Elena smoothed the quilt over them both and clucked her tongue loudly.

"Bery good tea. But der is a ... a ... gap. Jes, a gap. All de cold air is coming in," she said huffily.

Beatrix shifted herself closer, till she could feel the line of Elena's seated body right next to hers. It made her feel all squirmy-warm, too.

They sat in silence for a while, sipping tea and staring at the fake wall. The colors on the canvas were dark and brooding, but the red glow from the heater lit them in a new way, converting the whole painting into a womblike cavern.

Beatrix set her empty mug on the arm of the sofa and turned to Elena. Warmed now and feeling the heat radiating from the other woman's body, she put an arm around Elena's shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

"Are you still sad?"

''No.''

It wasn't that Beatrix didn't like gla.s.ses, but they got in the way of a good kiss. She reached up to pull Elena's off. Beatrix grinned and pressed her lips against Elena's.

She had wanted it to be a gentle sort of kiss. She'd thought about kissing Elena many times and she'd always envisioned that it would be very gentle and languid. But now that it was happening, she couldn't help herself. The knot in her stomach and the throbbing between her legs drove the kiss desperately, and soon she was straddling her beneath the quilt as she wrapped her arms around Elena's neck and pressed against her fiercely as she fed at her lips. Her tongue flicked and plunged into Elena's mouth, stroking and coaxing until she heard a low growl freed from the other woman's throat.

Between them, Elena worried the b.u.t.tons on her sweater, even as Beatrix consoled herself with sliding her hands over her clothed form.

Nice plump little b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against Beatrix's hands as she cupped them through the wool. And even through all those layers, she could feel two hard, prominent nipples. She squeaked with need and fumbled beneath Elena's pullover, shirt, bra, finally closing her spread fingers, and trapping the big, burning hot nipples between them. They were as big as raspberries and had the same effect on Beatrix as she buried her mouth in the crook of Elena's neck. She pictured them dark pink and plump; her mouth flooded at the image, her c.u.n.t flooded in response. As she squeezed her fingers closed, Elena's hips arched up beneath her. The fabric of their jeans slid and caught as they ground against each other, so hard it almost hurt.

"Jesus, mujer. Donde est tu cama?"

"Sorry?" Beatrix looked up from where she'd been feeding on Elena's neck.

"Where de h.e.l.l is jor bed?"

"Behind the wall," Beatrix whispered.

Elena glared at her. "Dat is not a wall. Dat is a piece of art."

"Yes... behind there."

"So, are ju going to invite me?"

"Absolutely, yes!" Beatrix was at it again, grabbing Elena by one hand and the quilt by the other, pulling her around the painting, collapsing onto her futon and dragging Elena down with her.

What followed was a madness of layer shedding. Boots were discarded, pullovers and shirts and jeans and bras and panties all followed. Wriggling against Elena beneath the quilt, Beatrix suddenly felt like a terrible host again. The heater was in the other room, there were no sheets on the bed. Still, it didn't seem to matter to Elena, who was plunging her fingers between Beatrix 's c.u.n.t lips. The chilled fingers made Beatrix twitch and chirp.

"Ah, Christ!"

"What?"

"Your fingers are freezing."

Elena sn.i.g.g.e.red as she slid her fingers back and forth through Beatrix's wet slit.

''No problem. I warm dem up a little, jes?" And with that she pushed two fingers deep into Beatrix's pa.s.sage.

Just for a moment, it felt like she was being f.u.c.ked with an ice- lolly. Then everything melted and turned to syrup.

She pressed her own hand against her stomach to feel how cold it was. Her fingers were freezing too and she copied Elena, plunging them into the nest of hair and through Elena's furrow.

She felt Elena shudder and clamp her legs closed around her hand, trapping it there.

"Friction-friction creates heat," panted Beatrix. ' Open your legs."

Elena relinquished her death-hold on Beatrix's hand and allowed her to slide a thigh between her legs. Beatrix rolled on top and began to move her body, rubbing the top of her thigh against Elena's mound, pressing hard against her outer lips until they splayed and Beatrix felt the hotter inner flesh slide against her skin, wet and warm and lovely.

She tried to be goal focused and sensible; nothing cheered a person up like a good, hard o.r.g.a.s.m. But it was difficult not to get waylaid by the sheer pleasure of being in contact with skin, the gorgeous taste of another's mouth, the curious electric shocks she got from grazing her nipples against Elena's.

Beatrix mourned the normal sequence of events. Elena would come, she would come, and then it would all be over. The prospect of an empty bed, so recently warmed by the body of another... no, not this time.

Beneath her, Elena's hips rolled and arched. Warm, strong hands clutched at Beatrix's a.s.s, pulling her hips down. Her thigh was slick with juice, every undulated thrust designed to drag Elena's c.l.i.t over her skin.

To h.e.l.l with body contact, she needed to taste her.

She coaxed Elena to loose her grip on her a.s.s. Perhaps Elena was close to coming-and that only fed Beatrix's urge to burrow her face in Elena's c.u.n.t. Wriggling down the bed, squirming between Elena's legs, kissing a long line of salty-sweet skin along the way, Beatrix finally got to her destination and pulled the swollen, matted lips apart.

Pointing her tongue, she traced the harder, solid line of each inner lip from Elena's hole up to where they joined to above the hood. She d.a.m.ned the weather and the darkness under the quilt. She would have loved to see the color, the blush of blood beneath the surface of those delicate membranes.

Elena panted and arched her hips, protesting at the tease with animal sounds and fingers that threaded through Beatrix's hair. Then, with the flat of her tongue, Beatrix dragged a heavy path from Elena's pa.s.sage all the way up to her c.l.i.t, pushing the hood up as she lapped.

She worked slowly, taking her time to find all the other little spots that made Elena twitch, not just the protruding little nub. Finally, she settled her lips around the neat, small bud and sucked at it as if it were a nipple, lashing it with the point of her tongue all the while.

" Ay, Dios mio! " The fingers buried in Beatrix's hair grew frantic, pulling her head down even as Elena's hips thrust upward.

It was then that Beatrix eased her finger into Elena's tight, dark pa.s.sage. The walls fluttered and clamped around it, pulling it in deeper, resisting each time Beatrix withdrew. As she added another finger, and then another, Elena's legs began to quiver and Beatrix felt those warm, lithe thighs close around her head. She sucked harder, flicked her tongue cruelly at the c.l.i.t that was now clearly throbbing. Thrusting her fingers deep into Elena's c.u.n.t, Beatrix could feel the very start of the o.r.g.a.s.m.

Fluids flushed between her fingers, soaking her hand and the mattress beneath. Elena arched her hips and froze, a belly-deep guttural cry breaking from her throat, but Beatrix kept on f.u.c.king her, dragging her tongue over Elena's c.l.i.t again and again with even heavy strokes, prolonging the climax until she felt the spasms that squeezed at her fingers subside.

Then she withdrew them, slowly, and moved her mouth to surround Elena's entrance. She slid her tongue inside, shallowly at first, and then deeper, drawing out the flood of juices and feeding off them. It was delicious, hypnotic to feel the aftershocks clutch at her tongue. Her own c.u.n.t fluttered and throbbed in sympathy. She encouraged the tiny tremors by pressing her thumb against Elena's c.l.i.t and rolling it.

Above her, Elena was keening softly. The hands that had, just moments before, grabbed desperately at Beatrix's hair were now stroking and gliding over her head.

Beatrix knew she should wriggle up beside Elena for the traditional post-o.r.g.a.s.m kiss, but she just couldn't bear to leave the wonderful wet cave between her legs. It was too nice, too warm, and the tiny convulsions that gripped at her tongue each time she pushed it into Elena ...they weren't stopping.

She pressed inward, as deep as her tongue would reach, and let her thumb slip and slide over the proud little c.l.i.t that still pulsed so clearly beneath it. And slowly she felt Elena's hips begin to move again, not violently, but in time with the tongue that f.u.c.ked her.

Another torrent of liquid spilled over Beatrix's chin and all of a sudden, without any warning, Elena was coming again, quietly, shuddering and making different sounds this time. Like a puppy crying.

It was Elena who sat up and dragged Beatrix on top of her. She licked and sucked at Beatrix's face until she found her lips. The kiss was long and deep and soft, and when it was over, Elena said, "I think jor turn now."

''No,'' whispered Beatrix. ''Tomorrow...not now. Just sleep with me."

And even though Elena tried to insist, sliding her hand between Beatrix's legs to try and persuade her, Beatrix refused. She didn't care about coming; she just wanted to lie beside this lovely body. From her imagination's perch, somewhere up near the ceiling, she wanted to look down and see two bodies in the bed.

On the edge of steep, Beatrix heard Elena speak.

"De painting. Where did you find it?"

''Um...the wall? Behind the London School of Art, I think."

Elena curled around her body, spooning it. Beatrix nestled back and covered Elena's arms with her own. "Why do you ask?"

"Dat painting-it's mine. It's bery bad. In de morning, I will make ju a new one."

HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON.

RENeE STRIDER.

ou're out of your mind!" Stunned, Jo gaped at me. "You can't be. Not her. It's...It's..."

Y "It's what? A sin?" I had to laugh. I had just told my longtime friend and colleague that I was in love. Well, in serious l.u.s.t. I had to tell somebody, and she was really the only one I dared confide in.

Because the woman I thought about day and night, especially night, was a nun.

"Well no, but... How could you let that happen? Robin, it's not right. For G.o.d's sake-so to speak." She snickered at that.

We were sitting in my office in the hall attached to the church. Not the Catholic Church, nothing to do with nuns. Jo and I did outreach work with street kids for our church. We had just finished writing up a report about sponsoring a halfway house.

I sighed, closing my laptop. "I didn't let it happen. It just did. I can't get her out of my mind."

"After all the women I've been trying to fix you up with." She looked at me accusingly.

"Well, n.o.body was as gorgeous as she is."

"Yeah, she's pretty hot all right. If you don't think of her as a nun."

"I don't." That wasn't quite true. I couldn't forget what Antonia- Sister Antonio-was, and that was why I hadn't made any real moves.

Yet. That had to change soon or I was going to lose it. Or go blind. I had to do something, and I intended to at a retreat that weekend. The theme was Women's Spirituality in World Religions, with workshops, panels, and meditation sessions. Antonia was the organizer.

After Jo left, more preoccupied than I'd ever seen her, I was free to think about strategy.

In case you're imagining the object of my fixation concealed in a black habit and veil, hands and generic face the only proof of a body underneath, you can stop. Antonia was a modern nun in regular clothes-trousers, even-if a little subdued and conservatively styled.

And she didn't live in a convent but in a very large brick Victorian house with other nuns downtown near the cathedral. Technically, they weren't called nuns-as in cloistered-but sisters.

She and her housemates worked in the community. That's how we had come to know her. She was a social worker, and we often attended the same meetings and events related to youth welfare.

The first time I saw her she was sitting halfway down the table from me at a meeting. As I sat down she looked over at me with the clearest, lightest gray eyes I'd ever seen. I didn't separate out the other details till later: full red lips, straight nose, and dark lashes and brows beneath an unruly lock of straight black hair falling over her forehead. I was undone. By the time I found out she was a nun it was too late.

I think that she knew from the beginning how she affected me. She must have seen it when our eyes first met because immediately her color had risen, the kind of delicate blush you see only on very pale, translucent skin. I wanted her and she knew it. My eyes said so. It was a tacit acknowledgement that lay there between us in all of our subsequent meetings in the year that followed. She also seemed to sense that I wouldn't do or say anything about my desire because of what she was.

We didn't exactly become friends but we had many encounters and conversations. We talked about my denomination, the most liberal of the traditional churches in the country. We talked about the Roman Catholic Church and its restrictions, and about her congregation of sisters. I told her about my beliefs and philosophy. She told me how hers had evolved and changed over the years since she had taken her vows as a young novitiate.

She asked me to call her Antonia, without the "Sister."

I could never tell whether she wanted me, too. If she did, she hid it much better than I. At times just the sound of her voice made me wet.

She couldn't see that, of course, but when her gaze fixed on me, my heart beat faster and the hot blood rushed through my veins, heating my face. That was surely obvious to her, even through my tan and freckles.

Antonia was probably a virgin. I imagined her opening up to me. I wanted to be the first to penetrate her with my fingers, enter her with my tongue. Some nights that vision would shudder through me to release. I was obsessed.

One day, not long before the retreat, she touched my hair. "I love the color of your hair," she said as she held a dark red curl between thumb and forefinger and raised those eyes, clear as water, to mine.

Sometimes I thought I saw desire in them, but I wasn't sure.

Ste-Therese Spirituality Centre is a stone villa on a wooded estate on the lakesh.o.r.e, an hour's drive from the city. It used to be a convent but now serves as a retreat for both religious and secular groups. It's still owned and run by nuns, though, and some of the retreats are directed by them, the congregation of sisters Antonia belongs to.

In the enormous, light-filled lobby of the Centre stands a replica of The Ecstasy of S. Teresa di Avila by the seventeenth-century Italian sculptor Bernini. Ostensibly, the statue represents the mystical ecstasy the saint experienced during a vision. In this vision G.o.d's love entered her in the form of a flaming arrow thrust into her by an angel.

The saint's ecstasy certainly doesn't look spiritual to me. The sculpture is incredibly erotic. From the position of her bare foot you know that the saint's legs are splayed wide under the agitated drapery.

She's lying back. Her neck is arched, her face enraptured, with eyes closed, flared nostrils, and full lips open. The smiling, bare-breasted angel beside her, holding the arrow pointed at her, could be female, or at least androgynous. The figures are life-size.

I had been here before, conducting workshops or attending meetings in which Antonia was also involved. This tableau is what greeted me every time I visited the Centre. It was the last thing I needed when I was already in a state of antic.i.p.ation about seeing her. The provocative sculpture just intensified my desire. I wanted to see the same rapture on Antonia's face. I wanted to be the angel, not standing beside her but bending over her.

That Friday was no different, and the s.e.xy saint was even harder to ignore because this was the weekend that I was determined to get Antonia off somewhere and seduce her. However, I also had professional obligations here, so I went to my a.s.signed room to unpack and go over some notes. I was to lead a couple of workshops on topics such as "Spirituality without G.o.d?" and to take part in a panel discussion.

I had arrived early and the place was still quiet. Not even Antonia had arrived yet. I walked through shadowed halls with gleaming floors that smelled of new wax. As always, I could almost hear the sounds of the women who lived here long ago-the murmur of voices, the swish of habits, the soft click of beads.

My room on the second story was somewhat larger than the nun's cell described in books, but not much. It was all white and the furniture was plain and dark-a straight-backed chair, a small desk with drawers serving also as a bedside table, and a wardrobe. On the wall above the bed was a simple cross, without the tortured figure hanging on it.

In another century this bleakness would have been relieved only by the tall window stretching almost to the high ceiling and opening out to a spectacular view of lake and sky. Now there was also a bright throw on the narrow double bed and a colorful mat on the hardwood floor.

I sat at the desk and worked steadily for a while. When I heard cars in the drive, I stretched and went to the shared washroom down the hall to freshen up before joining the others.

By late Sat.u.r.day afternoon it was still the status quo. My time hadn't been my own since the day before. Antonia had also been busy with her duties, and I hadn't really seen her except when she introduced speakers and facilitators-and this morning at breakfast.

We sat at the same table, across from each other. I noticed that a few ends of her short hair stuck out from her head, and her eyes were still heavy-lidded from sleep. The intimacy of that sent an unexpected shock of l.u.s.t to my groin so strong that I started. I managed to cover it up by reaching for something on the table and making small talk with my neighbor. When I dared look at her again, she was looking at my hands. Slowly her gaze moved up to mine. Oh G.o.d. This time there was no mistaking the longing I saw in her eyes. I walked around in an erotic haze for most of the morning.

Now it was late afternoon. The rest of the time was mine as I had no more official responsibilities and could simply enjoy the beautiful surroundings and the company of the other partic.i.p.ants. And think about how to get Antonia alone and in my arms.

I strolled across the front lawn and down to a small wooded area by the sh.o.r.e. A tree with low branches provided shade in the hot sun, and I stood with my back against it, looking out at the sparkling water.

The sun was still high. Nothing moved in the still air. I could hear only faint voices behind me in the distance and the murmur of the lake swells moving slowly to and fro over the pebble beach.

I decided that I would ask Antonia to go for a walk before the string quartet performance to be held out on the lawn that evening. My stomach tightened as I imagined pulling her against me within the protection of the trees. I closed my eyes and suppressed a moan. When I opened them I almost collapsed. She was standing in front of me, the bright sun behind her casting her in shadow. She had followed me. I moved so that I could see her face, and we stared at each other, lips parted but speechless.

"Antonia? What is it?" I finally managed.

For the second time that day I saw hunger in those clear eyes, and I was mesmerized. I would have stood there forever if she hadn't said something.