Bel smiled, then leaned forward and replaced her fingers with her tongue, and Luisa couldn’t help but moan, her back arching, as she felt electricity shoot through her, Bel’s tongue doing something very, very right.
The next half an hour was a revelation to Luisa, opening her eyes to what pleasure could really be. Bel took her time, really took her time, using her tongue and her fingers to slowly, slowly build Luisa up then let her back down again, again and again, so thatLuisa was in a state of ecstasy, starting to lose control as she got closer and closer to a peak each time.
All of her sexual experience so far, all of it, had been about her partner's pleasure, about him getting what he wanted, usually pretty quickly, and her getting the scraps. She could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times she'd genuinely orgasmed at the touch of someone else rather than on her own, and those times had been, well, they'd been alright. Nothing special. She got more out of it when she was on her own, that was for sure.
To have someone else, someone so gentle and calm and attentive, focused entirely on her pleasure was mind blowing, almost literally. She felt, as Bel’s tongue worked it's magic again, as if a wall in her head had come crashing down and an amazing world that she hadn't realised lay beyond it was revealed, waiting for her to discover.
When, finally, Bel didn't let her fall back down again, instead pushing Luisa further and further, Luisa felt her orgasm starting to cascade through her, a toe curling, back arching, sheet clutching, screaming orgasm, the only way she could describe it to herself afterwards was the sensation of utterly losing all sense of herself under Bel’s touch, of completely losing control but happily so, safe in the knowledge that the person doing that to you was taking care of you.
After that first, earth shattering orgasm, Bel gave Luisa time to recover, kissing her and gently caressing her, reassuring her, fetching them both another drink. And then, just as she had all week, Bel taught her. First of all, she taught her how to touch another woman, how to translate what Luisa did to herself whenshe was on her own to another body, how to listen for the signs and change what she was doing when she needed to.
Luisa felt pride, a massive sense of pride, minutes later when she held Bel up close, her lips and tongue on Bel’s breasts while her fingers played between Bel’s legs, marvelling at the feeling of another woman's arousal, and felt and heard Bel’s own orgasm shake through her.
And then later still, when Bel taught her how to use her tongue and fingers together, the knowledge that she had made Bel’s back arch, made Bel use English swear words that Luisa certainly hadn’t been taught in school, made Bel cry out Luisa’s name, all while Bel’s thighs tightened around her head as her orgasm peaked... well, if there was a word beyond pride then that was what it was.
That night Luisa lost count of how many times they each orgasmed, and of the variety of ways in which those orgasms came. It was a night of liberation, one where there was no ulterior motive, no agenda from either of them... Luisa was in no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that this was two people taking turns to give each other pleasure and nothing more. It was a moment, a single night carved out of time, an encounter that had no substance back in the real world.
For an eighteen-year-old Luisa, new to this world of international fashion shoots, it was liberating.
It was magical.
Aguascalientes
It was three weeks after Tulum and the alarm clock showed 3.17am, it's green digits the only light in the bedroom in her parents' home that Luisa had slept in since before she could remember. She stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep for the fourth night in a row.
All around her were familiar shapes... posters and a crucifix on the wall, the small desk where she'd studied, the clothes rail that was overflow for her wardrobe. But they all seemed alien, had done since she'd returned from Tulum. They belonged to someone simpler, someone who hadn't experienced what Luisa had three weeks before in Bel's hotel room.
Luisa rolled onto her side, kicking her blanket off in the night time warmth in a desperate attempt to sleep. Her body remembered everything... Bel's hands and words guiding her, showing her pleasure that she'd not known was possible, the way their bodies matched together so perfectly. The physicalmemory was so vivid, so clear, it haunted her waking moments and her dreams.
But... physical memory was one thing. The emotional side, that had left Luisa a deeply confused woman.
Who was she now? What did that night mean?
These questions circled through her mind relentlessly. She'd always assumed certain things about her life. She'd marry a local man, presumably her current boyfriend Miguel, have children, live a life not so different from her mother's albeit hopefully after she'd had a few years to try to make something from her modelling career. These were such fundamental assumptions that they were axiomatic to Luisa. It was simply who someone with her upbringing in her town with her parents would become.
Bel, in one night, had shattered all of that. It was as if the laws of nature themself had changed.
Am I a lesbian?That was the question that Luisa kept coming back to, and she had no frame of reference to guide her. The word itself felt strange in her mind, fraught with connotations that she barely understood. A Catholic upbringing and a Catholic education had been silent on the subject of homosexuality beyond its sinful nature, and as a result she had no exposure to that world. Everyone, literally everyone that she had grown up with was strictly heterosexual, and for someone in their community to be gay, whether a man or woman, was so out there as to be inconceivable. Luisa wondered if she was an aberration, the one in a thousand who slipped through the cracks.
Yet she had a boyfriend, Miguel. Kind and patient, he'd driven her to the airport to go to Tulum, collected her whenshe returned too, had been the model boyfriend since she'd returned. She'd been with him for nearly two years, enjoyed being with him, emotionally and physically. Not perhaps with the same electric intensity that she'd experienced with Bel, but enough that she couldn't dismiss their connection as anything other than genuine.
But yet... but yet... if she wasn't a lesbian, how was it that all Luisa had been able to think about since she returned from Tulum was Bel and that incredible night with her?
Giving up on sleep, Luisa switched on her bedside lamp and pulled out her laptop, a gift from her parents intended for her to use when she eventually went to university as they desperately hoped she would. Opening a browser tab, her fingers hovered over the keyboard. What should she even search for?
Finally, she typed:Straight woman with boyfriend but had sex with woman
The results were overwhelming and utterly unhelpful, a mix of pornography, relationship advice columns focused on cheating rather than sexuality, and forum posts from men fantasising about their girlfriends sleeping with other women. Nothing, not a single thing, that spoke to her fundamental question... was she a lesbian?
She tried again:Am I a lesbian quiz
This returned more quizzes than she could count, all in various bright tones and casual language. She chose one at random, answering questions about celebrity crushes and whether she liked dungarees, to get the result of 'You might be bi-curious'.No shit, she thought, sighing in frustration.
A third attempt:How do you know if you're attracted to women?
This was better, and she finally started to make some headway. Articles from LGBTQ+ websites, personal testimonies from women who'd come out, scientific analysis of sexuality as a spectrum rather than a binary classification... Luisa disappeared down the rabbit hole for hours, absorbing terminology that she'd never encountered before, perspectives she'd never considered, giving her new tools to understand what she'd experienced.
She read until dawn, engrossed, before she finally felt so tired that she couldn't help but sleep.
