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Vi was bleeding. She stood at the bottom of the narrow stairs that led up to the hole where she slept, trying to convince herself to climb. If she got up the stairs and inside, she could lie down. If she dropped here, she wouldn’t get back up and probably someone would rob her or kill her. So she’d climb, just as soon as her legs stopped feeling like water. And she was bleeding on top of it.
It didn’t surprise her. Came with the territory. Was hard to be sure, at first. The streetlights didn’t work anymore in this part of town, and when she touched her face and her fingers came away dark it could’ve been the paint under her eyes, or someone else’s blood. But someone else’s blood wouldn’t drip hot into her mouth and make her gag and spit into the street. She wiped at her aching nose with the back of her arm, smearing it red. Huh. She didn’t remember the guy getting a hit on her.
She was dizzy. Maybe if she sat down for a minute—
“Hey.” Someone kicked her boot. She hissed, looked up at the silhouette standing over her. She was on the ground. Funny how that went.
“Loris,” she groaned. “I told you to fuck off back Topside and leave me alone.”
A huff that might’ve been a laugh. “Try again, kid.”
Vi squinted up at the shape. Not big enough to be Loris. Too broad to be—anyone else. Half-cloaked, lopsided, leaning heavily to the left. She couldn’t make the pieces resolve into a person. But the voice—
Sevika.
Adrenaline shot through her, clean and hot like the first round of the night. The edges of the world sharpened and suddenly Sevika was as clear as full sunlight, leaning over her with a mean-ass grin. Vi was on her feet, arms up in front of her, muscles bunching to turn that face into blood and bruise just like the meat in the ring, but the ground tilted hard beneath her and Sevika moved thought-quick like a Shimmer mirage.
“Whoa,” Sevika said. Her hand gripped Vi’s shoulder in a way that could have been pushing her back and could have been holding her up. Vi didn’t look at her face to see which one it was. “Easy, killer.”
“Fuck off.” She shrugged off Sevika’s hand and tried to put space between them, but the brick wall was at her back. Sevika, of course, just kept looming.
“You passing out in the gutter? Bloodsport don’t pay enough for a bed?”
“Why do you give a shit?” Vi spat, glaring at her. She looked like she’d taken a knife to her hair. It curtained half her face, leaving her eyes in shadow, but Vi could still see the angry tick in her jaw.
“People ‘round here don’t like enforcers much. Maybe I don’t want some lowlife nobody to finish you off, now that you don’t have your Piltie girlfriend looking after you,” Sevika said. “Might make me jealous.”
She imagined putting her fist through Sevika’s teeth, but the world was going gray and soft again, and her skin prickled when she realized she wasn’t sure she could. Blood pounded in her ears from the fading jolt of fear and anger. She swayed, turned it into a lean against the brick and crossed her arms.
“Didn’t go so well for you last time. Sure you want round three?”
“You’re not the one with the pretty Hextech toys this time,” she said, flat and casual, like they were discussing the air quality. There was a quick, mechanical clicking from under her cloak when she rolled her shoulder.
Vi’s hands tensed, reflexive. But Sevika was right. What could Vi do, with no gauntlets and half-concussed in some back street of Zaun where nobody but scum like them ever went? Sevika could beat her into a red paste and no one would know or care, except maybe the bookie at the pit. And he’d only celebrate. People had finally learned to stop betting against her.
Her body relaxed, so sudden and complete that for a moment she thought she might slide back down the wall. She couldn’t do anything.
Vi reached up between them and, like lightning, Sevika’s hand was around her wrist. But Vi only grabbed at Sevika’s stupid new bangs and tugged, smiling a little, flaking the dried blood on her lip. “You look like shit.”
Sevika frowned down at her. The hand on Vi’s wrist ground the fine bones together in a way that gave everything a shimmering white outline, and Sevika didn’t even seem to know she was doing it. After a long moment, she said, “Check the mirror. You look like a junkyard mutt.”
“Better than Jinx’s bitch. Does she make you bark for treats?”
Sevika moved like a striking snake and that hand was around Vi’s throat, pressing her back into the wall. She came up on her toes. Her hands hung limply from Sevika’s forearm; she didn’t remember putting them there. She wheezed through the narrow pinhole that Sevika allowed her. Struggled faintly, pressing into her hand until even the pinhole closed and there was no air at all. The whole time she looked up into Sevika’s face to watch the anger smoldering there. Vi’s eyes fluttered.
Whatever Sevika saw in Vi’s expression made her grimace in disgust. She threw Vi away from her and Vi doubled over, arms crossed over her chest, choking and coughing as air rushed back into her lungs.
“You’re pathetic,” she heard Sevika say. “Wouldn’t even be worth it.”
Vi coughed again. Spit onto the ground. All night she’d been heavy, stupid. That’s how it was these days. A few electric moments in the pit, perfect and alive and unbeatable, and then the long, slow hours of the comedown like wading through thick mud. She’d let Sevika throw her around and been too slow to react. But now she was buzzing, almost floating, and she lunged before Sevika could bite off the last syllable of worth it.
The shock in Sevika’s eyes when Vi crushed their mouths together felt good, the split second thrill before a blow connected. There was a held breath where Sevika didn’t react at all. When she pushed firmly at Vi’s chest, Vi bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Sevika cursed, grabbed the collar of Vi’s jacket, and flung her away like a misbehaving dog. Vi flew back into the wall again. The impact hurt and she flexed her shoulders to feel the broad, deep ache.
Sevika licked her bloodied lip and narrowed her eyes. Vi grinned back, panting.
“You try that again,” Sevika said, “and we’ll have a problem.”
“Yes, sir,” Vi drawled.
Sevika’s thoughtful scowl only deepened. “You good?”
“Um,” Vi hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“Are you,” Sevika repeated, “good?”
Vi remembered her bloody nose, and the black eye Sevika probably couldn’t see under the smeared paint, and the myriad other bruises that would quickly become apparent if this went how Vi thought—hoped—it might.
“Yeah,” she said. “I won. I always win.”
Sevika grunted in frustration. “Are you drunk?”
Oh, come on. “I don’t drink before a fight.”
Sevika made an exaggerated show of looking at her wrist, where there was no watch. “Could be wrong, but I think this counts as after.”
Vi startled herself by laughing. It came out choked and wet, and hurt in some obscure way. Sevika’s expression didn’t flicker. She stared at Vi expectantly.
Vi dragged her tongue along her teeth. She didn’t know if the copper taste that lingered there came from her or Sevika. “I’m good.”
“Good.” Sevika turned and started to walk away. “Come on.”
“What?” Vi said. She jerked her chin toward the staircase. “My place is right here.”
Sevika barely glanced at the door halfway up the crumbling wall. “Uh-uh. I don’t want fleas. Mine or nowhere.”
Vi swayed a little, still lightheaded, still exhausted, and knew she would follow.
---
It felt like Sevika walked them across half the undercity, until Vi looked up and realized they were outside Babette’s. She balked, her ears burning, and then was ashamed at herself. Babette had never been anything but good to her and Powder, but the memory of the last time she’d been here and the weight of what she intended to do tonight blended into a perfect cocktail of shame that slowed her down as they approached.
Sevika threw a look over her shoulder and turned when she saw Vi wasn’t following. “What?” she said, dismissively. “Don’t tell me you’re shy.”
It wasn’t that. Not exactly. She didn’t want the girls inside to see her with Sevika, sure. She didn’t really want anyone seeing her with Sevika. But more than that, she didn’t want to be seen as one of Sevika’s girls. She’d had a rotating cast of them on her arm when Vi was a kid, while Vi sat at the bar in the Last Drop and snuck looks at the loud, broad woman who’d run with Vander’s crew. The girls had been beautiful with their brightly painted lips and nails that came to points, but that wasn’t her.
“I’m not parading you through there,” Sevika said, reading Vi’s hesitation on her face. “My room’s around back. The girls get a little extra protection, and I get a roof. That all right with you?” she added, like a challenge.
Vi shrugged, hands buried in her pockets, but fell back in behind Sevika, skirting the light that poured out of the brothel’s windows. It would have to be.
In the end, it was just another shitty flat only a little bigger than Vi’s and mostly empty, like a place that didn’t see much use. But there was a lock on the door, a real bed inside and, she had to admit, it was clean.
“Gimme a minute,” Sevika grumbled, pulling off her cloak to reveal the monstrous contraption underneath. It was barely an arm; it looked to Vi like a big cartoon boxing glove with teeth. Sevika started turning random knobs on it, little jets of steam hissing out. “Gotta get rid of this. It weighs a ton.”
“Whatever,” Vi mumbled. Now that she was here, inside a small locked room with Sevika of all people, a Sevika who was actively disarming herself, she didn’t know what to do. The night—and her life and the whole fucking world—was taking a shape she didn’t recognize. It would be easy to leave. She didn’t think Sevika would stop her.
“Take those boots off.”
Vi wrinkled her nose. “And if I don’t?”
Sevika looked back over her shoulder, expression bored as she loosened the straps holding the new arm to her body. “Then you can clean the floor.”
Vi swallowed. She didn’t have to do shit. She could leave. But when Sevika turned away again, she knelt to untie her boots and kicked them into a corner.
“And wash your face,” Sevika added, jerking her head toward the tiny bathroom.
Vi growled, but didn’t argue. She shrugged out of her jacket, threw it on top of her boots, and stomped over to the sink. Her reflection judged her silently from the mirror. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She pushed away everything but the relief of the cool water, the petty joy of leaving black stains on one of Sevika’s threadbare towels, let herself feel the anticipation humming in her skull.
There was a heavy thump from the other room that Vi felt through the soles of her feet. When she left the bathroom, damp and cold in only her pants and chest wraps, Sevika was down one arm and rolling her shoulders as though limbering for a fight. The arm itself sat propped in a corner of the room. It looked heavy and impractical, so large that if Vi was the one with the missing arm it would have dragged on the ground if she tried to wield it. And it was covered in splashes of bright neon paint. Vi’s eyes slid off it. Found Sevika again, who turned to regard her with a heavy-lidded, unimpressed expression. She looked smaller without it, and somehow more dangerous. She didn’t need that thing to be a weapon. Separate from Sevika, the arm was a ridiculous toy. Separate from the arm, Sevika was Sevika.
“Come,” Sevika said.
Heat throbbed in Vi’s gut. She ground her teeth and didn’t move.
Sevika quirked an eyebrow. “This was your idea, brat. Do what I say and you get what you want. Or piss off and don’t waste my time. Now,” she pointed at the floor in front of her, “come.”
Fuck.
She went.
“Hm,” Sevika hummed appraisingly as Vi stopped in front of her and glared up into her smug fucking face. “Good. Now kneel.”
“Sevika…” Vi said, and was horrified when it came out a whine.
“Kneel.”
Vi knelt.
Sevika laughed once, a cruel humorless sound. She put her hand in Vi’s hair and tugged until Vi was forced to look up the length of her body. There was hunger in her eyes. She wrenched her head back just a little more until Vi hissed in pain, and Sevika grinned. “Wow,” she said. “What if I told you to bark for me?”
Vi snarled to hide the way her whole body flushed at the thought. “Can you shut the fuck up and let me eat you out already?”
Sevika laughed again, genuine and just as mean. Maybe that’s just what her laugh sounded like. “Whatever you say,” she said, and let go of Vi so she could unfasten her belt.
Vi dropped her head forward and closed her eyes, breathed slowly through her nose. Her scalp hurt and her nose hurt, her knees already ached, she was embarrassingly wet, and she just wanted to get on with it. It was taking too fucking long. Sevika draw her belt free and stepped out of her pants in slow motion. Vi heard the dull sound of clothes hitting the floor, and then for an eternity, nothing happened. She realized too late that it really was taking too fucking long. That Sevika was being a dick, making her wait. Teasing her. When Vi looked back up, she stood entirely unhurried, thumb tucked into the waist of her briefs where a trail of dark hair climbed toward her navel.
“Say it again,” Sevika said.
“Let me eat you out,” Vi said, strained.
In one quick motion that really drove home how much of a dick she was being, she pulled off the briefs and flung them away, and then her hand was back in Vi’s hair with a perfect burst of pain that made Vi’s eyelids droop. She was so close to Sevika’s cunt that she could smell how much Sevika wanted her, but when she leaned forward, Sevika’s hand kept her in place.
“This what you want?” Sevika asked.
“Yes.” Yes, yes, this was what she wanted. She wanted Sevika to use her and she wanted to be useful, a mouth, a hole, a chewtoy, anything other than a girl on her knees in the bedroom of a woman she hated, like exactly the worst kind of undercity trash she’d always been afraid of being.
Sevika tightened her grip. “Yes what?”
“Yes, sir,” she gasped with no hesitation. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t hurt her. She understood the game they were playing. Sevika wanted to win, without seeming to realize Vi had already lost.
“Good dog,” Sevika said, and pulled Vi into her before she could protest. Vi didn’t even know if she wanted to. Her world narrowed to the wet heat between Sevika’s thighs, the overwhelming animal smell of her, the taste of salt and sweat when Vi opened her cunt with her tongue.
She heard Sevika sigh above her. “Watch those fucking teeth this time,” she said, voice tight, cupping the back of Vi’s head in a way that was almost gentle.
Vi groaned and laved her tongue up the length of Sevika’s cunt, dragging the flat of it over her clit. She half-expected Sevika to laugh at her and just pull her face where she wanted it, but she didn’t have to. Somehow Vi knew. She sank into her own body like she did before a match and every movement, every tug and thrust and press, was transparent to her, a constant stream of information transmitted through her skin, and all she had to do was react.
When Sevika bucked into her face, she opened her mouth and let Sevika move against her. When Sevika hissed and pulled her in hard enough that her nose throbbed and her eyes watered, she knew to go faster. And when Sevika said, low and urgent, “Two fingers. Press, don’t thrust,” Vi obeyed unthinkingly, sinking into Sevika with a moan, and felt Sevika’s answering “Fuck” as a hot pulse down her spine.
Sevika came in Vi’s hand with a growl. Vi stayed inside her while she rode it out, eyes closed, tongue fluttering against her clit. She could’ve stayed there forever, basking in the feeling of doing something right. Of being good at something that didn’t involve pain. She could take that with her and jerk off and call it one small win among the rising tide of her failures.
Of course, Sevika didn’t let her enjoy it for very long. As soon as she’d had enough, she dragged Vi back by the roots of her hair so roughly that it sent Vi sprawling backward on the floor.
“What the fuck, man?” Vi said, struggling up onto her elbows. The rest of the world flooded back in with ruthless clarity. Her knees sounded little alarms of pain as they extended. The room was too bright and every part of her body throbbed to the beat of her heart. She had a base urge to hide somewhere small and dark, another competing urge to tear at Sevika until she drew blood and proved she was stronger. She never found out which would have won. The anger died in her, went still and quiet, when she looked up at Sevika flushed dark with pleasure, a triumphant predator’s smile splitting her face.
“Shit,” Sevika panted. She rolled her neck like a winning prizefighter while Vi blinked stupidly up at her. There was an abbreviated twitch in the muscles of her arm that, for an instant, made Vi think Sevika was going to reach down and help her up. She scowled at the thought. Tore her gaze away and got her feet under her with the hard-earned ease of practice; as long as you got back up, the fight wasn’t over. She didn’t need Sevika’s help. What she needed was to find somewhere to take care of the insistent ache between her thighs and then pass out for ten hours.
“Okay,” Sevika said once she’d caught her breath. “Get on the bed.”
Vi’s head jerked up. “What?”
“I stutter?”
“No, I just,” Vi began. Sevika started unbuttoning her shirt without fanfare, revealing one tit and the complex assemblage of metal that made up half her chest and back that she needed to anchor the heavy prosthetic to her body. Vi breathed out slowly. “I just thought—”
“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” Sevika said, shrugging off what remained of her clothes. “Get on the bed.”
Still Vi hesitated, as if she wasn’t already deep into enemy territory with the taste of Sevika’s cunt in her mouth. Sevika rolled her eyes and something about the way she stood changed, just a little, a shift in her weight that made her less an imperious undercity commander and more of a human being, like someone Vi might’ve laughed with in a bar in a world where everything hadn’t gone so wrong. “Kid, if I wanted to do anything worse than fuck you, I’d’ve done it by now.”
“Right,” Vi said, unbalanced, unsure, wanting. “Okay.”
She tried to slip past Sevika, but the other woman blocked her. Before Vi could ask what her fucking problem was, she felt two of Sevika’s fingers tug inquiringly at the bandages wrapped tightly around her chest. “Take this off,” she said. No change in inflection, but Vi understood it to be the first real question Sevika had asked her since they walked into the room, the same way she’d seen the shift from predator to person in shape of her body.
Vi jerked away from the touch. Unwrapped herself as quickly as possible and flung herself onto the bed without a glance in Sevika’s direction. The sheets were cool against her flushed, bare skin and she lay there, eyes closed, and inhaled deeply to stretch the ache from her ribs.
The bed dipped under Sevika’s weight and she settled firmly on Vi’s hips. When Vi opened her eyes, the Sevika straddling her was the cruel mask again. Knowing that it was a mask made her feel inexplicably better and worse, but if this Sevika could see that on her face, she didn’t care. She just slid an appreciative hand up Vi’s abs to the soft skin beneath her breasts and said, “Are you going to behave?”
Vi’s stomach knotted. “Are you going to make me?”
The retort sounded thin even to her. Sevika bared her teeth in a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I am.”
Sevika, with the languid confidence of a street cat, took one of Vi’s wrists in her hand and dragged up to press it firmly into the mattress above Vi’s head. “These”—Vi obediently followed with her other hand, fingers flexing—“stay right here. If you move before I say you can, I’ll fuck you ‘til you cry and you won’t be able to look at your Piltie princess without thinking about me.”
Vi’s jaw clenched as a memory of pain flickered in her gut. She imagined Caitlyn seeing her like this and for a moment the disgusted curl of her lip was reality and Sevika the ghost. She didn’t get it; there was no Piltover for her anymore, just like without Vander and Powder there was no Zaun. The phantom Caitlyn turned her face away and there was just Vi, alone.
All she said was, “Shut up.”
“Or what? Still think you’d win round three?”
Vi jackknifed off the bed, pulling at the grip Sevika had on her arms, arching her back, hoping to throw them both to the floor. But between Sevika sitting on her thighs and leaning her whole weight onto Vi’s crossed wrists, neither of them went anywhere. She struggled fruitlessly against the pin, straining until her shoulders burned. Sevika pressed down harder still, bent so far over that her bangs brushed Vi’s forehead, and ground the bones in her wrists against each other until Vi gave a bitten off cry of pain.
Vi had never been big, but she was strong and, more than that, she understood her body. She understood what it was capable of. There was no separation between her and what her body could do, how much pain it could take or blood it could lose, the way her muscles tensed for a fight, the way they moved to climb above the city where she could imagine how sunlight might feel. When there was nothing else, she trusted her body to do what she needed it to do. She’d won fights and lost them, but she couldn’t remember ever feeling this small. Even as a stupid kid in Stillwater, it hadn’t felt like this.
She could throw her skull into Sevika’s face, break her nose. If this was a fight, she would have.
Vi didn’t want to fight anymore.
“Good,” Sevika said the moment Vi collapsed back onto the bed. She leant up and away from her, a slow, controlled movement that Vi appreciated distantly, and returned her palm to lay flat against Vi’s stomach. Vi’s wrists throbbed dull and hot with the absence of pressure. She didn’t move.
There was a calculating gleam in Sevika’s eye when she added, “Good boy.”
Vi made a small, wounded noise in her throat. Her body betrayed her again, flushing deep red from her ears all the way down her neck and chest. Sevika radiated smug satisfaction, like she’d won some sort of prize. She let the moment hang, anticipating another burst of defiance that she could punish. Vi didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter. She could say don’t or she could say please and it wouldn’t change anything that was about to happen. Any protest she made Sevika would know to be a lie and that would be worse.
With no further pretense, Sevika thumbed open the button on Vi’s fly. Vi gathered herself enough to say, “I could—”
“You stay where I put you.”
Vi took a ragged breath and watched, helpless, as Sevika rolled off her and began to drag Vi’s pants and boxers off by degrees. Her arms trembled with the strain of not moving. The slow reveal, the back and forth pull of one side then the other, the quick, efficient brush of Sevika’s knuckles against her thighs, made Vi feel like a toy. By the time Sevika threw her pants onto the floor, Vi was as tense and charged as a coil of copper wire. When Sevika roughly palmed her cunt, a whine broke from her chest and she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
Sevika tutted mockingly. “Desperate thing.” She dragged one finger through her slick heat and Vi shuddered. “You want me to fuck you?”
“Sevika,” Vi groaned.
“Answer me.”
“Yes, okay, fuck. I want you to fuck me.”
That mean, hoarse laugh. “Come on, then.”
“What—” Before she could finish, Sevika stepped away, grabbed her under one knee, and pulled her down the bed until her ass was nearly hanging off the edge. Vi was still processing the effortless way she’d been manhandled when Sevika dropped smoothly to her knees and threw one of Vi’s legs over her abbreviated shoulder. As if in answer to a question on Vi’s face, Sevika smirked and said, “Need leverage to do it right.”
Vi’s eyes lingered on the metal implants and the place where Sevika’s arm should have been. She had a sudden, horrible urge to apologize, to confess that if she had only been faster or smarter maybe that night could have gone differently. Maybe neither of them would be broken. Then Sevika touched her clit and Vi sucked in a breath and let her head fall back.
Sevika wasn’t gentle. She ground her thumb against Vi’s clit and that was too much, too soon. Her body wanted to writhe away from it, so intense it was indistinguishable from pain. That made it easy to stay still the way Sevika wanted her to. She dug her heel into Sevika’s back, grit her teeth, and tried not to make any of the embarrassing noises that were clawing at her throat. A battle she lost when Sevika pressed lightly at her hole, not even inside, and Vi bucked hard off the bed with a sound that was almost a snarl.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, arms straining above her head as she white-knuckled her own wrist. Sevika toyed with her. Circled her entrance, slicked up her fingers, didn’t press deeper and didn’t pull away. Gave her exactly enough pressure to make Vi think she might get what she wanted and kept her there. Vi let out a high, frustrated whine. Fuck Sevika for making her wait, smug evil bastard, Vi should’ve kicked her ass earlier, should kick her ass now, but she couldn’t, she had to stay—
A bright, bruising pain in her thigh made her gasp. She wrenched her head up to see Sevika’s teeth buried in her flesh. She waited until Vi met her eyes, then released and said, “Look at me, pretty boy.”
She craned her neck and watched Sevika slide into her slow and inexorable, first with one finger and then, with a look of satisfaction, with two. Her fingers were broad, but she filled Vi without edging into pain. Just sensation so all-consuming that every nerve in Vi’s body orbited the place Sevika rested inside her. She’d never been full like this before.
And she wasn’t the only one watching. Sevika’s eyes roved Vi’s face hungrily and whatever she saw there must have been enough for her. “Good,” she grunted, and Vi let her head drop as Sevika finally started to move.
Sevika fucked her slow and hard and deep. The picture of control, her rhythm unbroken, her fingers curved at the precise angle to make Vi gasp. Vi, in comparison, felt deranged. She thrashed her hips mindlessly, trying to take Sevika deeper, faster, trying to fill some part of her that still cried out with need, but it didn’t matter. She moved when Sevika moved her and Sevika took her apart at her own pace. The muscles in her back flexed under Vi’s heel as she drove into her like a piston. Vi could hear her own cunt. The wet sound of Sevika moving in her, the high stuttering whine each thrust forced out of her, all of it was mortifying.
“Oh, you needed this bad,” Sevika said. Unaffected, except for a faint hint of exertion in her voice.
She did, she did, she needed to come, the curl and press of Sevika’s fingers set off bursts of white behind her eyes, but she was up against a wall. She couldn’t reach it. “Fuck,” she gasped, “fuck, please, please.”
“Slut,” Sevika said appreciatively, and pressed her mouth against Vi.
“Oh fuck,” Vi choked. She tensed in a full-body flinch, thighs snapping closed around Sevika’s head, and Sevika groaned into her. The first drag of Sevika’s tongue hot and rough against her clit had her barreling toward release like the wall was never there. The barest brush of teeth and she was gone.
Pleasure rushed through her like a chemical fire, burned up all the oxygen in her brain until she arced up off the bed with the wordless cry. Her limbs shook, out of her control, she curled into herself instinctively, the way she would to protect the soft parts of her body from an attack. It didn’t help. Sevika was already past her defenses. The onslaught went on forever, Sevika moving slowly inside her, until Vi slumped bent nearly double over Sevika’s head, heaving.
Sevika let her suck in a few breaths, then gave Vi’s clit one mean lash with her tongue—Vi flinched—before pulling out.
“You didn’t listen,” she said.
“Huh?” Vi said. It took her a few blurry seconds to realize her hands were not where they were supposed to be: one was fisted at the back of Sevika’s head, the other digging angry red lines into her shoulder. She couldn’t remember exactly what that meant, but it could only be bad. “Oh.”
“Warned you.” Sevika removed herself from Vi’s trembling limbs. Her chin was shiny with come, and Vi had to turn her face away. “Bad dogs get punished.”
She stood up and away from her without further explanation. The distance left her feeling cold and exposed. She squirmed on the sheets, but Sevika hadn’t told her to move. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t meant to disobey. She didn’t fully understand what Sevika meant to do until she watched her open a drawer in the bare dresser that was her only other piece of furniture and draw out a tangle of leather straps and something that was unmistakably a cock. The vague dread in Vi’s gut sharpened into fear. She watched wide-eyed as Sevika stepped into the harness and pulled the straps on one side tight to her skin. She came back to Vi with only half the buckles done and held out the cock expectantly.
“Put that in.”
Vi almost choked on her tongue. “What?”
Sevika rolled her eyes. “Put my cock through the ring.”
“Oh,” she said again, glancing down at the metal ring to hide her reaction to my cock. She struggled to sit up, her nerves still firing in random, twitchy bursts, and took the strap-on from Sevika’s outstretched hand. The weight of it surprised her, but she didn’t know if she expected it to be heavier or lighter. It was plain, matte black, firm without being hard, and didn’t look so shockingly big once she was holding it. She turned it over in her hand like it was an interesting piece of junk instead of something that would be inside her soon.
Sevika stood just outside the bracket of Vi’s knees. She made an impatient noise in her throat, and Vi remembered she was meant to be doing something. She took hold of the front of the harness tentatively, trying not to let her knuckles touch the bare skin underneath, but it was quickly apparent she couldn’t do this without touching Sevika, and anyway she’d literally had her mouth on her cunt, so what did it matter? Frustrated with herself, Vi slid the cock through the ring. The back of her hand brushed something wet and fuck her, Sevika was soaked. As soon as the cock was through, Vi leaned away hard like she’d been burned, almost falling back onto the bed.
Sevika tutted, twisted her hips in Vi’s direction. “Now tighten those straps for me, sweetheart,” she said, the word sharp-edged like an insult.
A surge of anger brought her back a little. The words “do it yourself” were on her tongue when she realized the buckles were on Sevika’s left hip. Fuming, embarrassed, Vi reached toward her and secured them with two quick tugs.
“That’s a good boy,” Sevika said.
Fuck you, Vi thought on reflex. But she’d have to be dead not to appreciate the way the leather crossing her dark skin emphasized the shape of her thighs and ass. Her fear sank slowly into the murky swamp of her desire and humiliation until it was only a vast, shadowy shape below the surface. The cock jutting from Sevika’s hips should have been ridiculous, but it wasn’t. Vi wanted to touch it again, to grab it and pull Sevika off balance, to see the mask slip again and make her look even half as stupid as Vi felt right now.
“First the arm and now this?” Vi asked, trying not to sound breathless. “Can’t handle me yourself, huh?”
Sevika refused to be goaded. “You’re going to take it,” Sevika said simply, “and you’ll like it.” Someone else might have made it a threat, but from Sevika it was a statement of fact. She took a step forward, letting the cock rest on Vi’s belly. The dull, rubbery material was cool against her skin, but Sevika’s hand on her thigh was warm.
Vi huffed in irritation. “Just do it already.”
“Hm,” Sevika considered. “No.”
“Fucking why.”
Sevika slapped her thigh, more sound than pain. “Hand and knees.”
Vi looked at her incredulously.
“You heard me, pup.” Vi clenched her jaw against a shiver and, from her smirk, Sevika saw it. “Hands and knees.”
Vi rolled over. She was just a body following orders, the way a fist answered to the brain, and the fist didn’t make decisions. The fist didn’t want the impact so badly it made her sick.
She crawled up the bed and Sevika knelt behind her, a wall of muscle against the back of her thighs. The cock touched her lightly, but that’s all. Sevika pressed close behind Vi until the heat of her skin was everywhere. Between one heartbeat and the next, Vi’s fear roared back. There was so much more of Sevika touching her this way. When was the last time another person had been this close to her and one of them didn’t come away beaten or dead? Regret and anger welled up hot in her throat and she dropped her head between her shoulders as though anticipating a blow.
A blow that didn’t come. Sevika ran her broad hand up the bunched muscles in Vi’s back and, with unexpected lightness, trailed her fingers along Vi’s shoulder blade. It took Vi a few deep breaths to understand Sevika was tracing her tattoo. She rolled her shoulder with a grunt. In response, Sevika pinched her ribs.
Vi yelped. “You are such a fucking bitch.”
“Think you’re the bitch in this situation”, Sevika said. She didn’t give Vi a chance to dispute that before her fingers were back in her cunt, first two, then three, assessing. Vi let out a strangled ah. Sevika murmured, “Yeah, you’ll take it.”
Sevika entered her in one smooth, unrelenting press. In some submerged part of her mind, Vi expected it to hurt, wanted it to hurt, but the reality was worse than that. The hot-cold flush of being stretched, the little shellshocked sob she couldn’t bite back, even the weight of Sevika’s palm against her spine, it all felt too good. Her vision blurred with tears. She dropped her head and blinked them back. I’ll fuck you ‘til you cry. But Vi wouldn’t, not being fucked on her knees like a dog, not for her.
Sevika bottomed out with a groan. “Took me so good,” she said, indulgently. Vi could hear the stupid grin on her face. It made her want to turn around and bite it off. “All worried for nothing.”
“Fuck y—” Sevika withdrew partway and snapped her hips forward. Vi’s voice broke around a moan. “Oh fuck. Fuck me.”
“Planning on it.” She grabbed Vi’s hip and dragged her back onto her cock, but slowly, like she was an expensive toy she didn’t want to break. Vi balled her fists into the sheets and growled, driving herself back hard, but Sevika drew away from her before she got what she wanted, the tip barely inside her.
“I f–fucking hate you,” Vi said through clenched teeth.
“Sure sounds like it,” Sevika said. “Let me handle this, huh?”
When Sevika filled her properly, all at once, somehow Vi wasn’t expecting it. She made some kind of horrible noise and her elbows buckled, nearly dropping her face-first into the mattress. But Sevika wrapped her arm around Vi’s torso, draped herself over her back, and suddenly Vi was holding both of them up. If she wanted to get fucked, she’d need to be the one to keep them that way.
She locked her elbows defiantly. Both of them rocked forward like one heaving animal as Sevika drove her hips against Vi. She didn’t have enough air to speak, to think, but Sevika valiantly made up the difference. She panted hot and damp against Vi’s back, lips brushing the hard lines of muscle as she spoke into Vi’s skin. Did this woman not need to fucking breathe?
“That’s it, puppy, take my cock. Feel good? I know you need it, puppy, let me hear you.” Vi’s helpless whimpers with every thrust weren’t enough for her, apparently. Her hand crept up Vi’s chest and rolled a nipple hard between her fingers until Vi wailed. “Fuck yes, that’s it. Good boy.”
Vi was all sensation. Not just the cock heavy inside her, but the smooth sheets wrapped around her fingers, the wet chill on the inside of her thighs, Sevika’s sweat-slick skin against hers. She could feel Sevika’s growled taunts as vibration in her chest. She could feel Sevika’s heartbeat. It was too much. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it forever. She never wanted to think about anything but fuck and good and puppy ever again.
She needed more. She dropped heavily to one elbow—it interrupted Sevika’s rhythm and she whined desperately—and shoved a hand between her legs. Electricity zipped up her spine at the first uncoordinated brush of fingers against her swollen clit. She pressed her forehead into the back of her fist, gasping, throwing herself into Sevika. She was close, if she could just—
A low, dangerous voice in her ear. “I said, let me handle it.”
Sevika pulled herself up off Vi’s back and slid her fingers under Vi’s grasping hand, replacing her frantic, trembling touch with firm pressure. “Oh,” Vi whimpered. The only sound she could manage. “Oh.” Turned her head, smearing spit along her arm, just enough to see the tireless shape of Sevika through the fall of her hair. Her ribcage shivered around a hollow ache in her chest. She was going to shatter. She was going to die.
“That’s it,” Sevika murmured above her. “Come on, Vi, come for me.”
She didn’t know what changed. One second she was going to come and the next it was gone, disintegrating in her grasp, the pleasure curdling into pain. “Stop,” she gasped. Pushed weakly at Sevika’s arm. “Stop, stop.” She felt like someone had wired all her nerves in backward, like the scream of overstressed metal before the fracture. Sevika immediately let her go and Vi crawled out of reach, thinking the pain would stop, but being empty was worse. It reverberated through her like a bell. She caught a glimpse of Sevika’s face, saw concern there, and closed her eyes.
“No,” Vi groaned. She pressed the side of her palm between her legs to relieve the ache. Nothing but a pathetic, useless animal. She couldn’t even fuck up right.
“Kid.” Sevika’s voice was closer than she expected. Vi opened her eyes to find she’d come around the bed and sat beside her. The cock stood out from her hips, luridly wet. “Use your words.”
But Vi couldn’t. Vi didn’t know what she wanted. Her body ached and her head was full of wool and she didn’t want Sevika to touch her, or maybe she did, but knew she shouldn’t. She wanted Caitlyn, and shouldn’t want that either. She wanted to fight until someone beat her unconscious. She wanted to come. She wanted to go home. “Please,” she said.
Sevika waited for more and sighed when there was none. After an interminable span of time, she turned to rest her back against the headboard, not quite touching Vi, her hand against one thigh. Her fingers tapped her leg restlessly, but otherwise she was still. “C’mere.” There was something careful about her tone that made Vi want to disappear. “It’ll be easier this way.”
Easier. Nothing about this had been easy. Vi’s gaze darted between Sevika’s face, her cock soaked all the way down to her bush, her fidgeting hand. Her eyes rounded in understanding so unexpected it distracted her from the dull roar in her head. Sevika hadn’t moved any closer, but their proximity seemed suddenly intimate, even more than having Sevika’s hand in her cunt.
“Round three,” Sevika said, head angled toward her like an invitation. “I’ve got a reputation to think about.”
Like she’d be doing Sevika a favor. Vi’s laugh sounded like a sob. It was a bad idea, but a different kind of bad than she’d expected. She thought she’d get fucked hard and thrown out onto the street, about as personal as a mugging. She could’ve handled that. There was something else happening here, something more dangerous. But she needed to come so badly it hurt and, she realized with sinking despair, her whole body ached to feel Sevika against her skin again.
When had she ever made the right decision?
Vi straddled Sevika’s lap, legs spread across her broad thighs. The cock rested against her belly like a warning.
Sevika hummed in acknowledgement. She dragged her fingers over Vi’s scalp and gripped her hair, tightening her hold by degrees. Vi sighed. Let things go hazy again. Let Sevika decide. Heat burned under her skin, dripping down her neck and shoulders like wax.
“Good puppy. Now, up.” Sevika pulled her hair and forced Vi up onto her knees. She let the head of her cock rest at Vi’s entrance and Vi squirmed, impatient. “Ah, ah,” Sevika chided, and held her there, trembling, until Vi stilled. “That’s it. And sit.”
Sevika released her. Vi sank down onto her cock almost silently, just a soft exhalation when she settled in Sevika’s lap, full again. Vi put her hands on Sevika’s shoulders. Couldn’t look her in the eye. They were so close. Sevika’s breath ghosted against her lips. She waited, uncertain, breathing in the smell of sweat and hot metal, until Sevika pointedly rolled her hips. Vi hissed, swollen and oversensitive.
“Work for it, puppy,” Sevika said. “Daddy’s tired.”
Work for it. She could do that. Vi nodded wordlessly, tightened her grip on Sevika’s shoulders, and started to grind. Unsteady at first, but Sevika spread her palm against the small of Vi’s back, holding her in place. She felt Sevika’s eyes on her. Knew what she must look like. Filthy, desperate thing. Can’t get off without help. Can’t get fucked without breaking down. A dog in heat rutting against the nearest warm body. But it was so good. Everything felt good. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve it.
Sevika bucked up into her, once, hard. Answered Vi’s gasp with a low groan. Vi lost her train of thought, wiped out in a burst of pleasant static, and what replaced it was Oh. This was getting Sevika off.
“Fuck,” Sevika growled in her ear. She pulled Vi in until Vi’s arms were draped around her neck, her panting mouth against the curve of Sevika’s shoulder. Met every shaky jerk of Vi’s hips with her own thrust. “Fuck yourself on my cock, puppy.”
She was good. She did as she was told. Pulled herself onto her knees to drop down, again and again, crying out with every thrust. The pleasure didn’t build slowly. Vi’d been too close before, was too sensitive now. But it was broad and all-consuming, a bonfire expanding from the throbbing heat between her thighs, raging up her chest and throat, burning behind her eyes. Sevika’s palm on her back was like a brand. “Please, please, please,” she begged. “‘Vika, need you, please.”
“Touch yourself.”
She sobbed against Sevika’s neck. Dragged her fingers against her clit, nothing more than clumsy pressure, but she was so far gone it didn’t matter. She arched her back, trapped between Sevika's chest and her fingertips pressing bruises into her skin, and finally, finally plummeted over the edge. The orgasm ripped through her like an explosion, a demolition. Too much to hold in her body. She bit deep into the taut muscle of Sevika’s neck and howled her climax into her flesh. Sevika stiffened, hips twitching into her, and Vi shuddered again, pleasure redoubling its grip and dragging her deeper, because oh shit, that was Sevika coming inside her.
Sevika had the grace not to move until Vi’s legs stopped shaking and the storm receded enough for her to think. She was a series of distant, floating fragments struggling to assemble themselves. She observed her body collapsed against Sevika’s chest with no particular emotion. The metal socket of her shoulder pressed uncomfortably into her armpit. There was something, some flicker of feeling when Sevika tightened a possessive arm around her waist, that died when Vi tried to examine it. With dawning sickness, she realized her face and Sevika’s shoulder were wet with spit and tears. With any luck, Sevika would just think she’d slobbered on her, but there was no way to hide her hitching, overwhelmed breaths. She tried to control herself, failed. Shame crept up her neck.
Sevika shifted slightly underneath her, pulling a pained noise out of Vi, and settled again with a vague noise of apology. “You’re all right,” she murmured, sleepy and satisfied as a well-fed cat. “Good boy. You were perfect.”
Vi grimaced. In the sweaty aftermath, everything felt thin and insincere. She fought down a sense of embarrassed confusion, like she’d woken up somewhere with no memory of how she got there. With difficulty, she pulled herself off Sevika without any more pitiful noises and dropped to the mattress with her back to her. Curled up on her side to make herself less of a target.
“Don’t touch me,” she said thickly. Like she could take it back.
The bed dipped and Vi flinched, but it was just Sevika getting up. That was it then. Vi made a weak attempt to follow, but Sevika said, “Stay.” Vi hesitated, confused by the change in her tone, the missing edge of command. Sevika didn’t seem to notice. She flung the stained, rucked up sheet away dismissively and a corner of it fell across Vi’s naked legs. “Just taking a piss.”
There was a gentle ringing of metal on metal and when Sevika crossed the room Vi could see the harness hanging from her hand. She averted her eyes, like catching a glimpse of Sevika’s bare ass would be the worst thing she’d done today.
Just as Sevika reached the bathroom door, Vi blurted, “Why?”
Sevika stopped, turned back toward her.
“Why did you…” Vi didn’t know what to call it. She saw Sevika’s face in the alley again, the frustration and disgust, and didn’t know how to square that with—whatever this had been.
Sevika frowned and for a long moment Vi didn’t think she would answer. “Seemed a waste,” was all she said. Then she disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door.
A few minutes later Vi heard the stuttering hiss of the shower coming on and let the sound lull her into a sense of unreality, alone in Sevika’s bed. She was exhausted. But not bleeding and passing out in the street exhausted. She thought if she fell asleep here, she would wake up in the morning pleasantly bruised and nothing more. Sevika wouldn’t hurt her. The thought surprised her, didn’t fit easily in her head. But she’d said it already: if she wanted to she would have, and Vi had given her plenty of opportunity. She didn’t even think Sevika would turn her out, though she couldn’t say why.
Nausea crawled up her throat.
She was off the bed before she could talk herself out of it. The fact that she wanted to talk herself out of it probably meant there was something wrong with her. She fumbled on her pants, shrugged on her jacket without bothering with the wraps. She couldn’t stay. She wasn’t someone who stayed. The room contracted around her. She needed to get out, get back to her own room and the thin pallet she called a bed. Be ready for her fight tomorrow where, if she was lucky, some punk would beat her memory of tonight into a curious blur, like so many other nights.
The neon face on Sevika’s prosthetic leered at her as she shoved on her boots. She swallowed a bitter laugh. She’d lost. No matter how bad it got, she still invented brand new ways to fuck up.
She was gone before the hot water ran out.