Behind the Green Curtain (20 page)

Chapter 30

Amelia said an hour, but it was
more like forty-eight minutes between the time Caton hung up the phone and the
knock came at the door. In the slow-moving time, she had managed to make
herself and her apartment presentable, and to get just enough alcohol flowing
through her system to take the edge off her nerves.

Unless Amelia had called to fire
her earlier, it was an inevitable meeting. She would have to see Amelia at some
point. The closer that point came, though, the more Caton feared it. Things
weren’t exactly how they had left them when they last saw each other, she was
largely to blame for that, and, as she awaited Amelia’s arrival, she considered
the possibility that their rendezvous may be more of a confrontation.

Refilling her wine glass, Caton
swallowed a large mouthful on her way to the door, pulling it open to find
Amelia standing there, utterly appealing in jeans and no makeup, an instant
reminder of why the desperate craving she had suffered for the past two weeks
had been so debilitating.

“Hi,” Amelia quietly greeted her.

“Hi,” Caton returned, stepping
aside to allow Amelia to enter, trying to calm her overstimulated senses as she
closed the door.

Turning at the sound of Amelia’s
bag dropping onto a cushion, she watched Amelia slide her wool coat down her
arms and drop it over the back of the couch. Waiting for the slightest
indication of one, Caton took the action as invitation and gravitated toward
Amelia, arm wrapping around Amelia’s waist to pull her close.

Amelia’s head dipped to capture her
lips, hands winding into Caton’s hair, and Caton thought maybe things were as
they’d left them after all. Body responding to Amelia as it always did, with 
instantaneous submission, it would have been easy to give into it, to let
things transpire as they did between them. Knowing it would only postpone the
inevitable conversation, though, Caton utilized every ounce of willpower she
had to pull away.

Dark eyes regarding Caton
thoughtfully, Amelia slid the wine glass out of her hand, eyeing her over the
top of it as she took a sip and drifted away. Walking around the room, she
inspected everything in-depth as if she was looking at displays in an art
museum.

If she weren’t preoccupied herself,
Caton might have worried about what potentially embarrassing mementos she had
on display. Gaze trailing over Amelia, though, the realization of how much she
had missed her weighed heavily as she tried to fathom how someone could look so
perfect in faded jeans and a plain, dark t-shirt.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” she
stated, warmth infusing her as Amelia glanced back, seemingly surprised by the
statement, which was interesting, since Amelia was clearly aware of the fact.

“You don’t have to say that,” she
said, returning her gaze to Caton’s bookshelf.

“I don’t have to?” Caton
questioned. “Or I’m not allowed?” Eyes turning to her once again, Caton
shrugged. “There seem to be a lot of unspoken rules I don’t know about until
I’ve broken one.”

Amelia’s eyes narrowing slightly,
she turned away again, and Caton watched the tiniest trace of a smile appear on
her lips before she raised the glass to take another drink.

“How long have you lived here?”
Amelia asked.

“Three years,” Caton said, looking
around her apartment and realizing how proletariat it must look. Amelia hadn’t
been all that interested in her surroundings the last time she was there, but
now she was practically gawking at Caton’s middle-income living.

“It’s nice,” Amelia said.

“You don’t have to say that,” Caton
stole Amelia’s reply, moving back to the counter to replace the glass of wine
Amelia had taken from her.

“It is nice,” Amelia repeated.

“For what it is,” Caton tacked on.

No longer interested in the
mishmash of inexpensive, stylistically-challenged decor around her, Amelia
turned completely. “Is that how you think I look at the world?” she challenged,
watching Caton carefully.

“Isn’t it?” Caton returned.

“You really don’t know me at all,”
Amelia uttered, and, the defiance in her stance melting, she simply looked
hurt.

“I know,” Caton acknowledged
grudgingly. “You don’t exactly make it easy.”

The statement lingering, Amelia
finished the contents of her glass, lowering it to the coffee table and shoving
her hands into her back pockets as if she didn’t know what else to do with
them. Taking a drink from her own glass, Caton was suddenly reminded why she’d
felt the need to start drinking in the first place. For a moment, she was
certain Amelia was going to decide it was all too much trouble and walk right
back out the door.

“Where did you spend Christmas?”
she asked at last instead.

“With my family,” Caton replied.

“The bus driver and the janitor?”
Amelia interjected, a cocky smirk coming to her face, as if remembering the
details of Caton’s life proved something.

Maybe it did.

“Otherwise known as Dan and Reese,”
Caton countered. “My brothers and their families were there too.”

Smirk leveling back out, Amelia’s
face fell to a near-grim expression. “I didn’t know you had brothers.”

“You never asked,” Caton responded.
She could hardly be upset about it. She’d never asked either. Amelia could have
an entire trove of siblings she didn’t know about. In the few moments they had
spent together that lended to personal conversation, they avoided future and
past, keeping it surface and in the present, as if they both knew it was all
they really had.

The fact clearly bothered Amelia,
though. Even across the room, Caton could see her face tighten, hands clenching
in her pockets.

The reminder of her family, and the
holiday spent in their presence, reminded Caton of the other unacknowledged
subjects between them, the number of which only seemed to multiply the closer
they got to each other. If they were getting closer to each other. Sometimes it
seemed as if she and Amelia were on completely separate planes, side-by-side
but completely isolated.

“I did get the necklace,” Caton
said carefully.

“Oh?” Amelia gave her nothing in
return, no indication she’d even noticed the change in topic.

“It’s gorgeous,” Caton stated, eyes
dropping to the glass in her hand. “But I can’t keep it.”

The same wounded expression that
had come and gone so quickly returned to Amelia’s face as Caton glanced up, and
she wondered if she could ruin the entire night through her seeming inability
to keep her mouth shut. Maybe they should have just started fucking the moment
Amelia walked through the door. They never seemed to have any problems when
they didn’t talk.

“Why?” Amelia asked.

“Because it’s too much,” Caton
returned.

“It’s not too much for me,” Amelia
declared, and the line between financial statement and profound confession was
so hazy, Caton didn’t know whether to feel insulted or enchanted. Both came
remarkably easily with Amelia, and they were often helplessly interconnected.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”
Caton shook her head, knowing there was no real excuse. At the very least, it
was rude, and she couldn’t explain that away. “I didn’t know if I should. I
didn’t want to intrude.”

She also didn’t want to encourage,
she admitted in her head. She was already in deeper than she needed to be. Yet,
when the idea of waiting another two days to see Amelia had been posed earlier,
offering a highly-encouraging invitation was all Caton could do, and, with
Amelia standing there before her, she wasn’t sorry. Even if the conversation
felt like walking a narrow path with drop-offs straight to hell.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you,”
Amelia returned quietly. “I had to put Selene first.”

“I know,” Caton returned.

Nodding slowly, Amelia’s eyes
dropped to the floor. It was too difficult for them, this part. It took far too
much effort. It took more wine than Caton had on hand, and, at the rate they
were going, it could take the rest of their lives just to get past the surface.

When Amelia said nothing else,
Caton assumed they had reached an agreement that there’d been enough talking.
Probably too much. Abandoning the safety of the counter, she moved toward
Amelia, slowly but deliberately, and Amelia pulled her hands from her pockets,
so that when they came together next to the coffee table, her arms were free to
circle Caton without hesitation, pulling her closer as their lips met.

Caton moaned as Amelia’s tongue
insinuated itself into her mouth, feeling all the pent-up need flooding through
her, making every nerve hyperaware of Amelia, leaving no doubt as to the proper
course of action. This, they had always done well. It was everything else that
clouded the waters around them.

Making their way into the bedroom
over shuffling, tripping feet, they fell into the tangle of blankets on Caton’s
bed. Pulling her shirt over her head, Caton tossed it to the floor, latching
onto Amelia’s neck and sucking at the warm skin as if it was sustenance. Maybe,
for her, it was. Amelia’s body was like a reservoir of pleasure, and, without
access to it, Caton had to endure the incessant pain of her own thirst.

Yanked and torn, clothing flew in a
frenzy, and Caton fell back against Amelia’s body, pressing into the feel of
intimacy - even if it wasn’t real, even if they couldn’t translate it into any
other part of their lives.

Amelia’s legs coiling around her
thigh, Caton wrenched it away, earning a growl of frustration from Amelia,
before her hand slipped between their bodies, fingertips skimming Amelia’s
slick flesh as the world closed in around them. Amelia arched into her hand,
and Caton obliged them both, sliding lower to drag her teeth over the inviting
skin of Amelia’s chest as she pressed inside Amelia, so deep she feared the
warmth Amelia kept so well-hidden would consume her.

When Amelia’s hand alighted on her
head, gentle fingers working into her hair, and she raised her eyes to meet
Amelia’s in the dim light filtering in from the street and the living room, Caton
knew it already had.

Hand moving to Caton’s cheek,
Amelia’s palm was soft and enticing. Tongue darting out to taste the thumb that
traced her bottom lip, Caton pressed down on the firm thigh between her legs,
eyes closing at the instant friction, and Amelia pushed up, bracing herself
with one surprisingly sturdy arm, tongue sweeping up Caton’s neck as her other
arm wrapped around Caton’s waist to steady her.

Working with and against her,
Amelia drove Caton’s fingers deeper. Firm nipple brushing her breast, breaths
sharp and desperate in her ear, Caton could feel the need shuddering through
every fiber of Amelia’s body, and, her own breaths coming in uneven bursts,
light bursting behind her eyelids, Caton feared she would pass out. It was more
than it seemed, more than the sum of its parts, more than either of them would
ever say out loud.

“Come with me,” Amelia panted, and
Caton wasn’t sure if it was a sexual command or an all-encompassing request,
but, as usual, she was helpless but to follow.

The sound of Amelia’s breath
hitching, and Caton was seized by the other woman’s pleasure, ripples of
ecstasy passing through and around her, piercing sensation in every spot where
her body came into contact with Amelia’s. Fingers digging into Amelia’s back,
Caton clung for traction, but skidded into the ether, losing herself entirely
to the rhythm of Amelia’s body.

It was what possession must feel
like, she would think later, once her body had disengaged from its union with
Amelia’s and her mind was once again her own. It would take some time, though,
before Caton could recognize herself as anything other than an extension of
Amelia.

Lying atop Amelia’s cooling skin,
eyes blinking slowly open, she wasn’t sure how she ended up there and thought
maybe she actually had blacked out for a moment. Trying to lift herself off Amelia,
her arms would scarcely hold her, and Amelia further impeded the effort,
pulling Caton back down as she attempted to break free.

Sinking back into Amelia’s body,
head lowering to the thudding flesh above Amelia’s breast, she was exactly
where she wanted to be. Suppressing her flight instinct at the terrifying
realization, Caton pulled the mussed blankets up around them and pretended it
could last.

How long it did last, she wasn’t
sure. Every moment with Amelia went either too fast or too slow. Often, both at
once. Amelia’s heartbeat slowing, her breaths growing deeper and longer, it was
only the feel of her fingers running through Caton’s hair, lightly tickling the
skin of her upper back, that indicated Amelia hadn’t fallen asleep.

“I should go,” she whispered, and
Caton opened her eyes, almost like waking from a dream. One day, she suspected
she would remember the moment as fantasy instead of reality.

When she rolled off Amelia, Amelia
made no effort to stop her, and, without further explanation, Amelia slid from
the bed, picking pieces of clothing off the floor and pulling them on.

Head propped on her hand, Caton
watched every movement, refusing all thoughts that tried to enter her mind.
There was no other way the night was going to end, and acting as if there could
be was a child’s game. Knowing exactly what she’d gotten herself into, Caton
had no right to imagine anything different.

Finally clothed, Amelia turned
around, feeling her pockets as if she lost something she never had with her in
the first place, proving she was at least uncomfortable, which was better than
her feeling nothing at all. “Thank you for inviting me over,” she said at last,
apparently satisfied she was leaving with everything with which she’d arrived.

With a humorless laugh, Caton
looked away, not particularly surprised that the night had been reduced to
social propriety. “Sure,” she shrugged. “Any place we can have sex, right?”