Page 66 of Under Her Protection

Leo began to fuck her.

She moved slow at first, finding the rhythm, and then steady as Vivienne's hand on her shoulder tightened, and then harder as Vivienne's hand moved to the small of her back and pulled her in, and Vivienne, under her, was not silent. Vivienne made, tonight, sounds Leo had not heard before, low sounds at the back of her throat with every thrust.

The lamp light caught the grey at Vivienne's temple, the line of her collarbone, the mark Leo had put there on Monday night and the space where there would almost certainly be more tomorrow. Leo lowered her mouth. She tasted salt on Vivienne's throat. She ran her tongue over Vivienne’s neck, over her collarbone. She used her teeth lightly and then firmer.

Vivienne moaned. A beautiful sound that Leo wouldn’t forget.

Vivienne's hand found Leo's face.

"Look at me," Vivienne said.

"I am."

"Keep looking."

"I am."

Leo kept looking. She kept looking through the next three strokes, through Vivienne's breath breaking at her throat, through the small fingernail-crescent that Vivienne's hand left on the back of her neck and did not apologise for. She kept looking as Vivienne, under her, opened up for her. Not physically. That had been done. Opened in the face. Opened, for the first time in the five weeks Leo had been in this house, without a management of the opening.

Leo's chest did a thing she did not name.

"Leo."

"Mm."

"Harder."

"Yes."

She gave it to her harder. Vivienne's breath went short. Her hand in Leo's hair closed into a fist. Her other hand came down between them, past Leo's ribs, and Leo caught the wrist before it arrived, gently, and moved it, gently, back up to her shoulder, and shook her head once.

"Tonight," Leo said, "I do that."

Vivienne's eyes, on her, went soft around the edges for a breath.

"Yes."

Leo braced on one elbow and put her hand between them and found Vivienne with her thumb, and Vivienne arched up off the linen on the second stroke of it and came with Leo still inside her, shuddering, with her teeth on Leo's shoulder. She came without making the sound she had made last time, and then her forehead was against Leo's collarbone, and Leo did not pull out.

Leo waited.

"Again," Vivienne said, against her skin.

"Yes."

She moved again. This time Vivienne's sounds were not small. This time Vivienne's legs came up and locked at the low of Leo's back, and the ring of the harness pressed against Leo with every stroke, and Leo, whose whole body was a live wire of its own, gave her a rhythm and held it, and Vivienne came the second time with her mouth open against Leo's jaw and a long unbroken vowel and her hand fisted in Leo's hair and her other hand, this time, on Leo's breast, because Leo had not caught it on the way up.

Leo eased out, slow.

Vivienne opened her eyes.

For one count she looked up at Leo in the lamp light with her hair everywhere on the pillow and her mouth slack and her hand still on Leo's breast. She held Leo's eyes. She had not held anyone's eyes, after, since she was twenty-seven.

Then she rolled her head on the pillow and smiled, small, private, and reached down between them and closed her hand around the base of the shaft and pulled Leo, gently, back an inch, and guided the shaft up between them, and leaned her head forward, and took it into her mouth.

Leo's breath went through her teeth.

Vivienne sucked the shaft once, slow, with her eyes up on Leo's face, tasting herself on the silicone. She drew off. She licked, once, up the underside. She let the shaft drop and lifted her mouth to Leo's mouth and kissed her, and Leo tasted her on Vivienne's tongue, and her breath left her.