Tina smiled, “Nothing…nothing.  I guess I’ll just never get used to having my breath taken away by you.”  She tiptoed to return Bette’s kiss, longer this time.

“Almost three years ago I told Kate Arden that you were the hottest woman I knew; the sexiest thing on legs, as far as I was concered.  Her jaw dropped at my very brief description of that first night of passion we shared…in Paris, remember?”

Of course I remember, T.   “Every second of that night…and the day that preceded it,” Bette responded.  “I even remember what you quoted to me just before we finally fell asleep, completely exhausted.”

Tina smiled, she remembered she had quoted Kingsley Amis, but was ashamed that she couldn’t remember which quote exactly, as it had floated to her thoughts from a seemingly random place in her subconscious.  Bette rescued her.

“Sex stops when you pull up your pants. Love never lets you go.”
 

Bette smiled, a touch sadly, “Turns out that was true, given what happened just a few hours after that.”  Very early the next morning, Bette was contacted via satellite phone by agents she had been working with, who had arranged for her to take a private plane leaving in an hour, to take her to Washington, DC.  So she had left their bed, without waking Tina, but had left the blonde a one-word message.  It led to almost a month of no contact between them, and had caused a rupture in their relationship.

Tina gripped Bette’s hand, and brought it to her lips. She kissed it affectionately, as if to reassure the brunette that she’d long since forgiven Bette about that.

“Baby, if at all possible, you’re even hotter and sexier now than when I described you to Kate,” she whispered, huskily.

Bette shook her head, “Look who’s talking…French model,” winking, referring to the incident in Paris when Tina and Bette had first encountered each other one rainy night in the fall nearly four years ago.  Although they hadn’t met each other during that encounter, Tina had made an impression on Bette even then.  Bette admitted to Tina six months later, when they’d finally been introduced to each other, that Bette remembered the brief encounter in Paris, and had thought that Tina was a French model.