“Fucking wonderful! Birthday and Christmas and your Bat-Mitzvah, rolled into one!” She slugged another long draught of champagne, passed the bottle.
Iceweasel looked around her cell-like room, her meager things, the normcore clothing Nadie brought, generic interface surfaces that she’d avoided personalizing lest she inadvertently create a fingerprintable element. Their local storage held the books she’d read, but she could replace those easily enough. She wanted to walk away from all of it. Even when she realized their encrypted storage contained the notes she’d made during the long solitude, she didn’t give a shit. Those were Missioncreep’s notes, made by a stranger receding in her rearview.
She drank from the bottle. Champagne didn’t taste sweet and sickly this time. It tasted wonderful. This must be what other people felt when they drank champagne—power and freedom, the sense of being beholden to none save those of your choosing. That was why it tasted bad before—it symbolized her captivity to Redwaterness. Now it was the opposite. She’d probably never taste it again, she hoped she’d never taste it again. She guzzled more, let it run sticky over her chin and down her throat.
Nadie sat on the end of her bed, small white teeth, square face, ice-blue eyes, the cords of her neck and the sinews of her muscled arms standing out, cheeks flushed, wildness in her eyes. On impulse, Iceweasel reached out and Nadie took her hand. Her palm was hard with callous, strong as teak. Iceweasel felt her pulse throb. She thought of Gretyl. Thinking of Gretyl should make her want to go, to resist the impulse that had hold of her, but thinking of Gretyl made her want to—
She leaned in. Nadie leaned in, too, her hand tightening on Iceweasel’s almost to the point of pain. Iceweasel knew Nadie chose to take her to the point between pain and pleasure. She was the mistress of that point and could land on it like a commando pilot setting down a bird on an aircraft carrier, kissing it with control that made it look easy.
When they kissed, those small, square teeth nipped at her lips. She groaned before realizing she was making any sound. A dam inside her broke, pent-up emotion of the months in one kind of captivity or another, times she’d missed Gretyl with a longing that blotted out rational thought. She squeezed Nadie’s hand, heedless of how hard, feeling Nadie was indestructible.
Nadie’s free arm went around her. She was crushed to the woman. She realized that for all of Nadie’s strength, there wasn’t much to her—she was tiny. The body pressing to hers couldn’t have been more different from Gretyl’s. Her feelings for Nadie and Gretyl were polar opposites. No matter that Nadie had terrorized her, hurt her, kidnapped her—she had rescued her. She was there, so alive, in the way that no person had been for her for a long time.
She wrestled her hand free and reached for Nadie’s ass, compact as a tennis ball, slid her hand down the waistband of her leggings, feeling skin/skin contact whose feeling she’d worked so hard to forget. Her mouth flooded with saliva. Her fingers curled, found the matted, wet hair, slippery folds, her fingertips slipping inside. Nadie’s teeth nipped harder at her lip, making her pull back. Nadie followed, not letting her go. It hurt. It felt good. She panted.
Nadie sprang away and tore off her clothes in a series of economical motions. She was an anatomical drawing—the body Iceweasel had glimpsed in the taxi, with its strange rivers and arroyos of scar tissue stretched over lean muscle. Panting, reaching for her, some part of Iceweasel’s brain noticed she had a slightly crooked left forearm, an old break that hadn’t healed right.
Nadie dodged her grasp, settled on her haunches, staring frankly with cool, glittering eyes. She reached for the champagne and took another slug. She cocked her head expectantly. Iceweasel understood, skinned out of her clothes. Gooseflesh as she bared herself to that gaze. She reached again, and Nadie shook her head minutely and dodged back, continuing to stare.
Nadie’s eyes roamed over her body. Iceweasel’s breath came in short pants. She could feel the gaze. Nadie could tear her to pieces, force her to submit. Every nerve and hair follicle came to electric, tingling life. Nadie’s eyes narrowed. She smiled lazily, traced one of her own nipples, large and pale pink, with a calloused fingertip. The sound of skin on skin was loud, the only other sound Iceweasel’s breath. She reached for her own breast, touched it as Nadie was touching hers.
It didn’t feel like her own finger. It felt like Nadie’s. Matching her movement for movement, it was as though her nervous system lost track of its own boundaries.
Nadie nodded and licked a fingertip, brought it back to her nipple. Mesmerized, Iceweasel did the same. The feeling of being touched by a stranger wasn’t so strong, but as she fell into Nadie’s cool eyes, it grew. When, in her peripheral vision, she saw Nadie’s finger slide lower and followed suit, she gasped. She hadn’t masturbated in months, not since she’d been taken, not for some time before. That part of her switched off when she was kidnapped, but it had waited and it saw its chance. Their hands moved faster, blurring, soft wet sounds and breathing growing in pitch. When she arched her back and gasped, Nadie dived across the bed and bore her to her back, burying her face between her legs, tongue flickering quickly and remorselessly, hands on her hips refusing to give as she bucked. She buried her fingers in Nadie’s short hair, shouted words without meaning, rode it, not caring who heard, not caring what Nadie felt, burning away self-consciousness in a moment that went on and on.
When she was done, she gingerly released Nadie, felt her tongue on the inside of her thighs, felt the juices and saliva cooling under her ass. Nadie ascended like a serpent, all muscle and sinew. She smelled and tasted herself on Nadie’s face as her thigh slid between Nadie’s legs and Nadie pressed it, all that strength coiled atop her. Iceweasel was light-headed from hyperventilation, champagne and bone-shattering orgasm, but she was still full of animal horniness. She rolled Nadie, aware that Nadie allowed herself to be rolled, but knowing this was what Nadie wanted, as she grabbed the woman’s wrists and pressed them over her head, burying her face in the tuft in her armpit before nipping at her breast, biting harder, listening carefully to the answering gasps, straining to hold the wrists. Nadie pushed against her and she reared up and pushed back and looked into Nadie’s eyes. They were unfocused, her breath in sharp pants.
“Do you want this?” she whispered. Her hand drifted lower. Continuous consent was a walkaway thing. She was used to asking this question and having it asked of her, but it was exotic for Nadie. Nadie’s eyes focused on hers for a moment, and she bit her lip and whimpered. “Yes.”
On impulse, Iceweasel said, “What’s that?”
“Yes,” Nadie said. “Yes, please. Please?”