“ Lily laughed. “You look at me all the time.”
But I never tire of it.”
Lily lay on the bed, feeling Charlotte’s gaze burn through her. In everyday life, Lily felt she was passably attractive in a sloppy, bohemian kind of way, but she certainly wasn’t the kind of person who turned heads — male or female.
In the world of their bedroom, though, Charlotte made Lily feel like a high-femme fantasy figure.
In Charlotte’s eyes, in Charlotte’s hands, she was Rita Hayworth ... Marilyn Monroe.
When Charlotte finally joined Lily on the bed, their lips met in a fierce, bruising kiss. Lily wrapped her arms and legs around her lover, who pressed down on her, as each of them tried to get as close to the other as possible.
Charlotte pulled down the shoulder strap of Lily’s black dress and kissed her from shoulder to collarbone to breast. And when Charlotte’s hand slipped between Lily’s legs, Lily was ready for her — so ready that as Charlotte entered her, a sound escaped her mouth, the sound a woman can only make at the height of passion — a breathy, desperate...
SNORT!
Snort? Lily awoke from her dream to find that her arm was wrapped around not the curvy form of Charlotte, but the flat, hairy chest of Benny Jack McGilly, who was snoring with the volume of a sea lion with bronchitis.
Disoriented and still not quite removed from her dream state, Lily leaped out of bed. Where the hell was she, and what in the name of Sappho was she doing in bed with a man?
SNORT! Ben’s snoring shook the bed.
A man with obvious respiratory problems, no less? She backed away from the bed, horrified, only to feel something sharp stick her shoulder blade. She wheeled around to see the black, beady eyes of the stuffed turkey staring at her. She couldn’t help it. She screamed.
Ben stopped in mid-snort, sat upright, and flipped on the lamp. “What the — ?”
The peck on the shoulder had woken Lily up. “Um... I’m sorry. I was dreaming ... about Charlotte, and then your snoring woke me up, and I don’t know... In my dream it was like everything was so normal, and then when I woke up everything was just ... weird, y’know?”
“Well, that’s no excuse for hysteria when some people are trying to sleep. And besides, I do not snore.”
A knock on the door froze Lily and Ben stiff. “Hey,” Big Ben’s voice called. “Everything okay in there? We heard screaming.”
“Everything’s fine, Daddy,” Ben said testily. “Go back to bed.”
“Oh,” Big Ben said. “Oh. Sorry to, uh, interrupt.” Ben’s face turned the same shade of red as the preserved turkey’s wattle.
“What?” Lily teased. “You’re embarrassed that your father thinks you were driving me to screaming heights of ecstasy?”
