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She’s not really sure what she’s doing. Which is becoming something of a running theme in her life, now.
Her palms are sweaty, the evening breeze doing nothing to stop the sticky, warm nerves presenting themselves as a general sense of clamminess.
She pulls her phone out, checks the message again.
z
see you at seven
She doesn’t mince words any more over text than in real life, it would seem, something she’d found out after standing in her bathroom scrounging in her cabinet for another roll of bandages and seeing a phone number scribbled on the second layer of the one wrapped around her arm. She had messaged immediately, a pathetic Hi, it’s Carol from the bar? that had only been replied to after six hours of being left on read and at four in the morning. A simple, teasing someone’s eager.
Which brought her to now, standing outside a deceptively suburban bungalow in uptown Albuquerque with a definitely third-hand Ford parked askew in the driveway. It was half past, which was partly because of traffic but mostly because she had sat in her car in her own driveway for fifteen minutes, key firmly unturned in the ignition in favour of resting her head on the steering wheel and asking herself what the fuck she was doing.
The burn on her shoulder itches through her top, the skin still a little raw despite the week that had passed. Carol rethinks her long-sleeved shirt, simple and black, and wonders for an insane moment if she should drive home and change. Her phone buzzes in her hand.
z
are you going to come in or keep standing in my driveway
She looks up, tries to spot a curtain twitching, then looks back down at her phone and attempts to think of something funny to say before giving up and shoving it in her pocket.
The door opens before she gets a chance to knock, swinging back to reveal Zosia standing in jeans and a long white button-up.
Which is misleading, since she’s neglected to do a single one of them up, the shirt hanging open at the front, only just pulled in front of her chest, nothing on underneath.
Any witty comment she had dies, immediately, on her tongue.
“Took you long enough,” Zosia remarks, before turning on her heel and sauntering back inside the house. She gets halfway down the hallway before spinning back around, the shirt billowing slightly, and fixing Carol with a painfully unimpressed look. She gets the feeling it’s the first of many. “Are you a vampire?”
“What?”
She rolls her eyes. Carol considers making a tally. “Do you need to be invited in?”
“Oh, right,” she says, quite stupidly, and steps inside.
The inside of the house is not what she expected, even remotely. It’s dark, the overhead lights turned off in favour of tiny lamps and wall sconces that cast a warm, subtle yellow glow everywhere. The furniture is- well, it’s not Zosia, that’s for sure, the only thing that makes sense for the woman she’d met in the bar the ashtrays dotted around every room, but that’s practical rather than stylistic.
She considers if this is a getting murdered situation, and rationalises that that would have been far easier in a dark alleyway when she was blind drunk, so slips off her shoes and follows Zosia into the living room.
And it’s… even less like she expected. A single leather sofa, brown and worn, in the middle of the room, a television standing on a plain wooden unit, a coffee table in the middle with two tumblers and a bottle of whiskey already uncorked. Another ashtray sits, half a cigarette balancing on the edge, and she watches from the doorway as Zosia picks it up and relights it before taking a drag.
“You live here?”
She exhales, raises an eyebrow. “What, you think I’m squatting just because I’m an immigrant?”
Carol splutters, takes a step forward and then back, before sighing when she sees the smirk playing at her lips. “It’s always straight to xenophobia with you, isn't it?”
Zosia laughs, raspy and low-pitched, and Carol feels it in the pit of her stomach again. “It was my parents’. I used to live in New York, and I moved out here when they died.” At Carol’s silence, she waves her cigarette out in front of her. “You want?”
“Oh, no, I’m good.” She moves, cautiously, to the other side of the sofa, sitting down when the other woman folds herself into the chair, long limbs tangling as she gets comfortable. “Uh, sorry. About your parents. That sucks.”
The other woman regards her as she takes another drag. “Aren’t you supposed to be an author?”
“Huh?”
“‘Huh’,” she mocks. “Shouldn’t you be at least a little articulate?”
“I- you Googled me?”
“Of course I Googled you. I didn’t want you to murder me.”
At this, Carol scoffs, flinging her hands out to gesture at the room. “I’m not the one living in a safe house! And I am articulate,” she adds, then winces at how petulant she sounds. She realises she’s crossed her arms, and makes a conscious effort to sit with them in her lap instead.
Zosia just hums, takes a final pull before stubbing out her cigarette. Carol fights to fill the silence.
“So, Wycaro?”
Carol flushes, and reaches out to pour them both a glass of whiskey. She feels confident she’ll need it to survive whatever this evening is about to bring.
“Yeah, I write.”
“A bestselling author,” Zosia remarks, nodding her thanks when she’s passed her drink. “That picture of you in the purple is…” she trails off, hiding her smile behind her glass.
“What?” She takes a sip of her own whiskey, widens her eyes when Zosia still hasn’t elaborated. “What?”
“I don’t know. So straight,” she says the word like it pains her, and Carol laughs, throat warm from the alcohol.
“I know, I know.”
“I mean, you’re so…” she gestures at her, amber liquid sloshing in the glass.
“I’m so what?”
“Look at you. You’re such a dyke,” Zosia laughs, and Carol bites back the flare of discomfort at the word, forces herself to laugh again. “Guess you had to be to sell something that heterosexual.”
She feels suddenly like she wants to prove something. Prove herself. “I mean, Raban was originally a woman.”
Zosia’s surprised at this, eyebrows shooting into her hairline. “And they made you change it?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
They drink in silence for a minute, before Zosia throws back the last of her whiskey and stands up. When she bends over, her shirt gapes, and Carol sees one of her piercings gleaming in the low light. She swallows past the sudden dryness in her throat, stifles a cough, and Zosia catches her staring before rolling her eyes.
“You need to relax,” she says, before padding into another room.
“I- what?” She calls after her, wondering whether to get up or not.
“You are far more entertaining when intoxicated.”
“Hey,” she complains, pouting. There’s rummaging from what she assumes is the kitchen, before she hears a triumphant aha! and she returns, brandishing something long and thin.
“What’s- oh, absolutely not.”
“Come on, why not? We’re going to fuck and you’re going to spend the night, you don’t need to drive.”
Her audacity stumps her for a second, leaves her clawing for a response.
“Zosia, I’m fifty. I’ve not smoked weed in literal decades,” she holds her hands up like she has any chance of dissuading the younger woman, who settles back onto the couch opposite her and throws her legs over her lap, the contact surprisingly familiar.
“So?”
Carol stops, searches for a good reason. Comes up empty-handed.
“Exactly.” She lights the joint and takes a few hits, a tendril of smoke lazily curling out of her mouth as she holds it in before tilting her head up to the ceiling and blowing it out. Carol gets lost in the purse of her lips as she does, feels herself getting lightheaded and wonders if second-hand smoke can hit you that fast.
She looks down, realises that Zosia is holding it out for her. Her stomach twists in a way she thinks is anxiety but might just be the burning memory of the last time she was holding a lit object.
“I’m not sure, Zosia,” she mumbles, setting the glass down on the corner of the coffee table. The other woman just rolls her eyes, but there’s no real annoyance behind it.
“God, you’re so pathetic,” she quips, before pulling her legs off her lap and manoeuvring so she’s knelt in front of Carol, so close she can smell the mix of weed and whiskey on her breath. Her eyes are already a little hooded. “Open up.”
She complies before she realises what she’s agreeing to, then gasps when Zosia takes another hit and grasps her chin in between cool fingers, bringing her face the last couple of inches closer, their lips nearly touching. She breathes out as Carol breathes in, instinctively, the smoke coating the back of her throat in that funny way a cigarette never quite does. It’s softer, diluted, and Carol tries not to think about how it was inside Zosia just seconds ago, tries not to think about the give and take of it all.
Sitting back against the arm of the couch, still facing Zosia, she lets her mouth fall open as she exhales, and feels the effects immediately. She’s out of practice and Zosia knows, watching her with a lazy smile on her face.
She can’t think of anything to say so holds her hand out instead, trying not to flinch when their hands brush as she takes the joint. She thinks there might be a little chapstick on it.
Carol surprises them both when she doesn’t cough, the pull a lot smoother than she thought it would be, and she closes her eyes as she lets the feeling swim into her head, her shoulders feeling heavy, legs suddenly dense. She tries to think when the last time she’d done this would be, comes up with a fuzzy memory some twenty odd years ago of her and Helen huddled in the alleyway outside her studio flat, giggling every time someone opened a window.
When she opens her eyes she knows it’s been too long, can see from the way Zosia’s smirking at her. She scowls, for posterity more than anything, and takes another hit before passing the joint back over to her.
Smoke trailing from her mouth, Zosia finally speaks. “So, you’re divorced?”
Carol blinks at least three times. “Uh, yeah.”
“Huh.” The joint hangs lazily from her fingers, and Carol finds herself staring at her knuckles, the cut she can see on the back of one of them. It’s small, scabbed over. She wonders how she got it. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why are you divorced?”
She blanches again, and thinks that being murdered might have actually been the easy way out. “Uh, it just… didn’t work out, I guess?” It comes out as a question, and - to be fair - it mostly is.
“You guess?” Zosia passes the joint back over, and she takes it, gratefully this time. “I’d hope you’d know.”
“I’m… kind of difficult?” Another question, the smoke thick in her throat. The heavy feeling is gone, replaced with a buzzing in her limbs. Zosia takes a sip of her drink and the way her throat bobs makes the ball of something deep in her gut shift. Her cheeks burn.
“You’re not difficult.” The brunette says it like it’s obvious, like it’s a God-given fact. She says it so convincingly that Carol can’t find it in her to list all the reasons she’s painfully, incredibly wrong.
“I mean, you’ve known me all of, what, three hours?”
Zosia takes the joint from its place in her hand, brushes her palm with her fingers in a way that has to be intentional.
“You’re not difficult,” she repeats. “You just need to be… managed.”
“I need to be managed?” She repeats, incredulously. “I don’t need to be managed,” she scoffs, and realises immediately that it comes out huffily. Zosia laughs, a little mocking, and she struggles to swallow nothing.
She leans in closer again, this time brings the joint up to Carol’s mouth herself and places it between her lips.
“Go on,” she orders, and Carol sucks in a lungful of smoke, does it for as long as Zosia makes her, chest burning until she pulls it out of her mouth. “Hold it.”
And she does, Zosia’s eyes burning into hers as she waits three, five, eight seconds.
“Good.”
Carol’s breath falls out of her, lungs tight and throat dry. She shifts in her seat, suddenly aware of the way her underwear is sticking to her, desperate for something she can’t bring herself to vocalise. She remembers Helen pressing her up against the peeling white paint of the stairwell, one hand shoved hastily into her jeans with the other pressed against her mouth, and remembers what it is exactly that weed tends to do to her.
She sits there, mute, watches as Zosia takes a last hit from the joint before stubbing it out in the ashtray, mesmerised by the way she moves. It’s so fluid, graceful, like she knows where her limbs are in a way that Carol never has, never will.
“See? Easy,” she remarks, and the double - maybe triple, at this point - meaning isn’t lost on her.
“I’m not easy,” she complains again, and Zosia just laughs, raspy from the smoke, as she crawls across the couch to straddle her lap.
“Oh, but I think you are,” is all she says before she kisses her.
Carol’s fairly sure that weed is supposed to relax her, but instead she feels like her veins are full of electricity instead of blood, lips sparking like a knife in a toaster as Zosia slides her tongue into her mouth.
She’s whining immediately, wants to blame it on the intoxication but knows she’d be doing it sober too, and Zosia’s laugh whispers into her mouth. Her hands are cool against her neck, and she remembers that she’s half-wearing her shirt when she brings her own up to paw at her waist and finds smooth skin. She digs her fingertips into her hips and Zosia moans into her mouth, the sound breathy and desperate.
Kissing across her jawline, Zosia mouths her way down to her neck and bites, Carol’s hips jumping up off the couch at the sharp sting, and before she knows it, she’s switched to the other side and is laving her tongue over the tender skin of the cigarette burn scar on her shoulder. Her head tips back to lean against the cushion and she hears herself groan, low and broken, as she thinks about the moment she gave it to her.
“Easy,” Zosia whispers, mocking, and all she can do is whine in response.
She’s eager for equal footing, and slides her hands up past her ribcage to roll her nipples between her fingers, and Zosia hisses into her neck, head falling for a moment as she’s caught off guard by the feeling. She takes ground where she can, turning her head to suck at the spot just under her ear, pinching hard as she scrapes the skin with her teeth.
She’s rewarded with a high-pitched whimper and hips pressing insistently on her lap, and smiles into her neck.
“Who’s easy now?”
Zosia stands, then, a little unsteady on her feet, eyes more than half-lidded and lips bright red and glistening. Her shirt is fully open now, and Carol can’t rip her eyes from the way her chest is heaving.
“Up,” is all she says, and Carol scrambles from where she seems to have melted into the soft leather. Zosia smirks at her enthusiasm, and she blushes. “Still you.”
She stalks off, leaves Carol floundering, before she collects her wits and tears after her, fingers wrapping around the door frame as she takes a hard left and stumbles into the bedroom.
Zosia’s already waiting on the bed with her jeans off, shirt slipping off her shoulders as she lights another cigarette, and Carol wonders if she was stood stationary in the other room for longer than she realised or if the other woman can just pull them out of thin air. It’s criminal how hot she looks, long legs crossed and her tattoo peeking out from under her underwear. Today, it’s a pair of boy shorts, and she wonders how she manages to make them look even more attractive than the barely-there pair she was wearing the week before.
“Isn’t that a fire hazard?” Is all she can bring herself to say, watching as she brings the cigarette up to her mouth for a drag and rolls her eyes. It’s so mean-looking that she has to cross her legs where she stands.
“Take off your shirt and pants,” she orders, instead of dignifying her comment with a response. She strips immediately, so far past pretending like she wouldn’t walk through hot coals right now if Zosia asked her to. “Bra, too.” She leans back over the bed to rest the cigarette on the ashtray that perches precariously on the stack of books balanced on the bedside table, and Carol makes a mental note to ask what she’s reading afterwards.
Zosia leans back on her elbows, the low light of the lamps scattered around the room casting shadows over her torso, and she forgets immediately.
She complies, dropping it to the floor before walking over and crawling up the bed. It’s nearly refreshing to be on top, even if the advantage is entirely imagined.
She kisses up Zosia’s body, teeth pulling at the thin skin covering her ribs, before taking her nipple in her mouth and biting down, moaning at the feeling of hands forming tight fists in her hair. She’s responsive, incredibly so, back arching off the bed as Carol swirls her tongue around her, breathy little moans passing her lips as she changes pressure. She kisses across her sternum and does the same to the other side, metal bar knocking against her teeth.
Zosia pulls her up before she’s ready, then kisses her so deeply she forgets why she wanted to be anywhere else. It’s messy, their lips sliding against each other, both moaning into each other’s mouths. Zosia’s louder when she’s high, her grip a little tighter, and she skates her hands down the sides of Carol’s body before grabbing her ass.
It moves her slightly, her weight shifting forward, and Zosia presses a knee up against her. A strangled moan falls from her lips at the contact, and the brunette chuckles underneath her.
“You’re soaked,” she says, a husky whisper in her ear, and it’s tinged with both awe and mockery.
She just nods, head pitching forward to rest against her collarbone. Zosia laughs again, hands pulling her hips so she sits flush against her thigh. She moves her other leg out of the way so they’re interlocking and brings an arm up to clasp Carol’s back, holding her in close.
“So wet, just from playing with my tits?”
She shakes her head this time, is met with a soft oh?
“Was wet before,” she mumbles into her neck, letting out a soft whine as her core drags over toned muscle again.
“You were?” Zosia’s cruel, making her say it like this. She hums, grasps her shoulders. “When?”
Carol whines, and Zosia grabs her hips, stilling her movements. She pulls her head up from where it’s buried in the crook of her neck to look at her, sees raised eyebrows and pursed lips and feels the pads of her fingers buried deep in the flesh of her waist and moans even without the friction.
“When, Carol?”
“Fuck, when you made me smoke- God,” she breaks off when Zosia moves her against her thigh again, pants as her underwear bunches against her clit in just the right way.
“Easily manageable,” she hisses in her ear, and she’s instantly close, balls her eyes shut as she lets the humiliation of grinding against the other woman’s thigh, still partly clothed, wash over her.
And then, suddenly, hands on her shoulders pushing her back, the leg under hers straightening out, the contact gone. She whimpers at the loss, tries to press her hips down, is stopped by Zosia sitting up and placing a hand on her chest.
“What are you- is everything okay?” She struggles to remember her manners, thinks back to what she was doing, tries to find a fault with it.
“In the drawer,” is all she says, as she shrugs the shirt the rest of the way off her shoulders and pushes her underwear off her hips, rocking slightly as she does and giving Carol a better look at her tattoo. It’s a snake, no colour, the head resting just above her hipbone with the body curled around her side, the tail ending with a flick on the swell of her ass. It moves when she does, and she thinks for a second she’s too high, imagines it waking up and sliding up her torso, past her ribcage to her- “Carol?”
“What? Right, yeah,” she nods, resists the urge to shove her fingers down the front of her plain black briefs and get herself off just to the image of Zosia laid out in front of her naked.
She scrabbles around for the drawer handle, pulls it open and has to bite her tongue to stop herself from moaning at the sight of the strap-on coiled there neatly, buckles already pulled loose and black silicone dildo situated in the O-ring.
She pulls it out, doesn’t want to assume but has a feeling she’s going to be the one wearing it from the way Zosia’s eyes darken at the sight of her holding it.
“Did you plan this?”
The younger woman shrugs, playing coy. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared. Put it on.”
She slides off the side of the bed and pulls her underwear down before sliding the harness up over her hips, looks up at just the right moment to see Zosia slipping two fingers inside herself, lip pulled tight between her teeth.
“I- oh,” she says, feet frozen as she feels her face flush. She’s not looking away, holding eye contact as she pumps them in and out lazily before dragging them up to her clit, hips jumping as she circles it lightly and sighs.
“You need an invite for this, too?” She mocks, and Carol nearly trips over in her haste to get back on top of her. She crawls back up the bed, tries not to feel stupidly turned on with Zosia staring at her like she couldn’t care whether she lives or dies, fails miserably. When she’s closer, though, hands bracketing the other woman’s head, blonde hair skating around the outskirts of her vision, she sees the flush on her high cheekbones, the way her lips are parted and she’s panting.
Zosia brings her hand up between them and pushes her two middle fingers past Carol’s lips, an order implied without vocalisation. Her eyes flutter shut as the blonde sucks them greedily, tongue swiping in between them, lapping up her taste eagerly.
When her eyes open again, they’re darker than they were, breath coming faster than it was before. She wraps her legs around Carol’s hips and uses her knees to pull her in closer, gasping when the silicone makes contact with her centre.
Carol starts to reach down, aching to sink her fingers into her under the guise of making her comfortable but is stopped by a still-wet grip on her wrist.
“No, don’t.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I like it, I-” she cuts herself off with a moan as she positions the cock against her entrance. “Want you to stretch me out,” she finishes, and Carol groans, muscles in her forearms jumping as she fists the bedsheets harder.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispers, watching Zosia’s face below her split open as she pushes in, a broken moan falling from her lips at the sight.
It’s obscene, her brows pulling together and head tilted back so she can see the tendons in her neck flex when she all but bottoms out. Knees tight around her waist, she’s held there for a minute as she fills her up, both of them soaking up the moment. Her own breaths are shaky, trembling.
She shifts, and Zosia keens, hands wrapping around her body to keep her close. Some of the bravado is gone, now, replaced with furious want.
“Fuck- move, Carol,” she orders, ankles uncrossing from behind her to give her a larger range of motion. Not all of it, then.
She pulls out, tilts her hips as she pushes back in, head bending down to mouth at Zosia’s neck. Her moans are making her dizzy, low and raspy, her own desire coiling deep in her stomach at the wet sound coming from in between them.
Zosia moves one of her hands to tangle in her hair, her fingers a tight fist as she presses her into her throat harder. She takes the hint, adding her teeth to the mix, and feels herself become lightheaded at the noise it pulls from Zosia. She kisses lower, bends to press her lips down her chest to take her nipple in her mouth again, biting hard as she thrusts her hips into the other woman.
“God, fuck, harder, fuck me harder,” her order this time is breathless, and she gasps as Carol increases the pace, propping herself up on her forearms so she can snap her hips forward with more force.
And, sure, Zosia is in control, but this she knows she’s good at, can see it in the way that Zosia’s mouth twists as she pushes her knees up slightly to hit deeper inside of her, her rhythm steady.
“Fuck, baby, you’re so good,” she gets out between gasps, one hand moving to pull a nipple between her finger and thumb and the other covering Carol’s own on the underside of her thigh. The praise combined with the touch sends her head spinning, and she bends further forward, pressing herself further into Zosia’s body. The reaction is immediate, the brunette choking out a dry sob at the feeling.
“Yeah? Just like that?”
“Yes, fuck, so deep, filling me up so good,” Zosia chants, voice breaking every time she slams into her. She’s taking it so well Carol might come from this alone, just from the sight of her eyes balled shut and the way her nails are digging into the back of her palm.
“Look so pretty like this, Zosh, so beautiful,” she pants, and it’s the right thing to say without even meaning it, Zosia’s eyes flying open when she hears it.
“Fuck, wait, I wanna-” She stops Carol with urgent hands on her hips before rolling them over, knees now on either side of her as she sinks down the last inch she couldn’t take when Carol was above her, whimpering at the feeling. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop,” she whines, and it’s quiet, desperate.
She plants her feet on the bed and grips Zosia’s hips hard enough that she knows there will be ten perfect bruises there the next morning, immediately driving her hips back up into her. The angle is different, Zosia hinging backwards instead of forwards, the muscles in her thighs pulled taut as Carol’s cock presses up into her front wall.
Her mouth hangs open, little breathless oh’s escaping with each thrust, her hips rocking alongside the rhythm in a way that means the base of the strap presses against her Carol’s clit just right.
She swears softly at the sight, the feeling, and Zosia looks down at her with a smirk playing at her lips now, confidence reinstated seeing Carol pathetic beneath her once more.
“You like that, baby? Like it when I ride your cock?” She grinds down harder, laughs a little at the look on Carol’s face. “You gonna come like this?”
She nods, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips even harder when Zosia reaches one hand down to tug at her nipple and trails the fingertips of the other down her own body, brushing over her chest before sliding over her clit. Her hips stutter at the feeling, the movements jerkier as she chases her orgasm.
“You gonna come in me like a good girl?”
Carol moans, fighting the urge to squeeze her eyes shut so she can keep looking at Zosia, the way the toy disappears inside of her and the way her tits bounce with every movement doing nothing to stop her from barrelling towards the edge.
“Come on, baby, come for me, so good, so-” she interrupts herself with a gasp, stilling for a second before her hips slam back down, bucking wildly as she comes. She leans forward as she does to press her fingernail against the burn scar on Carol’s shoulder and she can’t help but follow her immediately, the base of the toy pressing hard against her as she ruts up into the other woman. She comes so hard she sees stars, Zosia’s words echoing in her head as she listens to her whimper her way through her orgasm above her, the crescent moon indentation burning.
When she’s done, she falls forward, panting into Carol’s neck as she comes down. One forearm is resting on the bed under her forehead, her other hand coming up to scratch lightly at Carol’s scalp. She hums at the feeling, ears still ringing, and Zosia laughs lightly.
“Puppy,” she whispers, and it’s accusatory but fond, too.
“What is with you and laughing after sex?”
Zosia nips at the thin skin of her collarbone and she yelps. “Are you complaining?”
Carol grumbles, presses a kiss to her hair and runs her fingers up and down her back, eventually pressing up on her hips to get her to lift herself off, stifling her own whimper when she hears Zosia’s whine, barely there. Her legs are shaking when she rolls herself off, and Carol busies herself with sliding the harness off, dropping it on the pile of clothes next to the bed.
When she rolls back on her side to face Zosia, she’s already lighting a cigarette - no, another joint, and she stares at her incredulously.
“What?” She asks, blowing a mouthful of smoke up towards the ceiling.
“Where did you even get that?”
“I have my secrets,” Zosia says, her laugh raspy at the mock scowl on Carol’s face. She leans over, taps some of the ash off before holding it out to the blonde, who hesitates. “What, you’ve never smoked after sex before?”
“I’m a middle-aged fantasy author from Albuquerque, Zosia, I’m not sure what kind of life you think I’ve lived,” she mutters, taking the joint anyway and humming when Zosia curls up next to her side.
“Well,” she starts, immediately sitting up and plucking it from her fingers before it’s even out of her mouth, ignoring Carol’s indignant hey. “How about I make you come with my tongue and then you test it out?”
“I- yeah, okay, that works.”