Nightingale: Free Spicy Book Extract (Sapphic!)

The following is a spicy book extract from my sapphic romance Nightingale, set in London in 1990. It's a moving book inspired by the true story of how many queer women and lesbians stepped up to take care of queer men during the AIDS crisis when hardly anyone else would. This episode of queer history is reportedly why our community which was once called GLBT, is now the LGBTQIA+ community, honouring lesbians by placing them first.

So, yes, this book deals with a heavy and important topic, but it's also a love story about two women coming to terms with their queerness, their childhoods and their hopes and dreams, all while rubbing up against each othe rthe wrong way at first, until they realise a much better way to do it! The following scene takes place after they've made the switch, but they haven't quite figure out how  to give each other their hearts yet.

You can read Nightingale in full here.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sharon

Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division

I have a million things I want to say to Kate. I want to acknowledge her fear and her experiences and the pain and loss she’s endured. I want to tell her that even though our queerness is different, I still understand how the cloak of homophobia can affect us in so many weird and ugly ways. I want to share with her my story, about my own mother rejecting me in a similar way. I could talk with her until the sun comes up about all these things and countless more.

     But I don’t talk. Instead, I pull on my hands and bring her closer to me. Close enough to kiss.

     There’s no haste in our lips as they press together so lightly, it’s like being stroked by a feather. Even as our kiss deepens, the pace stays slow, the heat little more than simmering.

     “If you’re too tired…” I mumble against her mouth.

     “I’m not.”

     “You want to?”

     “God, yes.”

     And that’s when I wrap my arms around her body and roll us so she’s lying on top of me.

     We kiss some more and slowly, steadily, so very certainly, there’s more to it. Hunger. Craving. Want.

     “Please, Kate,” I whimper, unashamed that I’m begging. “Please let me touch you.”

     “Sharon, I-”

     “I want to make you feel good.”

     Her hands grip both sides of my face. “Don’t you see that’s the problem?” She demands. “You always make me feel good.”

     “I just want to try…”

     She opens her mouth and I fear it’s to turn me down again, but she snaps it shut. “Okay,” she says eventually. “Okay. Make me feel good, Sharon.”

     As if to affirm her agreement, she takes my hand and slides it between us, under the covers and under her, my, T-shirt. She’s naked there, completely naked, and I almost feel tricked, like she was just lying in my bed with no knickers and didn’t tell me. Like how dare she? But also, thank you, God.

My fingers roam around feeling smooth hairs, the softest skin, and wet, wet flesh. When I brush up against something small and hard, Kate gasps in my ear and I know I’ve found her clit. I go back to it, circle it, map its miniscule topography and in doing so, Kate opens her legs wider for me.

“Tell me when it feels good,” I ask her. “Remember I’m new to this.”

“New doesn’t mean bad,” she says before punctuating it with a soft moan. “Yes, there, Sharon, right there.”

There’s something about hearing her say my name like that – all air and lust and need – that makes me more determined than I’ve ever been to bring her to climax. I roll my finger over the tip of her clit and pull back so I can watch her expression as I play around with pressure and strokes. She bites down on her lip when I run my finger over the tip as lightly as I can. She looks down at me with a small frown when I apply more pressure. Hmm, she doesn’t like that as much. Who would have thought bossy little Kate Chiu would like a gentle touch? And then her eyes roll back in her head when I dance those light touches around her clit in little circles, sometimes around it, sometimes on top of it. When her head tips back and she releases a long guttural moan, I know exactly what I want to do next.

“Let me kiss you,” I say, “down there.”

Kate erupts into silly little giggles. “If you want to eat me out,” she runs a hand through my hair, “then say it.”

I ignore the way her bossiness makes me bristle. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I even like it. “I want to eat you out,” I say pointedly and she smiles.

“Then fucking do it.” She pushes my head down as I shove the covers away.

When I’m positioned between her legs, my body curled up under me, I’m grateful there’s enough light in the room for me to really see her. I have nothing to compare it to, not even my own because I’ve always been too apprehensive to take a mirror down there, but she seems so neat and tidy. Her hair is trim, her lips are slim and already open for me, and what’s exposed is all pink and slick and well, small. Or at least, smaller than I expect.

And then there’s her scent. It’s magnetic. Musky and sweet and pulling me in closer and closer. When I feel the heat of her on the tip of my nose, I inhale deeply. It’s a fresh, earthy smell – like rainwater drying in bright sunshine – and there’s a tang of something citrussy too. Orange blossom. My shower gel. For some reason her smelling of my shower gel, of me, makes my heartbeat louder and faster in my chest and in my ears. I inhale again.

Kate laughs. “I like to do that too,” she says.

“I can understand why,” I lift my head enough to look at her. “You smell so fucking good.”

“Want to find out if you like my taste just as much?” She gives me one of her craftiest smiles and I give her one of mine before putting my lips on her.

There are too many new sensations to name as I kiss her silky-smooth and unbearably soft flesh. Her scent engulfs me, her taste fulfils me, the heat of her is enough to make my tongue melt. And yet it doesn’t, not as I get more confident with licking and stroking and playing with her. In turn, Kate starts to move with me, riding my mouth and guiding me without words to how she wants to be touched, eaten, fucked.

If I hadn’t been so turned on, if I hadn’t been so desperate to do this to her, if she hadn’t made me wait so long, maybe I would have been more nervous, more self-conscious, more petrified of this. But as it is, I’m too desperate to please her. I’ve spent every night since she last slept in my bed imagining her taste and how she would feel on my tongue. Every time she’s touched and pleasured me in the last few weeks, I’ve been taking notes, memorising how she moves against me and inside me so I can yes, repeat it for myself, for my own pleasure, but also so I can do the same to her.

And yet it still feels like a miracle when her fingertips dig into my scalp a little harder and she tells me, “I’m close. So close.”

So I keep doing what I was doing – alternating gentle licks and slightly more persistent sucks on her clit – and I wrap my hands around her thighs and wait, full of anticipation for her climax.

“Inside me,” she says through what sounds like gritted teeth, but her thighs are muffling her voice. “I need you inside me.”

Yes, I think. That does feel good. I want her to feel that.

I suck on two fingers and find her entrance. Again, it’s smaller, tighter than I expect and so I hold back one of them and just slide my middle finger inside her.

“No!” She pulls my hair. “More. I need another.”

So I give her another. Lifting my head so I can watch her expression, trying to gauge if it’s too much, if I’m hurting her, she releases a low moan and throws her head back into the pillow. And then she starts to ride my hand.

God, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, ever felt, ever been a part of. Her hips bucking and falling, her cunt rocking against my mouth. Because yes, my lips are back on her silky wet flesh and my tongue has resumed its dancing pattern over her clit, alternating its strokes with little sucks.

“Oh, fuck,” she grips the back of my head and thrusts up into my face. It should hurt, maybe it does hurt, but I don’t care. I’m lost to giving her pleasure. If I’m being really honest, I’m lost to her. To Florence Fucking Nightingale.

“Yes, fuck, yes,” she pants and then there’s more. More moans and groans and beautiful little sighs I want to capture and keep. More of her on my tongue. More of her scent filling my nose and mind. More of her tightening around my fingers that I didn’t even move, hadn’t even got to thinking about.

But I will next time. I will do this again and again for as long as I can. Until she kicks me off her. Until she can’t take any more.

Twenty-four hours. That’s what she wants. That’s what I agreed to.

 And that’s what I know will break my heart come this time tomorrow.