March Hastings
Enraptured lovers
CHAPTER ONE
The large furnished room seemed to sway as girls danced slowly and close, their bodies urgent with secret desire. Dex stood beside the phonograph and surveyed the smoky atmosphere, her gaze alert and curious as she searched out each languid face. The party had been going since ten last night. Now, the first pale signs of dawn crept in coolly through the half-opened windows. She had been waiting for Ryan. But Ryan, obviously, wasn't going to show.
A small, curly headed blonde maneuvered along the walls, picking her way gracefully over legs stretching out from the divan, around the buffet table spilled over with booze, around the couples standing still and stroking and kissing each other, too engrossed to bother with her.
She reached Dex and smiled with a certain triumph of accomplishment. Her small teeth glinted. "I'd like to say we've met somewhere before. My name's Gena. And this is my first gay party. Do you suppose I could ask you to dance?"
There was something brave and brash in her manner. Dex realized that it hid the shy person underneath, or at least that's the way it would seem. She gazed down at the pert, hopeful face. The face seemed so young, so ready for anything that Dex couldn't bring herself to reject the offer of friendliness or could she deny that she didn't feel the first flush of excitement passing between them as they drank up that special feminine attribute, the thrust of a breast, the curve of a hip, the shape of the lips, which attracted them to each other more and more forcefully every second.
And anyway, it would be a relief not to think about Ryan for half a minute. Dex still had notions of fidelity, despite the lateness of the hour and the female bodies entwined and panting softly about the room.
Now, there was nothing to say. Gena was making it all very simple. She had the direct optimism of the young, thought Dex. She expected everything to go just her way. Well, she couldn't hold that against her. If anything, it was a further temptation to spend more time with each other than just dancing. Dex put her arm around Gena's waist and moved her gently backward into the crush of couples.
The music was slow, the wailing sound of soul, of a woman craving another body, perhaps any body which would give her searing need some satisfaction. Dex listened to the words as she felt the new body in her arms. The small, firm body felt pliant and pressed willingly to her. Dex could imagine the fluttery heart beating nervously behind the fragile rib cage. She recalled her own youth. The first trial flights. Everything had been desperately painful, then. It hadn't been easy to grow up.
Of course, times had changed. Supposedly it was easier now, everything from meeting other girls who wanted the same thing to having sex immediately. Courtships were a thing of the past. So perhaps it was foolish if not downright wrong to put herself in Gena's shoes. Perhaps her boldness had not been hiding any inner shyness. And, thought Dex vehemently to herself, why should it? In her small way she had made this brighter day come about. She had come to New York and lived damn well the way she pleased, openly and sensuously.
"Kids nowadays," Bobbi Morton had said with a sly grin, "just come up to you and say, 'let's fuck'." And from all she had heard, Bobbi knew what she was talking about from experience. Her easy sex with young girls was legend. Dex now found herself admiring Bobbi's ways despite herself. She got what she wanted. She never hung around waiting for someone to show up like Dex did. She'd look around, see something she liked and take it.
Dex spread her fingers between the girl's shoulder blades. She could feel the flexible movement of Gena's spine, the way it plunged down to the tight roundness of her girlish buttocks. The young breasts brushed firmly against her own, sending shivers through her. How she would love to let her hand slip down and cup the beautiful, full ass, so temptingly within reach. But some old taboo, some rule of behavior she had made for herself years ago and then had never broken, stopped her dead.
"Your first party?" Dex repeated. "I hope you didn't come here alone."
"Oh, yes, I did. I think that's kind of the best way." Gena's laugh was bright. Pleased with herself. "I overheard Bobbi Morton tell some girls that there was going to be open house here tonight. And I decided to put my own two cents in, too. So that was it."
A faint fragrance of Blue Grass touched Dex's nostrils. She was very clean and refreshing. How long had it been since she'd paid serious attention to anyone other than Ryan? Maybe this was the moment. Maybe this was the bell ringing in someone who could change the world a little.
Dex said, "I don't suppose you have to be anywhere at any particular time? Family or such?"
Gena laughed aloud. "Family? Me?" She shook her head and the curls quivered. "Shit, not for ages."
Dex judged that the girl couldn't be more than eighteen. And a recent eighteen at that. Maybe she was showing off a newly found independence. But there seemed nothing else to do except take Gena at face value. If she had ties or other complications, they would pop up soon enough.
She had decided that it was high time to kick a few of those scruples out the window. Gena's voluptuous young body was the push she needed. And as Bobbi Morton said, nowadays all you had to do was say, "Let's fuck." Nothing could be simpler.
Dex found herself taking deep breaths, filling her lungs with the fresh odor of the girl's perfume, becoming slightly heady with the freedom and easy release she promised.
She steered the girl across the dance floor, edging toward the curtained doorway. She watched Gena's face with its cool gaze flitting from the room to the exit. Gena probably knew exactly what was happening. Perhaps she was a, bit wiser, a bit more sophisticated than Dex had figured at first.
Dex felt the tips of the girl's breasts brush her once again. The nipples were stiff, she realized. Gena was alive and horny. Their bodies pressed together tauntingly. Gena was wearing no bra under her jersey; she could feel it. The nipples were stiffening into two small pebbles. A rush of heat struck Dex between her thighs, warming her whole body, as she thought of the wetness of Gena's panties which surely matched her excited nipples. Her hand slipped down the girl's spine and rested on the first curve of Gena's buttocks. She was almost there.
"How would you like to come with me to buy the Times," Dex said, her voice easy but serious. "Take it home to my place and do the puzzle?"
Before Gena could comment, Dex turned the doorknob and steered Gena out to the landing.
"You don't know my type," Gena called back as she clattered down the stairs ahead of Dex. "I do those puzzles in ink."
Dex felt a warm flooding of pleasure as she realized that Gena was, in fact, going to give her a good run for the record. No wilting innocence here. No clinging, pleading boredom. This Gena, this girl out of nowhere, held a promise for Dex that she could barely trust herself to believe.
The click of the lock as the door shut on the party was missed by most of the women left there. The music was still going strong, despite the lateness of the hour. Most of the girls were too occupied with each other to notice two people leaving.
Bobbi Morton was the exception. She had watched Gena approach Dex from a dark corner of the room where she sat with a girl just about the same age as Gena. The girl fumbled with the buttons of Bobbi's blouse as the woman kept her eyes fixed on the door.
So Gena had decided to show her what she could do on her own, thought Bobbi. Well, getting Dex was not much of a conquest. Despite the fact that she had all kinds of hang-ups, rules, scruples, she had been ready for picking that night. Mooning quietly in the corner, the martyr of all-abiding love, Dex had snapped up the chance to show her lover Ryan up by rushing into a one-night stand that would show that two could play that game. Bobbi smiled to herself. Dex, however, did not know how to play that game. That was her whole problem.