“That’s hardly my choice after what we just did! You choose?”
Ellie thought for a few moments. “Let’s stay. Have a drink first, I think, and we can remake the bed before we get into it.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the most important thing of all?” Becca was smiling shyly.
“Are you even up to reclaiming sex after what you just did?”
Becca laughed. “You’ve got a filthy mind. I am, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.” She paused then shook her head when she saw that Ellie still didn’t understand. “My necklace. I’d like it back please.” Becca shrugged. “I mean, if you’ll still have me.”
Ellie felt herself blush as she reached behind her neck to unfasten Becca’s necklace. “The most important thing of all…”
Chapter 15
Becca had made the bed and removed any trace of what had just happened while Ellie took a shower, and when she came back out in a bath robe Becca was sat cross-legged on the bed, looking gloriously happy and relaxed. She was holding two freshly made gin and tonics.
Ellie joined her, sat cross-legged too, and accepted her drink gratefully, taking a long sip.
"Tell me," Becca said after a few moments.
Ellie took a sip and gathered her thoughts. "The sex was incredible. Like, genuinely some of the hottest sex I've ever watched. You with Cass was..." She shook her head. "You were a different person. The way you submitted to her, the way you responded to her dominance. I've never seen you like that. It was extraordinary."
"But?"
"But that's exactly the problem. You were a different person. I was watching Becca's fantasy hookup… the dominant, androgynous woman you've always had a thing for, doing everything you've always imagined that woman doing. And it was incredible for you. I could see how incredible it was."
Becca was very still, listening.
"But it was your fantasy, Bec. Not ours. What makes the dynamic work for me, what made Kelly so transcendent, is watching you with a plausible rival. A woman who could genuinely replace me. A woman who makes me thinkwhat if she prefers her?That fear, that threat, that's what powers the engine. And Cass..." Ellie paused, choosing her words carefully. "Cass isn't a threat to me. She's your dream one-night stand. She's the woman you'd choose for an incredible night, not the woman you'd choose for a life. And because I knew that, could see it, I wasn't part of the story. I was watching you enjoy yourself, and I was happy for you, but I wasn't involved. I wasn't needed."
Becca sat with that for a long time, turning it over. Ellie watched her process it, watched the therapist's mind engage with the personal, watched the understanding arrive.
"Oh my God," Becca said slowly. "You're right. You're completely right. I didn't even..." She put her drink down and pressed her hands to her face. "That was my fantasy. That was the TA from abnormal psych and every androgynous woman I've ever secretly stared at rolled into one person, and I was so inside it that I didn't realise I'd left you behind."
"You didn't leave me behind on purpose. You didn't even know you were doing it. That's kind of the point… it was so deeply yourthing that it absorbed you completely, and there wasn't room for our thing inside it."
"What we need is a triangle, and just now was a line," Becca said quietly.
"With Kelly it's triangular because she could genuinely steal you from me, which means I have a stake in what's happening. With Cass it was... I was watching you live out a private fantasy that had nothing to do with me. A really hot private fantasy, and I don't begrudge you a second of it, but it wasn't what we do."
"Becca's dream fling versus our shared dynamic."
"Exactly."
Becca uncovered her face and looked at Ellie with an expression that was part rueful, part grateful, part something else… the look she got when she understood something about herself that had been hidden in plain sight.
"I feel like I should have known," Becca said. "I'm literally a therapist. I should have been able to see the difference between a shared experience and my own wish fulfilment."
"You were naked with a dominant woman who was doing things to you that you've apparently been fantasising about since before you were twenty. I think self-awareness gets a pass in that situation."
Becca laughed despite herself. "Fair point." She paused. "Was any of it good for you? The watching, I mean. Honestly."
"Honestly? Yes. Parts of it were incredibly hot. Watching you be fucked like that, the sounds you made, the way your body responded, Cass's physicality with you, that was objectively amazing. Fucked is the only word too, it was insane and I was aroused, I was into it. But the arousal didn't have anywhere to go because the jealousy wasn't there to feed into it. Or maybe it was more that the jealousy was there, because she did things to you I could never do, but separate to the arousal, not feeding the fire. It was like..." She searched for the analogy. "Like listening to a great song but with the guitar coming from one speaker and the drums and vocals from another. You can hear it, you can enjoy it, but the full experience isn't there."
"Individual instrument instead of a band," Becca suggested.
"Yeah. The band only plays when the threat is real.” She paused. “I think, as well, a little bit it needs to be someone who is my type as well as yours. Like…” The thought had only just come to her, but she realised this was the missing piece. “Like, when I watch it’s primarily about the plausible replacement for me. But also, I think, part of me also imagines being in your place. Just a little. And that needs the person to be super-hot for me as well as knowing they are for you.”
“You think maybe you’d like to swap places?” Becca asked tentatively.
