Chapter 23 #7
Cordelia sat down on the edge of the bed.
Wren stepped out of her pants and knelt to pull off Cordelia's, hands on her calves, sliding the fabric down, and her palms were warm against Cordelia's shins.
Her thumbs pressed into the muscle just above Cordelia's ankles, and Cordelia let out a breath she had not known she was holding.
"Lie back," Wren said.
Cordelia lay back. The sheets and pillow were cold. Wren climbed onto the bed beside her, on her side, one elbow propped, looking down. Her dark hair fell forward and brushed Cordelia's shoulder.
"Hi," Wren said, softer now.
"Hi."
"I want to put my mouth on you."
Cordelia almost laughed—not at Wren or the words, but at the plainness of them, the total absence of coyness. "Yes," she said. "Please."
Wren kissed her collarbone first, then the hollow of her throat.
Then lower, her mouth warm and open against the skin between Cordelia's breasts, her tongue a slow, flat press that made Cordelia's stomach tighten.
She kissed her way down, unhurried, her hands sliding along Cordelia's ribs, and Cordelia watched her as she moved down her body, watched Wren's mouth find the soft skin below her navel and stay there, breathing against her.
She was present for every second of it, every nerve, every graze of teeth that was barely teeth, every warm exhale.
Wren's mouth moved lower. Her hands parted Cordelia's thighs, firm and easy, and she pressed her lips to the inside of one and then the other. Cordelia's hips shifted on the sheets without her permission. Wren looked up. Her mouth was wet, and her eyes were very dark.
She put her mouth on Cordelia’s pussy, and a low groan escaped her.
Wren's tongue was flat and slow and deliberate, a long stroke that started low and ended at the nub of her clit. Cordelia gripped the sheets as Wren did it again. And again. She found a rhythm that wasn’t fast but was relentless, and she kept her hands on Cordelia's hips.
Cordelia felt it building from somewhere deep and low, a tightness that climbed and climbed until it broke, and she came against Wren's mouth with her hips up and her hands in Wren's hair. Her mouth was open, but she made no sound at all because the sensation stole the sound out of her. Wren didn’t pull away immediately.
She stayed, her mouth gentle now, her tongue barely moving, and Cordelia could feel herself still shaking through the aftershocks, the small contractions that went on and on, and Wren rode them out with her, slowing with her, until Cordelia's hips settled and her breathing came down and her hands released Wren's hair.
"Come here," Cordelia said.
Wren crawled up beside her, her mouth wet and her hair a mess, and Cordelia kissed her. She could taste herself on Wren's mouth—salt and musk and the warm slick of it—and the kiss was deep and slow and unhurried. Cordelia could feel Wren smiling against her lips.
"You're smiling," she said.
"I am."
"Smug is not a good look."
"It's an excellent look, and you know it." Wren kissed her again. Then she shifted onto her back and pulled Cordelia over her, one hand on the back of Cordelia's neck, and said, "Your turn. Do whatever you want."
Cordelia looked down at her. Wren was spread out on the bed, lean and long, the lines of her visible in the low light—the ridge of her hipbones, the flat plane of her stomach, the dark hair between her legs already wet.
Her eyes were half-closed, and her lips were parted.
She looked, in this moment, like someone who had never once in her life been afraid of being wanted.
Cordelia bent her head and kissed Wren's throat.
She felt the pulse there, fast and hard, and she opened her mouth against it and felt Wren's breath catch.
She kissed her way down—collarbone, sternum, the small soft skin of Wren's breasts, the tight peak of one nipple under her tongue. Wren's hand tightened in her hair.
"Yes," Wren said. "Like that. Don't stop."
Cordelia used her teeth, gently, and Wren arched under her.
Wren made a low, unguarded groan that went straight through Cordelia's body like a current.
She moved to the other breast and gave it the same attention.
Her mouth was warm and wet, her tongue slow, one hand cupping and kneading the breast her mouth had just left. Wren's hips rolled in the air.
"Lower," Wren said. "Please."
Cordelia moved lower. She kissed Wren's stomach, the skin jumping under her mouth, and she put her hands on Wren's thighs and spread them and settled between them.
She could smell Wren now, warm and rich, and she could see her, the wet pink of her, the slick that had spread to the inside of her thighs.
She looked up and found Wren watching her with those hazel eyes that missed nothing.
Cordelia put her mouth on her. She started slow, a long stroke with the flat of her tongue that made Wren's hips buck and her hands fist in the sheets.
She found the rhythm that Wren's body asked for, and she matched it.
She kept her mouth right there on her clit, her tongue moving in firm, steady strokes, her hands holding Wren's thighs open.
Wren was loud in a way that Cordelia had not expected and could not get enough of.
"There… Right there, don't stop, harder, fuck—"
Cordelia did what she asked, and Wren came against her mouth with a sound that was almost a sob, her whole body rigid and then shaking, her thighs clamping around Cordelia's head and then falling open.
Cordelia kissed the inside of her thigh and looked up.
Wren was breathing hard, one arm over her eyes, her chest heaving.
Then she moved her arm, and Wren's eyes found her.
Something shifted in them. Cordelia saw it happen, the change that came over Wren in the space between one breath and the next.
Wren sat up, and her hands went to Cordelia's shoulders, turning her, guiding her down onto the bed.
It was the motion of someone who knew how to give and was moving, out of sheer reflex, to give again.
To turn the attention back outward, away from herself, because that was where she was safe.
Cordelia caught her wrists and didn’t say anything.
She held Wren's hands and guided her down flat on her back.
She held her there, one hand on Wren's sternum, and she did not let her turn it around.
Wren resisted, briefly, a tension in her body, a lift of her chin, the reflex of a woman who had spent her whole life making herself useful so that nobody could get rid of her.
Her hands came up and gripped Cordelia's forearm, and her jaw tightened.