Page 1 of WASP

ONE

ANNIE

Annie Dillinger hurried down a quiet residential street, where mature oak trees offered the smallest reprieve from the oppressive August sun. The sun had relentlessly beaten down on Washington, D.C. all day without so much as a single breeze—and don’t even get Annie started on the humidity. She was already second-guessing her decision to wear a skirt without the requisite bike shorts needed to keep the thigh chafing under control this time of year.

She shifted her overnight bag on her shoulder, adjusting the weight. Plastic cellophane crinkled against her skin as she nearly dropped the bouquet of flowers she was holding in her other hand. Annie quickened her pace, wanting to make sure she got to Caroline’s house—well, it was their house now, she guessed—before Caroline arrived home from her work trip. If her timing was right, and it always was, she had exactly one hour until Caroline would be home. And Annie—let’s just say she had very specific plans for how she wanted to celebrate her girlfriend’s return.

This year was a big year for the two of them. They had recently celebrated their seven-year anniversary, during which Caroline agreed that maybe it was finally time for them to move in together. Whereas Annie had a slight—okay fine, maybe more than slight—tendency to skew towards impulsive decision making, Caroline was the exact opposite. Cautious and slow to act. And that’s why they were perfect together.

Caroline’s father, Kent McHenry, was a longstanding client of Dillinger & Associates, the law firm Annie’s dad and older brother ran together. For the entire first year following Annie’s post-grad move to D.C., her parents had encouraged her to reach out to Kent’s daughter, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because Caroline McHenry happened to be the only other ‘respectable’ lesbian child of their close-knit social circle of friends back in Wellington Point, Connecticut, the tiny coastal town Annie had grown up in.

The likelihood of her and Caroline hitting it off was slim to none, given that Caroline was five years older than Annie, Ivy League educated, drop-dead gorgeous, and her sister’s best friend. And Annie was, well, Annie. It had taken all of the self-control she could muster not to roll her eyes at the suggestion the first time her mother had mentioned it, but here she was, all these years later, eating her own words because she was in love with Caroline McHenry and, despite having her pick of all the sapphic women in the world, Caroline was in love with her.

Annie made a sharp left, turning down the alleyway hidden between buildings, stepping around large chunks of weathered asphalt protruding in all directions, thanks in part to sprawling tree roots that had disturbed the pavement. The distant sounds of moaning caught her off guard as she squinted up at the back facades of the brick buildings lining the alleyway, their open windows meant to let in the nonexistent summer breeze, but instead were sharing what really should be a private moment with the whole damn block.

That was one of the things Annie would have to get used to living here—the voracious sex life of Caroline’s next-door neighbors. This wasn’t the first time Annie had been subjected to the sounds of 15 Liberty St NW, Unit 2’s afternoon delight, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

Annie approached the back gate, keying in the code and letting herself into the brick-paved back yard—could you even call a twelve-by-twelve square a yard? One more code entered at the back door and Annie breathed a sigh of relief as the cool kitchen air hit her. God bless AC.

She plopped her bag onto the bench by the back door before moving further into the kitchen. Yup. It was definitely Caroline’s neighbors having sex; the sounds only seemed to be getting louder. Fucking thin-ass walls. Maybe she and Caroline could address the soundproofing, which seemed like a more than reasonable request. Annie added that to her wish list of ideas for things she and Caroline could do around the house to make it more them, rather than just Caroline.

Annie set her keys on the counter, followed by the bouquet of flowers. She turned, opening the narrow cabinet next to the fridge where Caroline kept her vases, and pulled one down. But it was the sound that came next, that, “Fuck, oh fuck, baby, yes. Fuck me like that,” moaning that made her fumble the scissors she had reached for.

What the? She glanced up at the ceiling as the scissors fell from her hand, clattering to the ground. Were the walls really that thin? That sounded like it was right above her, not in the next unit over.

“Fuck!” came a high-pitched, breathy shout.

Annie froze. Her stomach instantly knotted. That had definitely come from inside the house. She stood there for a moment, stuck in the limbo of indecision, deciding that crouching down to pick up the scissors was the next logical step, followed by the illogical decision to make her way towards the stairs to investigate.

That knot in her stomach twisted tighter when she spotted not one, but two carry-on suitcases to the left of the front door, one of which—the soft baby pink one—she recognized because Annie had gotten it for Caroline for Christmas the year before. But the other one was unknown to her.

She began to climb the stairs. The weight of her footsteps heavy on each carpeted step following the grunting and groaning. The metal of the scissors still cool in her hands as she side-stepped a crumpled blazer that looked to have been haphazardly discarded. Two steps up lay a pair of red heels, the exact pair Annie had gifted Caroline as a because-I-love-you-and-was-thinking-about-you gift. And as she reached the top landing, Annie’s heart raced, the sound of her pulse whooshing in her ears as she tried to comprehend the image before her.

Annie wasn’t a prude. She had watched porn, had even watched it with Caroline on a few occasions. But there was something so starkly different about watching two anonymous people have sex on a screen in your hand vs. watching your girlfriend of seven years getting fucked in front of you.

She didn’t know how much time had passed since she had reached the top landing, her eyes glued to the two bodies writhing on the bed visible beyond the door frame of the primary bedroom—her soon-to-be bedroom.

“Play with my clit,” came an achingly familiar voice—Caroline’s desperate plea, one Annie was uncomfortably familiar with because usually it was directed at her.

She watched Caroline’s hips move, almost in slow motion, as she raised and lowered herself repeatedly on the sheath of the purple dildo worn by the mystery woman. Confusion twisted through Annie in one long swirl. This version of Caroline, the one bouncing on top of this homewrecking slut in their bed, was a stranger to her.

Caroline placed a perfectly toned arm behind her, steadying herself with a hand on the woman’s thigh as she rolled her hips in long waves, the woman’s hands coming to rest on her hips, fingertips digging in. Annie gulped as Caroline whispered, “Yes, baby, just like that, right there.”

White-hot rage shot through Annie, starting in the tips of her fingers and toes, racing through her veins until it was crackling in every inch of her.

The woman lying beneath Caroline pushed her hips up, meeting Caroline thrust for thrust as she let out a long, high-pitched whine—the one Annie craved to coax out, cradling it like a prize whenever she managed to and—oh.

Annie was going to be sick, but it was like driving past a car accident on the beltway; she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t look away.

The woman wrapped her arms around Caroline’s torso, bringing her down so their breasts were pressed together as she erratically thrust up into Caroline, causing profanity after profanity to fall from her lips. The sound of skin slapping together echoed around them. It was visceral and raw and, coupled with the squelching sounds of the dildo repeatedly driving into her girlfriend, it felt downright filthy. But that wasn’t what caused Annie’s surprise. It was the pink bedazzled heart-shaped base of a butt plug nestled between Caroline’s perfectly pilates-class-sculpted ass cheeks that caused a weird sensation in Annie’s chest. Not once in seven years of dating had Caroline ever expressed interest in anal play.

For another long moment Annie stood there, rooted to the spot, the sounds of Caroline’s pleasure loud in her ears as her mind struggled to fully process everything. But then she was moving, quietly making her way back downstairs, past the discarded heels and crumpled blazer, past the suitcases, and back into the kitchen.

Annie’s pulse still thudded in her ears as she set the scissors down, pressing her hands onto the cool quartz countertop of the kitchen island. Thinking. Her eyes landed on the bouquet of soft pink roses, the ones she had picked out with Caroline’s smile in mind. She had half a mind to take the bouquet upstairs, screaming and shouting about the complete and utter betrayal, but Annie had never been one to make a scene. She was raised better than that.

She reached for the vase, fingers wrapping around its crystal neck as she filled it with water from the kitchen sink, the sounds from upstairs still going. With a soft clink, she set the vase on the kitchen island, yanking the bouquet towards her as she once again reached for the scissors, cutting away the cellophane wrapping. One by one, she methodically trimmed each stem, placing the flowers in the vase, and when she was done she stepped back to admire her work.

A card. Etiquette dictates that all gifts should come with a card. Annie moved quietly into the den, where she knew Caroline kept a box of blank cards. Back in the kitchen, she expeditiously scrawled a note across the linen paper.