Cuando el amor no es locura, no es amor
"When love is not madness, it is not love."
-Pedro Calderon de Barca
Author's Note: What follows is a love story, something that's been rattling around in my head for a while now. Hopefully I've managed to do it justice. If you're looking for a quick fix (and you don't scare easily) I refer you to my 'Jack' series or any other number of terrific stories.
This is a 'romance' insofar that it deals more with love and erotica, as opposed to just straight up 'sex'. The story supports the sex, not the other way around.
The story however deals with a few different romances: a relationship between a woman and another woman as well as a relationship between a man and a woman. If either of these aspects make you uncomfortable or just aren't your cup of tea, no worries.
This is a long story, there is sex, there is love, tragedy, betrayal, violence, and, ultimately, hope.
Unnecessary disclaimer: Everyone is over 18. Duh.
Dynamics of a Human Heart: How many ways can a soul be saved?
Miranda sighed and squinted at the sun, bright in a cloudless California sky, and attempted to calculate what time it was.
Of course, you could just look at your phone.
She sighed again at that thought and attempted to juggle her books, her laptop, and her phone, trying to see what time it was. Unfortunately, she was attempting to do all of this with only one working arm, her other sported a wrist brace after a particularly nasty sprain.
I have a PH. D. in theoretical physics, I have an I.Q. of a hundred-and-sixty-plus,
she thought to herself,
yet, somehow, the ability to balance a bunch of stuff eludes me.
Miranda Inoue was an unusual woman in many ways: having just turned twenty-two, she had already gotten her Ph. D. from Caltech in experimental physics and was now dealing mostly with astrophysics and advanced mathematics.
Miranda was as unique physically as she was mentally: she was willowy in appearance and graceful. Miranda's Asian heritage was living up to the stereotype. However, her father was from Johannesburg and had contributed some of his own genes to Miranda's look, giving her a curvier figure than most would associate with your typical Asian woman. Her shoulders were also a bit broader; her hair was fairer as well, approaching a warm chestnut brown, cut short, if for no other reason than to just to not fuss with it and she could lay claim to a respectable amount of leg.
Overall, she was...'exotic' as she liked to think, and her eyes made her exotic look utterly unique: her eyes were almond-shaped, a gift from her Japanese mother, and they were a vibrant shade of violet. Neither her mother, nor her father had a clue as to how that had happened, but eventually Miranda did some research and deduced that there was probably a case of albinism or similar gene mutation somewhere back in of parent's family history and that it may be recessive.
She was four years old when she deduced this. Even then, she was exceptional.
Unfortunately, all gifts come with a price and Miranda's were no exception: she was frail, if not downright sickly. She didn't actually get sick all that often, but she was constantly exhausted, needing to rest between classes and before any kind of social activity, no matter how calm or relaxed it would be. It was as if, to fuel her genius, her mind was consuming her body for fuel.
And this affected her in other, more, intimate ways.
Simply put, Miranda's sex life was a delicate affair: she couldn't exert herself too strongly or she'd likely get dizzy and pass out. It was not a popular quality in a lover and it made for a lonely existence, pretty or not.
Fortunately, her current lover was an understanding individual and together they had managed to maintain a loving, if not vigorously passionate, relationship, which she found very much to her liking.
She was thinking about Sam, and must have been distracted because she slammed headlong into something tall and pissed off.
"Bloody Hell!!" roared a stranger's voice.
Miranda cried out and fell to the ground, all of her possessions crashing next to her. She gasped in pain as jolts of agony shot through her arm, which had been the point of impact. Blinking back tears, she looked up at whom she had run into.
He was Caucasian, maybe early forties but ragged-looking. He was dressed in a shirt, tie and tan duster that all looked thoroughly disheveled to the point of messy. His hair was the color of dirty straw cut short and spiky, like a punk rocker who'd kept the haircut long past its time and he looked haggard, as if he hadn't slept in days. A pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses covered his eyes. Overall, Miranda though he looked like a cross between a used-car dealer and a heroin addict.
He was currently dusting himself off and reaching down to pick-up a matchbook and a now-crushed cigarette from off the ground, ignoring the prone girl completely.
"Damn it," he swore at his ruined cigarette, before turning his gaze on Miranda, "What, are you blind or just stupid?" he demanded in a heavily accented voice that sounded like it could have come from Liverpool or maybe London. Miranda had heard some guys (and a few girls) try to fake an English accent. This guy clearly wasn't though, the combination of Scouse and Cockney was too distinctive.
She glared up at him and painfully got to her feet. She noticed that his sunglasses were mirrored as two tiny portraits of herself stared back at her.
He was also a bit more attractive than she had first though: his skin, while pale, was also unblemished, save for what looked like a perpetual five o' clock shadow. He had murderously high cheekbones and a strong jaw, the kind that could be described as heroic if it weren't cloaked in stubble. She thought she saw a faint scar, raised with an unusual texture to it at the corner of his mouth, but the stubble obscured it.
"No, don't worry, I'm fine," she grumbled and started to bend over to grab her things. She jerked her head up, trying to see if maybe he was checking out her backside or breasts, it had happened before: the swell of her hips gave her what one, rather vulgar, friend had called a heart-shaped ass and her breasts, while not terribly large, were full and firm.
Instead, he appeared to be busy trying to light another cigarette, hand cupped to shield the match from the wind, tossing the matchstick away carelessly once done. He looked at her one more time and smirked, as if she was his own private joke, and began to walk away.
Miranda glared daggers into the Englishman's back as she attempted to put her phone in her pocket and grab her books and her computer, all the while praying that none of them had been damaged. Gravity was not cooperating with the handicapped young woman and she proceeded to drop her stuff again.
"Kuso!!"
she swore, a curse that roughly translated to "Shit!" Miranda didn't swear very often and when she did, only in Japanese so no one else could understand it. She had been brought up to believe that the use of profane language, in any language, was hallmark of the uneducated and inferior.
The man stopped, only a few paces away from her and looked up at the sky, his shoulders going slack. He turned his head, just a little, to watch Miranda struggle again with her possessions, eyes still hidden by shades. He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled hard through his nose, then turned and stalked towards her.
"For fuck's sake!" he snarled, "Up!" He took her uninjured arm and yanked the startled woman to her feet. Stooping down, he grabbed her things.
"You keep the sodding machine close to you, like this," he said, wedging her laptop in the crook of her arm, "you put your books on top to keep it from sliding out," he unceremoniously dumped her textbooks on her computer, Miranda exhaling hard at the sudden weight. "And you keep your mobile in your bloody pocket!" Moreover, he spun her around, yanked her forward and thrust her phone into her pants' back pocket.
Miranda squawked in indignation as she was manhandled. "Keep your hands to yourself!" she hissed.
The man was not impressed, he smirked again, like she was the funniest thing in the world, gave her a mocking, two-finger salute, and turned and walked away.
Miranda glared after him.
"Jerk" she muttered to herself. Still, she wasn't being entirely fair; if he really had wanted to grope her he had had amble opportunity. Instead, he had been all business. She was used to people being attracted to her, from time to time, but not someone quite so irritated with her, except her mother. She couldn't quite put her finger on it: he was savagely rude, foul-mouthed, arrogant, sarcastic, and overall entirely abrasive. Nevertheless, he had, something; a...rawness to him, as if he made no pretenses at all of being anything other than what he was. He was bold, fearless, and totally unapologetic. In other words, he was everything she wasn't and a part of her, a small part, found that very interesting.
Dismissing these thoughts as nonsense, she made her way towards her apartment. But she did notice that, for the remainder of her trip, she didn't drop a single thing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miranda slammed the door to her apartment a little harder than necessary and her roommate, Samantha, rolled her eyes as she looked up from her computer.
"So, it was a fun day then, was it Miri?" she prodded in a voice heavily laden with sarcasm as Miranda dumped her books and computer on the table unceremoniously and stalked over to her.
Miranda's answer was the sound of tearing Velcro followed by a wrist brace being hurled across the room to smash into the wall with surprising force. "Shut up," she said without any rancor as she came to Sam's chair and bent over to kiss her lover once upon her lips, then again upon her brow, as was their custom.
Miranda and Sam had met as freshman and the attraction had been instantaneous: both girls were very bright, though Sam readily admitted that her lover was "definitely the brains in the relationship."
Miranda, having gotten her degree in theoretical physics, had now decided to pursue a second degree, this time in experimental physics. In her down time, she acted as a T.A. for the physics department. One of the 'perks' was being able to live on campus for very little money.
Sam was majoring in information science and technology while minoring in mathematics. While Sam and Miranda both enjoyed crunching numbers, Sam's interests began and ended with programming algorithms.
"So, what put you in such a good mood today, my sweet?" Sam asked wryly.
"Ugh, don't get me started-"Miranda began
"Too late."
Miranda glared at Sam as she sat down across from her.
"I was late for almost every class today, both teaching and attending, I'm suffering from major writer's block in regards to my final thesis," she sighed in frustration and gestured to her stuff on the table, "And some ass plowed into me and made me break my computer."
Sam pouted. "Aw, did baby have a bad day? Fall down, go boom?" She grinned as Miranda narrowed her eyes at her. Sam beckoned, "Bring it here," she said gesturing at the computer, "Let Sam take a look at it."
Miranda smiled as the tension drained from her, Sam had a gift for making her smile. It was one of the things she loved about her, and she kissed her lover's mouth again. She tasted like vanilla, one of her favorite scents and flavors and Sam knew it. Miranda enjoyed the way things smelled or tasted, for her it was much more immersive than looking at something or hearing it.
Sam smirked at her and set to work on the laptop. Physically, Sam was the polar opposite of Miranda: blond hair and blue eyes, she was a California native and had a deep, Pacific tan that was too beautiful to come from a bottle or a booth. When they made love, her own pale skin made for a stark contrast to Sam's sun-kissed body. She also had the most incredible, bee-stung lips that made her irresistible when she pouted. Miranda could quite contentedly kiss, nibble, and suck on them for hours. Sam looked like the kind of girl you'd see playing volleyball all day or maybe as a model.
Being confined to a wheelchair, however, dashed any hopes of that. Her legs had been crushed in an accident when she was a teenager and while she'd retained most of the feeling in them, she'd never be able to walk unassisted again.
"So," Sam began as she worked on the laptop, "Tell me about this jerk." She brought the machine up on its edge and rested it against her breasts as she fiddled with a USB port. Miranda couldn't help but stare, Sam possessed the most incredible set of "tits" as Sam liked to call them, she had ever seen: full enough to fill her hand, with large, pink nipples that Miranda had spent hours licking and nibbling at, at her lover's breathless and oft-repeated request. The thought of it sent vibrations through her slender body that resonated deep somewhere between her legs.
