Billie Lurk is a fool.
Now, Delilah doesn’t mind, exactly. The world needs fools, needs stepping stones so that those truly destined for greatness can make their way to the top. And certainly any weakness she can use to turn Daud’s second against him is one to be welcomed.
But does the girl have to be so…obvious about it?
Delilah knows these gestures, has used them herself as a mask, as a bribe. Lingering glances, stilted words, the shifting of hands as though to avoid reaching out and touching—she knows this language like her own birth tongue. So she knows that Lurk’s actions are rather too clumsy to be an act, and such blunt interest is almost insulting.
Well, perhaps she is being unfair. Her witches have learned all the skills she can offer them, but Lurk has been living under Daud. Assassins could be stealthy, but they were rarely subtle, and Daud’s men were used to hiding behind their whaling masks. Lurk, she decides, will likely need a great deal of retraining to be properly useful, even if she does succeed in her little coup.
She sighs.
"Something wrong?" Lurk breaks off her report of Daud's defenses to ask, her eyes flat and her voice sardonic. But her body stays open, stays loose, and Delilah smiles just to watch those careful eyes follow her lips and trace down the arch of her neck.
Disapproval or not, she might as well take advantage.
"Not at all." She slips from her chair, saunters over with just the smallest hint of sway in her hips. Lurk looks, but stiffens at the closeness: still wary alone with her, even after their two previous meetings ended without bloodshed.
What might it take to provoke her? Either to that bloodshed or...to something else.
“You just seem a little…tense.” Delilah continues as she reaches Lurk’s side. She is being a bit obvious herself, now, but this one likely needs such strong hints. With that in mind, she reaches out a hand as she speaks. “Is there something—?”
Lurk leans back, but not in time – Delilah touches her skin, for the first time since they met, sharp nail tips resting gently at her jawline. Something prickles between them, sweeping up her arm and rolling down her spine. It is…heady somehow, like drawing from the Void, a warm hum that curls in her stomach and unwinds—
Lurk grabs at her fingers as though to pull her away, but Delilah, intrigued by the way the girl’s eyes have grown wide and dark, shakes her off and presses both palms against her cheeks. Lurk’s gasp rasps delightfully in her ears and she is hard-pressed not to echo it as that twisting spot of heat flares inside of her.
“Darling Billie,” She breathes, pressing their foreheads together. “What magics have you been playing with, hmm?”
Because this certainly isn’t her magic, or one of her witches’ concoctions; she knows the feel of her own aphrodisiacs. This, whatever it is, is unsubtle but strong, rather like Lurk herself. Delilah could ignore it, but it would take effort and she would be distracted for hours. Perhaps she has underestimated her wily new ally.
But Lurk curls her lip and shakes her head—both to deny it and to remove Delilah’s hands. “It’s not me. I don’t—”
Then she stops—freezes—something like recognition or perhaps horror creeping over her face. Delilah eyes her and then pushes her gently two steps backwards, until she reaches one of the soft chairs beside the table holding their growing plans. It hits Lurk in the backs of her knees, sending her backwards into the chair before she can catch herself.
Delilah climbs onto the girl, pins her down with one knee on either side off her hips and lays her hands on the join of her neck and shoulder, ignoring the way her body goes stiff and offended. Lurk allows it, does not object, and that is enough.
The almost-arousal hums deep in her bones. “You’ve had a thought, dear. Do share.”
Lurk eyes her like she’s considering drawing her sword rather than talking, but she does not shove Delilah away. Finally she speaks, “Daud told a story once—we had to get him drunk for it. He says that if any two people Marked by the Outsider touch each other, they get…drawn together.”
Delilah raises a brow, delicate and disbelieving, because that is barely an explanation. Lurk glares back, but gives in and continues with a huff. “He said it takes over, makes you want to fuck until that’s all you can focus on. Didn’t look like a happy memory either, whatever he was thinking about. But that doesn’t really sound like this.”
She waves a hand between them, clearing indicating their physical closeness. And no, they aren’t desperate for it, but Delilah can feel the draw, can feel the warmth that could so easily turn to burning heat. And most importantly, she can feel that hint of the Void beneath it all, vast and incomprehensible.
She…has never heard of such a thing before.
“You’re not Marked.” She points out, and the sneer Lurk gives her in return in particularly venomous, but even as she does so, she reaches up and pulls off her gloves.
And she isn’t Marked, exactly, but there is something there. A shadow, an image: a warped reflection of the Mark as it should be pressed into the back of her hand. Delilah is almost offended at the thought that all of Daud’s whalers must bear such a thing, a pale imitation of the true greatness etched into her own skin.
“It’s never caused any trouble before.” Lurk says, now eying her suspiciously. “I’ve touched Daud without any of this.”
“My powers are far different than Daud’s.” Delilah curls her lip almost instinctively. “And he has lost the Outsider’s favor. No doubt his powers have weakened considerably, along with the rest of him.”
Lurk sits in silence for a moment before looking away, her face stony—not an argument, but not an agreement either. Delilah considers showing her some of those powers, taking the girl to pieces until Lurk has no choice but to admit her obvious superiority to the old assassin. But she has spent too long cultivating this ally to lose her in a fit of pique.
“Are you regretful? That you could not pull him in this way?” She needles, quite certain there is a sore spot concerning the man that she can poke. She leans in, pressing her forehead against Lurk’s, breathing her air, curious to see whether she will press forward or shove away.
“Are you just going to keep talking?” Lurk hisses instead of either action, her teeth bared. “Or are you going to do something?”
Delilah laughs, threads her fingers into dark hair, and lets Lurk fist rough hands in her coat to pull her down. The girl’s mouth is heated and wet, and that comfortable warmth flares out, becomes a sweet ache that Delilah has not felt in too long.
Lurk, for all her blades and bolts and sharp edges, kisses her like a lover: she presses and demands, but she also keeps her teeth polite and opens easily for her. Her hands, as they pull Delilah’s coat from her shoulders, run over shoulders and arms and chest, exploring with interest and learning her body.
Obvious, Delilah thinks again with disgust, and puts her own hands to better use.
Lurk’s trousers come undone quite easily, considering all the straps and ties that make up her uniform—Delilah doesn’t deign to bother with the rest of it. The angle is awkward, but she raises herself higher on one knee to make room and slips one hand down against the warmth of soft, vulnerable skin.
Lurk shifts her hips and makes a sound against her mouth—encouragement, or possibly some weak protest. Delilah doesn’t particularly care which—as she slips her fingers through coarse hair and into the folds of her body. It seems a dry heat at first, but her fingers slide deeper, find wetness waiting, and she clenches her own thighs tighter at the sensation.
She and Lurk press together in that small chair; she finds all the spots that make her shift and squirm, pulls out reluctant noises with flicks and thrusts of her fingers as she explores Lurk’s jaw with her mouth. The girl is too expressive, despite her clear attempts to dampen her reactions, and every arch and shift, every stuttered breath, gives away her vulnerable areas.
That warmth, that trickle of Void power, hums in Delilah’s veins with every brush of skin and she drinks it in, fascinated and intoxicated in equal measure.
She works with her free hand as she goes, even as Lurk’s hands pull her shirt loose and tease at her stomach and breasts. It takes some doing for her to get Lurk's clothes further down her hips. Eventually, she takes her other hand away from its pursuits when her patience runs dry, ignoring Lurk's unhappy noise of protest at the loss, and uses both to pull both trousers and underthings down past her knees.
Lurk finally shifts, allowing her to do so, and it brings the girl closer to the edge of the chair, which is fine. It makes it easy to kneel between her knees, and the barely-stifled noise she makes at the first touch of Delilah’s mouth is a passable reward for the trouble.
Delilah doesn't usually care to lower herself in such ways, but there is a power to be taken here as well. She can even enjoy the musk and the slickness under her tongue as she nips and teases, can appreciate these signs of Lurk's surrender to her ministrations. Her own clothes are too hot now, her underthings starting to stick, but she is not so easily distracted by base desires.
It amuses her more, at the moment, to pull Lurk apart, wrenching her control away in slow, jagged pieces.
Because she can guess the best ways to flick her tongue, the best spots to reach for as she curls her hand back inside Lurk's body. And, when she slides her mouth down to slip her tongue in alongside her fingers, Lurk snarls out a curse in Tyvian, wrenching her hands from their white-knuckled grips on the arms of the chair to tangle desperately in Delilah's hair.
"Enjoying yourself?" Delilah purrs, pulling back—not much, just enough to make the vibration of her voice and the whisper of her breath a tease, a torment.
"Glad to see your mouth is good for something," Lurk snipes back, but her bravado is undermined by the breathless tone of her voice, the wet red smear of her mouth. Her hands knead in Delilah's hair, an inch away from pulling.
Those hands tighten further when Delilah laughs at her again, sharp and warning against her scalp, but the girl has lost too much to be threatening now.
“He could never give you this.” Delilah hisses against her slick skin, satisfied at Lurk’s loss of control. “He will never give you this. You are far better off here.”
The girl’s hands twist viciously in her hair, but Delilah nips at her, grazes teeth over that small nub as she twists her fingers just so. Lurk convulses beautifully in her hands, her muscles tensing and back arching as her body pulses around Delilah’s fingers.
She keeps it up, licks and strokes until muscles stop fluttering and Lurk squirms to get away, too sensitive for the continued stimulation. They, finally, she draws away entirely and lets the girl slump back, sweat-slick and panting, in the chair.
She climbs back up to straddle Lurk's bare thighs; she keeps her smile from growing too sharp, though Lurk is likely too preoccupied to care, and loosens some of her own clothes, just enough to reach where she needs. The first stroke against slick heat is both a relief and a catalyst, a spark igniting that waiting heat and flaring it into a blaze.
Arousal twists tighter in her belly, though it is now more sharp than sweet.
Lurk, it seems, has had certain manners drilled into her, for she rouses herself from her slump and reaches out, attempting to reciprocate. But Delilah has no patience for any fumbling efforts, for teaching Lurk to do things properly—not now, at any rate. She pushes the girl back by her shoulder, flattening her back against the chair.
“Hush.” She coos, a bit too sickly sweet, but too far gone to care. “Let me look at you.”
That seems to suffice and Lurk settles back; her eyes are starting to harden again, the familiar, wary ambivalence and ever-present anger creeping back. But she watches Delilah, watches as though she plans to remember at a later time, and that together with her obedience merits a pleased smile.
Delilah slips fingers into herself and back out again, finding all of her old pleasurable spots with ease, and she winds quickly higher, burning with need as she dances touch along sensitive skin. She twists and rolls her hips as she pleases, enjoying the physicality of the act.
She will lose this familiarity soon, she knows—she will have a child’s body, with its own quirks and wants, and a great deal of growing left to do. She does not think she will miss it much, but she can certainly enjoy it for the months she has left.
And she will find other ways to entertain herself in the future, she is sure.
She will have Lurk to experiment with after all, so long as the girl succeeds in her coup. She will have Lurk and her troublesome touch, the full force of her coven behind her, a child's full life left to live and the power of an empire in her hands.
She thinks of her future, of her throne, and she cannot hold herself back.
Pleasure grips her tightly and drags her down, takes her by surprise, even, when it crashes out across her shivering skin. It blanks her mind for a moment, blinds her, so much more intense than the release she occasionally finds during long, sleepless nights. Her muscles, her lungs seize and spasm, bowing her back into a trembling curve, and she braces against the chair, setting her teeth into Lurk's clothed shoulder to stop any noises that might seek to escape.
She drives herself as far as she can, thrusts and strokes with frantic movements until her body loosens again and her core starts to ache under her touch. She stops and breathes, still for the moment as she and Lurk breathe together, enjoying the liquid warmth that still lingers throughout her body.
But she has never been one to bask in the aftereffects of such activities and, after a few breaths of silence, she straightens and sits back, settling her weight on Lurk’s legs. The girl is heartily disheveled, despite the mask that she has pulled almost entirely back into place.
Delilah smiles at her just to watch her wary eyes narrow and traces a finger along her chin. She does not mind when the girl shakes her off—she is feeling magnanimous at the moment, between the enjoyable activities and these brand new aspects of her Mark to consider.
She can train Lurk in her manners properly later. She will, actually, if the girl proves worthy, and her smile grows as she thinks of it.
“Oh, my dear Billie,” Delilah purrs, ignoring the girl’s glare with ease. “What fun we’re going to have.”