Chapter Text
Beatrice’s first orgasm happens almost by accident.
They have settled into a rhythm that is precious and uniquely theirs. In the daytimes, they train, and read, and smile at one another over meals. In the evenings, they lounge together in one of their rooms. Beatrice plays the violin often for Ava, who likes to lay sprawled on the bed, looking at her starry-eyed. They read, or rub each other’s backs and feet, kiss each other’s hands, talk about their secrets, and share their mundane thoughts.
Often, they take off their shirts and wrap around each other in the bed, and kiss with soft passion, and tell each other over and over how much they are loved. Beatrice is almost starting to believe it. She smiles more, now, and the more comfortable they become with this, the more intensely her body responds to the gentle, thoughtful way that Ava loves her. She can lie in Ava’s arms and the mere fact of Ava trailing her fingers up and down Beatrice’s back sends her into fits of shivers. Ava can speak to any part of her, and make trails of heat bloom along her skin.
It is not quite sex, though it is leavened with desire. They leave each other’s beds smelling of one another’s skin and hair. It is its own form of closeness.
It has been weeks of this, and they are in Ava’s bed, wrapped up in each other, a tangle of bare arms, chest to chest, hip to hip, kissing each other’s necks and shoulders. As the violin is Beatrice’s instrument of choice, Beatrice’s body is Ava’s, and Ava’s warm hands are playing electric symphonies at the small of Beatrice’s back. She has thrown her leg over Ava’s, trying to grip Ava’s body with her own, trying to press into her, melt into her, shifting to bring them ever closer, when suddenly, an overflow of sweetness bubbles up from below, and she gasps.
She clutches at Ava with all of her limbs, eyes closed, mouth open, overwhelmed for a moment with the kind of blinding ecstasy she has tried but failed to imagine. A high little moan slips out; a sound of joy, surprise, and wonder. Warmth floods every limb and digit. Even her lips blush. When she opens her eyes, Ava is looking at her with eyes dancing, both amazed and amused. “Was that what I think it was?”
Beatrice doesn’t know what to do but laugh. “I think so.” They kiss for a moment, giddy, still laughing, and Beatrice’s skin is tingling all over. Ava’s body, which always feels good, feels like heaven against hers now. They had not been pursuing anything in particular except the closeness. Bemused, she looks at Ava. “Did we just have sex?”
Ava snickers. “I think it depends who you ask.”
Beatrice wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think I want to ask anyone.”
They laugh until tears run down onto the pillow, and fall asleep holding each other.
****
Ava,
It occurs to me that I am only just learning what “all of you” really means.
I have placed a false barrier between how we choose to share our love. I have regarded our bodies as delineated like war zones, and the forms of intimacy segregated between what is and is not sex. I am coming to believe that it does not work that way. Not when you love all of someone.
I belong to you, Ava, and have for some time. What that means is that all of you excites me. Your eyes, your laugh, your newness, your pain. Your heart. All of these things excite me no less than your skin, your lips, your hands. And so, as the truth of loving you wholly becomes more real to me, it comes naturally that I should respond more easily to you. When you washed my feet, it was lovemaking. When I plucked the ribbon from your hair, it was lovemaking. When I explored the scents that you lay across your body for nothing more than my delight, it was lovemaking.
All of these things which are intimate and private, they are ours to keep and treasure. And as such, they are ours to anoint as more beautiful and more special as we see fit. Their value and meaning is no-one’s determination to make. Not even God’s.
The accidental bliss of orgasm is one I intend to repeat at some point, and one that I would like to give to you as well. But as I take in the depth and breadth of this love of ours, I feel more and more that it is not the point. It is treated like the holy grail or like a great transgression, and it is neither. For us, it is a kind of raw pleasure that we may share in more than one particular way.
My thoughts of you at night grow more specific, as I grow more comfortable with what we have and more honest with myself. If a kiss is a show of love and respect, then I am clear on wanting to love and respect every bit of you, every inch. Your body is beautiful, both because it is objectively so, and also because it is yours. It was created to be the vessel for the soul of the one I love more than anyone. It was created with care, and made to delight the eye. I ache to show reverence to the creation.
I ache to lay unnumbered kisses on your skin; to remove every last barrier between us; to kiss your breast which is made to fit my mouth; to curl my fingers around your hips and feel their muscles flex and reach at my touch; to lose myself in the valley between your thighs, which is made to accept my touch. It is an act of worship, every which way that we choose to make love to each other. And that, my dearest, is the point. The union of spirit and body and soul. That is divine love, and I have never felt more fervent, more devoted, in my life.
I need no-one to define for me what “counts” or does not. I would have us know each other in every way, and choose as we wish what ways we may give our love to each other.
*******
My love,
I understand now why it is easy to get confused and think that sex is the pinnacle and the point of it all. When you abandoned yourself for that moment last night, the bliss on your face was transcendent. My heart wanted to leap out of my chest at the sight of you, unraveled and giving yourself over to that ecstasy. And the aftermath, how your body went so loose and soft for me… I can understand why people can think that this is everything. Lying naked in your bed, with you utterly spent and given completely to me was a greater pleasure than my own.
But it remains a means to an end, and that end is the intimacy. The closeness. I remain steadfast in wanting all of you. Sometimes that will mean sex, and sometimes it will not.
I would be remiss, however, if I did not tell you that I love the process of unlocking this code, learning the secrets of your body just as I have done your heart. The puzzles of where to kiss and how, what to touch and when, are no less diverting than any I have ever attempted. You have tempted me with games before, my love, and this one is ongoing. The exercise of improving at this is one I face with great anticipation.
However, this is one case in which even “mediocre” is still quite wonderful.
******
My love,
I will probably never stop writing these letters because I know that you love them. But it has been a moment since my last because we have struck a balance. We have found a place to dwell in that is close to perfection. But that, I suppose, warrants saying too.
Camilla likes to say that each of us needs something which is only ours, and it struck me as sad that after a year, you had not seemed inclined to mark your room or claim the space as yours in any way. But since we have been together, I have seen these trifles accumulate: a pot of hyacinths from Camilla, books of philosophy and theology from Lilith, a rough wood carving of a bird that you made with Mary’s instruction. Growing in the context of home and family is the pursuit which you have chosen.
And to that end, you and I are the linchpin of this. I see and feel all the ways in which I and our love permeate your space, invisible and not. The box in which I presented you those first letters now lives on your bureau, and it is by now overflowing with the reams of words that I have given you as our love grows each day. I know that my scent is all over your bed, and the red silk ribbon that now dangles from your bedpost is both celebration and reminder of the power of our love to heal. I know that you have recorded me playing for you and that you listen to it when I am not there.
You and I have become a world unto ourselves. In our love for one another, we have made a place that is to our liking, one in which we can recover from the wounds of our respective pasts.
Healing sometimes comes with pain, but oh, it has come with so much pleasure too. You have shown me what it is to receive love, and to give it. Though I will never love myself a fraction as much as I love you, I have some inkling now of how to go about it. You have given me that along with so much else.
You are everything to me. You are my sin and my redemption, my thrill and my tranquility. In your arms, I fall apart and am made whole again.
I grieve sometimes that I lost so much of my life to isolation, to a thousand self inflicted cuts, to self hatred and the coldness of closing myself off to the world. But my path has brought me to you. My wounds, my flaws and jagged edges fit perfectly with yours. Without those wounds, we could not heal together.
And the truth is, my love, we are young. Though life is often short for women in our vocation, we have time enough in front of us to savor every happiness together, drink every drop of what our intimacy has to offer. So, I would not wish away a single moment of my life. We were fashioned just so, meant to fit one another.
So come to my bed, my love, my light, my bright angel, my vessel of God. Place your skin next to mine and tell me that your love endures. Tell me what I already know; that we belong together. In this life, and the next.