Page 42 of Hers for the Weekend

There was something very unsettling about the idea that trauma had been what made Miriam a good match as a wife for Tara. Thankfully, she was saved from delving too deeply into this by Holly sticking an ice-cold hand up the back of her sweater.

“That’s it!” Tara grabbed Holly’s hand and dragged her toward a snowmobile. To Noelle she said, “I’m going to get Holly out of these wet clothes.”

Noelle grinned knowingly. “Wouldn’t want her to catch a cold, after all. Try to be back down for the cake, okay?”

“We’ll try,” Tara told her, though she had her doubts.

She thought she heard Noelle say something about the pond having magical Cupid powers but she had to be joking.

The two of them held hands and walk-ran through the near-empty inn. Mrs. Matthews poked her head through the kitchen door at the noise, but when she saw them, she just waved and winked. It wasn’t clear who was pulling whom, and Tara wanted to stay in control, but she was willing to let herself be a part of this tug-of-war as long as it got them to a bed sooner.

Inside their room, Tara locked the door and began stalking, slowly, toward Holly. She was going to slow this down, take back control. Because it turned Holly on when she was bossy, and because she had made certain promises and she intended to keep them.

Holly launched herself, like a spider monkey, at Tara, and they tumbled to the floor in front of the fire, Holly’s legs wrapping around Tara’s waist. Their mouths fused together, hands going everywhere. Tara tried to strip Holly out of her sweater, but her hands began to wander once they met skin.

Holly was trying to unbutton Tara’s jeans, the button stuck because of the cold and wet. “I want to undress you,” Holly complained.

“I want to do the same, but I think it’s going to take all night if we do it this way.” Tara laughed, and sat up, pulling Holly with her so that she sat in Tara’s lap. “Let’s start with this sweater.”

Slowly, one piece at a time, they peeled leggings and boots and socks off, leaving them in a damp pile on the floor that Tara was, for once in her life, too distracted to hang up in the bathroom so it wouldn’t ruin the carpet. She watched Holly’s long limbs come uncovered and ran her hands along the black and gray tattoo work that covered her thighs. Holly shivered under her touch.

It was almost too much, the tan where her work clothes didn’t cover, one arm darker than the other from driving in the summer and fall, the pale, freckled redhead skin she usually kept covered. The scorpions and spiders, skulls pierced by knives and bottles of poison scattered across her torso and thighs. Tara wanted to catalog them all. Later.

Holly’s eyes were on her, too, laser focused on her breasts as she unhooked her wet bra and peeled it off. This part… she always got off track at this part. The part where someone else had to see her, and she had to let herself be seen.

The fire in Holly’s eyes went a long way toward vanquishing that fear, but nothing could make it go away completely. No matter how badly she wanted to be naked with this woman—and she wasn’t sure she’d ever wanted to be naked with anyone more—she still wished they could do this in darkness, hands and tongues making perfection out of flawed human flesh.

Not that Holly was flawed. Holly, naked, was life-altering. Jesus Fucking Christ.

Holly raised her eyebrows as if to say, Your move, and Tara pushed her back onto the floor, taking control and taking her brain out of the equation.

She’d promised Holly the sex of her life, and she was intent on delivering.

Reaching up, she grabbed a pillow off the bed and wedged it under Holly’s hips. Smirking, she began kissing down Holly’s body, spending as much time as she wanted on every part that caught her attention. She did love the curve of a woman’s hip. Her gaze, then her fingers, then her tongue moved lower, until she was where she intended to spend the next several hours.

They didn’t make it down for cake.

When Tara checked her phone, her texts were full of filthy emojis from her friends and smirks from Cole.

She wanted to tell Cole that she and Holly still weren’t dating, just friends doing each other favors that involved orgasms, but she was worried Miriam or Hannah would read his texts over his shoulder. Besides, if he’d decided that because he was living his own love story she must be as well, she wouldn’t be able to convince him otherwise. He would have to see it to believe it.

From inside the tangle of their bodies, Tara ran her fingers lightly down Holly’s spine. “We should make an appearance before everyone goes to bed.”

Holly peeked up at her through a curtain of hair. “You don’t think us very obviously disappearing for sex is going to convince people that we’re dating?”

“Oh no, I do think they’re convinced about that,” Tara said. “I also think it’s rude that we’re here for a wedding but missing the wedding events.”

Holly groaned but rolled over to start finding her clothes. “I’m only leaving this bed because I adore your Carrigan’s friends, and I hate your Charleston friends, and I want you to consider abandoning them to move here.”

“You don’t even know my Charleston friends,” Tara protested. Not very convincingly.

Holly looked up at her while pulling her jeans up. “Are they not terrible?”

They weren’t all terrible. She was friendly with queer activists and community organizers, and other people doing the work to try to reform—or deconstruct—the South Carolina legal system. Admittedly, she mostly socialized with people she hated, and it wore on her.

It wore even more on the people she dated.

“I’m never moving to Carrigan’s,” Tara said instead of answering. “I may love these weirdos, but there’s no way in hell I’m leaving my beautiful port city for the snow and woods and nothingness.”

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