All I Want For Christmas, Chapter 16

Previously: Chapter 15 [U]

It’s an update. An actual update! Happy Valentine’s day to everyone.

Rated: AA.

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Friday, 25 December 2009

“A baby? You’re having a baby? Really? A baby? Oh my God! A baby!!”

Despite the fact that she had been agitating to get to the bottom of the big secret that her elder child had been hiding from her, Paula seemed genuinely shocked to find out that Chelsea and Glen really did have a big announcement.

Ashley watched, bemused, as the assembled Carlins all rushed over to offer hugs and kisses to the happy couple. Chelsea had just announced that she was ten weeks’ pregnant. A dating scan earlier in the week had confirmed what she had already suspected. Given that everyone was still wearing their Carlin Christmas t-shirts, it looked like some kind of celebration at a company team-building exercise; not that she had ever had a real job to know what that might look like, but she had watched enough TV to be familiar with the concept.

She hesitated, unsure if she should intrude on what was obviously a family moment, until she noticed that Spencer was motioning with her hand for her to join to them. She stood up and walked over towards the happy throng but hung back a foot or so away, still not really certain of what she should be doing. Chelsea grabbed her hand and beamed at her.

“Congratulations, you guys,” she offered. “Way to go.” She wasn’t really sure what else to say under the circumstances.

“Thanks, Ash,” Glen replied, his chest puffed out with pride.

There was an awkward moment as they looked at each other before hugging. This was the sort of moment that left Ashley feeling uncomfortable because this was an element of family life with which she was unfamiliar. The whole day so far had been like a bizarre experiment that she had been watching with some detachment. Her family did not behave like this and she was entirely unclear as to how a person was meant to react to much of what had happened over the course of the day. Add that to the fact that she was on new, uncharted ground with Spencer and she was all kinds of confused.

She was aware that everyone else was asking the same questions all at once – What was the due date? Would they prefer a boy or a girl? Were they going to find out the sex or wait until the birth? – but the main question which was occurring to her, which she was pretty sure was inappropriate and impolite to ask, was how they could be willing to take such a huge, scary step. This was a major life decision – THE major life decision – and they seemed so young to her. And they had virtually no money. And they had a one-bedroom apartment.

She smiled weakly as she realised that Arthur had asked her a question.

“Hmmm?”

“I said, how does it feel to know that you’re going to be an aunt?”

She stared back at him strangely. She didn’t understand his question. How did Chelsea being pregnant mean that she was going to be an aunt?

“You and Spencer, you’re going to be aunts,” Arthur reiterated.

“Yeah,” Glen added. “At least I have managed to make sure that my child has a millionaire relative, something you never managed to arrange for me and Spence, Dad.” He poked his father in the ribs.

Ashley still didn’t understand how she could be the baby’s relative, so, as she usually did when she felt insecure or uncertain about anything, she looked over at Spencer, whose kind and loving gaze immediately calmed her. It had always been that way, even before she had accepted that what she felt for Spencer was something more than simple friendly love and affection. At that point, as she felt everyone else in the room melt away from her consciousness, as she smiled back at the blonde, taking a step closer towards her, she wasn’t even certain that there had ever been a time that what she felt for Spencer had ever been as simple as friendship. Spencer had always been more than that, more than anything else. She had been an idiot not to realise what it meant sooner.

“Hey,” she commented, as she came to a halt just in front of the blonde. She felt herself being pulled into a warm hug and she returned it happily, burying her face into Spencer’s neck and inhaling her scent deeply. “You always smell so good,” she whispered low enough for only her girlfriend to hear. That earned her a giggle.

“And you always feel so good,” Spencer murmured back.

“This always feels so good.” She was referring to the hug. “It always has.”

“Yeah, it has.” Spencer shifted a little, which caused Ashley to shiver with desire at the feel of the blonde moving against her. It unleashed a whole gallery of x-rated images in her mind of how she would like to have Spencer moving against her.

“Is there any chance we could…” She let the question trail off, pulling back from the hug before she gave into the temptation to let her hands start wandering over the enticing body that she could tell was begging for her touch.

“Have a few moments alone?” the blonde finished for her, her voice still low. The smirk on her face was evidence that their minds were as one on what was being proposed.

They hardly needed to be so circumspect when everyone else in the room was excitedly talking loudly about the new baby-to-be and not paying the slightest attention to them. Arthur was actually miming smoking a cigar, like a 1950s new father, which made Ashley chuckle to herself. She really did like Spencer’s dad a whole lot. Paula, meanwhile, wanted to know who their Ob/Gyn would be and whether she knew them professionally.

“You go first. I’ll be right behind you.” Spencer nodded in the direction of the staircase, glancing over at her family.

Ashley didn’t need to be told twice. She had turned and bolted up the stairs before she had a chance to think better of it. She made her way swiftly to Spencer’s bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. She plucked nervously at the comforter as she waited.

All during the meal, her body had been crawling with need for Spencer. She knew that she had been unfair to her by feeling her up under the table, but at least she hadn’t given into her desire to just have her there on the dining room floor. She was actually quite proud of the self-control that she had shown. She was still mentally patting herself on the back for her resolve when the door opened quietly and the object of her musings slipped inside.

“Hi.” She stood up and walked towards Spencer.

“Miss me?”

“More than you know.”

“Doubt that.”

Spencer surprised her by seizing the initiative: one moment, she had been bearing down on Spencer in her best predatory fashion and the next thing she knew, she had been grabbed by the hips, spun around and slammed up against the door. She didn’t even have a chance to say any of the amusingly flirtatious things that were going through her mind as Spencer’s head descended and covered Ashley’s mouth with her own.

The kissing might well turn out to be the death of her. Spencer Carlin could do things to a person just by kissing that countless others wouldn’t have been able to achieve with repeated explicit sex acts. It was as if Spencer’s mouth had been formed for the express purpose of delivering Ashley pleasure. If she hadn’t been so busy being kissed, she might have had a second to cringe at her own cheesiness for having such thoughts.

She stopped thinking altogether when, in a mirror of their bathroom tryst that morning, Spencer pushed Ashley’s t-shirt up slowly until it was gathered below her neck. Ashley moaned loudly as she saw her girlfriend’s blonde head dip to trace hot, wet kisses across the swell of her breasts. With no hesitation, Spencer dragged the flat of her tongue across Ashley’s distended nipple. The sensation of hot tongue over lace fabric was incredible. When she then felt her nipple being sucked deep into Spencer’s mouth, she moaned loudly and let her hands grip the back of her girlfriend’s head.

“You have been driving me insane all fucking day,” Spencer breathed around her sensitive flesh.

She couldn’t remember Spencer swearing that casually before and that was all kinds of hot, even beyond the sensations that the blonde was causing with her mouth and tongue. She wanted to give herself over entirely to the moment, but she was still very much aware that they were in Spencer’s family home and that they’d slipped away in full view of said family members.

“How long do you think we have?” she hissed, the question ending in a groan as Spencer released her nipple and started to lick the slopes of her breast that were visible above the cup of her bra.

“Not nearly long enough for what I really want, but a while.” The blonde quickly flashed her a sly grin before looking down between them. “Long enough for a quickie, though.”

Ashley hadn’t even been aware that she had been grinding herself against Spencer’s thigh until she followed the line of sight.

“I don’t want -”

She had been trying to say that she didn’t just want a quickie, not with Spencer, not when it meant so much to her, but the blonde silenced her by grabbing Ashley’s hips and thrusting her leg more firmly between Ashley’s.

“Remember what I said earlier?” Spence asked, grinding her thigh at the juncture of Ashley’s jeans.

Ashley doubted she could remember much beyond their first names as long as Spencer was pushed against her so intimately.

“What part?” she managed to gasp.

“The bit when I said I had something to tell you.” The blonde bit her lower lip and cocked her head in thought for a moment. “And I guess also the bit where I agreed that we should wait.” She smiled at Ashley, rolling those hips again and making her wonder if her jeans would have a massive damp patch when they finally went back downstairs. “Well, I wanted to tell you that all I want for Christmas is,” she shrugged and blushed a little, “well, you, really. And I’m immensely flattered that you want to wait and for it to be special and everything.”

Ashley nodded because she knew that Spencer was expecting some kind of response, but her mouth was too dry and her brain was too stunned to form any real words.

“But, see,” Spencer paused as she bent her head to dip her mouth to Ashley’s neck, sucking gently at her pulse point, “I don’t like that idea so much any more, the one about the waiting, and I think I get at least as much of a say as you do in this.”

During the little speech, one of Spencer’s hands had made its way from Ashley’s waist to cover her breast. It wasn’t moving, really. It was just resting, but her fingers were flexing almost imperceptibly and that was causing the most alluring friction of skin on lace on skin, and Ashley could almost feel her eyes rolling back into her head. Between the ministrations of that talented hand and the slow undulation of Spencer’s hips and the feel of the hot mouth on her neck, Ashley was quite confident that she was in grave danger of breaking her own vow without much more provocation.

“But -”

“No more buts.”

As brief statements went, this one was firm and final. Spencer-in-charge was back in the house. Before, Ashley would never have believed that she would allow anyone else to be in control when it came to sex. She decided what was happening and how and when and, naturally, at what point it was over.

But Spencer had her own ideas and, so far, those ideas had all been hot as hell. The determined set to her features also indicated that she was emphatically not looking for any opposition. The powerful sensations she was causing for Ashley was making even the thought of opposition almost impossible.

“We can do slow and romantic some other time,” the blonde affirmed, “but, right now, we’ve started this three or four times in the past day and a half and I already feel like I have been waiting all my life for this.” Her hand cupped Ashley’s breast more firmly, her thumb rubbing across the nipple. “So,” she concluded, “I’m not really in the mood to wait any longer.”

Spencer had sneakily distracted her by talking and nibbling and stuff. Ashley hadn’t noticed that Spencer’s free hand had moved from her hip and was now poised over the waistband of her jeans, quickly popping the stud. She inhaled sharply as the zipper was eased down.

“Spence,” she forced out through gritted teeth, trying to breathe steadily and not lose her train of thought, “are you really, really sure that this is what you want?”

The blonde sighed with frustration and laid her forehead against Ashley’s, but she didn’t move her hands away, instead leaving her fingertips inside the open zipper and just resting against her skin.

“I’m not really sure why you keep trying to stop me here because I have it on very good authority that you like sex a whole lot, but I know what I want. Maybe the issue isn’t me. Maybe, Ash, this isn’t about me at all and it’s all about you.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you. It’s just that this doesn’t feel right.” She couldn’t explain why she felt that way. She just knew that she did.

“Having sex here like this or having sex with me?”

“Oh, God, Spence, don’t talk like that. I already told you this morning that I really, really want to have sex with you.” She looked down between them to where Spencer’s hands were still resting inside her jeans, not moving. “I mean, that was me dry humping your leg. I just can’t shake the feeling that it shouldn’t be like this.”

“Fine.” Spencer removed her hands and stepped back, turning away and folding her arms over her chest. “No, it’s fine.”

It clearly was not fine.

“Spencer -”

“Don’t.” It was a command, not a request.

“But, Spence -”

“Look,” the blonde whipped back around to face her, “you’re the one who wanted to come up here. You’re the one who started this in the bathroom this morning. You’re the one who was trying to feel me up during the meal. You’re the one who made me ask you to be my girlfriend. And now you’re the one who’s playing the scared virgin.” Spencer made a scoffing noise. “And I know you’re anything but a virgin.”

“Sp-”

The blonde pointed her finger in Ashley’s face, interrupting angrily, “I have lost count now of how many times you have asked me if this is what I want. You have been constantly making this about me, like you’re some kind of saint, protecting me from myself. I’m a big fucking girl, Ashley. I don’t need protecting. I have repeatedly made what I want perfectly clear to you. And you’re the one who hasn’t. You have done nothing but run and hide. You have been pushing my buttons and then running away from my reactions for the past week now.” Spencer stormed over to the other side of the bedroom, again wrapping her arms around herself in a protective gesture.

Ashley stood against the door, her clothes still askew from their making out, her heart still racing, her body still screaming with need. She had no idea what to do or say to make things better.

“I just want things to be perfect.” It was weak. She knew it was weak. Even as she said it, she knew it was entirely the wrong thing to say.

“Yeah? You know, when you said that before, I believed you. I thought you were being romantic. But I’m not so sure any more. Because I think anything and everything between us could be perfect, no matter what, if you would just let it happen. So now what I really think is that you’re the one who doesn’t know what they want. I have tried to be understanding. I told you before that I would allow you a little freak-out now and again. But this is getting a little monotonous. This is making me feel like the quarterback trying to persuade the reluctant cheerleader to let him cop a feel. And I really don’t want to feel like I have to coerce you of all people into having sex with me. That’s just a little too degrading, thanks very much.”

Ashley shook her head silently. The ‘you of all people’ comment had been a low blow, but probably not uncalled-for. She couldn’t repudiate any of Spencer’s accusations. She literally had nothing to say for herself. She was behaving exactly as Spencer had said. There was no defence or justification that she could think of.

She wanted Spencer. She loved Spencer. She was pretty confident that she was in love with Spencer. But she was utterly and completely terrified of what that meant. She was scared of everything she felt, of everything that Spencer made her feel. She was scared of opening herself up to how vulnerable those feelings would make her. And she knew that the fact that it was Spencer – the best friend she had ever had, the truly best person she had ever known – should make it all easier, but it didn’t. It made it so much worse because if she lost Spencer – when she lost Spencer because she was bound to fuck it up at some point – she wouldn’t know how to cope because Spencer was the only person who ever had or ever could make her feel whole.

And she couldn’t face telling the other girl that she was right. She couldn’t face telling her that she was in love with her and that it made her feel so small and unworthy at the same time that it made her feel fifty feet tall. She couldn’t face admitting that she felt that sex was a line that, once they crossed it, there could never be any going back. It was too much, too definitive.

So she did the only thing she could think of, the one thing that Spencer was probably expecting already: she ran.

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Next up: Chapter 17 [A]