by Sacchi Green
(05/26/04)
Icy fingers of salt spray rasped the nape of Vic's neck. Her hands were full, pressing Tory's body so hard against her own that the pleasure verged on pain. Even discomfort was a joy, after so many dreams dissolving into yet another desert morning, and war, and her own fist hot and wet between her thighs.
Tory rubbed against Vic, nipples hard as the buttons on her opened shirt. "We could move forward out of the wind," she murmured against Vic's cheek. Her own cheek was damp and salty, even though Vic sheltered her from the worst of the spray. Tears? None she would ever admit to.
Everyone else had drifted toward the bow of the boat, watching Liberty Island loom closer through the mist. The Park Service crew had become, after introductions and sincere handshakes, genially oblivious, but years of "don't tell" had wired Vic for caution.
"What, I'm not keeping you warm enough?" she teased, easing back and beginning to button Tory's shirt. There were still limits to be observed, and the respect due a National Monument.
"We're almost there, anyway," Tory admitted, turning to nestle her butt into her lover's crotch. Then she gasped as Vic reached around under her jacket to fondle her through her shirt.
"Almost there?" Vic murmured into Tory's froth of russet curls. "How close?" She scraped her nails across sensitized nipples, keeping on until Tory's breath came fast and ragged.
"Vic...ah!...yes...oh...if I don't get sucked pretty damned soon I'll scream!"
"You'll scream even louder if you do." Beneath Vic's cocky tone she blessed Tory for not asking, "Why? Why now? When you wouldn't touch me last night? Or this morning?"
Last night, exhaustion after the long flight had been excuse enough. Not that Vic had slept soundly; time after time her dozing had given way to a panicky wakefulness. Where...who...New York...Tory's bed...Tory beside her, warm and tender.... impossible! And her dreams, filled for months with images of Tory so sensual and raw they'd seared her, now roiled with violent images she needed desperately to leave behind. All she'd seen, done...all those she couldn't save.....
Deep sleep must have come at last. When Vic had finally stirred, Tory was kneeling naked above her, bending to nibble lightly at tender skin exposed in the gap between t-shirt and boxer shorts. Vic sighed, stretching, letting the gap widen. Tory pursued this opening with enthusiasm, nudging the shirt upward with her nose, tugging the shorts downward inch by inch, exploring with lips and tongue and teeth; and every little kiss pressed into Vic's vulnerable belly sent tongues of fire darting toward her cunt.
She had needed to arch upward toward that teasing mouth, ached just as hungrily to pull Tory down, roll on top of her, and fuck her supple, wriggling body until she lay limp and sated. But her own body wouldn't obey her impulses. A ponderous, nightmarish gravity weighted her limbs.
Somewhere a truck had backfired. Vic stiffened. A tremor begin deep in her chest, threatening to ripple outward, and suddenly she heaved herself over to lie with her face buried in the pillow. Damn, damn, damn, why now, when she had stood firm for so long against anything war could hurl at her?
"It's okay, Babe," Tory had said. "It's kinda soon. You're not really all here yet." She leaned back and patted Vic's butt. Then she ran a finger along Vic's thigh and raised the edge of her shorts. "Sure didn't get those tanned legs in a New York winter, but your ass could still pass. No nude sunbathing in a war zone, I guess."
One deeply probing caress beneath the shorts, and then she was off the bed, turning on the burner under the coffee. Another grope like that and Vic sure as hell would be all there, she thought. Maybe.
Over breakfast Tory chatted casually about her work as an urban park ranger. "I wrote you about the bald eagles, right? It's been so cold upstate they've been riding ice floes down the Hudson to fish in open water. I'm recording sightings, seen one myself flying over Grant's Tomb." She reached across to rumple Vic's short, dark hair. Those glints of silver hadn't been there a year ago. "A couple more decades and you'll be one very fierce, sexy eagle yourself."
Vic leaned forward, but Tory went on in a rush, "Anyway, some National Park Service guys from Ellis and Liberty reported eagles way down off Battery Park, so we got together, and that's how I fixed up a trip to Liberty Island today. I thought you might want to see the Statue."
"Yeah, sure," Vic said. "Sure I do," and wondered whether it might even be true.
They'd met in the rubble of Ground Zero, where Vic's Reserve unit had been posted for search and security duty. Even dust-covered, Tory had caught her eye like a beacon. Vic hadn't made a pass, though, until the evening Tory came up behind her as she gazed out over the harbor.
"You ever been out to the Statue??" Tory asked casually. "Or Ellis?"
"Not yet," Vic said gruffly, glad to have her grim thoughts interrupted. In the gray distance the Lady rose from the harbor, strong, ageless -- but how had She borne it, when the towers fell, and she couldn't even turn to face them?
"My ancestors didn't come through Ellis, anyway," she said. "Most of them were French fur traders, and the rest were cousins of the guys who sold this real estate cheap to the Dutch. Always figured the whole deal about "Miss Liberty" was pretty ironic, in fact, but looking at her now.... Damn, that's some woman!" There was something powerfully sensual in all that steadfast, nurturing serenity; and Tory's closeness put sensuality powerfully on Vic's mind.
"She has a ten-foot fist," Tory said wickedly, "and a forty or fifty foot arm."
"Kind of makes me feel humble," Vic responded. Tory laughed, and gripped her hand, and two hours later they were showering off the dust and soot and anguish together in Tory's tiny studio apartment.
The boat emerged into sunlight just before it nudged against the dock. At the far end of the island the Lady stood, solitary, monumental; along the wide pathways tourists strolled and snapped pictures, although the statue itself was still off-limits after two and a half years.
Vic felt oddly reluctant to go closer. "This is great," she murmured to Tory, "but I can't wait to get you back home." The sea breeze had blown away the desert at last; whatever had blocked her was gone, she was sure. Almost.
But Tory tugged her along the dock to meet a wiry, fortyish woman in a Park Service uniform.
"Maddie, this is Vic," she said breathlessly. "Vic, meet Madlyn."
Vic felt her hand gripped with a force just short of challenge. Madlyn looked into her face for a long moment. "Okay," she said abruptly. "We can go up."
She strode off toward the monument. "Up inside the Statue? All the way?" Vic asked, and Tory nodded.
"She wouldn't promise until she'd seen you."
Vic wasn't sure this wasn't some new dream, but when they rounded the huge pedestal and she tilted her head back to look up, and up, into the Lady's face, it didn't matter. Whatever name or role men had given Her, She rose beyond it, the archetype of the strong woman, stern and compassionate, nurturing and commanding, powerful without swagger. Vic wanted to reach out, to touch something more of Her than her copper shell, smooth away the tension between Her brows, stroke Her full, beautiful lips until they curved into a smile.
A sidelong glance showed Madlyn watching with a trace of a smile herself. The ranger led them toward an entrance, stopped to speak to two security guards, and then they were inside, riding the elevator to the top of the ten-story pedestal. Then, under the cavernous shelter of Lady Liberty's robes, Vic was jogging up the spiraling staircase ahead of the others.
Higher and higher she climbed, through the massive, complex network of supporting girders. Her boots thudded on the metal steps like great heartbeats accelerating along with her own.
The farther she got, the faster she needed to go. At last, at the top, where a row of windows looked out from Her crown, Vic braced her hands against the inside of Her copper brow and gazed with Her across sea and sky. Harbor lights flickered on as afternoon flowed toward twilight, tiny sparks echoing the blaze of Her great lamp.
Vic's whole body seemed to grow, to stretch. She ached to stand eye to eye with Her, breast to breast, heart to pounding heart; to comfort Her, share the endless standing guard, the grief at the chaos of human hatred. Vic understood all that. And suddenly she needed to share something else she understood, something filling her to bursting; the piercing joy of a woman's body.
Vic's breath came even faster than when she'd been climbing. Then Madlyn's head emerged above the stairwell. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Just meditating," Vic grated. Madlyn gave her a keen glance, nodded, and stepped back down, gesturing for Tory to wait.
Vic didn't give a damn. She was inside the great body, filling it, her head brushing the copper ripples of Her hair. Fist clenched low against the side of an arching support, she leaned her hips into it, pressing her crotch against her flexing thumb; a desperate comfort grasped before, in rare moments of solitude, leaning on walls, trees, even an armored tank. But this time she wasn't alone. Another presence touched her, surrounded her, intensified the heat Tory had ignited. The pounding tension in Vic's clit and cunt swelled, and rose, harder and higher, until it burst forth like rays of light from Her crown.
A whole lot noisier than light, though. Vic's shout of triumph reverberated through the Lady's copper body as though it were Her own voice.
The cry died away, and when Vic's gasps had subsided, Madlyn re-emerged. "Meditating, huh? How about teaching me that mantra?"
Tory pushed past and rushed at Vic. They leaned against each other, shaking, until Tory slid to her knees and buried her face in Vic's damp crotch. "There'd better be more where that came from!"
Wherever that had come from, the way was clear now. "All you can handle," Vic said, and drew Tory's head briefly closer before pulling her up, and toward the stairs, and home.
On the return ride they pressed together, Tory's back warming Vic's front, and watched the city skyline with its aching gap grow closer. "Vic, I...." Tory paused to clear her throat. She began again in a lighter tone. "I can't believe you fucked the Statue of Liberty! But don't go thinking you did it all by yourself. I was rubbing that railing so hard my hand aches, and Maddy -- well, she was crouched over muttering something I'm pretty damned sure wasn't the Rosary."
Vic's crotch rubbed against Tory's round ass. Too bad she wasn't packing -- although that might have felt, well, inadequate, inside the immense Statue .
She didn't feel inadequate at all when she had Tory to herself in the tiny shower...and over the back of the sofa...and in bed. There was one brief moment, as Tory's gutteral moans intensified, when Vic hesitated, until Tory squeezed her thigh savagely. "Don't stop!" she commanded roughly. "You can't hurt me, damn it! More, harder!"
The last shadow of war vanished. Vic was all there, in every urgent moment, knowing without question where she was, who she was; free at last to take her long-unused gear for a wild, slippery ride, free to let Tory drive her to her limits, hold there for long, cruel, delicious minutes, then thrust her over into delirium. And, finally, into sleep, and peace.
