Chapter 2.
Note to readers: "Yaya" (γιαγια) = Greek "grandma".
Phoebe and I kissed good-night in the hallway, after looking both ways to make sure nobody was watching. I would've gladly followed her into her room — I enjoy
sleeping with
people, not just "sleeping with" them — but she stopped me at the doorway. "There's no room. In the morning?" So I kissed her again and crawled into the guest bed next door. I lay there awake for a while, nerves still tingling blissfully, body very pleasantly relaxed, but I drifted off somewhere around the time the very last of the guests left.
The sunrise woke me, maybe five hours later. Most Saturdays I would've turned away from the window and gone back to sleep, but this time I found myself a robe and a towel and headed for the shower to wash off last night's sweat. Even as an invited guest, I felt self-conscious in the boss's house — last night's bravado had evaporated with the daylight — and I was glad that nobody else was up and about.
The shower felt very good indeed. As the water splashed, I thought about last night. Well, wouldn't you? I could hardly believe my luck, or my audacity. The way Phoebe had quivered when I took hold of her, the feel of her skin under my fingers...
I realised that my hand had drifted down between my thighs and I was halfway to orgasming on the memory of last night's tryst. How long had I been in the shower? Too long, most likely. I rinsed off, dried myself and walked back up the hallway clad only in a fluffy robe.
Phoebe's door was open, just a crack, but I hesitated. Was I pushing my luck? What if she'd had second thoughts?
Well, I
had
been invited. If and when she chose to rescind that invitation, I'd respect that. Until then, I'd just have to take her at her word.
I tapped on the door softly and waited, counting ten. Then I eased it open, slipped into Phoebe's room and closed the door behind me discreetly.
The light was dimmer in here, coming in around the edge of her curtains, and I had to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust. It was the sort of room you see more often in movies than in real life: a teenager's bedroom, preserved long after she'd grown up and flown the nest, kept against her occasional visits back home. (My own childhood bedroom had lasted about a month before my mother filled it with boxes of wool.) I stopped to get a better feel for this woman that I'd met barely twelve hours ago.
A desk, decorated with badly-worn stickers that must have been there twenty years. Textbooks: maths and chemistry, schoolgirl Greek and French. Several books of music theory and a child-sized cello stool draped with last night's clothes (oh yes, I remembered those!). School pennants for music and hockey. A few family photos on the wall alongside some moderately good high-school artwork. A dusty Madonna-and-child icon in Orthodox style, redolent with gilt, hanging over the head of the bed. The bed that Phoebe was in.
She'd told me the truth last night; it was a narrow bed with barely enough room for one. That one now lay on her side on top of the covers — it had been one of those hot Melbourne nights — wearing only briefs and an oversized T-shirt, facing away from me, fast asleep.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the curve of her back. She'd tied her curls back into a dishevelled pigtail before going to bed and I slipped my hand under that ponytail, ran my fingers through it. It'd been years since I'd been with a woman with long hair and I like to play.
As I soon discovered, Phoebe was still quite mussed from last night's adventures. The last thing I wanted to do was wake her abruptly by yanking on a knot. So I made myself comfortable beside her, slipped the elastic out of her hair and started to unpick the tangles one by one. I could see it was going to take a while, but who counts the minutes when they're alone with a gorgeous woman?
So I worked through her hair, knot by knot, enjoying the view, as magpies warbled outside. I may have entertained an impure thought or two somewhere along the way. But eventually I got to the very last of the tangles... and just as I pulled it loose, my eyes lit on a black bristly hairbrush on the floor beside the bed.
Well, just because I'd dealt with the knots didn't mean I had to
stop
. I picked it up and started brushing her hair. Slow, languid strokes. Steady and soothing...
There's a trick my old science teacher Mr. Jackson showed me, with two pendulums hanging from the same support. You set one swinging; soon enough, the other starts swinging too, picking up energy through the support that connects them. It only works if they're made alike, on the same frequency, but when they are then the smallest connection is enough to conduct that energy.
It's the same with people, I think. When you meet someone who fits you — in love, in lust, in friendship, whatever — there's a sort of resonance that happens. What you're feeling and thinking passes from you into them and it comes back redoubled. It just needs the right sort of contact. That could be something as physical as full-on sex, or as nebulous as a phone conversation.
Or even brushing somebody's hair.
I don't know you, Phoebe. Not well at all. Maybe when you wake we'll have nothing in common. But right now, I feel connected to you by this simple act. Even if this is all that happens, I'm glad I'm here.
Phoebe murmured in her sleep and rolled over onto her front. That made my job awkward. Since she no longer had her back to me, I couldn't easily reach her hair from my current position sitting on the edge of the bed, not without twisting around uncomfortably.
So I climbed onto the bed and knelt astride her waist. That put me in a good position to reach forward and brush down toward me. At first I brushed lightly, just picking up a few strands on each pass; gradually, as I satisfied myself that there were no knots left, I brushed harder, letting the bristles scrape her neck and (through the T-shirt) her back.
Although she didn't wake, I could feel her relaxing, see her stretching out just a little, and I took that as permission to continue. I worked the brush through her curls again, one last time, before I gathered them into a bundle and pulled it to one side, out of the way. Then I set the brush down beside me and started using my fingernails, dragging parallel lines down her nape as lightly as I could manage.
That earned a sigh, so I did it again. This time I continued down, both hands fanned out and scratching down her back; when I got to the bottom, I slipped my hands under her shirt and then up to her shoulders, fingernails leaving ten tiny white trails on her skin.
Phoebe was starting to get restless; I didn't want to wake her just yet, so I eased off, scratching very gently down her back and straightening her shirt. I leant forward to position my thumbs either side of her spine and began stroking her back and shoulders. Slowly, slowly does it; the best backrubs are unhurried.
After several minutes of this she'd settled a bit, but I could still feel a certain tension. Well, I knew something for that...
Using my left hand on her back for balance, I slipped my right hand up into her hair, burrowing into her curls. Slowly, thoroughly, I massaged her scalp, from side to side, from the nape of her neck to her brow, using fingertips and fingernails in turn.
I felt her melt under my touch and I continued, stroking and scritching her, watching her breathe. I couldn't imagine wanting anything else on a Saturday morning when I could be doing this.
Time passed. The room grew warmer as the sun rose and my fingers still worked in her hair. Gradually I felt a slow subtle shift in the tempo of her breathing; she swallowed, paused, inhaled, still facing away from me.
"You're a bad girl, Yvonne." But she didn't sound angry.
I paused what I was doing. "I'll stop if you want me to."
"I didn't say stop."
So I resumed. Now she was awake, I could scratch harder. Phoebe seemed to like that a lot. She was practically purring under my fingers and I brought my other hand up so I could use both of them in her hair. As I pleasured her, I could feel her gathering her words.
