Page 59 of The Duet

So I tug at Lana’s shirt. I want her naked. I want her stripped of everything she hides behind. Because we are no longer on stage. This is not a performance. This is as real as it gets. As intimate as it gets.

“Hey,” Lana says after both our tops have been removed and we stand in front of each other in our bras. She flicks her tongue over her lips before pulling me close and kissing me. Our kiss in the club was intense, but this kiss is of an entirely different order. It’s hot and full of intention and it connects directly to my throbbing, aching clit. I’ve wanted Lana for such a long time and only now, even though we’ve done this once before, does it feel like that deep ache for her is finally being dealt with.

She just told me she’s in love with me. I might have started out smitten with the version of her I had created in my head all these years ago, but I’m well past that now. I know Lana much better now. Beyond her ubiquitous rock star hotness, she’s also kind and considerate and a woman who lost someone she loved more than anything. A woman who has had to dust herself off and find a way back into the life she once she knew, but will never be the same again. She’s brave and confident and more than two decades older than me, but fuck if that doesn’t turn me on. If that doesn’t light an extra fire right underneath my skin where her fingers skate up my arms. I love everything there is about Lana and, deep down, I know my bandmates won’t end up hating me for this, because how could they? How could my best friends not want me to have this?

“Oh, Cleo,” Lana whispers when we break from our kiss. “I need you.” Her voice sounds as brittle as the flimsiest glass, yet her hands are swift as they find the button of my jeans.

I know exactly what she means. A fresh wave of lust washes over me and I help her remove the rest of my clothes. I watch as she steps out of her boots and jeans. We eye each other and in silent agreement, we strip until we’re naked.

The entire expanse of my skin breaks out in goose bumps and not because I’m cold—quite the opposite.

We tumble onto the bed. Lana drapes her warm body next to mine.

“Hey, again.” She draws a line with her fingertip from my temple over my cheekbone to my lips. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmurs. “Like a dream.”

Then she kisses me again and I lose myself completely in this kiss. I pull her on top of me, grab fistfuls of her hair, push my knee between her legs.

I’m about to beg her for much more when she starts kissing her way down. She pauses at my breasts, which she seems to be especially fond of. I relish in the soft touch of her tongue on my nipples as well as in the certainty of what’s about to happen next. Lana’s divine tongue in an even more intimate spot. I spread my legs in anticipation. When Lana kisses a moist path down my belly, groans escape from my throat. My most persistent fantasy is about to come true. Lana Lynch is about to go down on me.

She maneuvers herself between my legs, then looks up at me. Mischief glints in her eyes, but something else as well. I know that this means much more to her than the previous time we did this. Just as I already know that when we wake up in the morning, she won’t ask me to sneak out of her room and make sure no one sees me. Everyone already knows. She came for me in a club full of people, where everyone witnessed our kiss. This is the next step, and there’s no way of knowing what the next step after this will be, but that’s hardly something to complain about. The fact that this is happening, that Lana is kissing her way down to the apex of my thighs, is proof that you can never predict what’s going to happen next, but that it can be damn delightful.

Lana exhales slowly, as though she has to take a moment to ground herself, to process everything that’s happening and that has already happened, before her lips touch down on my inner thigh.

I’m breathless with anticipation for what’s about to transpire, even though, from experience, I know it’s impossible to prepare for the moment when all your dreams come true. So many of my dreams have already come true, but none of them can compare to this one—to the one I’ve always returned to. To the woman playing the leading role.

When the tip of Lana’s tongue skates lightly along my clit, my brain goes into a tailspin of lust. Instantly, I’m dragged under by a blend of the wildest emotion and the purest desire. And through the haziness of lust that crowds my very being, I know, with absolute certainty, that nothing or no one else will ever do again. It’s all Lana for me now because she can never be someone I can recover from. My brain might be cloudy, but my body tells me everything I need to know as it takes over, as it becomes a crackling ball of fire, and I surrender to the soft touch of Lana’s tongue.

She’s all warmth and delicious intention on me. Lana’s tongue on me there, between my legs, licking me, is everything. I’m no match for the power of my dreams, for all that Lana stands for, for what we are, here in this bed tonight, together.

What ultimately tips me over the edge, is that Lana wants this just as much as I do. That she needs me and wants me in equal parts. That what we prove on stage every time we sing our duet, that together we are so much more powerful and special than we can ever be alone, also holds true in this moment.

I give myself to her because I have no choice. Because it’s all I’ve been doing since she asked me to sing with her. I may have tried to resist. I may have tried to take the high road for the sake of my band. I may have even believed for a while there that the solution was to no longer sing with her. All of it was utterly futile, because, by now, I need Lana as much as she needs me. The fact that I have her, that her tongue is touching down on my clit over and over again, that she’s putting all her focus into pleasing me, into making me feel the best I’ve ever felt in my life, is the most miraculous of all.

I scream her name when I come. I hold on tight to her shoulders, digging my nails deep into her flesh, as pure happiness courses through me. I could scold myself for not seeing that this is what I wanted all along and that it was okay to go for it, that I didn’t need to jump through a dozen hoops to get here, although, come to think of it, maybe I did. Maybe I had to go through all of that to reach this moment with Lana now, and all the moments that will come after.

She crawls up to me, her chin glistening with my wetness, and to see her like that floors me again. I open my arms and hold her close, because, if it’s up to me, I’m never letting her go again.

Chapter 35

Lana

I could go to sleep perfectly happy right now, lying in Cleo’s arms, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath me as she catches her breath—after I’ve just made her come like that.

She holds on to me as though I might decide to leave this room any second, or maybe she’s a little overcome. It’s been a day and a half. It’s been an eventful few weeks and she has just released a lot of pent-up emotion—and lust.

She buries her nose in my hair, then loosens her grip on me a little.

“Are you okay?” I push myself away from her to get a better look at her face. God, that face. Thousands of people must dream of waking up to this face in the morning, after having done what Cleo and I just did. From experience, I know that having that effect on people simply because of what you do, because of the privilege of being able to play music for an adoring audience, means absolutely nothing.

“The biggest paradox of being famous,” Joan used to say. Out of the two of us, and in my never-wavering opinion, she was the hot one, with the most pleasing features and the most symmetrical face—“a killer smile and boobs to match,” Joan used to joke—yet I was the one receiving most of the attention, because of my voice and my position on stage behind the microphone.

“I don’t know.” Cleo curls her fingers around my wrist. “Is this real? Are you really Lana Lynch or am I in the middle of some sort of delirious fever dream?” She grins at me. “Did we really kiss in a club full of people and did you just…” Her grin turns shy. “Make me come like nobody’s business?”

“It’s all real.” I brush the back of my fingers along her flushed cheek.

“I must be the luckiest girl on earth.”

Now is not the time to launch into a speech about how I’m nothing special just because I’m the lead singer of The Lady Kings, about how I’m just a fifty-four-year-old woman in bed with another woman who is, quite possibly, much too young for her.

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