Suzy

Dear Jane,

I got your letter - it was wonderful! I'm so happy that you liked my story about me and Monika, and I loved yours. Honestly, it got me more excited than anything I've read for ages, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about you and Penny some other time. Talk about a small world. You mentioned that you and Penny first met at the bus stop after you'd been to Camden Market. Well, that's exactly where my second affair with a woman started; what a coincidence! I want to tell you how it happened.

It was after I came back from my trip to Europe. I was living in London, doing nothing in particular while I thought about what I was going to do next. One of the regular things in my life was Camden Market on a Saturday. I loved going there, mostly just to watch all the weird and wonderful-looking people coming and going.

Well, one Saturday I went there and decided to get some earrings. My sister was going to have a birthday but I thought I might get some for myself as well. I spent more or less the whole morning going round various stalls looking at things and being generally indecisive and hopeless. There was one that had some I really liked but couldn't quite make up my mind about and I must have gone back there about five times. In the end it got so that the woman was laughing and rolling her eyes each time I appeared. But the final time I went there I'd made up my mind to get them. There was no price on the ones I'd chosen so I asked her how much they were.

"They should be ten quid," she said, "but if you'll go to a party with me tonight and wear them there you can have them for free."

Talk about directness! I thought about telling her not to be so cheeky but then when I looked at her I had second thoughts. I mean, if you think you can get away with it then why not? And this woman was really nice-looking; close-cropped hair dyed jet black, a face a bit like an inverted triangle with a wide forehead, high cheekbones, and a chin that was pointed without being sharp. Lots of freckles. Generous lips that looked as if they'd be good to kiss. From what I could see with my X-ray eyes through the baggy leather jacket and jeans she was wearing, a good figure too, on the slim side but then so was Monika. I suppose I must like them that way. What clinched it, though, was her eyes. They were big and blue and clear and looked full of laughter. I've always thought you can tell a lot about a person by their eyes and this woman had eyes I thought I could trust. So I decided that maybe I'd let her get away with it.

"What kind of party?" I asked.

"A good one, I hope. People. Food. Music. Dancing. Fun. Maybe even a little bit wild. How do we know until we've been there?"

"And where is it? When?"

"Tonight. In Islington. I can take you there if you like. I've got a car. Of sorts."

"And if I go to this party with you, where will we meet?"

"Where do you live?"

"Muswell Hill."

"Small world, eh? Me too. I can call round for you and pick you up. Real door-to-door service."

So I told her where I lived and we agreed on a time. I asked whether the people who were throwing the party were fussy about what their guests wore.

"No, it's dead liberal. Wear what you like. Though if you don't mind me saying so I'd be delighted to see you in something drop-dead gorgeous and as minimal as fuck."

More directness. I was half-tempted to tell her to forget the idea, until I saw the smile that accompanied the remark. It was the sort of thing you normally see whoever's playing James Bond come out with whenever he drops one of his bons mots, but with her it was somehow done with a broad brush-stroke of irony and fun right through it. Suddenly, I got the feeling I could like this woman a lot. Obviously, she'd already reached the same conclusion about me. Well, I'd visited her stall five times, hadn't I? It pays to shop around...

"OK, I'll come," I said.

"Great," she replied, with a smile of real warmth this time. "I'm Suzy, by the way."

"Jessica," I answered.

"Jessica. So, Jessica, tonight?"

"Tonight."

"Don't forget your earrings, sweetheart."

She passed them to me in a small paper envelope. I put them into my bag, flashed her what I hoped was a coquettish smile, blew her a little kiss, turned on my heel and walked off into the crowd, shaking my head in astonishment at what I'd just agreed to do. Talk about an easy pickup!

Finding something 'drop-dead gorgeous and as minimal as fuck' in my far-from-massive wardrobe wasn't easy. I experimented with various options but had to admit that all of them were somehow too weedy and insipid for the sort of evening I hoped I was going to have with this Suzy, who didn't seem the sort of person to go for anything too subtle. So in the end I emboldened myself with a strong drink and went for the Little Black Number, a few square inches of velvet I'd bought in a moment of madness and very seldom had the courage to wear in any even semipublic situation. The top half was actually pretty respectable, even chaste, well, as far as anything that fits like a second skin can be respectable and chaste, with long sleeves and a neckline that a priest wouldn't feel ashamed of, but from the waist down it flared out gently and then came to an abrupt halt about half an inch below my crotch. Maximum. Encouraged by finding out I was still able to get into it, I went for a plain but tiny black bra and panties to go underneath it, black tights (very sheer, very opaque, and very me - my legs look great in the right kind of black tights and, believe me, these were), and a pair of clumpy shoes with straps. No make-up, no jewelry except the new earrings, and just a dab of perfume. Looking in the mirror, I was one happy girl. I had no idea what effect it was going to have on Suzy, but I certainly turned myself on.

Suzy rang the bell bang on time. I swung the door open. I'd been hoping to register the look on her face when she saw me, but I was so distracted by her appearance that I completely forgot her face. Like me, she was wearing black, but there the resemblance ended. She had on a man's black suit, but none of your jumble sale rubbish. This one fit her so beautifully that it must have been either an impulse buy from heaven or made to measure. Baggy trousers with lots of pleats and turnups, and a conservatively-cut jacket, open, with narrow lapels and big pocket flaps. It was what she was wearing under it that really caught my eye, though, a lacy little black thing that together with the waistband of the trousers was like a frame for her bare midriff. She had a lovely belly, flat and smooth, and if it wasn't arresting enough in itself there was a shiny thick silver ring through her navel that I had to wrestle with myself to avoid reaching out and touching right there. She obviously loved her jewelry, because on almost all her fingers there were silver rings and in each ear six - I counted them - silver hoops going backwards in a neat mathematical progression from almost an inch in diameter at the front to absolutely tiny at the back.

"Wow," she said.

"Mmm., wow," I answered. Dialogue wasn't that important right then.

"Well, I did say drop-dead gorgeous and as minimal as fuck, didn't I?"

"Yes, and I was brought up to be a good girl."

"You look more than just good to me. Come on, let's go, I want to show you off to people. Our carriage awaits."

The 'carriage' was a horrible battered old Mini, but it started OK. She opened my door and held it open for me before getting in herself. It would have been a nightmare to try and climb in while remaining reasonably decorous in a dress like the one I had on, but fortunately I wasn't remotely interested in being decorous right then. Anything but. It's not hard to show yourself off when your skirt is about the size of a midget's handkerchief, but I put plenty of effort into it anyway, and the way Suzy looked at me as she closed the door suggested it hadn't been wasted.

The house where the party was being held was in a leafy street which was probably very quiet most of the time. Right now it wasn't. There must have been well over a hundred people in there and noise to match. Suzy led me in by the hand and introduced me to the hostess, a woman called Virginia. We fond ourselves a drink in the kitchen and then went into a room full of food. It must have looked wonderful before the hordes had unleashed themselves on it. Right now it looked like the aftermath of a hurricane but we were still able to find plenty of good things and spent some time in a corner eating them and chatting.

Then we circulated for a while. We met nobody I knew, people Suzy knew and I didn't, and people neither of us knew, and we talked to all of them. We drank some more, we spent some time in a very smoky room full of very friendly people who were adamant that we shouldn't leave, and we fobbed off more advances from men than I'd ever dreamed possible.

There was one guy in particular who just wouldn't leave me alone. Suzy was off getting us both a drink at the time and nothing I said seemed to sink in. He was good-looking in a conventional sort of way and very pleasant, but he was really barking up the wrong tree with me right then. Suzy figured him out in a millisecond when she came back with the drinks.

"She's with me," she said, circling my waist with her free hand and drawing me towards her. I allowed myself to be drawn and put my hand on her shoulder.

The poor bloke was really shocked. His bottom jaw literally went slack, he turned the kind of red that made me think he might be about to have a heart attack, and he just gaped at us, looking first at me, then at Suzy, then at me again.

I gave him my idea of a sweet and innocent smile, ran my finger along the rim of Suzy's ear, and said: "She's right. We're girls' girls. Not for you. Not tonight."

"Jesus fucking Christ," he groaned, and turned on his heel. Part of me felt sorry for him but the other part, the part still playing with Suzy's ear, the part with Suzy's hand resting on her ass, loved every second, every nuance of it.

"This looks a bit more like it," Suzy said as we came to a doorway through which we could see a roomful of people dancing. Reggae music was pouring out through a sound system and the dancefloor was full, mostly of male-female couples but also a few pairs of men and one or two of women as well.

"C'mon, let's bop," Suzy said, and led me by the hand into the heart of the throng. Somehow it was no big surprise that she was a lovely mover. We cleared a space around ourselves and threw ourselves around, dancing to the fine fine music until we were both beaded with sweat. Then, just as I felt I was going to have to take a break, the tempo changed abruptly.

"Come and dance with me," she said, holding out her arms in invitation as something slow and smoochy shifted the atmosphere down a gear or two. I moved into her embrace, my hands resting on her shoulders as hers met behind the small of my back, and cheek-to-cheek we let the music and the scent and the heat of our bodies carry us far, far away, into a private world where the only reality was the two of us, me and Suzy, just her and me and the feel of our bodies one against the other, the promise of things to come. We gyrated slowly round, drinking in the scent of hair and perfume mixed with sweat, fingers and hands wandering in a dreamy way over each other's jawlines, necks, backs, waists, hips, buttocks, raising the temperature by steady degrees without getting up to anything too outrageous (well, so long as you don't find the idea of two women climbing all over each other in a crowded room with no attempt at subterfuge whatsoever outrageous in the first place, but I think you know what I mean) but definitely communicating to each other that there was plenty on the menu for later.

As the tempo of the music picked up once more we came out of our reverie and unpeeled from one another.

"Do you fancy leaving?" she asked.

"Yes," I smiled. "I want to be somewhere with just the two of us."

"So, my place or yours?"

"Mine's nothing special. Yours?"

"Well, mine's not exactly the Ritz, but I've got a bed."

"What more could we need?" I asked, and brushed her lips with a little kiss while thrusting my breasts against hers.

The looks we got from the people around us as I took her hand and led her out of that room were pure bliss to me.

"Did you see the way they were all looking at us back there?" I asked her when we were in the car.

"Yes. It's great, isn't it? All those people staring at us, seeing my hands on you and the way we were holding each other close, fantasising about what we're going to get up to when we're alone together, wishing they were a fly on the wall. I get a real buzz from teasing people that way, flaunting myself, driving them mad. Don't you?"

"I hadn't really thought about it that way, but when I do, yeah, it's really exciting." And it was true, I had got off a lot on the surreptitious (and not so-surreptitious) looks we'd been getting from the other people in the room when we'd been dancing close together.

Suzy ran the tips of her fingers gently up my thigh from my knee to the very top. I groaned.

"That feels beautiful," she said. "I love this material. It's so smooth, so slick, so light. Are you wet between your legs?"

" I must be soaking."

"Mmm, lovely. I can just imagine it. Yum yum."

The minutes to Suzy's place seemed like hours, but finally we were there, with the car parked, hall light on, then through into Suzy's private world, into the living-room of what she'd already told me was a one-bedroom flat, and on to the sofa.

"Drink?" she asked, taking off her jacket and folding it over the back of a chair.

"I can think of better ideas," I answered. "Come here."

She moved like quicksilver to join me. Our eyes met. Hers were wild with lust. I'm sure mine were too. She took my face in both hands and brought her mouth down on mine. Lips, tongues, teeth, it was as if we were trying to climb inside each other. I'd never experienced a kiss so blatantly hungry or that went on quite so long. It must have been a good fifteen minutes before we broke our embrace, our mouths puffy from our exertions and our faces slick with saliva. Suzy gave me a soft smile.

"Now that's what I call kissing," she murmured, and ran her index finger down my nose and across my lips. "You're lovely, Jessica."

"You too, Suzy," I answered, running my finger down her jawline from her ear to her chin, then allowing my hand to stray down over her collarbone, slowly, slowly to her breast. It was as hard as a rock against my palm and I could feel the nipple jutting out through the slight roughness of her lacy top. I caressed it slowly, running my fingertips around it. Her eyes were out of focus now and her mouth open and slack, her chest rising and falling as her breath came in ragged gasps.

I took the lower hem of the top in my hands, one at each side, and Suzy raised her arms above her head. It came off easily and I tossed it to one side. Her bare breasts were small and high, pale with blue veins clearly visible under the skin and crowned with small pale upturned nipples that I just couldn't resist. I cupped one of them in my hand and bent my head to play with her nipple with my mouth, enjoying its sweetness and firmness, loving the way it seemed to look at me and beg for more as I ran my tongue around the aureole, held it between my lips and sucked on it, and plumped it up with my hand as I took it between my teeth and nibbled and tugged at it in a way that made Suzy squirm and whimper with excitement, her hand clamped in my hair.

Once again I moved my mouth up to hers for another feverish kiss. As our mouths locked together I moved the flat of my hand down to enjoy the softness of her belly. They met the metal of the ring she was wearing there. I pinched it between my forefinger and thumb and pulled on it gently. Suzy stiffened.

"Does that hurt?"

"No, it's really nice. Don't stop. Please."

I didn't stop. I moved my mouth down once more, tongue out, licking the salt sweat from between her breasts and then letting its tip play around her navel, pushing it in as far as it would go, delighting in the contrast between the soft elasticity of her flesh and the hard unyielding silver piercing it, making my tongue as rigid as I could and rolling it round her concavity till I could feel her shivering with pleasure.

But when I moved my hand down to the button at the top of her trousers, which was all she was wearing now, she put hers there to stop me.

"Not yet," she said. "I want to see you first."

"So help me," I answered, standing up and turning my back to her. Suzy didn't need any second invitation. She stood up and unzipped the dress and put her hands inside to thrust it off my shoulders in what was almost one smooth gesture. It rustled as it fell to the floor. I climbed out of it and turned to face her again. Even as I turned round she had her hands behind my back again to unsnap my bra. While I was sliding it down my arms and off she was already kneeling in front of me, fingers inside my tights and panties together, pulling them over my hips, my thighs, my knees, and then kneeling as she drew them down my calves to my ankles. I put a hand on her shoulder to steady myself and climbed out of them, totally naked. It had taken about fifteen seconds.

"Nice view," she said, still on bended knee and looking up at me with a broad grin, her eyes roaming up my body to meet mine.

"Glad you like it," I said, grinning back and holding my arms out to her. "It gets better in close-up."

She stood and I enfolded her in my arms. We kissed again, enjoying the long-drawn-out slowness of it, our tongues and lips exploring each other rhythmically, now gently, now more urgently, our breasts rubbing together, clammy with sweat. She brought her hand down to touch me, alternately rolling the whole of my breast with her palm and arousing my nipple between her finger and thumb till it felt as if it would burst.

I felt the heel of her hand trace a trail down over my ribcage, past my diaphragm, over my stomach, and into my pubic hair. She pressed against my abdomen and then brought down her fingers, three of them, ever so softly, on my vulva, stroking its whole length backwards and then forwards, in time to the thrusts of her kisses. She made me so hot I was more or less sobbing as I tried to keep my breath. Sensing the level of my excitement, she shortened her strokes to concentrate more on my clitoris, flicking it, rolling one of her fingertips around it, occasionally dipping a finger inside me for lubrication. I felt my orgasm start to gather force inside me and pressed against her with my hips and dug my nails into her back in my excitement, her slim deft fingers moving harder, faster, harder, faster until that beautiful feeling came washing over me and I could feel liquid come spurting out of me in little fountains. I howled out loud with the sheer ecstasy of it and crushed her to me. When the bearhug I had Suzy in finally relaxed she brought up her hand, still glistening from me, middle finger extended, to lift my chin up. "There, that's better, isn't it?" she said, looking me in the eye. "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes." "You wanted that a lot, didn't you?" "I sure did. But I want more. Don't you?"

"Undo me," she whispered hoarsely.

With my left hand on her shoulder, stroking her collarbone with my thumb, I moved my right hand to the button at the top of her trousers and opened it. Then I took the zip and drew it downwards. It was long and I made the movement last. Finally, though, I reached the bottom. As I did so Suzy shrugged and the trousers fell to reveal black silk drawers. I put my hands on her rump as she finished climbing out of the trousers, loving the soft yet firm curves of her ass in its smooth covering.