The Taste of Lavender Read Online Free PDF Page B

possible
to another person, my fingers writhed and my tongue flicked. My mind might have
been clueless as to how to love another woman, but my body had it all figured
out.
    Maribel’s body shudder and bucked, she
pressed her legs at the sides of my head and pumped herself against my mouth.
She grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my face further into her. As she
cried out, warmth spread across my lips and down my chin. And I tasted it.
    Lavender and Longing. I’d found my home.
    “Oh, Dios mio!” Maribel panted and
flipped me over on the bed. “Now, it is my turn.”
    We drove all the way to DC, only to stay
in the hotel room the entire weekend.

March
2010
    T hose first few days after we returned
from DC were hard. I vacillated between being unreasonably irritated and
psychotically chipper quicker than the my husband could slam a door. I’m sure
he was baffled by my mood swings, but as confused as he must have been, I was
even more confused.
    Conflicting thoughts played tug of war
in my mind.
    What had I done? I was a horrible
person, damned for my deceit and lustful ways. There was a whole host of
commandments I’d broken. I wasn’t a particularly religious person, but morality
knows no particular church. There’s right and then there’s wrong. And I’d done
a whole lot of wrong.
    Several times over, even.
    But oh, my! What I’d done... I felt
reborn. Washed clean in the glow of a love so true and whole that it could only
be described as miraculous. How could something so beautiful be a sin? Was it
wrong to listen to the desires of  my heart? No, I didn’t think so. The sin
would be denying how I felt. The sin would be locking down my feelings and
forgetting the weekend in DC had ever happened.
    So I did what I had to do to muddle
through daily life while I sorted out all of my yo-yo emotions. I threw myself
into work, taking on two more projects than I normally carry at any given time.
I stayed up late into the night working to avoid having to go to bed. I wasn’t
a very convincing liar— probably because I rarely lied up until I had a very
good reason to— so I tried to keep myself removed from situations where I would
be forced to lie.
    Still, no man is an island and I could
only avoid my husband and our marriage but so much. This was one of those
nights where he caught up to me.
    I was hunched over my laptop, absentmindedly
sipping on a hot cup of coffee despite the late hour, when I heard a knock at
my office door. I looked up to find Paul leaning against the door frame,
sporting wet hair and a tiny little towel around his waist.
    “You coming up?” he wagged his eyebrows
suggestively, as if I wouldn’t catch his meaning without a little assistance. 
    It was further proof of how much I’d
been avoiding him. Normally, his idea of foreplay was a clumsy crotch-grab
while I was preoccupied reading or watching television. As if that would ever
turn me on. In desperation, he’d stepped up his game.
    And then he stepped it up again by
giving me a puppy-dog look before coming around behind me. His hands caressed
my shoulders, kneading the tension that had built in the muscles as I’d sat
hunched over my laptop for hours. I felt guilt flow over me. He was thinking of
his self, sure, but he was also being sweet to me. And that slayed me worse
than anything he’d said in anger.
    He was killing me with kindness.
    Without a word, I stood and headed up to
the bed room. Paul followed quietly, with the one exception of slapping me on
the ass as I climbed the steps to the second floor. Seriously.
    I climbed into bed and tried to relax as
he turned out the light, pulled my clothes off rather clumsily, climbed into
bed and pulled the covers up over the both of us. He knew how I hated to be
naked and cold. Again with the kindness, dammit.
    The weight of his body felt felt so much
heavier now, since I’d grown used to Maribel’s lithe body pressed against my
own. We didn’t fit together any more either, Paul