Scratched Out Heart

"Goodness," she purred. "Now that's not something you see every day." She knelt at Kimiko's feet. With a rush of shame, Kimiko realised that in the sunshine she had stopped dripping cold lake water, but a new tell-tale dribble chilled on her inner thigh.

Kimiko dug fingernails into her palms behind her to stop them covering herself like a weakling. Let the world see her horn. Let it prove the strength of her resolve.

Angelique rolled massive doe-eyes up at her, then back down again. "I'll do you first, then." She leant forward, lips parted. Kimiko flinched, yanking her hips back.

"Ma'am I wasn't joking about sexual harassment." Kimiko set her voice deep, serious.

"Yet here you are still. Naked, legs apart. Dripping." She lunged again, Kimiko dodged again.

Angelique laughed. "Right," she said. "I'll leave it up to you. I'll just lie down here..." she lay on her back, head between Kimiko's feet. "And have a little... intimate moment. Don't mind me, I'll do myself. You just do your job. Then if you need a break, all you have to do is sit, right here on my plump pillows. Mwah." She blew a kiss that Kimiko would take to the grave.

Kimiko willed her feet to move, but again her wilful body was having none of it. She gave silent thanks for having recently waxed, at least; usually a pointless ritual not unlike polishing a car kept in a garage. Never in her wildest fantasies did she imagine she'd have the salon's workmanship inspected so closely by anybody, let alone this body. In fact, while waiting for her appointment, she'd perused a feature on Angelique in a magazine in the waiting room, entitled: 'The Tweed Angel'. One of the girls had joked, "That one's so uptight, I bet she's got a tweed muff."

Actually, salon-girls? She isn't, and she doesn't.

Kimiko's knee wobbled; another attempted mutiny of her body over dull-arsed duty. Her senses joined in, painting the world with hyper real colours and the crackling edges of a dream. One of those wish-fulfilment dreams that your psyche means as a pressure-valve when things are desperate. But it's vibrancy lingers for days, and you pore over it, turning your lonely hell even lonelier by showing you what you'll never get.

But then you get it.

Kimiko's ethereal, untouchable lady-of-the-lamp sprawled below her, knees swinging and hips joggling at the fleshy stir of elegantly manicured fingers, all while staring up at Kimiko's most secret place. A place even she had only witnessed once or twice from that angle; on lonely days, rudely manoeuvring her mirror and obsessed that she should see her clit actually throbbing like a Tom'n'Jerry bashed-thumb of longing.

Angelica's pink digits made indelicate sticky noises as she slipped them knuckle-deep into her slot. Was Kimiko really that sexy, to reduce a woman of Angelica's refinement and experience to such base arousal? Or was the woman actually that excited that Kimiko might give in and relax onto her world-famous mouth?

Despite herself, despite the deep breathing and digging of nails, Kimiko's mental suitcase was unlocked and gaping now, the vibro-alarm hopping about, demanding attention.

"P-please..." Angelique squirmed, her fingers moving quickly and with deep insistence; her thighs and belly trembling. "K-Kimiko, please."

Her name on Angelique's quivering lips - begging for something so fundamentally rude - simply unfastened Kimiko's legs. Duty jumped into a lifeboat and headed for the horizon. Fuck it. Professional pride was nothing next to seizing an on opportunity of this magnitude.

She lowered herself onto Angelique's slow, wicked smile and shut her eyes, ready for the irresistible, wet-heat wrongness of a mouth on her private parts. A sensation she'd only ever imagined. Albeit a lot.

"Yes..." Angelique whispered and hot air puffed over Kimiko's chilled folds as she poised herself over the woman's face. She teased them both at the last moment, playfully showing off her athleticism, glad for all those squats she'd done at the gym and dizzy at how utterly dirty she was being, and how that this wasn't just ok, it was what the famously demur, actually cooing harlot beneath her wanted.

Kimiko could hold herself like this all day, but hoped Angelique might just crumble into orgasm right there and then. Or, unable to resist the pornographic spread, nuzzle upward, to plant fat lips to fat lips, or wriggle the tip of her tongue into Kimiko's bloomed petals like a wet flame. Anything to express the most-desirable-woman-in-the-world's desire, for Kimiko.

But no flame.

Ice.

"Knew it," Angelique said, her voice cold and hard.

Kimiko froze. Opened her eyes. The woman had moved, leaving Kimiko crouched over empty air.

Angelique clapped, once. "I knew it!" She rolled to her feet jabbing a finger down at Kimiko, fixed, dumbfounded, in her shameful splay. "You act like you're special, that you care. Hiding knives and jumping into water after me, but you only want your trophy fuck. Just like the lot of them."

Kimiko rose shakily. A smile twitched on her lips, expecting Angelique to burst into laughter, then launch back to her cheeky task. But Angelique's arms were folded. She peered down in dark triumph. The sun flared around her head like the Devil's own halo. And only when Kimiko went to deny the accusation did she realise Angelique was right, and only then did all joy and power leave Kimiko's limbs.

No problem. No. Fucking. Problem. Kimiko had been through worse. In the police, for example, when she dealt coolly with every pimp, wife beater and child molester she should have beaten to a pulp.

Or when she sucked off her future husband at Sachiko's funeral because he was the first man to listen to her without judgement, then years later dumped even that meagre squirt of love.

Or when she wrestled a bloodied blade from her sister's grip, and got her to hospital just in time and sat by her bed until she thought the drugs had kicked in and then left her alone just once and lost her forever to a grabbed shard from the smashed glass of water she'd brought her.

Yes, she could take vicious twists like this in her stride. Just another shitty day. It was no surprise to Kimiko that she had let herself down and acted like a selfish bitch again. When had she ever acted any other way?

She silently stooped to pick up her clothes and to put all this silly naked nonsense away. The only really annoying thing was that, no matter how hard she swallowed, the lump in her throat wouldn't shift.

Well, at least the bitch couldn't see that.

However, this implosion wasn't the reaction Angelique wanted. She ran an angry search for ammunition up and down Kimiko's body, curling her lip at her socks. "And you look fucking stupid in those," she said then turned her back on Kimiko, sitting back on the stone bank, feet back in the water. She slumped again, too, returning to her despondent position of earlier as if to undo everything that happened since. Or as if it never happened at all, with her hat plonked back on her head like a stopper for even the notion of it.

Kimiko looked down at herself. Her only remaining items of clothing, their hopeless normality, were like petrol to the embers of her mood. They said, "Girl, you were put on earth to look after your little sister. And you failed. Now, we, soggy socks, are all you deserve. You should expect nothing else out of life but us, a crushed husband and every now and then, violence."

No. A black rage rolled up from her sodden feet. She would not accept this. Not again. She yanked at a ridiculous wet sock and flung it at the back of Angelique's head, then ripped off the other and held it poised to follow its mate.

But then Angelique turned, looking back at Kimiko, her eyes huge. One tear popped and spilled down her cheek, perfectly from the middle of her eye like a movie tear. "Fuck you, too," she said in a tiny voice.

Kimiko's anger quavered. This was not the reaction of a bully. This was disappointment, and Kimiko was no stranger to that. Angelique's might be unusual - born of her extraordinary beauty and her stratospheric wealth and fame - but she had still the same loss of trust in the world as Kimiko. In their deep disappointment, they could be sisters.

Kimiko clawed her head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She'd completely misunderstood. She wanted to start again, stand astride Angelique while the woman relished Kimiko's nudity but mostly - it appeared - her strength at holding back. She wanted to avert her eye and let the woman cum below her, cum in the knowledge that she was safe with Kimiko, no matter how horny Angelique made her. That Kimiko cared more for Angelique than for getting off on an opportunity.

Kimiko stamped down her indignant strop, dropped her ridiculous missile and sat beside her client, instead. Angelique looked away, but let her stay, at least.

"I'm sorry," Kimiko said.

The back of Angelique's head jerked as if trying to get the words to fit in. She turned back, cheeks glistening. "You're sorry?" She sniffed. "I was the cruel one."

Kimiko shrugged.

"You're a punchbag, you know that? Have you no self-esteem?"

"None at all, Ma'am."

The depressing words hung between them like a little black rain cloud against the jewel-blue sky. Kimiko snorted. Angelique too.

"Me neither!" She burst. The couple chuckled, and small and restrained as the sound was, Kimiko sensed a seed, rooting. Then she couldn't help it. No doubt she was letting the pea-brain between her legs do her thinking for her, and she might regret this too, but she couldn't stop herself. She put an arm around Angelique's shoulders, and squeezed.

Angelique stiffened. Kimiko's stomach flipped, suddenly aware of how this might be misread, and even after all they'd done this morning, bizarrely they hadn't yet touched. And there was no escaping the fact they were, of course, naked; Kimiko's bare breast pressed to Angelique's bare arm.

Kimiko decided if she was wrong she'd quit this job and go. But all she'd ever really wanted was to be held, and believed Angelique might be the same. So despite the woman's burgeoning laughter trailing off into a charged silence, despite seeming fragile as a bird in Kimiko's embrace, she squeezed harder.

"Nobody holds me," Angelique muttered.

Kimiko stayed put.

"Except my father." Angelique drew her feet up, and curled her head into her lap as if to stifle herself from admitting more. She leant into the crook of Kimiko's cuddle, her tears returning briefly in one wracked little sob before she tutted and palmed her cheeks dry. "God, I'm so sorry about this."

Kimiko said nothing, relieved that she hadn't been misunderstood. She stroked the woman's back until Angelique relaxed under her arm and continued. "I miss my Mum," she said and sniffed. "It's been nine months. This week. Nine months growing me inside her, now nine months dead from me."

Angelique's loss echoed in the hollow that Sachiko left. Kimiko swallowed and shuffled her body closer so their skin pressed all along their sides, as if shared heat might fill their void. Still slumped, Angelique addressed their bare legs. "I used to be able to tell her anything. She was the only person interested in what was inside me, and not what they might shove inside me."

Angelique sniffed like a builder. Kimiko leant behind and pulled out one of a few laundered handkerchiefs she kept in her jacket pocket. Most days, thankfully, she proffered more of these than bullets.

"Kimiko." Angelique blew. "There's something I need to tell someone or I'll just... die."

"No-one dies on my watch," Kimiko said quietly. "I insist you talk, in that case, Ma'am."

Angelique snorted. She flicked a frown at Kimiko. "No. Sorry. You don't need my problems. Here I am, luckiest bitch in the world, whinging."

"My sister told me there's no such thing as luck." Kimiko blurted this before she realised she'd have to elaborate. She never talked about her sister. Not even to her husband, who'd probably had less verbal intimacy from her than oral. Too late to stop now. "She proved it too. That even if a tossed coin lands tails a million times, it still has the same chance of coming up heads next time. The universe just doesn't care."

Angelique did the head shaking thing again. She threw off her hat. "That sounds like the logic of someone who's had a lot of bad luck."

Kimiko turned away for a moment. That damned lump.

"Shit. Sorry." Angelique slipped her arm under Kimiko's, around her waist. Her palm was a warm creature settling on Kimiko's cold hip.

"Forget it," Kimiko said. "My sister was Bipolar. She killed herself. So yes, not such uplifting advice about luck, now I think about it."

"You think you could have done more for her."

"Every second. Every day. Come on. Your turn. Spill."

Angelique sighed, a hint of a ragged growl at its edges. "OK. The thing is, Dad was fucked up in the Sixties. So much fame so young. He never grew up. And everyone thought Mum was this fragile little bird. But she was steely." She wiped her nose again. "She wore the trousers. She looked after him. When she went, in weeks he lost half his fortune to all these shitty... leeches around him. Oh no, your sock."

The garment wended its way out into the lake, as if sneaking out of prison. Kimiko shrugged. Angelique took Kimiko's free hand and dragged it onto her lap. "So I moved back here to look after him."

"He said it was for your rehab."

"Dad invents his world. He'd love me to be that rock chick. Like... like Mum." Another sob. A tear dripped into Kimiko's palm. She closed her fist on it. Angelique lolled her head onto Kimiko's shoulder. They fit surprisingly well. "No. I'm very dull," she whispered snottily. "I don't have any rock'n'roll vices."

"Hmm."

"Except sex, obviously. But, honestly, I have nothing else to do."

Kimiko bottled her instinct to laugh when Angelique seemed to deflate again.

"At least sex brings connection," she added. The nuzzle that followed seemed to make promises Kimiko didn't want to contemplate.

Then Angelique paused, as if building up the courage. "We used to have picnics here. The three of us. It was my favourite thing growing up. I hardly ever got to see my parents, let alone have them all to myself. Now Dad and I come here to remember her." She sat up, looking around the lakeside as if re-capturing what she saw with child's eyes.

"Then a few weeks ago, Dad and I came here to carve that heart on the tree for Mum, and for us, to remind us of all the love we shared here. He told me how proud of me he—" She choked and blinked wetly, then wiped her face and raised an icy eyebrow. "He pushed me against the tree, and called me Mum's name. He tried to kiss me. He tried to put his hands up my skirt."

There was both heartbreak and challenge in Angelique's expression. Kimiko gripped the woman's hand hard and they knotted together. A shared pulse of solidarity seemed to shoot anger back and forth under their whitening knuckles.

With a long puff, like escaping steam, Angelique released her hand, but only to nuzzle tighter to Kimiko. She pulled her feet out of the water and swept wet legs across her lap so in a moment she was in an almost foetal ball, cheek pressed to the front of Kimiko's shoulder. Kimiko wrapped both arms around her client and gripped her with all her might, so it was as if the woman's sobs came from her own chest. Then after a while, they did.

Eyes shut, cheek pressed to the knobs of Angelique's spine, and Angelique's face buried in her chest, their bodies sought to enfold while being enfolded. Even Kimiko's knees pressed up into the undersides of Angelique's legs, all but glued together.

They squeezed out and soaked up each other's pain. After a time, the wind picked up and stroked them too. It strobed the leaf light as if to remind them of the world beyond. As if to say, "OK, that's enough now."

"Look at us sad-sacks." Angelique kissed Kimiko's chest, jolting her at the unexpected, intimate touch. "Your heart is going like the clappers," she added and proceeded to press her lips gently in more kisses along the trails of their mingled tears. Kimiko kept quite still. afraid that any movement might burst their bubble. Not this time. Let the woman take whatever she needed.

"Will you leave?" Kimiko all but whispered, as if to a twitchy bird.

Angelique plucked one last kiss and licked her lip. She sat up. "He can't look after himself." She shrugged. "I have to stay."

Kimiko's skin tingled for more, and Angelique's picture-book innocent eyes, fragments of sky caught in perfect black circles, darted hungrily over her as if she felt the same.

"With respect, Ma'am, that's fucked up. Is his money that important?" Kimiko's voice came out more exasperated than she intended.

Angelique's face slackened. "I earn my own money. I wouldn't prostitute myself to protect an inheritance."

"Don't get huffy, that's not what I meant." Kimiko leant back. "Ma'am." She enjoyed her power at the return of Angelique's wanton gaze. "I just can't see why you'd stay if he's betrayed you."

The woman wrung her feet. "He's frail. He needs me, that's all. In the meantime, I keep out of his way. If I have to deal with him, all he gets is my super-polite public persona. It drives him nuts."

Kimiko could not imagine having a public and private face, let alone being able to weaponize it. She rarely had the time or inclination to put on make-up. Or indeed, sometimes, underwear. Instinct had her checking the reach to her Glock. It was right beside her like a faithful hound. Maybe it was this that reminded her, with a shudder. "So, the cameras..."

"He says they're to protect me from that creep stalker and his death threats. But it's odd timing isn't it? He only installed them after..." she tipped her chin at the carved tree. "And only he watches the footage. Dirty old fucker. So you know what I do?" She knocked knuckles on Kimiko's arm, then at her chest. "I torture him on them. With my body. My mum's body. With what he will never have again. I debase his little Angel. I spread her to strangers and lick and fuck and suck." She glared at Kimiko, top lip quivering horribly. "And I've seen him. On his own fucking cameras. Watching recordings of me. Sobbing Mum's name." A tear dripped over her snarl, she swiped it away. "Let him drown in it. Motherfucker."

They glared at the scratched-out heart carved into Angelique's betrayal tree, working up Kimiko's own heart into a rage, ramming against her ribcage. The pistol in Kimiko's palm was hot from the sun. Not the cold reminder of duty, this time, but a promise of retribution and desire. Without a thought - a muscle-memory reaction to threat - she lifted it, and squeezed. It kicked in her palm. The loud crack shook a yelp from Angelique and the tree-trunk puffed splinters. A good shot, one handed.

Angelique blinked at the hole in the middle of her carving, then at the gun. Her jaw dropped, she barked a hollow kind of laugh.

Kimiko took aim again.

"No!" The woman hopped up. "Let me."

"Ma'am I can't—"

"Oh fuck off. Teach me."

Kimiko rolled to her feet, passed the gun to the woman, and turned her toward the target. "This gets pointed in that direction, only, got it? Hold it like this." She wrapped her arms around Angelique, and then the woman's fingers around the weapon. She kicked feet into a wide stance, her breasts pressed to Angelique's back, her mound to her bottom. Her hands hovered over her student's. "Line along the sites, front and back... now... squeeze the trigger. Smooth and firm-"

Another bang, more splinters.

"F-fuck," Angelique said. "I feel like a bloke cumming." Another bang. Then another and another. Angelique's body jerked in Kimiko's grip. She held her tight as the woman shrieked and emptied a whole clip into the tree, all but blasting it in two.