holding me delicately and carefully, as if afraid of bruising me with her touch.

And she rises back up, her lips retreading her earlier trail of kisses and caresses as I can't help myself and bite down on my bent forefinger as a needy moan tears past my throat.

Then she takes my wrist and pulls my hand away, and I almost protest in sheer, mindless desperation before Taylor kisses me, before her lips do so much more to me than I could ever do to myself with mere fingers, and my knees buckle under her assault, even if it's tender, even if it's more of a caress than the hungry thing I know she could unleash on me at any moment as her hand goes from my waist to my lower back and she tilts me as she lowers both of us to the bed below.

I almost kneel, but she guides me to lie down, to rest on my bed, atop my soft, expensive sheets that I now feel the need to replace with sheer silk because nothing can ever be too good for her, and—

And I'm naked, on my bed, with Taylor by my side, clinging to me, staring at me with a soft smile and a pretty, pink blush.

"I love you," she says.

"I love you more," I, stupidly and childishly, say.

And she giggles, that… that heartbreakingly girlish thing she only does with me and no one else. Not right now. Not until she heals in the same way Rachel needs to, even if in also entirely different ways.

"I really doubt that," she tells me before cutely leaning up to kiss the tip of my nose. "I really, [really] do."

"Is that… do you want to argue? Because I can assure you the foreplay phase has been more than thorough enough—"

She kisses me.

Gently, once more, her tongue only tracing my lips, caressing them, tasting them, yet not going past them even as I writhe and moan beneath her.

"No, I don't want to argue. I want to give you everything you want, everything you need… even if that means we're both going to be very frustrated," she says.

And I… blink at her.

"No," I breathe out in sheer horror.

"You [asked for it]. Like, literally."

"Tay, I say a lot of things. A lot of [dumb] things. Really, that may as well be my superpower: saying dumb things that backfire horribly."

"Liz… Look into my eyes."

I do.

I look into seafoam green. Into what she looks like without glasses or contacts getting in the way of her gorgeous eyes. Into…

Into tenderness, and caring, and love, and just a tad of schadenfreude.

I whine.

"You can't do this to me," I mutter as I bury my face in the crook of her neck, taking maybe a too-intense breath of air filled with the scent of her hair and my shampoo.

"I can. Because I love you. Because… Because I really, [really] want you to be wrong about us making love right now not being the right thing to do, and I even think you may be, but… but I don't want the next time we do to bring up these memories. I don't want you to associate today and everything you've gone through with… With being with me. So I will hold you and feel your warm, bare body near me, and… and nothing else. Not today," she says.

I hug her closer to me, our bodies molding against one another, my fingers digging into the sides of her spine, my thumbs resting on her well-defined shoulder blades.

"Thank you," I whisper.

"You're welcome," she says.

And then she reaches up and turns the light off, and we're enveloped in inviting darkness that is only safe and comforting because she's by my side. Holding me.

"Tay?" I ask after a while of listening to her soft, slow breathing and feeling her pulse against my cheek on her neck.

"Yes?" she answers, her voice slightly rough from the long pause in which she kept caressing my arm up and down.

"Are you frustrated and horny out of your mind?" I ask.

"God, [yes]," she says without stopping her slow caress.

"Good. Me too," I tell her, nuzzling closer against her.

And then, eyes closed and thighs tightly pressed together, I try to go to sleep despite the overwhelming arousal burning beneath my belly.

Except that is a lie.

What I do is rest against the girl I love, and I don't even wait for sleep to claim me, because I could lie here, in silence and darkness.

Forever.

By her side.

Happy.

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This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 89 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!