there’s a first time for everything
The shop is nearly ready to open by the end of their first July in Burlington. The summer up until that point had been spent getting everything ready—setting up contacts and getting licensed, buying and building shelves, filling the shop and on and on and on. They’ve been so busy—spending so many long hours running around—that, by the time they get back to their apartment, they’re usually too exhausted to do anything but go straight to sleep.
But then there comes a Tuesday night, so near August, when Dani stands at the counter, looking over the fruit of their labor with a smile on her face that makes Jamie’s stomach do this weird, twisting thing.
“Hey, Jay?” she says and Jamie stops adjusting the greeting card display and meets her eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I think we’re...I think we’re done.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Heat sticks to the back of Jamie’s neck, dripping a little onto the fabric of her t-shirt. She gathers her hair in one hand and holds it up and away, pulling the scrunchie of Dani’s she found forgotten in the back room off her wrist so she can tie it back. The evening light gives the whole airy space an orange glow that makes her feel like something is sparking and tingling in her chest. The way it hits the side of Dani’s face sort of makes her want to cry.
She doesn’t.
Instead she says, “Poppins?”
And Dani smiles at her. Says, “Yeah?”
“I think you’re right.”
She stops fidgeting with the display and pulls her pack of cigarettes from the front pocket of her overalls, pulling one out and sticking it between her lips. The sound of her lighter’s click feels too loud in the triumphant silence filling the air between them.
“Damn,” she sighs, letting the smoke billow out from between her parted lips. “Finally.”
Dani is watching her, eyes filled with that wonder that she gets sometimes when she looks at Jamie. Jamie can’t quite say she understands it, but she’s grateful—so grateful—to have someone who looks at her like that. Eventually, she comes drifting over to where Jamie is standing and puts one hand on Jamie’s waist, using the other to pluck the cigarette from her fingers and place it in her own mouth.
“We should celebrate,” she says and, this close, Jamie is reminding herself to breathe, watching the way the sunlight glows in Dani’s eyes—lighting up the two different colors in a way that makes them look like they match for a moment.
“How should we do that?” Jamie asks.
Dani gives her the cigarette back. “Dinner?”
“We do that every night,” Jamie says, shaking her head and laughing.
Reaching up, Dani brushes a curl from in front of Jamie’s eyes. “Sure, but we always get take-away,” she says. “We could go somewhere instead. Somewhere nice?”
Jamie considers the thought. Imagines them sitting in that bistro they went to back in Spring, when they’d just signed the lease to their apartment. And then, just as quickly, she remembers that night—Dani lying below her on that hotel mattress they slept on for two months straight. Writhing. Jamie straddling her lap, Dani’s hips grinding up and up and the face she’d made when she—
“How about,” Jamie says leaning in and letting her eyes follow the line of her lover’s jaw, the swell of her lips, and the sweep of her neck, “you go get us some food and I’ll meet you at home so we can celebrate alone?”
Dani sucks in a breath. Her fingers tighten on Jamie’s hip. “Why aren’t you coming with me?” she asks.
Jamie leans in and presses their lips together and Dani surges against her immediately, her hands drifting up Jamie’s shoulders and coming to rest in her hair. It’s a hard kiss, but it doesn’t last for long. Eventually, nervous that someone walking past the shop could see, they pull apart from one another without stepping away.
Dani’s cheeks are rosy and her blinking is slow, lust-dizzy and unhurried. Jamie grabs at her wrist and holds it.
“It’s a surprise,” she says simply and she knows by the way Dani draws in a sharp breath that she won’t argue any further.
______
By the time Jamie gets back, Dani has set up their little table by the windows with food and lit a few candles. From where she stands, paper bag tucked under her arm, Jamie spots Dani’s silhouette in the kitchen, trimming the stems of the bouquet that’s been on the island counter for a good few days.
“Hey,” she greets, smiling wide and easy. “What took you so long?”
Jamie’s heart leaps into her throat, remembering the quiet humiliation of purchasing the items in the bag. The cashier of the shop had been stoic and kind, hardly even blinking when Jamie came up to the counter, but it was certainly a first. She wonders if she’s ever going to calm down.
Knowing the direction she’d like the evening to go, she’s beginning to doubt it.
“Sorry,” Jamie says. “Longer walk than I thought.”
As her eyes adjust to the low light of the room, she realizes that Dani has changed clothes—that she’s now wearing a dress and she has her hair brushed out and falling in waves over her shoulders. Standing there in her overalls and t-shirt, she feels supremely underdressed.
Dani drifts over to her, still smiling, and takes Jamie’s face between her palms once she reaches her, kissing her soundly on the lips. “I missed you,” she whispers and it’s been almost eight months of this, but Jamie certainly knows how that feels—feels it to every time Dani leaves the room, whenever they’re apart, really, even if it’s only for a few minutes.
“Missed you, too,” she breathes against Dani’s mouth.
“What’s that?” Dani nods to the bag as she pulls away, a pretty frown twisting her lips.
Jamie’s stomach lurches in response. “After dinner,” she says. “Just let me go change.”
For some reason, this seems to catch Dani off guard. “Oh, you don’t have to—”
Shaking her head to cut her off, Jamie laughs and says, “Look at you. Far too pretty to have dinner with mangy, ol’ me.”
“Oh,” Dani says, flushing from the attention. “I like you how you are.”
And it’s sweet, it’s so sweet. But the stakes feel higher tonight and the fact that she knows why and Dani doesn’t only makes it worse.
“Just a minute,” Jamie says, gives Dani a peck on the lips, and goes to their bedroom.
She sets the bag down on the bed, keeps it closed and folded. The last thing she needs is for Dani to see it without warning her first. For a moment, she just stands there and stares at it. Thinks about her life and the way it is now. The way it used to be.
It’s amazing how much better off she is now. There’s no use in even comparing.
______
“So,” Dani says, taking a sip of her wine and fixing Jamie with a serious look from across the table.
“So,” Jamie mimics, doing the same. She knows what’s coming next, so she draws the word out. Makes it last. Tries to look casual even though she’s anything but.
“You’re gonna make me ask, aren’t you?”
Dani looks amused, one of her eyebrows lifted in curiosity.
She grins, hides her worry behind it and hopes it’s convincing. Says, “Yes, ma’am.”
The Dani that is sitting there across from Jamie, in an apartment they share, is different than the one Jamie first met at Bly. There are still dark times, to be certain, and life is hard—made only harder when you forever carry the weight of something that can’t be named. But that first night together, pressed together in Dani’s bed, set a precedent that they’ve done nothing but follow.
Jamie leads and Dani follows. It’s easier that way, to be sure. After all, Jamie is the one amongst them with the most experience, though she’d only had two partners before Dani. It was a whole other world that Dani had to discover and she’s still discovering new things all the time when they’re in bed together.
Tonight isn’t going to be any different.
But Dani does surprise her then, getting up from her seat and walking slowly around the table, skimming her fingers across the surface, before coming to a halt beside Jamie’s chair. She’s biting her lip in that way that never fails to drive Jamie mad and she knows the effect it has. With a gentle hand, she pushes back on Jamie’s shoulders until she gets the picture and scoots back, away from the table. In an instant, Dani is sitting sideways on her lap, arm looped around Jamie’s shoulders, and pressing their foreheads together.
“What are you planning?” she whispers, her breath sweet and cool.
“Why don’t I show you?” Jamie asks, wrapping her arms around Dani’s waist and holding her where she is. As she speaks, she leans up and presses a kiss to the underside of Dani’s jaw, dragging her lips across the tender skin and puckering them against the high of her cheekbone.
On her lap, Dani shifts a little, the sudden pressure making Jamie want to grip the other woman even tighter and grind up. Dani leans down and kisses her hungrily, tongue slipping into Jamie’s mouth and flicking, making her sigh.
After a moment, Dani pulls away and smooths her hands over Jamie’s hair. “Let’s go, then.”
She stands up again and Jamie feels suddenly cold without Dani’s warmth. She’s quick to stand, leaning down to blow out the candle on the table, and then she’s grabbing Dani’s wrist to pull her into the bedroom.
Once there, she goes to the bag still resting on the bag and picks it up, turning around and timidly offering it to her girlfriend. Dani takes it and—for all her begging to know—takes her time opening, as if she’s half-afraid it’s going to explode or something.
It doesn’t, of course. But the lighting in the room is good enough that she must be able to clearly make out what it is.
“Jamie…” she says slowly. “Is this…?”
Jamie nods as Dani lifts her eyes again. “Yeah, I...I thought that you might want to...try it?”
She’s not sure what she’s expecting exactly, but the fact that Dani barely even blinks, barely even hesitates, before pulling the box out of the bag, probably isn’t it.
Jamie had sort of thought that seeing the thing in her own home would make her feel less embarrassed about it, but it doesn’t. Her ears and cheeks are hot and she swallows thickly, waiting.
“How would we…?” Dani starts, looking between the box and Jamie, who is sitting on the edge of the bed now. “I mean...I know how , but—”
Jamie gets to her feet again and takes the box from Dani’s hands, opens it and looks down at the object itself. Somehow, it’s less intimidating than it seemed at the store.
“It’s…” Dani starts and Jamie nods in agreement. “ Very purple.” Her voice tilts up in amusement. She laughs and Jamie can’t help but laugh with her.
“It really is,” she agrees. She reaches down and pokes at the leather straps of the harness curiously. “This looks…” She picks one of the straps up with her fingers, looking at the buckles, “really complicated.”
“Oh my god,” Dani says and Jamie turns to look at her in surprise. “I thought you... knew .”
Oh, God. How is that the most embarrassing part of the evening?
“No,” she says quietly. “No, I...I haven’t ever done this before. But...I get the principle of it and I just sort of thought it might be something we’d...enjoy.”
The thin edge of panic in Dani’s eyes disappears immediately and then she’s kissing Jamie again, lips fevered and desperate. “Why does that turn me on so much?” she whispers, sucking at Jamie’s neck.
“What?” Jamie gasps, the box dropping from her hands and landing on the bed so she can grip Dani’s hips and pull her closer.
“That this is new for you too.”
Jamie’s mind is filled with a buzzing white noise. She inhales shakily, blood feeling like it’s burning, the muscles in her body throbbing like she’s on the precipice of something, like she’s about to fall off. The calm before the storm.
She pulls herself away and out of Dani’s grasp, chuckling a little at the helpless whining noise Dani makes at the loss. “We’re wearing too many clothes for this,” she explains.
Her fingers are trembling too much to be of much help with the buttons, but she somehow manages it, shucking down her suspenders as she goes. At the sight, Dani jumps into action, curling her arms at an odd angle to reach her own zipper so she can pull her dress off her shoulders, let it fall to pool around her feet—leaving her in nothing but her underwear.
Jamie’s mouth waters at the sight. The heady mix of adrenaline and arousal makes her clumsy at removing her trousers and underwear , but they come off eventually and then she’s standing at the edge of their bed, naked.
Dani takes a visibly shaky breath at the sight, reaching out one hand. “God, Jamie,” she whispers. “How are you so beautiful?”
Jamie smiles and takes the hand being offered to her. Dani is the only person she’s ever known around whom she can be truly vulnerable. And Dani is good at so many things, but this especially: making Jamie feel loved and beautiful, even while they’re both, apparently, half-mad from arousal and nervous.
Dani pulls her closer until they’re pressed together. Jamie traces the strap of Dani’s bra and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You are, too,” she whispers. She pushes the strap off her shoulder, then the other. “Take this off.”
Dani obeys, her hands shaking so badly that it takes a moment. Jamie helps her, the both of them giggling and pushing at it until it’s on the floor. Her underwear comes next, the pale fabric slipping down Dani’s skin and making the air in Jamie’s lungs feel too tight. “Come here,” she says, pulling Jamie closer.
This is a first that Jamie thinks she could get used to: Dani taking the initiative. She’s never minded starting things off, no. But it’s something to be guided by her girlfriend’s familiar and soft hands into the unfamiliar situation.
On the bed, Dani sits down first and pulls Jamie on top of her until she’s straddling her waist. Jamie leans in and cups Dani’s face. Dani jerks a little into the touch and Jamie has to bite back a whimper at the way her stomach feels between her legs.
“Fuck,” she breathes, and then a strong hand is cupping the back of her neck and Dani is leaning up and kissing her. It’s a messy kiss—hot and eager and without any clear destination in mind. It lacks almost any finesse, and their tongues slide together wetly, but it’s perfect. Dani tastes sweet like red wine and the air before a storm.
Jamie fumbles her hand down until she’s cupping Dani’s left breast, flicking her thumb at her nipple. Dani sighs and shifts beneath her, kissing harder. She does the same with the other breast and then presses hot, open-mouthed kisses down Dani’s neck. She pushes at her shoulders until Dani is lying down and Jamie’s cradled between her thighs.
They grind together hotly for a few minutes, Jamie’s mouth closing around each of Dani’s breasts in turn and then she decides that this is as much foreplay she can take. Close enough. She can’t wait any longer. From the way Dani is panting and mewling against her mouth, she’s not the only one who feels this way.
“What do you want?” she whispers, tilting Dani’s head so she can kiss her ear, scrape her teeth along the hinge of her jaw.
Dani makes a vaguely questioning noise, pressing her palms into the dip of Jamie’s spine to tug her closer. Her tongue flicks against the back of Jamie’s teeth and then it’s Jamie’s turn to gasp.
“Do you want me to…?” She’s not sure why, but she can’t quite finish the thought.
Fortunately, she doesn’t have to. Dani pulls back, looking at Jamie seriously, thinking it over carefully. There’s a pregnant pause that lingers for a beat too long and then, just as Jamie is beginning to feel like her heart is going to claw its way out of her chest, Dani says, “I want to wear it.”
And then: “Is that okay?”
Jamie makes this shocked noise at the image that flashes in her mind. “Yeah,” she says gently. “Jesus, Dani, yes, that’s okay.” The words sound fairly normal for the fact that she’s trying not to just shove Dani’s hand between her legs.
Silence for a beat—only the sound of their breathing and the faint sound of the cars outside the window and out on the street filling the room.
Finally, Jamie pulls away, hating the way the cool air chills its way over her skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. The toy and the harness are still at the end of the bed where they were dropped and she sits back on her knees, pulling the plastic wrapping off and trying to put it together. Dani sits up, watching curiously, and getting it on her is quite the experience.
Especially because, at the end of it—after the struggle to figure out the buckles of the harness and the vaguely awkward act of getting it on Dani—Dani can’t stop giggling at it. Jamie has to admit that it does look a little silly and certainly an unfamiliar addition to her favorite person’s body, but she’s far too embarrassed to laugh.
Anxiety bumps its way around her stomach and chest as she forces herself to ask, “How do you want me?”
Something dark crosses Dani’s eyes at the question—something feral and wanting that Jamie has certainly seen before, but never like this. In an instant, Dani is lying on her back again and offering a hand to Jamie, guiding her to go on top. Clearly, Jamie’s not the only one who’s nervous—Dani is more than willing to fall back into her normal role.
Jamie maneuvers herself on top of Dani in a way that she can’t feel the toy sticking up from between Dani’s legs. She leans down and focuses on what she knows—kissing Dani, feeling her lips on her skin, running her fingers up and down her body—rather than on what she very, very much does not know.
She’s excited, yes, but still very nervous. Dani, seeming to sense this, runs her hands up and down Jamie’s body, pulling her closer. She sits up and there’s no longer any space between them. It changes the angle, and Jamie can feel the toy now a little. She bites back a moan.
“Are you okay?” Dani whispers, breath puffing out against Jamie’s neck.
Jamie nods, clutching her arms around Dani’s shoulders. “Yes,” she says. “Fuck, just—”
Dani chooses that moment to reach her hand down and press her fingers into Jamie, swirling around and making her shiver. “Is that good?”
Jamie nods, lips parted. She grinds down into the touch and gasps as Dani slips two fingers into her, getting her ready. “So good, baby.”
Any clarity and control she’s been able to muster thus far is quickly fading with each thrust and stretch of Dani’s fingers. She feels any and all rational thoughts being run from her mind entirely.
“Lay back,” she whispers, because that’s all she can manage to say telling—begging, really—Dani to just fuck her already.
Dani obeys, falling back against the bed and she’s an exquisite sight below. Her lips are parted, her eyes blown wide in that same wonderment she always has when they’re together like this. And this is like those times, of course, but it also isn’t and Jamie is completely overcome with the need to blow her mind.
Reaching back, Jamie wraps her fingers around the toy and then lifts herself to her knees, lining herself up. Rather than focusing on the way her stomach is twisting and flipping, she forces herself to watch Dani’s expression—that look of awe, eyes dark with arousal—as she sinks down slowly, sighing a little at the stretch. It’s certainly an adjustment, and Dani’s hands come up to lightly grasp her hips. She rubs her thumbs in gentle circles, trying to loosen Jamie up and get her to relax.
“You’re so beautiful,” Dani whispers.
Jamie smiles, reaching down a hand to rest flat against her girlfriend’s sternum. “You, too,” she says.
Once the pressure begins to alleviate a little, she lifts herself up slowly and covers one of Dani’s hands at her hips, encouraging her to thrust up gently. She bites the inside of her cheeks as the stretch changes and then sinks back down.
As she does, Dani’s breath hitches audibly, her eyes slipping closed. Jamie rocks her hips, repeating the motion curiously, and then Dani groans, thrusting up a little, like she can’t quite help herself.
It’s the harness, Jamie decides. While the sight of Dani below her and the motion of her hips—not to mention the fullness of it all—certainly sends an electric spark through her veins, the harness must be pressing down into Dani in a way that’s doing much the same.
If not more, based on the way she tightens her grip on Jamie’s hips with the third thrust, mumbling out a, “Please, Jay.”
God. Okay, then.
Jamie rolls herself up and then down, liking the way that Dani stares up at her with heavy eyelids, parted lips. “Please what?” she asks, trying to sound confident and only managing to sound breathy and desperate.
“Please don’t stop,” Dani answers.
Yeah. Jamie can do that.
A flame licks the low of her belly and she can feel her muscles beginning to tense up. Rather than giving into it like she very much would like to, she pushes it as far to the back of her mind as she can manage.
Instead of answering verbally, she rocks her hips up and then down again, an easy rhythm, as she watches Dani’s face. It’s something to be able to see the pleasure on her girlfriend’s face that she knows is on her own as well. The toy sits perfectly inside of her, textured and ridged a little at the base, making it brush against her clit every time she sinks down, and it gets harder and harder with each moment to keep from just giving into it.
Dani drifts her hands up and down Jamie’s back, brushing her palms over her nipples. Her hands are everywhere at once and her hips twitch every other thrust, a moan accompanying the move each time—shocked and open and completely uninhibited. Eventually, she forces herself to sit upright, changing the angle in a way that makes Jamie briefly think she’s going to slip. Especially when Dani kisses her, groaning against her lips and moving her hips up even harder to meet Jamie with each movement.
“Jamie,” Dani whispers, her face tucked into Jamie’s shoulder. “ Jesus, please, please.”
Jamie kisses her head, closes her own eyes against the pleasure jolting in her body, making her thighs tremble. “Come on, baby,” she whispers, tilting Dani’s face up so she can kiss her, press their foreheads together. “Can you come for me?”
Dani groans in response and it’s only a few more thrusts before it happens, wrapping her arms around Jamie’s body as she does it, muscles tensing and trembling. She comes with a rough moan pressed to Jamie’s collarbone and then falls still, still holding Jamie close as she catches her breath.
“Jeez,” Jamie hears her sigh after a few quiet moments. “I...I didn’t think it would be so…”
She pulls back and Jamie cups her face, kisses her forehead, her nose, her lips. “Neither did I,” she admits. “I’m guessing you liked it, then.”
The soft question, worlds different from the frantic, heated words from before, and they make Dani melt against her. “Understatement,” Dani answers and they kiss again, slow and steady and lazy.
“Yeah,” Jamie agrees, brushing Dani’s hair away from her face, smiling as Dani leans into the touch. “Understatement.”
They sit there for a little while—Jamie on Dani’s lap, their arms around one another—until the itching electricity in Jamie’s skin becomes too much and she begins to unconsciously rock a little against the toy still resting inside of her.
It only takes a second for Dani to realize what’s happening and then something mischievous glints in her eyes. She presses up into Jamie, pulling her closer with a coy smile. With another quick kiss, she falls back against the bed, her hands going to their familiar place on Jamie’s hips and then she’s thrusting up into Jamie with a speed and a ferocity that catches Jamie off guard.
Jamie gasps at the sensation. She reaches her own hands down to wrap around Dani’s wrists, encouraging her to lead, to take control. To not treat her like she’s going to break.
Thankfully, Dani listens. She rocks her hips faster, actually pushing Jamie up and pulling her back down with each one. One of her hands slips around to find Jamie’s clit with her fingers. Their skin slaps together, the sound mixed with their cursing and heavy breathing and almost obscene . But Jamie can’t even bring herself to worry about that—or their neighbors and the thin walls.
All she can focus on is the way Dani feels inside of her, the way her fingers tighten and dig into her skin. She’s never felt so vulnerable and exposed before and she can’t bring herself to care. Can’t do anything but love the way Dani is taking control. Stroking the flame. There’s a steady, buzzing thrum beneath her skin, not quite enough to make her buckle but close.
“Not gonna last long,” she gasps. She drops herself forward, falling to rest her weight on her upper arms on either side of Dani’s head so she can press their lips together. At the change of angle, their rhythm changes and it turns into a desperate sprint to the end.
“Fuck, Jamie...Me neither.”
She cries out as Dani fucks her harder, her fingers swirling around her clit, nails digging into her skin and making Jamie feel lightheaded. Just right. Perfect.
Jamie shatters.
As she does, she feels Dani below her, grinding up and finishing—can hear her own desperate noises as she quivers and shakes in the aftershocks. She collapses her weight down and Dani’s arms come up to wrap around her body. The burning heat between them begins to fade, pushed out by sheer exhaustion.
Eventually, Jamie sits up and pulls away, lying back on the bed while Dani undoes the buckles and sets the toy on the ground before lying back down.
“Tire you out?” Dani jokes, voice quiet.
Jami smiles and nods, eyes becoming heavy. “Very much.”
They don’t bother with clothes, just sliding beneath the covers and flicking the lamp off on their way. Jamie presses herself into Dani’s warm embrace, wishing dreamily that it were possible to climb inside another person’s existence.
“What a way to celebrate,” Dani says, stroking random patterns across the skin of Jamie’s shoulder.
Jamie nods loosely. This wasn’t the slow, careful lovemaking that they usually have. No, this was fast and carnal and simultaneously nothing she’d imagined and everything she wanted. She presses a kiss to Dani’s sternum.
“I’ll say,” she says softly.
Dani presses a kiss to the top of Jamie’s head, eyes drifting closed as sleep creeps closer and closer. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers.
This isn’t the first time that Dani has said this in the time that they’ve been together, but it surprises Jamie in the same way every time. Love is different, funny. Strange in a way she’d never known it would be and she hasn’t said that word aloud yet, but she knows that she can. That Dani won’t run away.
That she’ll say it back.
And isn’t that something?
For now, she settles for closing her eyes and pressing her warm cheek to Dani’s skin. “I’m glad you’re here, too,” she manages.
Sleep finds them as they’re lying in their bed, in the home they’ve built, and isn’t that something, too?
..