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Shauna retrieves the thin stack of mail from the mailroom in her uptown apartment. If you can even call it ‘up’. If you can even call Wiskayok a town.
Clutched firm in a crab claw of gnawed cuticles and misshapen keratin, Shauna brings the envelopes upstairs, rifling through them one by one as she ascends the staircase leading to the third floor. Her toe thumps against the top step of her level but she pays it no mind, used to tripping on the waterlogged wood that her landlord tried to cover with antiquated carpeting while hoping no one would notice — the ones who didn’t usually cracked their heads like an egg.
She slips an index finger beneath the lip of a telephone bill and tears it open with a significant lack of grace. A stray scrap of paper flutters down the stairs but she ignores it, walking down the hall to her dilapidated one-bedroom, figuring that her moral compass will send her back out to pick it up later; it usually does. Sometimes.
The bill is more expensive than last month and she’s already scraping the bottom of her savings account with a chisel and a putty knife. The settlement from the crash wasn’t as much as any of them had hoped, all things considered, but it’s paid her rent thus far, two-ish years into independence and the real world. She decides to tuck the bad news in the back of her pile and deal with it later. See no evil and all that.
She kicks the door shut behind her with an unfriendly slam when she spots a repeat offender, the elegant seal and prepaid stamp of a New Jersey publishing house, no doubt containing yet another letter of groveling typography that offers to kiss her feet in exchange for the rights to her past, future, and everything in between. She scoffs and tosses the remaining stack on the flat top of her refurbished entryway credenza. The papers hit the wood with a satisfying smack and Shauna tears the prostrating offer in half with practiced hands.
With the severed remains of her literary nemesis in one hand, Shauna scours through the rest with the nonchalant finger of the other, pushing and prodding at the stack to see what she got this week, catching her nail against the wood beneath them.
It’s all fairly typical: electric bill, movie rights, water bill, autobiographical payout, routine maintenance notice, fan mail (if that’s how the frenetic garblings of an ill-spoken true crime fan who found her address through a definitively illegal route could be classified). She rolls her eyes.
Something catches them on the way back down from their cyclical annoyance. It’s unusual but intriguing. It’s hidden towards the back of the pile but the effective fanning of Shauna’s irritated discard has wiggled it into plain view. It’s a larger envelope, cream instead of eggshell, baronial instead of commercial, inviting instead of annoying. The seal isn’t held to the back by begrudging saliva, rather a wax seal the color of peach flesh, sunset pink and lightly dusted. Shauna slips a curious finger beneath it and cracks it away from the paper flaps.
Cardstock greets her from the inside. It’s thick and weighty, something that costs way more than a torn out sheet of notebook paper. There was no return address on the envelope. Shauna pulls out the notice.
It’s a wedding invitation. Shauna can’t catch her breath. She feels the surefire fist of an MMA fighter plunge deep into her soft underbelly without remorse. The air is wiped from her lungs; it’s nothing but a memory.
Jackie Taylor and Jeff Sadecki cordially invite her to their wedding on the first of August at 5:00 pm. The invite has a decided lack of greenery, flowers, not even a laurel wreath around their names as is all the rage right now. It feels pointed. There is no plus one. Not that she would’ve had one, but the assumption by the hosts is another blow to her ego.
Her mouth runs with the agitating flood of pre-expulsion saliva. She swallows to keep it all down. She fiddles with the cardstock and bends the corner without realizing. At least it’s temporarily effective in keeping her teeth away from her nails.
It’s been over two years. It’s been no-contact for longer than Shauna can throw, and she’s got a damn good arm. It’s been nightmares and long nights and sleepwalking in winter. It’s been memories repeatedly pulled out of her like an ingrown hair dug deep beneath the skin, fiddled with and tugged on by the needy hands of a psychologist, an analyst, a scientist. It’s been waking up sweating through the front and back of every sleep shirt she owns thinking that she left Jackie outside, never went to collect her, never went to repent and grovel and whine the way a teenage girl is so good at doing.
It’s constantly reminding herself that Jackie was rescued with the rest of them. She has a microvascular disease now, her breath runs out with a handful of steps. How intriguing what frostbite can do to a human body. How it can reduce miraculous agility and poise to nothing at all. Jackie was the only one studied under a microscope when they were airlifted out. Shauna heard she has a cane, dark and regal like a queen’s scepter.
She’s clearly back with Jeff; his discrepancies were merely irritants it seems, especially when faced with imminent death. Frivolous teenage fuck-ups mean nothing when your bones essentially freeze together in a way that ensures only robotic movements on your right side for the rest of your life.
It seems that Jackie isn’t so forgiving with Shauna’s betrayal. The gritty cardstock in her hand — some twenty-seven months later — is the only contact Shauna’s gotten from her former best friend since they were rescued. Just how the cookie crumbles she supposes.
Still, it doesn’t stop her heart from leaping into her throat. It doesn’t stop a wave of guilt from washing over her and there’s no upside to being drowned in it — her hair won’t even smell like sun and salt when it’s all over.
She doesn’t know what she feels. She only knows it’s terrible, it’s rotten, and it needs to be smothered out of her. She lays a shaking palm flat against the credenza and traps the invitation between her skin and the wood, as if she could choke it out. As if she could put the pillow of her thenar over it until it shakes and rattles and stills beneath her hand. She can’t even bear to throw it away.
She does the only rational thing she can think of: she picks up the phone. It rings twice before it clicks. She doesn’t give the listener time to breathe.
“It’s me. Is that offer still on the table?”
________
Lottie and Natalie’s apartment is a quaint brownstone leaning precariously against the county line. It’s like they didn’t know if they wanted to leave or wanted to stay so they picked both, just in case. Two Lottie-sized steps north and you’re in a smoggy hamlet nestled in the very cradle of Hoboken. Cute.
The drive was short but the rain made it difficult to see. It’s a firm reminder that Shauna needs her windshield wipers replaced but she doesn’t have the time nor the funds. She’ll have to be satisfied with a porthole of clarity just slightly adjacent to the driver’s side view. Her back aches from leaning forward.
Pulling her spring coat around her abdomen and locking the door with her fob, Shauna jogs up the steps of the brownstone, the outside lamp so kindly illuminated for her visit. She raps her knuckles against the door and waits, eyes fluttering as they try to keep out the wind-whipped rain. Her brown hair is plastered down and sticky against her cheeks.
The door whines as it opens. It cries out with surprise at being moved and manipulated and Shauna winces at the shrill squeak. She pulls her coat tighter around her waist, a slight thunderclap of anxiety blooming deep in her gut, though she whisks it away with ease. There’s nothing more to be nervous about amongst the three of them; the jagged line between locker room nudity and… intentional anthropophagy is a red string of fate that ties them all together in a neat and bloody bow (Shauna has never said the C word. None of them have).
Lottie stands barefaced in the open maw of the door, the handle tight in her left palm, her right leaning against the frame. A delicate, claspless gold bracelet hands down her right wrist and stops at the swell of muscle where her arm begins. She lingers in the doorframe wearing an evergreen house robe, loosely cinched and baring the upper half of a modest silk negligee, a burnt ochre that grants no hints to Shauna’s leering gaze.
Her hair is still long, though a bit more kept now — having a brush and conditioner again has done wonders for them all. It lays in thick, black waves over both shoulders, the ends caressing the very bottom of her sternum on either side. Her bangs are back and are effective in covering the white forehead scar Shauna knows is still there; what will always be there. Some parts of that place you can’t leave behind.
“Shauna,” she breathes, her voice honeyed and inviting. The corner of her mouth tilts upwards like a ship unmoored by waves. A fang gleams in the light of the illuminated sconces. Her breath fogs and evaporates in the cold.
Shauna tips her chin, though not enough to be mistaken for submission. “Lottie.”
“Come in, come in. You must be freezing.”
Lottie steps back and releases the arm lounging on the doorframe, using it to gesture widely at the space behind her, still holding the door open with the other and allowing Shauna to step inside.
The innards of the apartment are as cohesive as they are eclectic. What a strange world, one where Lottie Matthews and Natalie Scatorccio share their belongings in equal value. Their combined lives are splayed across every available surface and their innate closeness makes Shauna yearn for something that makes her queasy. She’s used to dichotomy. She’s used to unrequited. She blames it on the incense burning on the windowsill.
There’s soft music playing from somewhere beyond the living room, flushed with large-bellied seating options, varying between chaises and stools and pillows on the floor. Shauna picks a chestnut armchair beneath the lip of the street-facing window and takes a seat. She shrugs her coat off and lays it over the back.
Natalie emerges from another room, most likely the kitchen, a cigarette loosely held between her chapped lips. She’s wearing gray boxers that seem to billow out against her twig legs, pale and just as knobby as they were two years ago, starving and bruised. A black racer tank accentuates her biceps and the freckles stretched across both shoulders. They’re light brown. They’re burnt stars. Shauna swallows.
“Well, well,” Natalie teases, talking around the cigarette in her mouth, flopping haphazardly onto the couch directly across from Shauna. The mix of smoke and incense makes Shauna’s head spin. “Really didn’t think you’d show.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Natalie shrugs, teasing. “Thought you might be bluffing.”
“Have I ever bluffed, Natalie?” Shauna challenges the girl with practiced ease.
Natalie freezes. She scoffs a bitter laugh after a moment, stubbing out the end of her cigarette in the ashtray on the side table. She swirls her cigarette around in the singed ash for a moment.
“Just happy you didn’t chicken out. That’s all.”
A deference from Natalie Scatorccio was unexpected, although there is only one person in the room who is modestly dressed. Shauna figures this gives her an immensely firm upper hand. She shuffles in her seat.
“Would you like something to drink?” Lottie asks, playing hostess. She lingers near the kitchen awkwardly, one foot in both rooms as she stares expectantly at Shauna. “I think there’s still wine in the fridge.”
“No, thank you. I don’t drink.”
Natalie barks a short laugh. Shauna would’ve mistaken it for a raucous cough if she hadn’t been making eye contact with the girl. Lottie looks at Natalie sternly and silence immediately falls over the room, sparing the fizzling hum of early ‘80s rock coming from somewhere in the apartment.
Instead of loitering on the topic for too long, Lottie surrenders and joins the other two in the living room. She takes roost on a smaller armchair beside the couch, newly reupholstered with mauve felt and brass legs. Her robe — looking far more similar to a caftan with the way Lottie holds herself — drapes lazily across one arm and down the front, stopping just before hitting hardwood. She sits patiently with both hands in her lap, nervously eyeing the space between Shauna and Natalie.
“So,” Natalie starts with a smile, “haven’t seen you in a while. Glad to see you’re not dead. No news is good news, right? Isn’t that the saying?”
Shauna scoffs. “I guess. But I didn’t really come over here to reminisce and sing kumbaya in your living room.”
Lottie says nothing. No part of her face moves. She is stone against her seat, lounging gracefully as a voyeur in this strangely tense volley. Shauna pays her no mind.
“Why did you come?” Natalie asks, quirking an eyebrow, fiddling with a loose thread on the hem of her boxers. The slit in the center, designed for something else entirely, has wriggled open in Natalie’s refusal to sit properly. Shauna sees black lace.
“You know why.”
Lottie and Natalie share a brief look, and although it’s fast, Shauna digests every fraction of that time with ease. The needle goes in quick but you feel the bruise form in slow motion. The glass slips off the counter in an instant but shatters against the floor slow enough for you to think of every curse word you’ve ever learned in your short life and move your vulnerable foot out of the way. This moment is exactly that way; Shauna sees everything.
She knows what they’re thinking. She seals her lips together and lets them process the almost discomfiting possibility that this isn’t a joke. Not now; not anymore. Natalie speaks first.
“You know it was a joke, right? I mean, we were all pretty drunk that night. I really was joking, Shipman.”
She’s talking about last year, about what was said at the bar — the one that didn’t card them out of a dreadful combination of pity and remorse — after their brief reunion for the 60 Minutes profile on ‘what is perhaps the most fascinating case of bravery, girlhood, and survival’. Shauna spent that entire weekend in New York wanting to gouge her own eyes out on national television. What a story that would’ve made, huh?
Anyway, three beers after being starved out for nineteen months had reduced Shauna, Lottie, and Natalie to a sloppy mess a single pinky-toe away from being thrown out of the place entirely, as if they were designed to make the bartenders regret their decision. Natalie had slurred her and Lottie’s collective proposal against Shauna’s blushing ear, but they eventually went their separate ways after a quick laugh. Now, no one’s laughing.
“I wasn’t. I’m still not.”
Lottie blinks, unwavering still. Her gaze is like a hunting fox, straight-edged and wide, digesting every minute movement that Shauna or her girlfriend make. It’s pointless; no one moves. The music has stopped itself, the clicking of a finished tape going unnoticed during their conversation. The grandfather clock in the corner ticks away. It’s the only proof that time still moves.
Despite the embarrassment — or what should be embarrassment — of the situation at hand, Shauna’s cheeks are delightfully neutral. No redness blooms across her chest. She’s stagnant and thoughtful, gaze set as it bores into Natalie’s.
If Shauna had blinked, she would’ve missed the slight twitch of Lottie’s wrist towards Natalie’s thigh, dangling precariously off the edge of her couch and trespassing close to the mouth of Lottie’s chair. Shauna doesn’t know whether it was born out of approval or deescalation, but she doesn’t care to know the intricacies of their relationship.
She just wants to get fucked.
Shauna breaks her stare in order to give the other two a moment to silently discuss the situation at hand. It’s clear that Shauna’s phone call hadn’t been taken seriously, nor was there any stock put into what was said last year. If Shauna was more serious than she is right now she would surely erupt into immovable stone.
She sees the envelope at the same time they do. It peeks out from a large stack of mail on the coffee table, rifled through but not cared about in the least. The size of it makes it unique, as does the wax seal that contrasts against the pile of sterile white splayed across the dark oak surface. Shauna swallows but says nothing; she is gracious that her hosts follow suit.
It’s Lottie that moves first, ever the peacemaker. Ever the intermediator. She stretches her legs outwards and inhales quickly, shooting Shauna a timid smile.
“You’re sure this is what you want?”
Lottie is hopeful but not insistent. There’s a shimmer of light that bounces off her amber irises but she doesn’t move. Not until Shauna nods.
“Yes. I’m…I’m very sure.”
For this to work, swords need to be felled like trees. Pasts need to be forgotten like an amnesiac memory. The scars they each have can’t burn. Shauna’s voice, unusually timid and strangely open, marks the truce between them all. On her tongue lies a white flag that snags against her teeth. It’s respected and reciprocated immediately. They are different people tonight, and that’s okay. It’s what they all need to feel alive again, to feel grounded again. It’s for the better, Shauna thinks; fresh fruits taste sweeter than bruised ones.
Lottie nods, continuing to take the lead, leaving Natalie behind to gather her thoughts and catch up when she’s ready. With a tensed thigh, Lottie lifts herself from her self-made nest within her chair and approaches Shauna delicately, reaching out a hand, palm down. There’s a small gold ring on her middle finger, an opal in the center. It accentuates the curve of her finger, the veins of her hand, the firmness of the knuckles there. Shauna swallows and takes Lottie’s hand, allowing herself to be lifted from her position against her own seat.
She’s led silently down a slim hallway with accent pictures on either side. Two petal shaped sconces illuminate the tight space and cast a shimmery rose gold across the stretch. Shauna pays no mind to anything besides the fingers rhythmically squeezing her hand.
The hallway leads into a large bedroom, half-cast in darkness, only given reprieve by a lit bedside lamp, an eggshell, knife pleat shade diluting the soft light and breathing it across the room. The mattress is large, not quite a king but a very full queen, with a dark orange comforter laid on top. The fabric by the pillows is folded down and creased to create a faux lip and add dimension to the otherwise flat furniture. There are no decorative pillows, but each side has two large, downy ones wrapped in ochre cases. Shauna’s sensing an earthy theme here. Ironic, as many things with Lottie tend to be.
“This is our room,” Lottie says shyly as if they were on a house tour. She approaches the left side of the bed and sits delicately, one leg folded beneath the other. She waits expectantly for Shauna but doesn’t say a word. Shauna takes the invitation with hesitation.
She settles her weight against the bed, sitting at the foot and facing Lottie. She lets her gaze flit around the room as she digests the space, nerves suddenly filling her stomach. All semblance of bravery has evaporated from her bloodstream somewhere between the living room and hallway. Now she’s left an anxious shell of false bravery. She avoids Lottie’s gaze and picks at the skin around her fingernails as Natalie finally joins them.
The blonde sits on the other side of the bed, nestling close to Lottie but ensuring they don’t touch. She looks skittish and wild, as if she isn’t sure if she should be here, but she waits for someone else to move. A hunter without a gun leaves them vulnerable. Shauna sees the line of silver across her jugular, reflected in the light. Sliced skin heals like fish scales.
There’s the sound of shuffling that echoes in the silent room. Lottie shifts her weight forward and nears closer to Shauna the way you would approach an animal stuck in a trap gnawing at its own limb. A gentle hand rests on her inner thigh. Lottie smiles.
“And you’re sure? We don’t have to if you don’t want to. We can forget this ever happened.”
Two sets of curiosity leer in her direction. Four individual eyes all sit on her. It makes her nervous and her stomach flips when Lottie’s thumb moves against the seam of her pants, back and forth, back and forth. She thinks about the envelope on her credenza. She thinks about the drunken offer, the one she laid awake in her hotel thinking about. She thinks about Natalie’s lower back dimples that were exposed during a pre-game change, and Lottie’s long neck thrown back beneath the gentle stream of their locker room shower heads. She thinks about Natalie’s lace panties and Lottie’s hand on her thigh and suddenly loses capacity for thinking of anything else.
She surges forward and connects her lips to Lottie’s, swallowing the sound of surprise.
Lottie’s lips are soft. The harsh winters have left a divot in her lower lip where a scar has now formed, cracked by the cold, and Shauna drags her tongue across the terrain. Lottie whimpers into her mouth and seems to sag against her as if abandoning her bones in favor of Shauna’s.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Natalie snorts from the sidelines.
Shauna doesn’t dignify a response. Instead, she grows hungrier, fiercer, reaching her arms upwards and threading her fingers through Lottie’s thick mane. Her tongue brushes against Lottie’s and she isn’t sure who moans first. It’s soft, pliable, and she can’t help but hold Lottie closer to her in search of more. The available oxygen between them has all but evaporated.
She never thought she’d be kissing Lottie Matthews, let alone inhabiting her bed, but she supposes there’s a chance for everything to happen at least once. Considering what they’ve been through, the disposal of decency in favor of survival, Shauna figures the chances of tonguing her friend is about as high as her chances of dying in a car accident on the way over here — metal wrapping comfortably around a telephone pole in low visibility is almost guaranteed. C’est comme ca.
Lottie makes a low groaning noise that vibrates deep in her throat and Shauna rewards the sound with two sharp canines digging into the flesh invading her mouth. She drags Lottie’s lip backwards and releases it with a shudder, gathering her breath but refusing to remove her forehead from Lottie’s. She feels the scar tissue against her own skin. It looks like a cross now, hidden beneath the shroud of thick bangs.
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m sure?” Shauna jokes, licking the remnants of Lottie’s spit off her bottom lip. Lottie smirks shyly, a pretty blush flooding her skin, bringing out her freckles.
“I think I got the hint.”
Before Shauna can take the lead again, the role that comes easiest to her, there’s a flash of movement and full lips descend upon her neck. A nose brushes the underside of her jaw with a delicacy and she whimpers, throwing her head back to give her assailant more room to work with. Teeth find her jugular but she isn’t afraid. She’s hungry.
She pulls Lottie closer by the back of her head, urging her to consume every centimeter of space, begging her to crawl inside her skin. She dusts the cobwebs out of an abandoned corner of her heart just in case. She tugs lightly on black hair.
“Lottie,” she mewls, her eyes fluttering closed, head tipped towards the ceiling. Her heartbeat is arrhythmic as a tongue is dragged up her throat, stopping and sucking at the softest point, where the proof of her pulse beats through the skin.
“Nat,” Lottie murmurs against Shauna’s skin, pressing a kiss behind her ear in apology for retracting. “Be polite to our guest.”
Lottie doesn’t need to say anything else; Natalie is on the move. Spurred into action by her lover’s firm command, Natalie crawls over to Shauna with a devious grin plastered across her lips. She threads delicate fingers towards the nape of Shauna’s neck and pulls forward, colliding their lips into a heated kiss, something with teeth and tongue and a ferocity that Lottie was missing. Where Lottie is smooth, Natalie is jagged, ready to take but willing to give — under the right circumstances. Shauna’s desperate whimpers and moans seem to be perfectly good circumstances.
Shauna can’t breathe. She’s dizzy, even with her eyes firmly shut. The mouths against her have quadrupled, she feels a burning beneath her skin. Lottie is kissing down to her collarbones, exposing them with a finger hooked into her shirt to pull it aside, and Natalie’s tongue is slipping into her mouth with precision. She would collapse if four hands weren’t holding her upright.
Shauna blindly fumbles her hands along their bodies, left hand clawing at the upper part of Lottie’s back, right hand wrapped around Natalie like a snake, palm pressed flat and possessive against the slightly exposed skin of her tailbone. There are far too many clothes that exist between them all. Enemies, they are. Shauna wonders how the heat of her skin hasn’t already reduced her cheap cotton to ash.
“Please,” she gasps when Nat pulls back from her lips in favor of other places, teething down the sharp line of her jaw while she catches her breath. Shauna lets bruises be sucked into her delicate skin. She must look like a felled orange by now, blotchy with purple-blue marks in the shape of lips, made whimpering by Natalie’s canines.
“Please what?” Natalie whispers coyly against Shauna’s ear, sucking an earlobe into her mouth. Shauna pants like she’s rabid.
“Please,” Shauna tries again, wetting her lips, “clothes. Off. Need them off.”
Lottie shushes her and brings a soothing hand to the spot between her shoulder blades. She rubs back and forth as if comforting a child, kissing delicately along Shauna’s clothed chest.
“Okay, Shauna,” Lottie whispers with a smile, “let’s get these off of you.”
“You too,” Shauna groans when Natalie shuffles around to sit behind her. She falls back against a firm chest and arches her back when probing hands run down her arms, down her sides, teasing the hem of her shirt. Lips return to her neck, her hair pulled to the side for easy access, a smile burned into her skin.
Lottie nods with a laugh. “I think we can do that.”
Shauna is sick with want. She feels it growling and turning in her stomach, her mouth watering with the thought of Lottie bared before her. She’s seen it all before, of course, but this is different. This is purposeful. This is see me, look at me, want me. She’s pressed tight to Natalie’s front and Lottie — shy, amiable, inexplicable Lottie — is pulling off her negligee like she’s done this a million times. Like her old soccer teammate has always been pressed against the full breasts of her lover, who’s smiling so wide it’s almost a snarl.
Lottie is wearing a light pink bra, lacy and conformed to her tight figure. The swell of her breasts threaten the cups with every inhale and the straps are so thin Shauna wonders if she could snap them with just her eyes.
The taller woman’s abdomen is toned and long, with divots existing where muscles build and contract. There are faint scars around her middle like craters on the moon. Shauna knows what they’re from and her knuckles shriek beneath her skin. She brushes away the thought as soon as it comes, forcing her eyes upwards, tracing the delicate pattern that encases Lottie’s full breasts.
“Is this what you wanted?” Lottie teases with a smirk, her cheeks about as pink as the bra she’s wearing.
She’s on her knees in a devotee stance, clothing long gone and her palms pressed to her upper thighs. She stares at Shauna expectantly, eyes flicking back and forth between the overwhelmed expression on Shauna’s face and the rose petal lips that are distractedly sucking marks into Shauna’s neck from behind. It’s all clearly something Natalie’s seen before, too focused on her new plaything to look up at her lover, but it’s a revelation to Shauna. She can’t tear her eyes away. She nods quickly which garners a few chuckles that echo in the silent room.
“More,” Shauna croaks, eyes rolling back briefly when Natalie snakes fingers through her hair and pulls her neck backwards, extending it to its limit as she continues her assault. Shauna regains her focus and blinks wearily at Lottie, her gaze now semi-restricted by her angle. “Please, more.”
“I think it’s your turn, Ship,” Natalie murmurs in Shauna’s ear before turning her head towards Lottie. It isn’t a look of approval; no, these two are clearly on equal ground. Always have been, in one way or another. However, with how quickly Lottie moves towards Shauna’s lounging body, Natalie’s look must have been more a question than anything else. Something that expresses just how full her hands are at the moment, and maybe Lottie could strip their guest bare in the center of their bed.
Lottie does so with pleasure and ease, much to Shauna’s quick assistance. With a few tentative hands and a handful of confirming looks, Shauna finds herself completely naked in her friends’ bed. Her underwear comes off alongside her pants, removed from her legs in one fluid motion and tossed to the floor, hidden somewhere in the semi-dark. Her shirt is extracted from her shaking arms, and though she was initially nervous about being so exposed in front of others, Natalie hasn’t stopped whispering compliments into the shell of her right ear, making her swoon. Her purposeful lack of a bra is met with a reprimanding tweak to a budding nipple that made her cry out with a shock of pain and pleasure.
She’s been given no time to be self-conscious the way she normally would. She has no time to consider her perceived faults before Natalie is cradling her to her chest and Lottie is kissing down the medial line of her abdomen. Her brain is too full with want to consider her blemishes, her lack of smooth legs, the birthmark on her hip bone that looks like she was punched. It doesn’t seem to matter much anyway; Lottie devours her as is. Natalie is eagerly awaiting her turn, fidgeting and panting as she watches her lover swallow one of Shauna’s nipples into her awaiting mouth.
“Fuck,” Shauna whines, eyes screwed shut. The back of her head collides forcefully with Natalie’s collarbone and her hair catches on scratchy fabric.
Lottie releases her nipple with a pop. She’s on all fours between Shauna’s spread legs, a cunning smirk plastered to her lips, her heated gaze peering up through her bangs. Her lips are swollen.
“You’re up, Scatorccio,” she murmurs, nodding her chin at the clothes that are still very much attached to a body.
“You’ll have to take her if you want that to happen.”
Lottie grins — beams, rather. Shauna watches the two of them with ping pong ball eyes.
“Happily,” Lottie replies, crawling up the bed and turning over, leaning her spine against the headboard and bending her knees. She spreads her legs and Shauna swallows tightly at the damp discoloration forming at the center of Lottie’s matching pink panties. Lottie pats the space between her thighs.
“Come here, Shauna,” Lottie coos encouragingly, a deep red blooming across her chest and down her bare stomach like a rose.
Shauna obeys immediately. She’s struck with the rarity of it, the willingness to do as they say, as Lottie says, but she’s heady with want and delirious with the incessant throbbing that’s developed between her legs. She has tunnel vision and Lottie happens to be the light at the end. She’s quick to settle into Lottie’s embrace without so much as a word.
Her bare back collides with Lottie’s nearly-bare front and bent knees press into her sides. Her arms drape over the V space between Lottie’s hips and the full flesh of her thighs, hands loosely grabbing onto clean-shaven shins. Lottie smiles down at her, pressing an endearing kiss to the side of her head. Shauna feels like she’s falling backwards into an abyss.
“Breathe,” Lottie whispers quietly to her, nuzzling her nose along the edge of Shauna’s ear. “You’re alright.”
She is. She’s more than alright. She reminds herself that this is what she wants, that she can’t wait to have more, and if anything she’s growing impatient. She nods against Lottie’s chest and inhales deeply, watching as Natalie shuffles off the bed and begins to strip.
Alabaster skin is doused in warmth as it’s exposed to the lamp-lit bedroom with dark walls. Natalie’s tanktop comes off swiftly, pulled up and over her head and thrown to the floor with the others. She grins fiendishly as she shimmies out of the boxers being used as pajama bottoms, letting them fall to the ground with a thud before stepping out of them with delicate feet. Her underwear set is also matching, and Shauna had been correct in her assumption — black lace. Butterflies hatch in her stomach.
There’s a dark birthmark on Natalie’s upper thigh. It’s littered with tiny freckles, a miniature galaxy, and Shauna’s mouth waters like a dog.
“You’re so—“
Her breath catches in her throat as she stares at Natalie. Lottie’s chest is pressing into her back and Natalie is crawling back up the bed like a predator on all fours and Shauna can hardly think straight.
“I’m so?” Natalie teases, her crooked teeth peeking out from between pink lips.
Shauna’s mouth is open, her eyes surely glazed over, and she can’t find the rest of the words that were once housed on the back of her tongue. She can only nod, sure that Natalie knows what she means.
“How sweet,” Natalie hums before using two firm hands to drag up Shauna’s bare thighs and force them apart.
Lottie runs teasing fingertips up and down Shauna’s arms as Natalie settles into the created space between her legs. In a flash, lips descend upon her chest again and she mewls, keens in Lottie’s grasp, arches her back and presses herself fully into the mouth sucking at her taut, abused nipples.
“Good girl,” Lottie whispers into her ear, kissing the side of her head and keeping her relaxed as Natalie continues her relentless assault.
Shauna cries out at the praise, feeling a slickness grow between her thighs. She briefly senses the static of a silent conversation around her, feels the arched eyebrow against her chest and the smirk around her nipple, teeth dragging like claws down her skin. She’s just given them both valuable information.
Natalie kisses downwards, her lips riding the tumultuous waves of Shauna’s panting abdomen, rapid inhales and exhales making the blonde’s work challenging but delightful.
Shauna’s legs are obediently spread apart, a slight stretch humming at the hinge joint where her thighs meet her full hips, every inch of skin blushing and bright pink. She can’t bring herself to watch what’s happening, can only manage to sink into Lottie’s embrace like quicksand and fall into Natalie’s kisses, allowing herself to be burned alive.
She whines and rocks her hips upwards when Natalie approaches her aching cunt, lips dancing on the swell of flesh and bone just above where she needs them most. Lottie settles her with a swift bite to her neck, a vampire kiss. Shauna gasps.
“Behave,” Lottie whispers, bringing her slender fingers up to Shauna’s now-abandoned breasts, brushing over the pebbled buds with the lightest touch. “Be good for her, too.”
Shauna nods eagerly, apologetically, stilling her hips and allowing Natalie to take her time, trying desperately to ignore the sweltering heat in her stomach, the taut rope between her thighs. She’s instantly rewarded with the warm, firm press of a flat tongue against her aching clit.
“Oh, fuck,” she cries, clenching her eyes tight as Natalie licks at her eagerly. Blonde hair tickles the delicate skin of her legs and they try to snap closed at the sensation, only to be caught and pressed against the bed by dominant hands. She’s made immobile and submissive.
“Baby,” Lottie coos, but it isn’t directed at Shauna, no matter how badly she wants it to be. “Hold on a second.”
In a flash, the tongue probing against her weeping cunt vanishes. It takes everything in her to remain stoic and not slam her hands against the mattress, writhe against the sheets in protest, shout as loud as she can. Besides, she’s in no position to make such demands. She’s the only one naked and restrained, after all.
“Shauna,” Lottie murmurs, pinching one of Shauna’s nipples absentmindedly before bringing up a hand to cradle Shauna’s jaw, fingers near her neck, thumb against her cheek, stroking delicately. Lottie turns Shauna’s head upwards and to the side so eye contact is made, and Shauna nearly drowns in how deep and dark Lottie’s eyes have become.
Lottie smiles down at her. “Do you want Nat to fuck you?”
Shauna nearly chokes and turns her gaze towards the end of the bed, only to come face to face with own slick glowing against Nat’s full, waiting lips, practically dripping down her chin. Her heart stutters like a faulty car, turning over like a beat engine. She nods eagerly.
“Do you want her to fuck you with the strap? ”
The thought squeezes her chest like a python, though she isn’t prey; she crawled here on her hands and knees. She laid in the snake’s embrace and waited for it to take her. It finally has.
The thought of Natalie filling her in such a way, fucking into her with rocking hips, stretching her to her limit, pushing her deeper into Lottie’s comforting arms — it’s overwhelming in the best way possible.
“Please,” she finally manages to croak, feeling herself practically drip onto the sheets beneath her naked ass. She looks back up to Lottie with eyes that beg. “Please?”
Lottie smiles at her and a warm feeling of satisfaction fills Shauna’s cheeks. “Of course,” Lottie hums, rubbing her thumb across the flat plane of Shauna’s upturned jaw. “Good girl, Shauna. You’re going to love it, I promise. She’s…very good.”
Natalie grins darkly — perhaps smugly — at the two blushing girls in her bed and hops off the mattress with a galloping stride, eagerly entering the dark walk-in closet and emerging moments later with a harness curled in one hand and a thick, deep red cock in the other. Shauna’s soul plummets into the deepest pit of her body.
She’s physically unable to tear her eyes away from Natalie’s movements as the strap is situated between thin, pale hips, held to taut nylon by a tight ring; so tight that the silicone moves with Natalie as if physically attached to her. The possibilities of everything make Shauna’s head spin in sickly circles. The color alone, contrasting sharply against Natalie’s natural alabaster, is enough to make her mouth water deliciously.
“Someone’s eager,” Natalie teases, standing at the edge of the bed, her thighs bumping against the mattress. She leans forward with a sly smirk, one that pulls the right side a bit higher than the left. She places her palms flat against the sheets and stares daggers into Shauna’s expectant eyes. “Think you can turn over for me?”
Shauna bites her lip and nods vigorously, much to Natalie’s delight. With a little help from Lottie, Shauna is able to corral her jelly limbs and roll over onto her shaking knees, her elbows digging into the bed, her back arched with her ass bent and outward. Lottie slides silently off the bed as she situates herself, lowering her head and accentuating the curve of her back. She’s essentially blindfolded this way, unable to do anything but feel and hear Natalie shuffling behind her. She catches her breath — and the anxious butterflies in her stomach — while trying to focus on her heartbeat, letting it relax.
Soon, she jumps at the feeling of warm hands placed on either hip. Fingers palm at the fleshy skin there, rubbing soothingly at the sides of her thighs.
“Shh,” Natalie hushes, sidling up to Shauna. The mattress dips as she mounts the bed on her knees, inching closer to Shauna’s weeping pussy on full display. A gentle kiss is pressed to Shauna’s tailbone and she coos, swoons, arches her back beautifully.
“Look at you,” Natalie praises, teeth digging into Shauna’s ass, making her cry out. “So pretty like this, all spread open for me. My pretty girl.”
Shauna blushes a gorgeous pink. She feels it collapse down her body in a warm wave, ending between her legs, throbbing and incessant.
“Please,” she tries again. It seems to be the only thing she can say coherently.
“What do you need, Shauna?”
“ Please, Nat, please fuck me.”
A finger runs down her slit and she jumps, gasps. She presses her hips back to entice Natalie, to beg for more, for something to fill her, but she’s given nothing. Natalie continues stroking a single digit through her wetness, teasing.
“So wet, baby,” Natalie chides playfully. “All this for me?”
Shauna’s heart soars at the pet name, finally directed at her and only her. She would’ve blamed her mess on both of them equally, maybe clinging to Lottie with a roll of her hips, but Lottie is long gone, vanished without a word. She would ask where her taller lover went if she wasn’t so dizzy with the feeling of a finger prodding at her entrance.
“You think you’re ready for me?”
Something cold and thick is dragged through her folds, collecting wetness and drawing a moan from her throat. She nearly falters, even on her elbows, and decides to lower herself even more.
Shauna presses her cheek into the mattress and stretches her arms outwards like an angel, feeling the bones of her wings flex within her back, nudging her spine. She fists the sheets with her fingers, desperate for something to grab onto. She practically beams when she hears a whispered Fuck, Shauna escape the lips of the woman nestled behind her. The view has clearly distracted Natalie.
The blonde catches herself and returns to the task at hand, her temporary lapse at Shauna’s new pose vanishing with the promise of doing rather than seeing. She continues to rub the head of her cock through Shauna’s slickness, gathering what she can with one hand while she kneads the flesh of Shauna’s ass with the other.
With calculated movements, bated breath, and soft coos that fill the room like being submerged in a lavender bath, Natalie pushes into Shauna slowly. It’s easy considering how ready and eager Shauna is, but she appreciates the care regardless. She wiggles her hips in thanks and gasps when Natalie’s hips falter and more inches are pushed into her without warning. She’s already dizzy with it all.
“That’s it,” Natalie praises, rubbing a flat palm across the dimples in her lower back, “there you go, baby, take all of me. Just like that.”
Shauna whines pitifully at the show of dominance, the combination of words and sensations making her heart teeter on explosion. Her mouth falls agape as Natalie bottoms out inside of her. Her eyes are long gone, rolled back and frozen in her skull. Her left hand palms at the sheets, looking for purchase and solace in the shape of a warm thigh, a freckled arm, a scarred hand.
“Lottie,” Shauna pleads, patting her hand against the bed in a brewing tantrum. She hears Natalie laugh behind her before pulling out and thrusting back in with little mercy. Her limp body rocks with the thrust. She groans.
Fingers connect with her own. They tangle together like ivy on a brick wall and they become knotted together as if always meant to be this way. The digits that reach for her are long and slender and Shauna sighs, sinking her weight further into the bed as Natalie’s thrusts into her cunt sway her body back and forth.
“Shhh,” Lottie reassures, squeezing Shauna’s hand before letting go. “I’m here, you’re okay. I’m here.”
Shauna nods, letting a smile creep across her lips and stretch her cheeks apart. There’s a sharp intake of breath as Natalie’s cock swipes something deep inside of her, and Lottie takes full advantage of her open mouth.
A thumb is pushed past her teeth, pressing firm against the muscle of her tongue. Shauna doesn’t know why she does it, but she instinctively closes her lips around the digit in her jowls and sucks wantonly, lavishing Lottie’s finger with her tongue. The taller girl’s other fingers curl beneath her chin and stroke the soft skin there like she might a cat.
Shauna’s never been more animal than she is now. She’s never been more devoted than she is in this moment. Her knees ache and burn as they slide across the sheets with every thrust but she doesn’t even think about rising the way she would have years ago. She swims in the same piety she would have laughed at back then. If only she could see herself now, being tag-teamed and fucked relentlessly by her old soccer teammates. Who would’ve thought?
“Shauna,” Lottie calls, retracting her thumb and humming at Shauna’s pitiful noise of loss, rubbing the wet digit back and forth across Shauna’s lips. “Can you open your eyes for me?”
When Shauna does as she’s told, she nearly stops breathing entirely. Her eyes widen impossibly and her eyebrows arch dangerously, the bow of an opening switchblade, the vaulted curve of a cathedral.
In front of her stands Lottie, a few inches from touching the side of the bed with her now-naked thighs. Her lingerie has been discarded in her absence, but Shauna’s view of the tuft of dark hair she knows is there is obstructed by yet another harness, yet another strap. This time it’s slimmer and light purple. Shauna swallows the drool threatening to spill out of her mouth.
Natalie had slowed her thrusts to allow for Shauna’s brain to process the newest introduction, but her benevolence didn't last long. With a grin so devious it can almost be heard, she thrusts faster and deeper into Shauna’s sopping pussy, filling the room with noises that make Shauna blush hot pink.
“Oh fuck, fuck, oh god, Natalie, fuck,” she babbles aimlessly, clawing at the sheets, closing her eyes, briefly forgetting about Lottie standing beside her as her focus pinholes and darkens. Her teeth ache to bite something.
“What do you think, Lot?” Natalie pants as she maintains her vicious speed. “Think we should quiet her a bit?”
Shauna manages to open her eyes in time to see Lottie smile down at her. There’s a softness there, good cop to Natalie’s bad — or, more appropriately, dominating — and Shauna’s chest cracks and crumbles open. She hasn’t seen Lottie’s true smile in years, especially not directed at her. Even out there, in that place, it stopped at the same time blood and bruises coated Lottie’s face and mangled it unrecognizable. Shauna reaches a hand out, palm upturned, knuckles put away for once. Lottie takes it happily.
“I’m going to sit right in front of you, okay?”
Shauna nods eagerly and once again feels her hand fall from Lottie’s as Lottie climbs onto the bed. The fleeting comfort was enough, though, and Shauna smiles idly to herself as Natalie stretches her from behind.
Lottie sits against the headboard as she was before, legs outstretched and flanking Shauna on either side. She strokes her member with one hand and puts another to Shauna’s cheek, urging her to look upwards before calling out:
“Nat, baby, slow down. We have all night.”
Natalie laughs from behind her and does as she’s told; an obedience clearly reserved for Lottie alone. Shauna does her best to contain the pitiful cry that comes from slower thrusts, calculated hips, a fullness that doesn’t make her ache the way she needs.
“Shauna,” Lottie redirects, and Shauna lifts her head to make eye contact. She pushes her weight onto her elbows to give her neck some reprieve in this position. “Can you get me ready for you, sweetheart?”
Shauna’s eyes flit back and forth between Lottie’s soft irises and the rigid cock between her legs. Sensing her question, Lottie nods, biting her lip. She drops her stroking hand from between her thighs and silently beckons Shauna closer.
She doesn’t need to be told twice.
Shauna wets her lips with her tongue before inching forward, the movement furthering the impossible dip in her spine and plunging Natalie’s strokes deeper into her cunt. Her eyes roll into the back of her skull and roost there like laying hens, comfortable and warm. She opens her mouth and descends upon Lottie’s strap, sucking lightly on the head with tentative pressure. Her tongue swirls around the chiseled curve of the tip, her moan silenced and vibrating down silicone that doubles as a gag.
“That’s better,” Natalie teases, playfully kneading Shauna’s ass to remind her it’s only a jest, that she really does enjoy the pitiful little sounds that escape Shauna’s lips.
Shauna doesn’t need to be told as much — Natalie’s breathing sounds like a faulty engine even though her pace has slowed considerably. Can’t blame the breathlessness on exertion anymore. Shauna grins around the cock in her mouth, making sure to keep her teeth tucked away, though Lottie can’t feel it anyway. She continues to suck, fervor increasing with the sound of Natalie quickly falling apart behind her.
She swallows more of Lottie, cheeks hollowing when she reaches the midway point, and the knowledge of there being more that she can’t possibly touch without gagging makes her delirious. She sticks out her tongue and feels the pressure approach her throat.
“Fuck, Shauna, just like that,” Lottie groans, hips nearly vibrating but never moving.
Lottie stays still, letting Shauna go at her own pace, but she is clearly affected by the sight in front of her. Shauna hums as she blearily watches Lottie’s pelvic muscles tremble in restraint. A hand snakes into her hair, light as a feather. This is getting ridiculous.
Shauna pulls back, feeling a cool snap against her bottom lip as the tightrope of saliva connecting her to Lottie’s strap is disconnected with the distance. She looks up through her lashes, knowing her face is flushed, knowing her lips are red. A pang of pleasure jolts through her as Lottie whimpers at the sight. She’s never felt so adored. She’s never felt so in control.
“Lot,” she pants, trying to maintain enough composure to verbalize her needs while being pounded into from behind with long, heavy strokes. She feels herself drip onto the mattress and knows she’s making a mess of herself. “You can be rough, you know. It’s okay. I won’t break.”
Lottie bites her lip and nods. She’s fully entranced by Shauna’s direction and Shauna blossoms at the thought. She resumes her actions when she’s sure that Lottie will abide by what she’s said.
Though she can’t feel it, Lottie is clearly hypnotized by the scene in front of her: Shauna, wrapping soft lips around her cock. Natalie, thrusting into Shauna’s cunt with sweat dewing along her hairline. Shauna watches with glee as Lottie’s eyes can’t seem to stay still, nor can her breathing level out. She swallows more of the member warming in her mouth, saliva pooling down the sides and collecting at the base. The head nudges the back of her throat and she brings a hand forward to wrap around the unattended portion, the part her tongue can’t reach. She grinds the base into Lottie’s pelvis and hums delightedly at the choked gasp it rips out, the harness connecting just so with Lottie’s swollen clit.
Fingers return to Shauna’s hair, but this time they tangle on impact. They pull and push, they hold her in place. They put pressure on her skull and make her eyes roll. With practiced hips, Lottie starts fucking her throat. Finally.
With a hand spidering across the back of her head, Lottie pushes Shauna’s sucking mouth into her lap with every jagged thrust of her hips. The head of her cock grazes the back of Shauna’s throat and she gags, eyes rolling, drooling around the obstruction between her lips. She feels saliva crawl over the ledge of her lips and drip into Lottie’s pulsating lap, but neither of them care. Lottie has taken Shauna’s words to heart. She’s fucking her with abandon, pulling in and out, keeping Shauna’s head down and whispering a sinful combination of praises and curses at the sight. Shauna gags but scrambles to swallow more. It feels as though she’ll explode into a million pieces without Lottie lodged deep in the cavern of her throbbing throat.
Combined with the sensation coming from behind her, thighs connecting with her ass, filled to the very brim and stretched in ways she’s never felt, Shauna feels herself tumble closer to euphoria. She rocks her hips back into Natalie’s and blushes bright when Lottie pulls her hair out of her face and whispers Good girl, very good girl, Shauna in a voice so syrupy with want it’s almost unrecognizable. The words are sweet and sticky in Shauna’s flaming ears.
She eventually pulls back from Lottie’s strap and gasps for air, head limply falling to the mattress, her lips throbbing and pulled apart. “Please, please Natalie. Fuck, keep going, keep going, fuck I’m going to come, I-”
Lottie rubs at her face soothingly, cradling her cheek with an open palm. Shauna’s gasping desperately, throwing her hips back to meet each thrust that’s delivered to her. She feels her walls flutter like wings.
“God, she’s so fucking tight , Lot. You wanna come, baby?” Natalie teases, slapping her ass playfully. The sound rings through the room and Shauna sees flashes of white behind her eyes.
She folds an arm behind her, resting in the valley of her arched back. She hopes that her soundless request is acknowledged, can only pray it’s understood while her voice evades her, and she smiles big and bright when it is.
Natalie wraps slender fingers around Shauna’s wrist and pushes, makeshift bondage, pressure on her spine. Shauna is held prone and rocking like an unmoored ship, forced to follow the path of the waves around her. Her sore breasts rub against the sheets with each thrust, and with each thrust she gets closer to heat, to light, to weightlessness. She wants to writhe and thrash against the sheets, drag Natalie’s cock deeper and crumble into Lottie’s lap, but the physical restraint feels better than any of that stuff ever could. The desire to fall apart but the requirement to stay together is enough to make her heart stutter and stop.
“Good girl, Shauna,” Natalie huffs and pants, her speed consistent despite her exhaustion. “Being so good. Taking me so well, baby. You look so good, all stretched out for me, you’re so pretty like this.”
Shauna gasps at the praise, her hips faltering and slipping Natalie further inside when the angle changes slightly. She cries out like she’s been struck.
“Oh fuck, fuck, Nat- Natalie I- fuck, fuck, keep going, please. Please let me come. Please make me come, please, please let me come.”
She hears Natalie laugh wickedly behind her. Blunt nails scratch soothingly across her shoulders — Lottie’s. They keep her grounded. They force her to anchor. Her vision is black — or maybe her eyes are still closed? She can’t be quite sure of anything right now.
The hand around her forearm tightens and the thrusts deepen, quicken, leaving her ass cherry red with the impact of skin on skin. The harness grazes her clit with each stroke.
Natalie leans over her back and bites the sensitive, white skin hiding the notches of her spine. She wails.
“Come for me, Shauna.”
Her mouth is frozen in a perpetually open state. Her jaw is locked in pleasure that drains through her body like running water. It’s cool and warm at the same time, making goosebumps and broken blood vessels erupt across every inch of skin. Her muscles tighten and contract with the impending explosion igniting beneath her skin.
Shauna sobs her pleasure when it reduces her to nothing. She feels her bones sink loosely into the mattress, her head still sagging as the taut muscles of her neck finally vanish for good. The thrusts turn gentle and abiding, but nothing else is processed. She’s weightless and heavy, full and empty, satiated and hungry. Her stomach quivers and her clit aches and sings with sensitivity, drool leaking out of the corner of her mouth pressed limply to the bed. She must look like a mess, reduced to nothing but a beating heart.
Lottie soothes her with timid hands, scratching at her scalp and pulling hair out of her face. Natalie litters kisses down the arch of her back with full lips. Shauna can only murmur nonsensical appreciation to her lovers, her limbs too liquified to do much of anything.
Natalie helps Shauna retract her arm from behind her back and place it against the bed again, massaging the swollen bicep to let blood flow back into it. Shauna’s never been this doted on, never been this cared for, in her entire life. Her whole being is heavy with longing. If she waded into the Atlantic she would surely drown at ankle-depth. Her cry of dismay transforms into a weak smile when Natalie pulls out of her cunt before leaning over to nibble playfully at her shoulder.
“Shauna,” Lottie whispers, drifting fingers beneath Shauna’s chin, a thumb brushing across her bottom lip. The cool metal of Lottie’s ring feels good pressed to the soft flesh of her jaw. She blinks hazily with a questioning groan, lifting her head slightly. “Do you think you can be a good girl and give us one more?”
She can’t help the mewling noise that crawls out of her throat at the proposition. A fire she thought she smothered suddenly rekindles between her wet thighs, shining with the proof of her own want. Her ass is still upright, her back still arched; she’s clearly not done. There’s something in her begging brutally for more. It pounds on the cage of her chest until she relents.
Can you be a good girl, Shauna?
She never thought she’d be reduced to so little with such simple praise. Shauna Shipman, ass up, dripping onto the sheets at the thought of being good, of being holy, of being wanted full-heartedly. There is no unrequited lust here, no begging for scraps. Shauna doesn’t have to question the want in her lovers’ eyes, the carnality of their yearning for her, and she finally feels satiated. The envelope on her credenza is long forgotten. The one on the women’s coffee table has been burned to irrelevancy. The feeling of wanting and being wanted back is enough to make Shauna ignore everything but this moment, and she wants to take. She wants to live in this feeling for just a little while longer. She nods meekly with another whimper that slips past her lips.
“Words, pretty girl,” Lottie coos gently, dragging Shauna’s lip downwards with the pad of her thumb before letting go completely and withdrawing her hand.
“Yes,” Shauna breathes, cheek once more recumbent against the sheets wet with her tears, her spit, her need. “Yes, I can. Please. Please, I can do it.”
Lottie hums her praise and shuffles over Shauna’s heavy body. She moves with grace, her long limbs dainty and light, her presence a whisper, and Shauna doesn’t even realize that Lottie is standing beside the bed until she feels a kiss against her temple.
There’s the sound of clinking metal, a thud against the floor, and Natalie keeps the spot in front of Shauna’s face warm with her own being. The blonde settles against the headboard and spreads her legs, now rid of lace coverage. She’s fully exposed in front of Shauna without blushing. Shauna wouldn’t even know that the woman was nervous if it wasn’t for the fidgeting fingers that clench and release around the bedsheets.
“Shauna,” Lottie murmurs, behind her now, kissing a haphazard line down the river carved through the center of her back. “Don’t you want to say thank you to Nat for doing such a good job?”
Shauna’s mouth waters. Natalie isn’t making eye contact, staring at Lottie for comfort instead and anchoring herself against the shore of her lover, but Shauna still nods eagerly.
“Can I?” she asks timidly, her voice cracked like punched glass from overuse.
At that, Natalie looks down at her. She spreads her legs further apart and nods, swallows, drags blunt nails through Shauna’s tangled hair and pulls her forward by the back of her head.
Shauna makes contact with Natalie’s wet cunt at the same time that Lottie’s strap pushes inside of her, coated in her spit and dragging easily along her sensitive walls. There’s a unanimous, disembodied cry that lights the fire within all of them.
The rest of the night is spent this way, Shauna’s mouth coated with slickness, moans reverberating through the room and nestling into each corner to replay later. Natalie is fervent in her grinding, using Shauna’s tongue how she pleases, stuttering praises when she has enough air in her lungs to do anything but gasp. Lottie, stamina unparalleled, maintains practiced thrusts into Shauna’s pussy until they all come with a yelp, one wave chasing the other like desperate surfers, Lottie’s fingers digging into Shauna’s full hips as if they were trying to bury something.
“You really weren’t kidding,” Natalie teases later, sweaty and spent, slightly out of breath.
The bed is big enough for them to collapse into one another, limbs so folded that no one knows what belongs to who. Shauna is sandwiched between the two, lying on her side, curled against Natalie’s chest like a newly adopted cat. She nearly purrs at the fingers in her hair, the heat against her back, the hands running down the length of her.
“I told you I wasn’t,” Shauna responds, half-laughing at the words that broke the silence.
“Fine with us,” Lottie chimes in, eyes fluttering closed behind Shauna, lips pressed into her shoulder. She inches closer and seems to rumble pleasantly when Shauna reaches behind them both and squeezes Lottie’s hip comfortingly, lovingly.
It’s fine with her, too. She can’t think about anything other than the sheets against her body, the naked women surrounding her, the smell of sex and life that settles around them. She can’t even remember why she came over in the first place. She’s just happy that she did.
________
Poppies. Angry orange poppies in the center of every table. It looks like someone tried to set fire to snow, the tablecloths a lightning strike to the eyes.
Shauna isn’t a bridesmaid. She’s not even a maid-of-honor. Not after everything. Her position has been demoted and reassigned to some Hampton blondes that Jackie met at Rutgers. Shauna wonders if their shared room was pink and green.
There are tea candles at every table and small placards at every seat. Shauna’s table is small, intimate, and consists of everyone she considered devouring at one point in her life. They all sit in silence, such a past too awkward to rekindle at such a reunion. Taissa sits next to Shauna and their knees almost brush beneath the table, grazing against each other in their matching hazy orange dresses. They both stiffen like kenneled dogs.
The music is far too loud, something with heavy bass and too much synth. Jackie has never been one to have exceptionally good music taste, but there’s something that pulls taut inside of Shauna at the sound of Jackie’s heart thumping through the speakers. They’ve missed so much of each others’ lives that it’s nice to know that some things haven’t changed.
When Van arrives at Taissa’s side, dapper in a golden-hued blazer accompanied by a drink laced with what is probably insane amounts of alcohol, Shauna is left alone at the table. The only attention she receives is from the sporadically shifting spotlights that swing rambunctiously above her head as if following their own beat.
“Some party,” a voice scoffs indignantly. There’s a slur around the edges of each letter. “When was the last party we went to, Ship?”
Shauna laughs, closing her eyes at the memory. She can smell the fire smoke coating the inside of her nose. She can feel the humidity, so thick that her fingers can slice through it like a knife. She can taste the booze from some cheap no-name keg that Randy Walsh managed to snag from his cousin’s job at the liquor store on Washington and Beech.
“The going away party,” she finally says, leaning back in her chair and feeling the bite of starched wood against her exposed shoulders. It’s too hot to wear the cardigan she brought, even hotter now that both chairs to either side of her are occupied. “The bonfire in the woods the night before we left. You told me you didn’t need me to stick up for you.”
Natalie scoffs. Shauna’s eyes flutter open just in time to see the girl lean her elbows against the table. She’s wearing an orange halter-top with her jacket over it. The zippers gleam in the spotlights above them. She’s wearing her only pair of jeans that aren’t ripped to shreds and her hair is pulled back into a short, half updo, bleached and scraggly at the edges. Shauna smiles.
“Still don’t,” Natalie grumbles, leaning forward to pick at the poppy petals with her finger and thumb. “This one isn’t much better than that. Both are kinda lame.”
Lottie, ornate at Shauna’s side, finally chuckles. It’s the first indicator of her presence, other than the smell of coconut shampoo that rolls out of her hair in waves. She’s wearing a dress quite similar to Shauna’s, though nobody but Lottie can pull anything off the way it’s designed to be. Whereas Shauna looks miserable in hers, haunted by the spaghetti straps and open back, Lottie looks as though she was born into the reflective satin. If you took the dress off, Lottie’s skin would come off with it.
“Be nice,” Lottie admonishes, though her voice has a bit of a tease inside. She knows that the three of them hate this an equal amount and she clearly doesn’t mind Natalie’s pouting facade that announces the fact. “It’s our friend’s wedding. Let’s all pretend to like Jeff long enough to get good use out of the open bar.”
Natalie waggles a finger in Lottie’s direction with a smirk that brightens her eyes. “See, this is why I love you.”
Lottie shrugs but can’t hide the blush in her cheeks. Shauna watches the two of them, her eyes bouncing from one to the other like a tennis ball. She picks at the skin around her thumbnail in her lap.
“You okay?” Natalie asks, turning towards Shauna, smirk melted from her face like hot tar.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“You sure? Because if you’re not, we can always ditch this place and go have some real fun.”
Shauna furrows her brow, opens her mouth to speak. Lottie interrupts, placing a hand on her shoulder, leaning in close.
“I think you know what she means, Shauna.”
Shauna stiffens, burns hot, feels like she’s cooking alive beneath the lights and the music and the two pairs of eyes scanning down every inch of her body. She swallows tight and tries not to choke on the sudden eruption of longing. The girls begin to laugh.
A shadow looms over the table across from them, standing beneath the light and darkening Shauna’s vision. She turns to find Jackie, one hand resting on the table, the other gripped around the head of her cane, beaming at the three of them with teeth so white they could be veneers. Her hair is tousled from the August heat and there’s a glimmer of sweat at her temples.
“What are we laughing about?”
“Nothing!”
They all shout their avoidance in sync. It sounds like a TV show playing in three separate rooms, all on the same channel. Their eyes go wide and their postures align, giving them the image of clear guilt.
Though Jackie doesn’t seem to catch on, merely shrugging at the unanimous secrecy, Shauna feels two hands rest against either thigh, drifting higher, teasing the hem of her dress. She feels breaths increase and heartbeats stutter. She feels the world darken and brighten and finally pinhole when both hands drift inwards, upwards.
Shauna watches Jackie reunite with Jeff on the floor, falling into his waiting arms with a smile brighter than the moon. She spreads her legs beneath the table.