13. Carrington #2
Carrington adjusted her position, settled in, and began.
She was good at this but had expected to be nervous, to fumble, to feel the way she felt in most intimate situations: aware of her own inadequacy and performing a competence she didn't own.
But her mouth found all the right places and her tongue moved with a slow, sure rhythm that she hadn't planned.
Lucy's thigh under her right hand was trembling, a continuous vibration that Lucy was clearly trying to suppress.
Carrington used her tongue in long strokes at first, then shorter ones, then circled around her clit once, twice, and felt Lucy's hips push forward against her mouth, small and contained but unmistakable.
Carrington kept going. Every so often, she varied the pressure, speed, and angle.
She used the flat of her tongue and then the tip on the swollen nub, and when she found the spot that made Lucy's hand press harder against her own mouth, she stayed there.
She could feel the pleasure building in the tension of Lucy's thighs, in the way Lucy's free hand came down and gripped the edge of the mattress, in the controlled shallow breathing that was the only sound Lucy was allowing herself.
Lucy came quietly. Her body went rigid for a moment—her thighs locking, her stomach tightening, the hand over her mouth pressing impossibly harder—and then she shuddered, a series of small contractions that Carrington felt against her tongue.
Then, she was still. Her hand dropped from her mouth. Her breathing was ragged but silent.
Carrington stayed where she was for a moment, her mouth still against Lucy, feeling the aftershocks. Then she pulled back, slowly, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked up to find that Lucy was already looking down at her.
Lucy’s expression had changed into something clearer and more present. "Come up here," she said, her voice low, barely above a whisper.
Carrington stood. Her knees were stiff from the rug, and she felt the ache briefly. A second later, Lucy's hands were on her, pulling her forward, and then Lucy was standing too. Lucy put a hand flat on Carrington's sternum and pushed her backward onto the bed.
Carrington fell backward and sat up on the bed. Lucy pushed again, just a hand on her shoulder, and she lay back fully. The slate covers were cool through her clothes, and Lucy climbed over her, one knee on either side of Carrington's hips.
Carrington started to reach for her, but Lucy caught both her wrists. She moved them with a casual strength that Carrington was not prepared for. She placed Carrington's hands flat on the covers, one on each side of her head, and held them there for a moment, looking at her.
"Leave those there," Lucy said.
Carrington's fingers curled against the fabric, but she didn’t lift them.
Lucy sat back on Carrington's thighs and looked at her.
The lamp was behind Lucy now, and her face was softly illuminated, her hair falling forward.
She reached down and began unbuttoning Carrington's blouse agonizingly slowly, one button at a time, a slight pause in between. Her fingers were steady and unhurried, and she looked at Carrington’s face the whole time, watching every reaction.
Carrington kept her hands where Lucy told her to.
The urge to move them was enormous, a physical pressure in her arms, but she resisted it.
It made her aware of her whole body in a way that was almost unbearable.
She could feel the blouse opening, the air on her skin, the slow reveal that Lucy was orchestrating button by button.
When her blouse was open, Lucy pulled it aside, exposing her plain bra. She leaned down and put her mouth on the swell of Carrington's breast, above the bra's edge, and Carrington's hips lifted off the bed. Lucy's hand was on her hip immediately, pressing down.
"Not until I say," Lucy murmured against her skin.
Carrington made a sound, louder than she’d meant, and Lucy's hand came up and covered her mouth.
Her palm was warm and smelled faintly of coconut.
Carrington could feel Lucy's fingers curled over her cheek, her thumb along her jaw.
She could feel her own breathing against Lucy's hand, warm and damp, and the sensation of being silenced was so sudden that something in her chest loosened.
Lucy’s other hand was working the clasp of the bra. She got it open with a dexterity that suggested practice, and then she pulled the bra away and the blouse with it, leaving Carrington bare from the waist up.
Lucy’s hand was over her mouth, and she looked at Carrington for a long time. Her eyes moved from Carrington's face to her throat, collarbone, breasts, and stomach. Then she leaned down and put her mouth on Carrington's throat, and Carrington's whole body seized.
Nobody had touched her throat in years. She kept it covered— with collars, scarves, and high necklines—and the exposure of it was more intimate than the exposure of her breasts, more intimate than anything.
And now, Lucy's mouth was there, open and warm, moving slowly down the long tendon from jaw to collarbone. Lucy's mouth moved down to her collarbone, then sternum, and her breast. She used her tongue and the soft, wet heat of her mouth. She was unpredictable; she’d settle into a rhythm and then abandon it, would move from one breast to the other without warning, would press hard and then barely touch. Carrington couldn’t anticipate anything.
Her body kept trying to, though, and every time her hips lifted or back arched, Lucy pinned her down harder.
When Lucy moved lower, it was with the same maddening patience.
She unbuttoned her pants, unzipped them, and pulled them down over Carrington's hips along with the underwear.
Lucy knelt between her legs and looked at her, and it was worse than Lucy not touching her because Carrington could feel Lucy's eyes on her. She hadn’t been looked at like this in years and she had no idea what to do with that.
Lucy put her mouth on the inside of Carrington's thigh where the skin was most sensitive.
When Carrington's hips jerked, Lucy pressed on her hip bones.
Her mouth moved higher, pressing a kiss to the crease of her thigh, breathing warm air against wet skin, pulling back to look.
Every pause was its own kind of torture.
When Lucy's mouth finally found her pussy, Carrington almost broke. The sensation was overpowering, and her hands came off the covers. Lucy stopped. She lifted her head and looked up the length of Carrington's body and said, very quietly, "Hands."
Carrington put them back. Her fingers gripped the covers, knuckles white.
Lucy resumed. She used her tongue on her clit with the same deliberate unpredictability: slow strokes, then quick, then nothing but the tip circling the exposed nub, then the flat pressing broad and firm.
She slid two fingers inside her pussy, and Carrington tightened around them.
The pace of Lucy’s hand didn’t match the pace of her mouth, and the dissonance of it was unbearable.
The wave of pleasure built, and Carrington couldn’t do anything about it.
The inability to control any part of this was the thing that was undoing her more than anything Lucy was doing.
She came hard. Her body arched off the bed as far as Lucy's pinning hands would allow, which wasn't far, and the orgasm was clamped and silenced by every constraint Lucy had placed on her.
The compression made it sharper, made it last longer, made it feel like something being wrung out of her.
She heard herself groaning against Lucy's palm, a low, broken noise, and then she was shaking.
Lucy's mouth stayed on her, and she kept her fingers inside Carrington’s pussy, but the rhythm changed—slower now but not stopping. Carrington's body was oversensitive and every movement was too much and not enough.
"Stop," she said, or tried to, against Lucy's palm, and the word came out strangled and damp.
Carrington's hand came up. She caught Lucy's wrist—the one over her mouth—and pulled. Lucy let her hand be pulled away, and Carrington said again, "Stop. Stop. I can't—"
Lucy stopped. She lifted her mouth and eased her fingers out of Carrington’s pussy and wiped them on the covers without looking.
She came up the length of Carrington's body and lay beside her, one arm across Carrington's stomach, her face close.
Lucy traced a slow circle on Carrington's stomach with her fingers. She was relaxed, idle.
"You know, I've been thinking about it since April," Lucy said. Her voice was barely audible. She did not say what "it" was, but she did not need to.
Carrington turned her head on the pillow.
Lucy's face was very close and flushed, a strand of hair stuck to her temple. Her eyes were calm. Even though she looked completely relaxed and unbothered, Carrington knew now that it wasn’t the same as Lucy being unaffected.
She was. But she was simply better at carrying it.
Carrington opened her mouth. She was going to say something, but she didn't know what.
Something competent and composed, something that would reassemble the armor she had walked in wearing.
But Lucy's fingers were still tracing that same slow circle on her stomach, and the words dissolved before they reached her tongue. She closed her mouth.
Lucy smiled. It was small, and it had the faintest trace of something that on anyone else might have been smugness but on Lucy was simply the quiet satisfaction of someone who had known all along how this would go.
"Good," Lucy said.