The sequel to Obeying Rigel, Loving Rigel continues the tale of Rigel and Sadie. Originally published as Operation Sadiemeister.
“Initiate Operation Sadiemeister,” Sadie intoned from her hiding place behind a stand of bushes.
Lifting a pair of binoculars to her camouflage painted face, she focused them at the entrance to the swish restaurant. Dressed from head to toe in surplus army combat fatigues, the young blonde had taken all possible precautions against being discovered by her quarry. Her face was daubed with green and black paint and she’d even gone so far as to muss some dirt and twigs into her tussled locks, before her friend Kate had the chance to point out that a hat would probably be more effective at hiding her golden mop. Now a dark beanie perched atop her crow’s nest of hair and a faint scent of something unpleasant wafted under Sadie’s nose whenever the wind blew. Sadie ignored the odor, she had more important fish to fry.
“Well well, Stacy likes it up-market, huh?” she murmured to herself, taking in the gold tassels and plush fabrics that were draped wherever they could be draped. The place looked more like a brothel than a restaurant, no wonder it was so popular as a date spot for oversexed lesbians. There was even a man at the door, a man in a suit with stripy trousers whose only job was to open the door for people who otherwise would have been forced to manipulate a lowly handle with their own hands. Sadie disapproved of the place entirely.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Kate, voice of reason extraordinaire, chipped in from behind her. Kate’s long shiny brown hair had been pulled back into pigtails that looked quite adorable. Unlike Sadie she had not shoved half the environment onto her body in the hopes of being inconspicuous. Kate preferred to be clean. She preferred to be good too, but that was difficult when you were friends with someone like Sadie.
“Shh, eat your sandwiches,” Sadie hissed. “They’ll be coming soon.”
“My sandwiches are soggy. You shouldn’t have made them last night,” Kate replied, lifting up the moist white bread and watching in dismay as wilted lettuce and tomato slices fell onto the grass.
“There wasn’t time to prepare provisions today, don’t complain soldier!” Sadie snapped, returning her attention to the restaurant’s exterior.
“There isn’t time to be doing this now. Rigel is going to know we didn’t clean up like we promised we would,” Kate protested reasonably.
“Rigel isn’t going to know anything. Anything at all,” Sadie cackled. She was full of bravado and glee at executing her plan and little things like logic and likelihood weren’t going to rain on her parade, oh no, not in the slightest.
“Of course she is, Milo’s fur is about a foot deep on the couch. She’s going to know the house wasn’t cleaned.” Kate’s voice had taken on a slightly scared and entirely plaintive tone that Sadie found entirely unnecessary.
She shot a glowering look over her shoulder at Kate. “Well it’s not going to be you she beats, is it? Anyway, I found my way around that little problem.”
The triumph in her voice seemed to inspire suspicion rather than trust in Kate. “What did you do, Sadie?”
“Nothing to worry about. The house will be clean. Rigel will give you a gold star…. Wait.. Shh…”
The ‘shush’ command was unnecessary. They were a busy street away from the front of the restaurant, and the way that Rigel and her girlfriend Stacy were making eyes at one another, they probably wouldn’t have noticed a bomb going off in their immediate vicinity.
Sadie made guttural sounds of disgust as she watched the way Rigel draped her leather clad arm around Stacy’s narrow shoulders and dropped a kiss on the woman’s cheek. She’d slicked her hair down for the date, it made her appear debonair and wickedly good looking with the way it highlighted her high cheekbones and dark eyes. Her leather jacket gave her a slim-but-jacked-butch effect and next to her the pink clad Stacy looked positively puffy fairy princess. It was sickening how good they looked together. “Damn Mary-Sue,” Sadie whispered bitterly.
“Who is Mary-Sue?” Kate asked in confused tones.
“Stacy is.”
“Stacy is Mary-Sue?” Sadie’s answer clearly hadn’t shone any light at all on the situation from Kate’s perspective.
“Stacy is a goddamn bitch,” Sadie swore, lowering her binoculars. Watching the two of them together was just sickening.
“Hey, hey hang on,” Kate interjected. “You told Rigel you didn’t mind if she went out with Stacy.”
“Yeah, well. I tell people a lot of things,” Sadie muttered.
Kate sighed the long sigh of a woman who finally understands why she’s been dragged out to eat sandwiches by the side of the road. “This isn’t going to end well. Let’s go get some ice cream or something and go home, ‘kay Sadie?”
“I don’t want to go home,” Sadie said, her jaw tightening as she watched Rigel open the door for Stacy and usher her into the restaurant with a hand casually placed on the curve of her ass. “Oh my god they’re going to have sex,” she groaned, relinquishing the binoculars and slumping down to her knees
in despair.
Kate frowned at her friend. “Sadie… I’m starting to worry about you. Maybe you shouldn’t be with Rigel if you can’t handle her being with Stacy.”
“I’m not even with Rigel, not properly,” Sadie replied.
Kate looked flummoxed. “You’re not with her? The noises I head sure indicated you guys were… pretty ….close.” She blushed as she sought out words to describe the headboard banging sessions that had recently been taking place upstairs.
“Yeah, well, sex doesn’t always equal a proper relationship, Kate,” Sadie replied tiredly.
Kate refrained from offering an opinion, opting instead to pinch her lips together in a thin line of disapproval. “Let’s go home, Sadie,” she said gently.
“Yeah, okay, fine,” Sadie finally agreed, defeated. She’d harbored hopes that Rigel would lose interest in Stacy, but it had been weeks and weeks since they’d come to their little ‘open’ arrangement, and Rigel had continued to date the little wretch unabated. What the hell did she see in her?
Following Kate’s lead, Sadie stood up, brushing grass and twigs off her clothing. She no longer felt excited and awesome, she felt completely stupid and lame. She’d sworn she’d never be ‘that crazy girlfriend’, but she was in the process of outdoing most of the crazy girlfriend stories she’d heard.
“Sadie?”
Sadie froze in the act of plucking a muddy twig out of her hair. How could it be? She couldn’t be in two places at once, surely? But that was Rigel’s voice, there was no mistaking it.
“Er, yes?” she turned around slowly, doing her best to look as nonchalant as any stalker can look.
“What on earth are you two doing?” Rigel looked more confused than angry. Sadie thought that was probably a good thing. She also thought that Rigel looked damned hot up close. She’d worn just enough make up to highlight those gorgeous eyes and sensual lips, and matched with the stern look she had on, it was enough to momentarily addle Sadie’s brain completely.
“We were just uh…” an explanation failed to come to Sadie.
“Sadie was helping me with some of my course work, it’s a psych paper,” Kate saved the day with a smooth lie.
“Really?” Rigel quirked a brow, flicking her car keys about in her hand in a way that Sadie found incredibly suggestive of painful things.
“Yes. She’s been very helpful,” Kate said sweetly.
Sadie was momentarily stunned. In all the years she’d known Kate, she’d never known her to lie, not once. Now she was discovering that was probably because Kate was a near perfect liar. She didn’t skip a beat whilst fibbing, nor did she have any obvious tells. There was a ring of truth to her words that made Sadie almost believe them even though she knew better.
Rigel nodded slowly, looking Sadie up and down in a way that made her squirm on the spot. “Is that so,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yep,” Sadie squeaked, hoping that her pants didn’t burst into flames. They didn’t and Rigel nodded.
“Well, I’m in the middle of a date, so if you’ll excuse me ladies… behave yourselves. Both of you.” With one final stern look Sadie and Kate, Rigel set back off to the restaurant.
“Oh my god, thank you so much Kate,” Sadie whispered as they hurriedly gathered their things.
“You’re welcome. I don’t know if she believed it though, did you see the way she looked at me?” Kate
whispered back.
“Uh huh, now you see why I said she was dangerous?”
“Yikes,” Kate’s usually calm features drew into a frown. “I hope she doesn’t try it on with me.”
“She knows you’re straight, silly,” Sadie nudged her.
“No,” Kate blushed. “Not that thing, the… other thing.”
“Oh… you hope she doesn’t spank you? Yeah. I hope for us both. No offense Kate, but she’d destroy
you.”
“Oh god,” Kate shuddered. “We are never doing anything like this again.”
“Agreed,” Sadie concurred. That had been far too close of a call for her comfort. It was one thing to spy on Rigel, getting caught spying on Rigel, well, that just looked bad.
The drive home consisted of a detour to a fast food restaurant and subsequent agreement and counter-agreement that Rigel couldn’t have known that anything was up and that there was no way for her to prove it wasn’t an assignment and that she probably wouldn’t think about it anymore anyway and they should both just calm down and forget everything.
But all their self assurances did nothing to calm either Sadie’s or Kate’s nerves. Even arriving home to see that the cleaning service Sadie had secretly hired had done a near perfect job wasn’t enough to entirely take the edge off.
“It is nice and tidy in here,” Kate said, nodding nervously.
“It is. Too tidy! She won’t believe I did this,” Sadie frowned.
Kate shot her a look. “What do you want to do, mess it up again?”
“Brilliant idea!”
“Sadie, no!” Kate pleaded. It was too late. Sadie was already piling dishes into the sink and tossing random food products over them to give them that ‘four days unwashed’ look.
“This is not going to end well,” Kate groaned to herself.
“What’s not going to end well?” The door creaked shut behind Rigel, making Kate and Sadie both jump.
“Er, nothing!” Sadie chirped, turning the sink tap on full blast, sending a jet of water into the sink that splashed off the largely clean dishes and hit her square in her chest. “Ah fuck!” she swore, reaching for a dish towel.
“You’re home early,” Kate said sweetly to Rigel, once more covering up for Sadie’s nerves like a pro. Sadie dabbed at her shirt in the kitchen, frowning at Kate and wondering if she possibly was a spy. She could have been one. A moment ago she had been abuzz with nerves, now she was making polite chit chat in her normal way.
“Stacy didn’t feel very well,” Rigel said, shrugging off her coat.
“Aw, that’s no good,” Kate commiserated.
“No. It’s not. This place is clean. You two must have been hard at work before you went bush,” Rigel said dryly, looking around the house as Sadie inwardly cursed herself for not having tramped more dirt through the hall.
“Yes, well, we wanted to make it nice and clean!” Kate’s voice was beginning to sound slightly strained.
“Steam cleaned, huh?” Rigel said, inspecting the carpet as she took her shoes off. “I didn’t know we had a steam cleaner.”
“We don’t. Sadie hired one. She wanted the house to be extra nice for you,” Kate explained, turning and giving Sadie desperate eye roll expressions to try and get her to explain herself.
“Oh Sadie did it, did she?” Rigel drawled, casually wandering over to the kitchen, where Sadie was now squeezing enough dish washing liquid for the entire African continent into the sink. “Sadie is awfully quiet today,” she observed, hooking her finger in the back of Sadie’s pants and pulling her away from the sink.
Sadie squeaked as she was drawn back and turned around to meet Rigel’s gaze. Up close like that she could only look up at her, a fact Rigel capitalized on as she wound an arm around Sadie’s waist and secured her chin with two fingers. “And why have you been such a busy little bee?”she asked softly, gazing down at her captive with a quirked brow.
A quiet squeak was the best response Sadie could muster.
“Sadie was…” Kate began to answer for Sadie again, but Rigel turned and gave her a look that stopped her runaway mouth dead in its tracks.
“When did Sadie become unable to speak for herself?”
“Er, uhm, I don’t know. I’m going to bed,” Kate said with forced lightness. “You two have fun. Try to keep the plaster on the ceiling this time.” She turned and scooted into her room at an impressive pace.
“Kate!” Rigel raised her voice. “Get your butt back out here.”
It took a moment or two for Kate to emerge, looking obviously pale. “Yes?”
“Tell me about this assignment you have that requires hiding in bushes whilst this one,” Rigel squeezed Sadie’s backside hard enough to make her squeak, “spies on me?”
“Oh, haha, you thought we were spying on you? No. No. Total coincidence,” Kate lied. “We were doing a study on… a study on…”
“Lesbians in their natural habitat,” Sadie broke in, her brain finally kicking into gear.
“Lesbians in their natural habitat.” Rigel repeated the words.
“Well, yes, its for a sociology class, you know, Ananuci’s is a popular spot for lesbian couples and we thought that we would compare and contrast…” Kate trailed off as Rigel’s expression became stone cold serious.
“I thought it was for a psychology class,” she said, slowly releasing Sadie and focusing her attention on Kate, who was thoroughly unused to being intimidated by Rigel in stern mode and didn’t know how to handle it at all.
“Eh, sociology, psychology, they all sound the same to me,” Kate said, trying to play it off cool, but failing miserably.
“Aren’t you studying engineering?” Rigel said, hammering the last nail into Kate’s coffin of lies.
“Uhm, well, yes.”
“So you’ve been lying to me Kate, haven’t you? You’ve been lying the whole time.” Rigel’s voice was
dangerously soft as she approached Kate, who shrank back against the sofa with a little whimper.
“I.. er…” Kate tried to restart her lie machine, but it had stalled. Sadie could almost see the smoke rising from her ears as she opened her mouth and no sound came out.
When poor Kate was sitting on the back of the sofa with nowhere to go at all, Rigel leaned in and placed a hand on either side of her prey, effectively boxing her in completely. “Care to tell me the truth?” she asked in silky smooth tones.
“Probably not,” Kate replied.
Rigel chuckled dryly. “The first honest thing you’ve said all day.”
Kate blushed deep red. She was going to crack. Sadie could see it in her eyes. She had to save her. Glancing down at the sink, she laid eyes on a pot of sudsy water. The perfect diversion. “Run Kate! Save yourself!” she squealed hysterically as she picked up the pot and ran across the room to splash it all over Rigel. Turning the hose on Milo often distracted him from hunting squirrels in the backyard, maybe splashing Rigel with water would have the same effect.
It was not to be. Rigel moved aside at the last second, just as Sadie tossed the pot of water all over Kate and all over the sofa. “Sadie!” Kate howled in dismay, leaping up and dripping water all over the carpet, where it pooled on the surface of the pile for a moment before beginning to sink in.
Sadie stared in horror at what she’d done. “Oh my god, I am so sorry!” she squealed, rushing back to the kitchen to grab a towel.
A snort from Rigel, followed by outright laughter distracted both Kate and Sadie from the flood in the lounge. Sadie turned around with an armful of paper towels to see Rigel nearly losing it in gales of laughter.
“You two…” Rigel said, gasping for air as she clutched at her stomach. “Are priceless. You’re… the worst… brats… ever.”
“I am not a brat,” Kate objected stiffly. “I’m getting changed.”
“You do that,” Rigel giggled to herself, wiping a tear off her cheek as Kate walked to her room with a
stiff legged gait, rather reminiscent of a drenched cat that’s accidentally fallen into a pool.
Sadie half smiled. Perhaps the distraction had worked. It certainly hadn’t worked as intended, but Rigel wasn’t looking all slitty eyed with stern determination anymore. Taking all due care to keep her backside away from Rigel, she set to work cleaning up the spill, noting with satisfaction that the object of her affection was no longer concerned with questioning them and had taken herself off to the fridge to get a beer.
They might just get away with this after all.