You Don't Belong Here

"You don't belong here." Four words. Four words were all it took to crumble the illusion. She could see the pieces shatter around her like broken porcelain knocked carelessly from a kitchen table, lying on the ground with an air of minor irritation. Suddenly, she could see the farce of the thin women teetering on thinner heels in sparking dresses that made them, look like cardboard cut-outs. She took in the unsatisfying canapés parading handsome art students and out of work actors with plastic smiles around the room.

"What did you say," she began to garble to the woman who had shattered her little universe, but as Lucy looked up she had gone and all that remained of her was the strangely familiar green eyes and flame red hair imprinted in Lucy's mind.

Lucy's stunned reverie was barely punctured by the voice of the presenter demanding the assembled masses congratulate themselves on the role of women in the legal industry. Lucy laughed appropriately when her nearest neighbour suggested that role was right underneath men with a double entendre laden wink, but did not take it in.

Stupid woman, she thought, who was she to question Lucy's place? She did belong here, hell she was getting an award congratulating her on belonging to the exclusive fraternity of overachieving female lawyers (exchanging their love lives for billables). She stood up to accept her award and smiled glowingly (liar), and said she could not have achieved her success without wonderful female role models and hoped she could be one for the next generation of women (the scrambling cut throat graduates who wouldn't blink at thrusting her from her precarious throne, knife lodged firmly between her ribs).

She drank champagne, and exchanged contract clauses and confidentiality breaching smiles. She read the unhappiness in the lines, (and plastic filled lack of) in the over moisturised faces of her colleagues, the sacrifices they'd (she'd) made, the emptiness they (she) felt, the years of 11pm cab rides home from the city, the meals they (she) inhaled carefully above shareholder agreements and circulating resolutions.

It started to close in on her and she felt the too familiar shortness of breath, the swimming sensation in her head, the tears threatening to run her make up in rivulets down her cheeks. With a practiced calm (liar) she excused herself from the conversation and through a set of doors into the cooling evening air.

Lucy knew she wanted to be a lawyer before she finished school. She had pushed her way through law school like an impatient baby insisting to be born, she'd battled as a junior lawyer, against the competition, stabbing and being stabbed as required, and was now reaping the rewards, young corporate lawyer of year, a senior associate position dangling in her near future and decent sized diamond (and boyfriend attached) sitting on her finger. Yet all of a sudden, a set of piercing green eyes and soft lips the colour of fire and pain and accusation and temptation and passion had made her see her stark dissatisfaction. She lent against a stair rail and inhaled, she hated her job and its insistent consumption of her. She hated her pale wood panelled office; she hated her superficial friends, her boring, appropriate fiancé, but mostly herself, her boundless ambition, her boring topics of conversation, her manicured nails, the furious anxiety that gripped at her throat over the years, her stick thin heels.

She took off her shoes, the concrete pressed into her stockinged feet as she ran away from it all. The image of her unidentified attacker was foremost in her mind, those eyes. She sat on a stone bench overlooking a river, ladders climbing up her stockings, giggling children flowing around her, and tried to think, but she could not clear her mind. All she could see was the eyes, the lips, the hair, the rose coloured cheeks that had stopped her in her tracks.

"Are you ok", the burning red lips feigned concern, the green eyes sparkled in front of her,

"No, why did you do that to me?"

"Someone had to."

"I do belong there, I'm a good lawyer."

"If you say so."

"Who are you?"

"Follow me", it wasn't a question. Lucy followed. Around a corner. Through a crowd of dining families. Twisting through familiar streets. Up a flight of stairs.

At a grey door the woman blinked,

"You have options, you know. You can keep living that life, letting its poison drill through you until you are an empty shell, or you can follow me." Lucy didn't say anything, a snaked danced from under the woman's shimmering black dress. Suddenly, more than anything Lucy needed to see the snake. She nodded.

Inside the door was a refuge. It was no longer the city, lights danced from origami flower growing over the walls, a four-poster bed covered in oriental silk momentarily distracted her, but quickly that need returned,

"Please." It was barely audible; coming from somewhere inside Lucy had no control of. The woman slid the zipper down her side and let the black dress fall around her feet like water. Lucy gasped at the beautiful body before her. She felt like she'd been hit in the stomach, impulsively, without thought or question, her hand reached forward and her manicured nails traced the body of the snake from under the woman's arm, across her left breast, dipping into a valley between them and barely glancing the rise of her right. The women stood perfectly still as Lucy traced the snake back across her stomach to where its tail flicked above her underwear.

The underwear was black lace, it carefully hid and revealed flesh and Lucy felt her heart start to beat, as she let her hand glance the waist band, she moved closer, kneeling, her face close enough to smell a warmth that felt like it might possess her. She let her finger trace the pattern of the lace, carefully moving downwards. She felt moisture as her hand gravitated to the beautiful woman's centre. She brazenly slipped her fingers under the waistband and pulled the black lace to the ground. Ruby's fingers crawled up the inside of the woman's firm slender legs, across her calf muscle, over her knee, over the fine hairs on her thigh.

Quivering with need, she let her finger slide from the pale thigh to the gathering moisture over her pink slit. She slipped between the pink lips and felt the slick juice run onto her hand. The woman sighed; the beautiful sound shook Lucy's body. She began to play, stroking and parting and moving her fingers over the moist flesh, but it wasn't enough, she needed to be nearer to this woman- she needed to possess her. She slid her tongue along the dripping slit, as she made contact she noticed the sharp intake of breathe and began to lick. Each stroke became more passionate. Each touch was more desperate. She sucked on the growing clit. Her fingers thrust deeper, harder, faster. The muscles of the woman's dripping pussy began to clench and she began to moan and scream as an orgasm gripped her.

Lucy didn't stop, she couldn't. Her whole purpose had become to bury her tongue in the slick folds of the pussy in front of her, the woman's orgasm had barely receded before another took its place. Lucy felt warm liquid squirt over her face and hands and the woman stumbled backwards onto the bed.

Lucy felt a sigh of release course through her whole body, like breathing for the first time, weightless renewed by baptism in the orgasmic juices of the beautiful redhead. Now completed, she could breathe again and see and feel. But the release from her mania brought Lucy harshly back to reality. She was crouched on the floor of a stranger's apartment, covered in pussy juices, her colleagues and friends, and fiancé abandoned at the Women's lawyers awards.

"It's ok darling, relax. Come here," the woman's voice was gentle now, kind, reassuring. Lucy stood up and walked over to the bed where the now lay completely naked her milky skin contrasted against black embroidered silk.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Ruby, I didn't mean to hurt you, I saw something in your eyes that told me you wanted more than that life, but there was so much standing in your way. It's hard to see desperation through success. I guess I've just been there before". Lucy moved towards the women and sat on the bed beside her. Her mind felt empty, she needed Ruby to keep talking to her, the lilting sound of her voice to wash away the terror that five years in law had calcified to her being.

"may I?" Ruby asked raising her hand to the zip on Lucy's dress. Lucy nodded, she let the dress fall and shivered as Ruby wrapped her arms around Lucy, pulling her tighter and holding her as Lucy began to shake with sobs.

For what seemed like eternity Ruby held Lucy against her, their breasts pushed together, the warmth transferring from one body to the other. Gently Ruby detangled herself, brought her face to Lucy's and let their lips brush, the kiss was slow, passionate and full. It warmed Lucy from the inside out, and she lay with a renewed sense of calm as Ruby gradually moved down her body, covering her in tiny kisses. She pulled Lucy free of her bra and underwear and began to trace the line of breasts, taking each nipple in her mouth. The girl beneath her began to moan and Ruby slipped her hand lower letting her fingers graze the moist opening as she continued to lick and suck on the hard nipples. Lucy's breathing shortened and Ruby moved lower, gentle sucking on the budding clit before her caressing the firm body and working her fingers in and out of the dripping slit. Lucy began to convulse, an orgasm washing over her. The two women lay entangled in each other until morning, when the sun gradually lit the room and Ruby awoke to the beautiful body next to her.

When Lucy woke she heard the gentle humming, the smell of fresh fruit and mint in the air. Draped over the chair beside the bed was a pink silk robe and Lucy wrapped herself in it and walked through glistening silk curtains to the balcony; Ruby sitting at a small table, humming, a plate of fruit in front of her and two beautiful Moroccan glass tea cups full of steaming tea.

Lucy's mind was full of what she would say to Ruby; that she wanted change, that she wanted to be happy, that didn't want her stark, empty life. But as she moved closer, Ruby looked up, her eyes full of love and hope and comfort and whispered, "You belong here."

*

Thanks to Bliss Ninja and Zogger for their help in editing