Page 28 of The Explorer
I sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t spicy, but this one had a sweet scent to it. The taste was pleasant and Banni grinned when I took a sip and gave him a nod of approval.
“Here, I ordered a beer for you,” he shouted to Indiana, who was chatting with a pink-haired woman who was exhibiting her breasts in a low-cut dress.
“Thanks.” Indiana took the beer and shot me a quick glance before being sucked into the conversation with the women on each side of him.
Lucille was sweet and intelligent. Her English wasn’t perfect, but I understood her fine. Several times, she touched me in a flirtatious way and after twenty minutes of talking, she asked if I wanted to dance.
Letting my eyes glide over the dance floor, I noticed that women dancing with women seemed to be as normal here as men and women dancing together.
“Sure.” Once we stood, I saw that Lucille was almost a head shorter than me.
As I walked past Indiana, he grabbed my hand and looked up at me. “Where are you going?”
“Dancing.” I wiggled my eyebrows with a laugh. “We’re here to explore, remember?” I didn’t stay to hear his opinion but followed Lucille to the dance floor. She was soft in the right places and I liked how womanly she was with her beautiful curves. We danced and Lucille’s moves were so seductive that I no longer doubted her intentions. She was interested in me sexually and I felt flattered. Maybe I wasn’t exactly turned on by her, but the adventurer in me loved the novelty of flirting with a woman. In the Northlands every man in the bar would have been staring if I danced with a woman like this. Because I held a special status as Magni Aurelius’ daughter, someone would have tipped off the News, who would have concluded I was a lesbian.
Here, no one cared. Sex was considered a pastime and stress reliever, not a commitment for life.
Lucille danced closer to me and I got the feeling she was looking for a chance to kiss me. I laughed when she leaned in and kissed my neck while letting her hand run down my back to my butt.
Others tried to join our dancing, but Lucille turned her back on them and moved us to another part of the dance floor.
“Everybody wants your attention,” she told me and when yet another person attempted to mingle with us, she’d had enough and led me back to the sofa where we had first met.
“It’s better here,” she said and picked up my drink from the table and handed it to me. “Santé.”
“Cheers,” I responded and downed my drink, giving me a lovely buzz. Putting my glass down, I looked over at Indiana and saw him studying me. He looked pissed for some reason, but when the blonde next to him slid her hand up his thigh our eye contact was broken.
“My friend Sparrow will be glued to my every word, when I tell her about this,” I told Lucille, who was sipping on her drink.
“Is she your lover?”
I shook my head. “No, she’s my best friend. Here, let me show you a picture.”
It didn’t take me long to pull up a picture of Sparrow and me together. “Her parents run a school and she and I have been teaching fight classes there since we were eighteen.”
Lucille leaned in, studying the picture of Sparrow, who looked more like her mother Kya than her father Archer. “She’s beautiful. I love her smile and her black curly hair.”
“That’s funny you should say that. Sparrow always hated her tiny curls and wanted my straight hair, but now that she’s grown and she wears it loose, it looks amazing.”
Lucille looked away from Sparrow’s picture to me. “You’re both extraordinary. If she came here, she would be as desired as you.”
“Me? Nah.” I passed her words off as a joke. “The thing about Sparrow is that she loves to test boundaries and she’s going to be so jealous of all the things I have access to here.”
“If she’s as open-minded as you are, then how come you haven’t slept together?”
“Oh, we’ve had plenty of sleepovers.”
“So, sheisyour lover.”
“No, we never had sex. That would be weird when we’re best friends. What about you and Banni? How close are you?”
“Banni?” She furrowed her brow.
I looked around and saw him sitting further away with some women. “Over there, he’s the guy who introduced us.”
“Hmm. I saw him walk in here with you and the tall fella and asked him to introduce us.”
“Oh, I thought you were friends?”
