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.