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Zosia usually woke when Carol got out of bed in the early morning. It was rare to see her body still and unconscious when she walked back out of the bathroom, hands cold from the tap she was always too lazy to wait to turn hot.
Zosia had kicked the blankets off in the night, always warm compared to Carol. She’d taken the covers gladly, it seemed, from the way her side of the bed had accrued the entire volume of comforter and sheets. She pushed the mess to the foot of the bed to be dealt with later and climbed back in next to Zosia, folded herself over her and found a swath of exposed skin along her lower stomach.
Her shirt had hiked up in the night, revealing her warm skin and black panties to Carol’s prying eye. She loved seeing her this way, stayed up when she woke in the night sometimes just to watch her sleep all soft and serene.
Carol wasted no time pushing her hand beneath the elastic of Zosia’s underwear, down the front into a tuft of curls, then further. Slick heat greeted her, pulled her in until Carol found her clit and felt it twitch.
She remembered, still, the third time she’d woken Zosia from her sleep and told her with poorly concealed desperation to let her get off on her thigh, the way Zosia had told her she didn’t need to wake her. To use her when she was sleeping if she so wished, that she was there for Carol’s pleasure. Carol had gotten herself off right after, Zosia’s eyes piercing the dark and pinning her in place until she came.
Soft circles around Zosia’s clit brought the sound of raw, breathy moans to the air. They reverberated in the silence, the yawning quietude of a morning that hadn’t yet woken the birds nor the breeze beyond, and filled Carol’s head to the brim. She stole one last look down over Zosia’s shoulder at the involuntary tensing of toned stomach muscles, the primal evidence of need that Carol stoked without hesitation, before she finally looked back to Zosia’s face.
Her brow was pinched, a look Carol might have taken for concern if not for her hot breath on the pillow, the steadfast closure of her eyes. This way, as her lashes fluttered, it was nothing if not desperate, an expression Carol could only assume had been dredged up from the recesses of an occupied mind, a singular example of something Carol had been fighting tooth and nail to find. A real reaction, one born of reflex and sensation and instinct, not premeditated nor negotiated.
She reveled in it, reveled in the feeling of Zosia’s pooling wetness encouraged her to continue. This was the Zosia beneath the veneer calling out to her, begging her for consideration.
Zosia was only real when she was asleep, prone and disposed and waiting for her.
Two fingers pressed inside, pushed apart silken warmth and filled Zosia up as best they could. She’d taken more the night before when Carol had laid back and told her to ride her strap—Carol could tell she was still tender. Gently, she pushed in, curled her fingers and dragged out, slow and steady. Languid. Teasing for anyone aware, but perfect for the sleeping woman next to her, for the woman held hostage beneath the surface of consciousness.
Carol let her lips roam Zosia’s exposed neck just to see the gooseflesh that would erupt there. She sucked at the skin for her own gain, drawing a hickey to the surface that she would admire later. Red bloomed where her mouth had been, a bruise in the making, but it was the uptick of her pace between Zosia’s legs that brought on a breathy, broken groan from her sleeping mouth.
A thumb on her clit pushed her over the edge with little warning, just the brief fluttering of her cunt around Carol’s fingers before she tensed entirely. She was whimpering when she came, spilling into the air and into Carol’s hand as her body ebbed and flowed with the waves of her climax.
Lashes fluttered in the aftermath. Carol had fucked her awake.
A kiss to her cheek, Carol smiling against her skin while her hand kept moving. “Do you know what day it is?”
She knew, of course, that Zosia knew exactly what day it was. Zosia would also know the precise time of day, the humidity just past the window of the bedroom they’d been sharing—the bedroom that had once belonged to Carol and Helen alone, the one she’d let Zosia into on unspoken conditions that had long since been broken. Slow circles around a sensitive clit, Zosia’s entire body prone. Carol bit back her chuckle when Zosia’s exhale hitched on a whine.
“I don’t know,” Zosia murmured, voice sleep-thick and gravely, “do I?”
The backs of her fingers pushed into damp material as Carol tried to slap Zosia’s clit. It worked enough to make Zosia’s breath stick on the way out.
She hissed when Carol’s pace picked up, nearly punitive in its insistence. “Valentine’s day.”
“That’s right,” Carol murmured, then bit down on Zosia’s ear.
“The day of— oh!”
Carol doubled down again, impossibly, and watched Zosia’s face crumple. “Day of what, baby?”
Zosia tensed, strained as she answered obediently. “The day of lovers.”
“Good girl. Come for me.”
Carol didn’t stop until Zosia had relaxed all over again, her second orgasm much less satisfying than the first. The difference was always stark, too obvious. She hated fucking Zosia when she was so in her head, would do a better job later when she’d properly taken her as far out of her rational brain as she could.
She withdrew her hand and shoved them, wet, into her mouth. Sucked Zosia off them as Zosia rolled over next to her and stared straight into her, through her to a place Carol wondered if even she knew about. A coy smile tugged at Zosia’s lips when she reached for Carol’s wrist, when she coaxed her fingers into her own mouth and sucked.
Carol’s chest trembled, breath shaking. “Fuck.”
Wet smacking noises as Zosia sucked, as she let the digits out from between pink lips all too soon. “Happy Valentine’s day, Carol.”
Carol’s response was wordless, a tongue-filled kiss to Zosia’s mouth that tasted like her own spit and Zosia’s cum. She moaned as Zosia pulled her closer, as their teeth knocked and their breath muddled until all she was breathing was the smell of Zosia’s skin and her coconut shampoo. She lost herself in it long enough to go soft, to lose her edge and sink into the saccharine current of need, too prepossessed to notice the hand sneaking down to her boxers.
Zosia’s fingers tugged at the elastic and pulled Carol back to present. Breathless, she slapped her hand away and came up for air, feeling something in her chest swell.
“You know better than to take,” she chided. “Do you want more?”
Zosia nodded with big eyes and an open mouth, both glistening. Carol stilled her with a firm grip on her chin.
“If you’re greedy enough to use your hands, you can use your words.”
“I want more.”
“Go get the strap, then,” Carol said. “Put it on me and I might fuck you.”
Glowing with the direct order, Zosia rushed off the bed. Her foot caught on the loose sheets that had tangled up near the end of the bed and she stumbled, an impossibly human moment that Carol felt bubble up and out of her chest in a full-bodied laugh. Her Zosia, the Zosia she found in pockets and ruptures, the one that could love her the way Carol was trying to save.
“Careful,” she teased. “Don’t need your pretty body bruised before I can get around to it.”
Zosia’s eyes had narrowed when she stole a glance back at Carol. “Is that so?”
Something in Carol’s stomach flipped—a memory, a regret. Zosia’s slip eyebrow and split lip, the bruises on her collarbones and the softest parts of her. The marks for which she’d apologized profusely, the marks Zosia had told her she was happy to bear. The ones she’d asked for more of so Carol knew she belonged to her.
She’d read once about toxic therapy practices in an article she pretended to care about in a magazine at the dentist’s office when she was waiting for Helen two winters ago. Echoes of testimonies about enablers and therapy speak cropped up like weeds in the crevices of her conscious thought, pests peeking through the spaces in between to taunt her.
It all melted away when Zosia smiled, the only one left to love her. It didn’t quite matter how they expressed it, so long as it was theirs.
“Yeah,” Carol said, feigning smugness she hoped would become real. “Remember that paddle I asked for months ago?”
Zosia was bending over the console now, sticking her barely-covered ass in the air gratuitously. “Did you want me to get that for you, too, Carol?” She peered at Carol around her shoulder, shook her ass as if to entice her into saying yes.
She scoffed instead. “You wish. Hurry up.”
Carol stood and waited next to the bed, watched as Zosia weighed the dildo in her hands before carrying it over. She dropped to her knees without being asked, wasted no time in easing the harness up Carol’s legs. Her fingers were warm when they brushed Carol’s skin to tighten the straps, when she let her hands push up under Carol’s shirt and onto her stomach for a brief moment before sitting back on her haunches and looking up at Carol expectantly.
“Get it wet.”
She gave no other instruction, just waited and watched Zosia lift her hands and almost touch her hips before letting them fall back into her lap. She smirked when Zosia leaned in hands-free, when she picked up the tip between softened lips and welcomed the head into her mouth.
“Good,” Carol murmured. She patted Zosia’s cheek just to feel how it hollowed as she took the first half of the black dildo in her mouth. “Suck it just like that.”
Drool eked out from Zosia’s lips, thick and wet and dripping onto hardwood. Carol felt her bones turn to jelly as she watched, as she refrained from cleaning up Zosia’s mess just for the later reward of visible spit-stains on her t-shirt.
When Zosia gagged three-quarters of the way down and pulled back, tears in her reddening eyes, the cock glistened.
“That’s good,” Carol mumbled. “Good. Stand up.” Zosia’s towering height was exacerbated when Carol plopped down on the edge of the bed, saliva still dripping from the protrusion at her hips. “Strip and sit on it.”
Black panties on the floor, white shirt close behind. Zosia turned and bared her ass to Carol’s prying eye, hinged sharply at the hips and preened when Carol pushed her thumbs into the dips next to her spine. Slowly, Carol guided her down, forced her to feel every inch as it stretched her open and filled her up.
“’S it too big?” Carol pouted when Zosia whined, when her thighs tensed and she resisted the kind guidance Carol was offering. “Too much for you, baby?”
Her own cheeks flushed at the memory of being patronized for the same reasons, at the feeling her own voice dragged to the surface.
“No,” Zosia whimpered. “W— oh! I can take it, Carol, I—”
“I know. You’ll take it.”
And she did. Zosia’s skin was warm when it settled at last against Carol’s thighs. Carol felt her drip onto the thin fabric of her boxers, felt her quiver as she tried and failed to keep still.
Distracted, Carol watched as Zosia rolled her hips. It seemed hesitant, like she was waiting for something to come in the aftermath, but as she continued she grew bolder. She used Carol as she sat there, unmoving, and watched her back curve, her waist twist, her hair move against her shoulders until she was intoxicated, entirely possessed.
It wasn’t until Zosia moaned that Carol realized what was happening, that her reverie had been blinding her. Zosia was trying her, testing the rules to see when Carol would break, and Carol had been sitting idly by and allowing it to happen.
Zosia’s scalp was warm when Carol fisted her hand in her hair, when she tugged back harshly until Zosia’s head snapped back on her neck. The fingernails of her free hand pushed just as harshly into Zosia’s hip, both sensations beckoning Zosia’s next breath in on a hiss.
“Did I tell you you could move?” She asked, rhetorical in the way Helen had always been with her when she’d had Carol desperate and prone like she had Zosia. “Who gave you permission to fuck yourself on my cock, Zosia?”
And oh, how Carol wished she could have seen Zosia’s face. From below, all she got was a face full of hair, the sound of a strained groan that had been directed at the ceiling, reverberating back down to her ear.
“No one,” Zosia whined. “I’m sorry, I’m— please, Carol, I—”
Carol had spread her knees just enough for the angle to change, for Zosia’s legs to take on some of her own weight. Gravity had lowered her impossibly further onto Carol’s strap, had her filled to the brim with no reprieve.
“I could keep you like this, you know,” Carol purred, her voice someone else’s entirely, so unlike her own it sparked something between her own legs as if she were watching herself on a television screen; a fantasy that wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. “Desperate and pathetic, stretched open wide and whining…”
Slurred pleas spilled from Zosia’s mouth, nearly incomprehensible by the time they registered in Carol’s head. She remembered how Zosia had been when she’d given her the thiopental sodium, wondered if this was a close alternative. Wondered if Zosia might let her do it again if this didn’t quite scratch the itch.
“Please, Carol…”
She manhandled Zosia by the waist, rough hands lifting her and turning her right over until she was pressed face down on the mattress. Origami, all delicate folds and strange angles, Zosia’s body contorted to Carol’s whim—folded wrists pinned beneath her, craned neck, sharply curved spine. Her ass was pushed up high, higher than when she presented herself to Carol of her own volition, and Carol watched as the muscles around her back dimples trembled with the severe angle of it.
Carol’s knees dipped the mattress beneath them, shifted Zosia’s body until she turned to putty, unable to hold herself up any longer. Carol hauled her up by the hips when she toppled, fingertips digging bruises into the soft flesh at the fold of her thighs.
“You want it?”
No matter what answer she got, no matter how it had been influenced by the hum of billions in her head, Carol knew by the dripping wetness that greeted the rounded silicone in her hands that Zosia wanted it. Needed it. Her body spoke for her more often than not, and Carol had taken it on as her duty to meet its needs. Limp and willing, Zosia took Carol’s length all at once, moaning loudly enough that Carol laughed.
“Fuck…”
Carol set a punishing pace, one that ignored the way Zosia beared down around her each time she pushed in, one that paid no mind to the mess dripping onto the bed nor the desperate whining before her. She bullied Zosia down into the sheets to get a better angle, held her hips down to keep her from squirming, relished the way her body compressed in on itself to accommodate her insistent intrusion. She could almost feel Zosia, warm and wet, wrapped around her, squeezing her, begging her to go deeper, to fill her up further.
Drunk on the sight of Zosia’s crumpled face, consumed by the pleasure Carol was making her take without solace, Carol groaned, slapped her ass and gripped her hips harder, felt the flesh squish until it couldn’t anymore and Zosia couldn’t move at all, until the sheer force of her grip made Zosia whimper and brought tears to her eyes.
“So good like this, Zosh,” Carol mused. “So fucking pretty taking my cock. Does that feel good?” She didn’t wait for Zosia to affirm her, just sped up enough to slow the frantic nodding of her head. “I can feel you pushing me out, baby,” she husked. “’S it too much? Too sensitive? Do I need to st—”
Zosia sobbed then, real tears overflowing from full waterlines. She was babbling something between ‘No’ and ‘Please don’t’ that Carol couldn’t discern, that she didn’t care to. She just fucked her open, felt the tension in her body build to the apex she’d been waiting for, the one that turned the babbling into coherent requests, words suddenly returning to Zosia’s mouth with a sense of urgency that only came about when she was folded up and at Carol’s mercy.
“I’m close, Carol,” she whined. “So good, so good, so close, I—”
“You’re gonna come, baby?” Carol teased, unyielding.
“I need—”
“Need…” Carol let the word hang, felt her mouth upturned with a smirk she did nothing to erase. “For someone so happy to please, you sure are greedy.”
“Shit, Carol, I’m gonna—”
Carol slapped her ass hard enough that it mottled red, pulled out without a second thought. “No you aren’t. You came twice already, wasn’t that enough?”
Zosia’s body collapsed, boneless, into the mattress, slack except for muscles that tensed against her will. She shivered when Carol stroked a hand gently across her ass, when she smoothed her warm palms over her damp, sweaty skin.
“Deep breaths for me,” she murmured, almost an afterthought; recall over intention.
Big tears wet the sheets under Zosia’s face as she breathed in, the darkening fabric spreading outward from the source, the only movement coming from Zosia barring the intermittent twitching of her tender cunt. Carol spanked her once more and she jolted, a fresh wave of tears streaking from between closing eyelids.
“Shower when your legs work again. There’ll be coffee when you’re done.”
She said it as she slipped away, one kiss planted to the smarting redness on the full flesh of Zosia’s ass. Her feet were planted on the hardwood by the time she began to tug at the clasps of the harness, but it didn’t stop Zosia’s voice from swaying the floor beneath her feet.
Carol’s head snapped up as she spoke, watched as her shining eyes came into view with the gentle lifting of her head from where it had imprinted the bed.
“Thank you, Carol,” she said, always in earnest.
Carol froze, tipped her head to the side. “For what?”
“Always taking care of me,” Zosia smiled.
Pride, then something rotting. Caustic. Carol’s diaphragm spasmed with it when she inhaled.
“Sure,” Carol shrugged. “It’s not really…” She didn’t quite know what to say, what the gnawing in her chest meant. She picked at her cuticles and didn’t look up when she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
☆
Carol scrubbed the dirt from under her fingernails, the slight green tinge of chlorophyll staining her fingertips. Warm water on reddening skin, wet and susceptible. It took on evidence of the bristles she pressed too hard, proof of her effort in the irritation that stripped her hands of moisture.
Eucalyptus hand soap. Jasmine hand cream that she rubbed in poorly. It clung to her hands, palms thick with it, when she gripped the doorknob and exited into her bedroom. On the bedside table—Zosia’s side—were the flowers she’d busied herself picking. They littered the neighbour’s backyard, growing like weeds until the grass between was littered with yellow petals and whitish blooms. There was an identical bunch in a larger vase on the kitchen table, one she’d filled out with some attractive green things she’d been able to find. She wasn’t sure what to call any of it, but Zosia would know.
Perhaps she’d ask. Or, more likely, she wouldn’t, and would wait to see if some remnants of the Zosia of old would compel her to bring them up, an itch she needed to scratch. An itch Carol hadn’t stopped trying to provoke.
The remnants of lotion on Carol’s hand rubbed off onto a pile of Helen’s sweaters in the closet as she reached beneath them. She ignored the wince creeping into her face, the discomfort in her spine, and found what she was looking for. Red lace, maroonish and deep, came out into the light from its hiding place. Lingerie she’d picked out of a selection a few months prior and kept out of Zosia’s sight, surprises for her when Carol felt like seeing her in something new.
From a hanger nearby, Carol picked a short dress. Merlot fabric, soft and fluid, pooled in her hands, resisted folding when she tried awkwardly to turn it into a neat square she could lay on the foot of the bed. She draped it over the edge of the mattress instead, folded dainty lace next to it. Then, she procured black stilettos from Zosia’s collection and set them on the floor close by.
Laid out like this, it reminded Carol of the pink boxes she used to pass in the toy section, the ones all the girls in her class wanted, but she’d never been interested in. Doll clothes, sorted and organized and sold in sets to smiling girls preparing unconsciously for motherhood. In a way, Carol understood them now, understood the appeal of having a doll to dress up whenever she wanted.
Zosia needed her, her judgment, her guiding hand. Carol knew better because she didn’t know everything, and it was her responsibility to at least try to help Zosia remember what she’d lost.
If such assistance came in the form of bruises on delicate skin and revealing lingerie, nights on the couch that ended with her face between Carol’s legs, endless hours spent with Carol picking her brain for memories that might bring her out, then so be it.
Satisfied, Carol exited the bedroom still wearing the clothes she’d worn outside. She would change soon, but not yet. Until then, the jeans with grass stains on the knees and the grey t-shirt with striped dirt across the torso from where she’d brushed her hands off would do. She looked good and well-worked, as Helen would have put it. As she descended the staircase, she wondered if Zosia would think the same.
Zosia’s feet were tucked up beneath her when Carol peeked into the front room. Draped over the arm of her chair, the most recent chapter of Wycaro. It was one of the things Carol had told her to do to keep herself busy when she was otherwise occupied, a way to mitigate the uncanny notion that Zosia just sat when Carol wasn’t around to interact with. Next to her, on the small side table, sat a glass of iced tea. It sweat condensation onto the coaster, visible even from ten feet away, untouched.
She’d told Zosia it was weird not to eat or drink until she suggested it, and found her more often than not with a full glass of something from the fridge. It wasn’t an improvement, but Carol took it as one anyway.
The landline was warm in Carol’s hand. She’d been gripping it since she reached the first floor, the meat of her palm taking on the indents of the plastic seam as she stared. Two minutes passed, then five. Carol watched as Zosia flipped the page, as she settled her chin into her palm.
An endeared sort of warmth fluttered in her chest, occupying the spaces between each rib until Carol had to squeeze her eyes shut against the sheer intensity of it. Around the corner, she retreated and allowed Zosia to disappear from her line of sight. Unnoticed, she pressed zero.
One and a half rings trilled in her ear, then a clean voice. “Hello, Carol. How can we help you?”
Carol opened her mouth, then shut it promptly. Cleared her throat. Checked again over her shoulder in case Zosia had appeared from nowhere, lingering a few paces behind her like she was waiting to be noticed, and found no one at all.
Quietly into the receiver, Carol said, “I would like a collar. For a human. For Zosia.”
A fantasy she hadn’t known she’d had, encouraged by a dress Zosia had worn a few weeks ago. A black strap across her throat, a gap between it and the fabric covering her breasts. Carol still remembered how it felt in her grasp, how her knuckles had grazed Zosia’s throat and felt it bob as she swallowed, how easy it had been to pull her in for a kiss as if she’d ever put up a fight otherwise.
“What colour would you like? Within the hour, we can get you any except—”
“Black?” Carol interrupted, pacing the floor like it might quell the sudden onset of anxiety. “Black leather. I can wait if necessary.”
A small pause that made Carol frown, then: “Alright, Carol. We’ll be over right away with that.”
“Good. Okay. And—” she stopped in her tracks— “don’t tell Zosia. It’s a surprise.”
An even longer pause possessed the line, heavy and full of something Carol didn’t want to acknowledge. “Okay, Carol. Happy to help.” So cheerful. “Anything else?” Too cheerful.
“I don’t know, fuck…” she hissed. “Probably a leash? Yeah. A leash too. Also black leather. And leave it on the step, don’t knock. I’ll get it when I need it.”
She didn’t wait to hear the reply, just slammed her thumb into the end call button and slotted the phone back in the cradle. It beeped to tell her it was charging, the screen blinking just once. There it sat, abandoned, as Carol made her way into Zosia’s space and pretended she hadn’t been half-watching her for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Hand resting on Zosia’s shoulder, Carol watched as she looked up and smiled. “How’s the chapter?”
“Wonderful,” Zosia replied. “Thank you for letting me read, Carol.”
Zosia’s hand brushed the curve of her neck, then, an action Carol watched with rapt attention, then mirrored. Her hand rested against her throat as she leaned down, the webbing of her thumb slotted over the slight protrusion of Zosia’s windpipe.
She didn’t squeeze as they kissed, just let the suggestion linger. “Of course, baby. I value your opinion,” she murmured. A shared inhale of warmed oxygen, lips brushing. “Your opinion. Yours.”
Zosia nodded, smiled tightly. Carol pecked her once more for good measure and watched Zosia’s mouth chase after her when she’d gone.
☆
Carol bit down on her own tongue as she stared at the words littering the screen of her laptop. A few paragraphs laid scattered against white, pieces of sentences and throwaway words in between. The chapter was a mess, Lucasia’s failings too difficult for her to address as of late. The lie she sold herself had become comfortable, easy, and shining light through the inevitable cracks in her own facade would only ever be a risk.
Too much rode on that comfortable place on high, the one she had created herself and then immediately put out of mind all the labour; the sweat and tears of creation long forgotten. Carol sighed and sipped at the bourbon she was nursing, the same glass stretched out over the hour for once. It was an unnatural practice to Carol, one she admired Helen for having perfected. She was beginning, slowly, to understand its appeal now, if only through its evocation of her wife.
She watched her cursor blink and considered the emotional climax of act one. Reconsidered the direction of the installment altogether, Raban’s new position as a real member of Lucasia’s crew and what it meant for their relationship. The way Lucasia had grown complacent, had allowed their new dynamic to carry over to their private life. Carol had spent ten chapters and one month of in-universe time building to this, a breakdown, an emotional outburst, Lucasia realizing the only reason she could be good at commanding the Mercator was because it ended with Raban. Because Raban expected nothing of her, and loved her anyway.
The sun beat down on the crown of Lucasia’s head, worsening the climbing heat in her face as she—
Lucasia’s facade was crumbling, and all Carol could do was backspace, attempt dialogue, and bounce her knee with gnawing annoyance. She erased the sentence, folded her hands on her stomach, wondered what she could possibly do that might reveal her true state.
Somewhere buried in the ether, there was an attempted argument, a failed sex-scene that would have broken her closed-door romance streak, and a full-fledged breakdown. She’d circled back around to something spectacular, humiliating and degrading in the way only a public failure could be, but what?
Crystalline sand in her eyes, fierce wind in her hair, Lucasia watched in horror as the crates slid across the deck and free-fell off the edge into the purple mass of sand below. The task she’d neglected to delegate, the task left for Raban who she’d already commanded to hide below deck.
Celebratory, Carol downed the last few sips of whiskey all at once. It was subtle, but she knew in two chapters it would explode. Lucasia had begun to slip, her grip on everything changing as soon as pressure had been applied. She made a mental note to shift some events down the line to allow more space for a downward spiral and sat back in her chair, satisfied.
Movement in the corner of Carol’s eye dragged her eyes off the screen. Zosia had been hovering for the past hour, pacing the hall upstairs. Carol smirked when she caught her eye, beckoned her in with a relaxed crook of fingers on her right hand.
“Hi, Zosia,” she murmured once Zosia was close enough. “Bored?”
“Something like that.”
Zosia had rounded the desk, heeled at Carol’s side as if in attendance of an order. Carol snaked her hand across the small of her back, traced her fingertips at her spine until she shivered.
“Get a book,” Carol said then. “You can wait in here while I get ready.”
She didn’t acknowledge the nagging awareness that hummed in the very bones of her skull, the imploring knowledge that she ignored and refused entirely. It didn’t matter, not really, not when Zosia was so obedient.
Her chair squeaked when she pushed herself away from the desk and followed Zosia to the bookshelf. She lifted onto her toes to rest her chin on Zosia’s shoulder and peer at the shelf, leaning on her just enough to betray a need she couldn’t speak. Weight passed onto Zosia, Carol reveled in the momentary release of exported burden.
It ended too soon, dispersing into the air as Zosia reached for a paperback on the top shelf—shitty Harlequin romance that Carol wasn’t sure she’d ever even read. Mass-produced erotica clutched in her dainty hands, Zosia turned.
“This?”
The book was old enough to still have a drawn clinch cover, the kind Carol preferred to the newer, photographed versions with aggressively airbrushed pecs and a photoshopped background.
She shrugged. “Why the hell not.”
Zosia’s teeth glinted when she flashed a smile Carol’s way, when she slipped around her and plopped down in her desk chair, long limbs spilling out. “Can I sit here?”
“Aren’t you already?”
Another charming smile, wider and more conniving. “Yes.”
Carol scoffed. “So I have no other choice, then, do I?”
“You always have a choice.”
A stark tone shift made Carol blink hard a few times over like her vision had gone bad. Such simple words, spoken with such severity it struck her like a baseball bat to the backs of her knees, too real and too charged.
“Right,” she said, voice betraying her as it shook just so. She compensated with an eye roll and wondered if Zosia noticed. “So you’d stretch out across the desk if I wanted?”
Theoreticals were always so much easier than the real thing, little tests that meant nothing in the grand scheme. A charge hummed, ephemeral. Temporary. Enough to make Zosia’s eye glint as she leaned in; bait. Enough to make Carol bite.
“Of course.”
“You’d read it out loud without missing a word if I asked?”
“Certainly.”
“Good. You can stay where you are and read silently.”
No fun. She could have sworn she saw Zosia pout as she turned her back and exited the office.
Black slacks, a black satin top. A wine-coloured tie that matched Zosia’s lingerie almost exactly. If the night went as planned, Carol might tie Zosia’s hands out of her way with it later, or blindfold her and tease her for a while. Something Helen would have threatened to do to Carol, but had never really gotten to.
So stubborn, Helen had always teased. Too stubborn.
Zosia never put up a fight.
The comb tugged at Carol’s scalp when she dragged it back through wet, gelled hair. Little drops of water splattered on the shiny fabric of her shirt, soaked into it before she could brush them away. Carol sighed and ignored them instead of dwelling, tried and failed to lay her hair the way she wanted it. She gave up after ten minutes of struggle, shoved her hands back to push all her hair away from her face without any more effort.
She missed when Helen would step in and assist—gentle voice and even gentler hands that were never too direct. Always just enough to get Carol to cede without stirring the inadequacy that had long been sowing in Carol’s gut; fermenting since long before she’d ever known Helen at all.
Her smell lingered still, etched into the walls and into Carol’s need to live up to something she couldn’t identify, always inopportune in its appearance. Something buried with the body that she’d managed to hold onto somehow.
Carol wished it would go away, then regretted the will twofold. Slammed the drawer and nearly closed her fingers in it; cosmic punishment.
She smelled of hair gel and the cologne she’d been waiting for years to wear when she slipped on a pair of clean black boots. There were footprints in the rug when she tracked across it, rubber soles leaving marks more imposing than she felt.
In the office, Zosia didn’t look up from her book until Carol’s hands had rested on her shoulders. She exhaled deeply as Carol dug her thumbs into the slight tension she found, relaxing Zosia visibly until the book had fallen, ignored, from her hand onto the floor. Touch drifting down lithe arms, Carol leaned down.
“Go get dressed,” she murmured, mouth brushing the edge of Zosia’s ear. She kissed the side of her face from behind and felt goosebumps under her lips. “There’s an outfit on the bed. No jewelry. Do your makeup however you see fit, but I expect you in the kitchen in an hour. Understood?”
Zosia smiled, turned to face Carol and kissed her. “Yes, Carol. See you in one hour.”
Downstairs, a cardboard box tucked just next to the door. Carol heard Zosia’s quiet feet pad overhead, contained in the boundaries of the bedroom, and shoved it under her arm. She locked herself in the first-floor bathroom before she opened it.
Leather and steel, sturdy and well-made. Despite its clear hardiness, it seemed delicate when Carol held it to the light. Zosia’s collar glimmered, conditioned and as-of-yet unworn, just like Carol had imagined it would. It fit nicely in her pocket along with the neatly folded leash, both items just the right size so as not to add unnecessary bulk to her right side where she slotted them for easy access when the time came. It wouldn’t be long before they would grace Zosia’s neck, not long before Carol could see her ownership stand out against Zosia’s skin.
The flutter of nerves in her stomach was incessant, nearly churning. In the kitchen, Carol downed another glass of whiskey just to quiet them.
☆
Carol was lounging, feet up and crossed on the coffee table, with a glass of red wine in her hand when Zosia appeared. She lingered in the doorway to the living room like she didn’t live on the premises, like she was unsure if Carol wanted her around. In her defense, Carol made no move to stand, just smirked over the rim of her glass and coaxed Zosia into the room with a beckoning wave of her hand.
“Come show me, baby,” Carol murmured. Her mouth tasted of wine, slightly acrid and thick. “Let me see you.”
She swallowed hard when Zosia approached, standing square in front of Carol with only the coffee table between them. Long legs protruded from a short pink skirt, the fabric shifting every time Zosia moved to reveal maroon lace beneath. The neckline bowed open wide, revealed an expanse of delicate skin and the tops of fine shoulders, Zosia’s protruding collarbone. At the hem, peeks of lace, just as Carol had imagined.
“Turn around,” Carol said, eyes flicking from the soft curve of Zosia’s neck to her face. “Bend over.”
Zosia obliged wordlessly, tossed her loosely-curled hair off her shoulders and hinged at the hips, all polite and obedient. Carol finished her wine without taking her eyes off of Zosia’s body, without missing the reveal of a single inch of skin as the dress lifted, caught on her undergarments, stretched and flowed and uncovered the wonder of lithe muscle and smooth skin that laid underneath.
A quiet exhale, a muttered ‘fuck.’ Carol was on her feet before she knew it, stalking closer to Zosia carefully, predator and prey both exactly where they were, no regard given to where they wanted to be. This was simply the way of things, the way of the world—for once, Carol’s place was clear.
Zosia’s calves, her hamstrings, proved tensed just under her skin. Carol brushed her nails up beneath the protrusion of Zosia’s ass first, four gentle lines leading up to the place she squeezed, dug her nails into, kneaded as she slipped her fingers under fabric.
“I was gonna suggest we make dinner, but you’re—”
“The fridge is empty Car—”
“Interrupting is rude, Zosia.”
A gasp when Carol’s nails scratched red into the flesh of Zosia’s ass. “I’m sorry, Carol.”
“Good.”
It had been a lie, an oversight. She’d been looking for an excuse not to face her shortcoming anyway. Zosia always provided somehow, if not always the way Carol anticipated.
She sighed. “As I was saying, you’re not giving me much of a choice.”
“What does that—” Zosia hissed and cut herself off when Carol’s grip rounded her hips and pulled her close.
“It means you’re a tease,” Carol said, like it was obvious, like it was Zosia’s fault at all. “And you rile me up on purpose.”
Zosia’s hands were braced on the television console, and she was pushing her ass back into Carol just enough that Carol noticed. She slapped her where her skirt had ridden up, then slapped her again when all she did was preen.
“Slut,” Carol mumbled softly, more to herself than Zosia at all. She heard it anyway, and arched her back in response. “Mine.”
Breathy, almost whiny, Zosia sighed and let her head droop on her neck. “Yours.”
“Do you mean it, Zosh?” Carol was toying with the edges of Zosia’s panties again, moving inward until the lace grew starkly warmer, until she was sure she could feel the beginnings of something wet embedded in the stitching. “You belong to me?”
“Yes, Carol,” Zosia murmured.
Carol dragged her thumbs across plush skin, watched Zosia’s body tense and release all at once. “Speak up.”
“Yes,” Zosia said louder. “I belong to you.”
“Good. Good girl.”
Cool air swept across Carol’s palm when she lifted it, reaching for the collar in her pocket without making it. Instead of her target, her hand collided with Zosia’s own, all greedy and exploratory as she reached backward toward Carol and the missing contact. She slapped it away and laughed, cold and merciless, then reached for her silk tie.
“Give me your other hand,” Carol said, “nicely.”
Zosia didn’t squirm, just accepted defeat, let Carol manoeuvre her arms into the proper place. With much less grace than she’d envisioned, she tied a knot around both her wrists, securing them at the small of Zosia’s back before abandoning her entirely.
“Stand up.”
The couch welcomed her back before Zosia had even righted herself. Carol sat, legs spread wide, arms draped over the back, and watched as Zosia turned to face her with red cheeks and a trembling lip. Dramatics. Carol leaned in.
“Who taught you to be so greedy, Zosia? I know it wasn’t me.”
Words she remembered from another, perhaps Helen, or perhaps something she’d ghostwritten so early in her career it had meshed with her own language; retrieved instead of formed, found instead of generated.
“No one, Carol.”
“Right. Come kneel for me, baby. You can make it up to me.”
A scramble of fawn legs and stiletto heels, awkward and stunted. Zosia all but collapsed on the floor in front of Carol’s feet, no hands to support her venture. Messy limbs on the floor, unfolding and tucking beneath her properly. Strained shoulders that Carol watched, rapt, as they tensed with intent but no accompanying movement. Inhibited, Zosia gnawed on her bottom lip as she arranged and rearranged herself, her heels pressing into soft flesh and pinching at her ankles.
“That’s enough, Zosia. I don’t have all day.”
It was a lie and they both knew it, an outright contradiction of the very life they’d been leading, and still Zosia stopped. Frozen as if Carol held to switch to her functioning, the very will from her own body, Zosia’s eyes snapped up to her face—she waited.
Casually, like it was the natural progression of the conversation, Carol asked, “Do you want me?”
“I do. Of course, I do.”
Still leaning back, still relaxed in the cushions, Carol shifted. Brought her foot between Zosia’s knees, pushed it forth until the tip of her boot was hidden beneath her.
“Yeah?” Carol probed. “Bad enough to debase yourself for me?”
Stupid questions with wonderful answers. Anything Carol had to say to her was a given, every inquiry already considered, already wrapped up with a big red bow and ready to be delivered. The guarantee wasn’t enough, though, not when Carol was fleeing any reminder of the truth.
Zosia’s nod was timid, a front she’d been putting on more and more ever since Carol told her how much she liked it, how soft it made her seem. Like Carol could dig her nails in and tear a chunk out of her flesh with her bare hands, like she could see the humanity beneath.
“Beg to hump my boot, then. Tell me you wanna rub yourself on my foot,” she said. Then, for good measure, as if Zosia would say anything but yes, “It would make me happy. I know you like to please me.”
A rush of intoxicating lust joined the soothing hum of alcohol in her stomach, arousal and numbness heightening at once. It was easier to bear the brunt this way, to shoulder the exigencies of the role she took on, always reluctant, when she wasn’t sober. Still, even nearing inebriation, even as she finished the wine in her glass, it was strange on this side of things.
She was borrowing from a time before, a script etched into her own need, equal and opposite. Helen’s words, Helen’s desire, speaking through her. She’d been asked, once, long ago, to degrade herself this way, an exercise in letting go. Surrender had been sweet in the hands of someone who knew her inside and out, someone who concealed her from the very things she herself harboured within.
Vulnerability in its truest form, no longer the safest option; no safe harbour left for rest nor reprieve. Carol did the next best thing, let the hand that had guided her continue in its quest as she watched Zosia’s lashes flutter. In the tensing of her neck muscles, Carol saw the clenching of her fists.
“Carol, I—”
“Beg.”
“Please.”
She scoffed. “You know every word in the English language, Zosia. Beg me properly, or not at all.”
Charged air, electricity pinging off them both across invisible power lines. Carol wanted to see Zosia crumble, wanted to set the palpitation free into the atmosphere and let the consequences befall them both, wanted to watch her unravel into something from which only Carol could save her.
It would almost make up for the real thing, the reality she refused to think of.
Zosia’s brows upturned, a desperate sort of expression that shook something loose in Carol’s gut. A puff of embers from the fire slowly stoked, the flame itself rising just enough to lap at the insides of her stomach, the backs of her abs, warming her from within until it melted, dripped.
“Carol, please,” Zosia said—or, barely said. She was whispering, voice small like she’d been broken. Even if it was all for show, Carol bought it just for the sake of it, leaned in just enough to see the widening iris of Zosia’s right eye. “I want whatever you’ll allow me. I need it. I— I need you, Carol. I want you to make me show you how badly I need to please you. I want to make you happy, Carol, please, I—”
“That’s it,” Carol murmured, smiling almost cruelly at the gravel in Zosia’s voice, the strain of arousal she was sure was staining the crotch of her new panties. “Go ahead, then, since you need it so bad.”
“Thank you.”
Through leather, warmth. Carol could feel Zosia’s heat against the top of her foot, could feel her as she sank down onto the toe, as she pushed herself up against the laces. “Good girl,” she cooed. “Make me happy, baby.”
Closed eyes, tossed head. The length of Zosia’s throat revealed itself to Carol’s demanding eye when Zosia’s hair fell back over her shoulders. Mindlessly, Carol leaned in just enough to run her fingers gently down the gasping windpipe, made Zosia feel her thinking without saying a word.
She could do whatever she wanted, and Zosia wouldn’t stop her. Couldn’t. Carol had grown accustomed to this thought enough that it had gone from horrifying to arousing.
Her doll, the woman she kept for keeping’s sake, the only one who she could believe cared for her to any extent. Zosia gasped when Carol pushed her foot out on the carpet just enough to press tightly against her, no motion made to reject the action. Unless Carol requested it, she’d never resist.
It was so much easier like this.
“Mine,” Carol mumbled, barely audible.
Zosia heard her anyway; always did. “Yours.”
A prayer, something sacred affirmed mid-air. It floated, featherlike, to Carol’s ear, loud and undeniable.
Still, she pushed. “What’s that, baby?”
Hips stuttering, breath hitching, Zosia’s chin tipped down just enough for her to make eye contact with Carol through heavy lids and thick lashes. “I belong to you,” she gasped. “Yours.”
“That’s right. Mine.”
“Anything for you.”
Carol’s blood was loud in her ears. “Anything?”
“Whatever you want,” Zosia gasped. Carol stared at the underside of her chin as she moaned, watched the sound climb out of her mouth from her throat. “I’m yours.”
Carol was digging in her pocket before she knew it, plucking the collar from the warm place on her thigh. “Come here, then, Zosh,” she said. “Put this on so everyone can see who you belong to.”
Zosia’s full face came into view as soon as Carol undid the clasp, as though the sound of metal on metal drew her from wherever she’d disappeared to in the recesses of her own head. Pink lips, big eyes, red cheeks. Her hair was mussed, pieces stuck to her face while some around the crown of her head had begun to frizz. Carol wished she and Helen had kept the polaroid camera they’d bought decades before so she could have frozen this moment in time, the moment Zosia laid eyes on the collar Carol had procured just for her.
“I got this for you.”
Zosia swallowed, hips still. Nodded just a split second too long as if she were recalibrating like the GPS in the first new vehicle she and Helen had ever owned.
“Thank you, Carol,” she smiled.
It fit around Zosia’s neck like a glove, perfectly adjusted by whoever had dropped it off, Carol presumed. It clipped closed snugly, but with enough room for one of Carol’s fingers if she so wished to grab it and pull. She did.
Zosia lurched forward when Carol tugged, her sternum making contact with Carol’s knee.
“Fits nice,” she mused. “Don’t you agree?”
“I like it,” Zosia replied. “Feels good.”
Carol nodded. “Good. Now, I didn’t tell you to stop.”
She let go of the collar, leaned all the way back in her chair and watched. Picked the toe of her boot up and nudged Zosia’s cunt. Stared as Zosia’s mouth fell open in a silent moan as she grinded down on her boot. Her shoulders strained, an unspoken wish to use her hands that Carol nearly granted. Part of her wanted to feel Zosia’s nails digging into her calf, dulled by the thick fabric of her slacks but still acute, still sharp and incessant. The very same nails that dragged down her back when she fucked her just right, the same nails that scratched at her scalp when she put her mouth on Zosia’s cunt—their compromise so that Zosia wouldn’t pull her hair.
The rest of her liked the restraints, liked seeing her inhibited and dutiful, determined despite the limitation. It amplified the need that had begun to drip between Carol’s legs, hot and aching. She wondered how Zosia’s compared, if they were, too, common in the thrumming desire that undercut Carol’s every day.
Zosia’s breaths had turned whiny, almost lamenting in their repetition. Her eyes were shut, her face all screwed up and nearly pained as she chased something Carol wasn’t yet ready to give her. Carol laughed.
“I’m not gonna help you,” she sneered. “Keep going. You can do it, baby, just like that. Whining won’t get you anywhere.”
As she’d hoped, Carol’s resolution made Zosia whimper louder, made her breasts heave with the sheer force of her quivering inhale. Through her dress, Carol saw her nipples harden and strain against the fabric, ultrasensitive and enticing. She nearly reached out and flicked her thumb over them just to hear Zosia mewl, but refrained.
Instead, her gaze flicked up. Consumed, Carol stared at the leather against Zosia’s skin. It was more for her than for Zosia at all, she realized—an unintended and uninvited realization, but a realization nonetheless. One that manifested in a thrumming hunger deep inside her. Security for Carol in the eternal circle of the implement, something enclosed within it that belonged to her and no one else—if only for the time worn.
A tether, anchored behind Carol’s navel. It tugged when Zosia squirmed, stirred the welling desire that trickled through her and settled below. Carol released the collar, patted Zosia’s cheek, and didn’t pull away when she nuzzled into it. A short moment passed, too long, wherein Carol allowed the affection, allowed her authority to dissolve.
“Just like that, baby,” she said, her last contact with Zosia’s cheek more firm than the last. It pinked her cheeks just enough to drag a smirk up from the corners of Carol’s mouth, amused. “Show me how you need me.”
Poison-laced words, Zosia’s efforts the antidote to a self-induced toxicity.
She was moaning openly now, body taut and stiff as she dragged her clit across Carol’s boot, as she debased herself with abandon. She was pathetic like this, all desperate and needy, showing off for Carol as she watched with rapt attention and a dry mouth.
Carol was holding her breath as she watched the beauty unravel before her, as Zosia’s measured control dissolved all at once at her feet. She spilled wet heat across the top of Carol’s foot, slick and carnal, making a mess of Carol’s shoe and the warm space between her legs. Carol’s bones had thawed into a pulp of her own need, once latent and now impossible to ignore. Something in her had snapped, every ounce of composure she’d once possessed gone.
Her hand was on Zosia’s neck all over again, finger crooked under the side of her collar and twisting until she could see it dig into her skin. “Come for me, my Zosia.”
A loud groan that bordered on a sob, a guttural sound that rippled in the pooling satisfaction beneath Carol’s ribs, the pool that dripped gasoline down into the fire below. She lifted her foot just enough to worsen the blow, enough to feel Zosia’s hips jerk as she continued greedily, pursuing every wave of pleasure as it slipped from her grasp.
“You look fucking pathetic like this,” Carol said then. “I wish you could see how you look when you get like this, all desperate.” Zosia had slowed to a stop—Carol jostled her anyway, pushed her boot against her clit and smiled when she whined. “Maybe I should fuck you in front of a mirror, hm? Don’t you wanna watch yourself get stupid for me?”
Absent nods, a smile from another planet. Carol understood; she herself was drunk on Zosia’s climax, high on whatever rush it had given her. It spurred her to reach back into her pocket for the leash and clip it onto the ring at the front of Zosia’s collar.
“You’re so cute when you’re all fucked out,” she crooned. “Bet you’d let me parade you around like this, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, Carol.”
Drool slipped from Zosia’s mouth as she leaned in with Carol’s gentle, coaxing pull on her leash. Her cheek was hot on the inside of Carol’s knee, her breath doubly so. She looked up at Carol with wet eyes and a dopey smile.
“Yeah? You’d do anything to prove you love me…”
An observation. A loaded gun.
Zosia nodded like she didn’t know. Nodded because she might not.
“Of course, Carol.”
Leather laid, abandoned, on the cushions next to Carol as she reached for the buttons of her pants. She’d nearly asked Zosia to take her pants off for her, then had bitten her tongue when she remembered the burgundy restraints keeping her from assisting.
She shoved the thick fabric and her wet boxers down, nudged Zosia off her just enough to push them down her legs until they pooled at her ankles. Her own smell hit her nose when she spread her legs again, heady and thick and needful. Undeniable.
Carol wrapped the lead around her hand three times and yanked.
“Use your mouth and get me off,” she ordered. “No teasing.”
Zosia’s tongue was wet, saliva-laden and so, so warm against Carol’s cunt. She pitched her hips forward, brought them closer to the edge to give Zosia a better angle, all the while holding her in place with the leash she hadn’t even been sure she’d wanted. Without hands, Zosia was entirely at her mercy, a toy to be used as needed, no real will in her head that didn’t belong to Carol anyway.
She moaned when Zosia swirled her tongue around her clit, felt herself clench around nothing at all and tried to recall the last time she’d been full. Zosia’s fingers, two days prior. Three of them, curling just right deep inside of her, three fingers that had made her make a mess of the bed more than she ever had before.
Helen had told her once that she thought Carol might be a squirter, and Carol had told her to never bring it up again.
“Fuck, Zosia. Just like that.”
She forced herself to watch, to resist the will to close her eyes and sink deep into the pleasure brought to her by an expert tongue laving over her cunt just so she could watch Zosia’s head bob and strain against the leash to get a better angle. Carol could feel her tongue dip inside each time it descended, felt it smooth the slick wetness all around her clit, circle it until she began to whimper before starting all over again.
Her hand went slack, arm relaxing as the ebb and flow of euphoric sweetness increased. Her lungs shook when she inhaled, body overtaken entirely by the intensity, by the fluttering gravity in her cunt.
The fog of bliss overwhelmed her when it moved in, rolled across the hills and valleys of her mind until everything was obscured, until all she could think about and all she could taste was the sex in the air and Zosia. Zosia between her legs, Zosia occupying the space beneath her skin and in between her ribs, Zosia’s name in her mouth. Carol was sinking, free-falling into an oblivion she hadn’t felt in a long while, honeyed darkness enveloping her entirely until she forgot her own name in favour of the desperate moans falling off her tongue.
Her cheeks were hot—too hot—and her face was numb. Carol’s limbs weren’t real and the only thing that was real was Zosia. All Carol could see was the backs of her own eyelids and the fireworks of ecstasy that danced across them, the pinpricks of light that exploded when Zosia pushed her tongue inside and licked.
“Zosh— Zosia. Fuck, I— please, oh god, please…”
Her hips canted upward, nearly squirming as she felt her stomach tense, felt the beginnings of something loom over her, then, when she reached down, found Zosia’s hair and yanked, it all stopped.
Big brown eyes met Carol’s when she snapped her head up, shocked. Zosia’s chin glistened, her mouth all full of saliva and Carol’s own need. It dripped from the corners of an open mouth, too much to hold while breathing heavily. There was little within the depths of those eyes, little besides the entirety of eternity, everything Carol had left. Little except a need to please, all eager and urgent and hopeful; giddy like a student body on the first day, too pure and too content.
Carol felt her clit throb, the muscles across her stomach ripple. Body wracked with confusion, sheepish and guilty like she was anticipating a punishment, she blinked against the haze occupying her mind.
“Zosia?”
Wet lips closed around nothing at all, swallowed saliva and desire. “Tell me what to do, Carol,” Zosia mumbled. “I’ll do it. Let me be good for you.”
Through the swimming haze in her head, a shimmering smear across her vision and thought, Carol heard Zosia’s words. A dog receiving an unfamiliar command, she stared blankly, felt her head tip aside.
“I d— Fuck, I…”
All at once, memories of Helen telling her to hold her hair or grip the bedsheets, to keep her hands out of the way. Helen’s face tucked cleanly between quivering thighs, Helen’s hands pushing down on her hips until she couldn’t squirm, until all Carol could do was tug futilely at her hair and whimper against the influx of precise pleasure brought on by Helen’s tongue.
She’d slipped, footing faltering, into something that was no longer meant for her. Her skin tightened as the realization hit her, the unavoidable knowledge that she couldn’t truly return to what she’d once needed, what had once brought her out of the shame holding her head underwater.
Carol cleared her throat, picked the leash back up, and tightened her grip. Steadfast, committed, Zosia’s eyes were locked on her face, observant and too attentive.
“Carol—”
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” Carol eked out, the firmness of her voice strained against weakened lungs. Something flickered across Zosia’s face next, something Carol didn’t care to translate. She doubled down instead. “You can be good by leaving the thinking to me, yeah? No need to guess wrong, baby,” she murmured, loosening her hand just enough in Zosia’s hair to tighten it again and see her wince. “Just be good and make me feel good.”
She smiled for good measure. It was Zosia or nothing, this or more loneliness. What was another inch when she’d already given miles?
She tugged Zosia in closer and moaned loudly when her lips wrapped around her clit. Zosia whined when Carol’s thighs closed around her ears, when her edge returned without delay. She was quick, too needful and too messy.
Her orgasm came quick and left faster, stung as it swelled and deflated. No afterglow, no slow comedown. The room had gone cold, the life sucked out of it and begging for resuscitation. Carol didn’t dwell, just pulled Zosia off her and up by the reinforced leather in her hand until she was on the couch next to her.
The sun had disappeared from the sky close to entirely, casting Zosia in a strange glow when Carol looked her over. Sitting on the couch in her pink dress and maroon lingerie Carol hadn’t even gotten to take off of her, feet bare. Over the edge, stiletto heels recently abandoned on hardwood.
Always beautiful, somehow always more so than that first day in the backyard. Carol tried not to think about the circumstance.
She all but collapsed into Zosia, not a word spoken by either as Carol’s head came to rest on her lap. It wasn’t until Zosia began stroking her hair, nails dragging oh-so gently down the side of her face and back up again to tuck loose blonde locks behind her ear, that Carol noticed anything at all was amiss.
“Did you take the tie off?”
Zosia laughed in that twinkling way she did sometimes, the one that made Carol’s heart skip a beat with its earnestness. “No.”
Her reply was too simple, not enough to satisfy, but Carol didn’t push. Didn’t want to know. She grumbled instead, let Zosia dote on her the way she craved but never requested. She’d always been bad at tying knots, was so woefully underprepared at all times, it seemed. Even the easier option was wrong, never enough.
“Kiss me,” she said, like it would make it all right.