feel good
“You know,” says Van idly, “if you wanted to stop sleeping with me, you could have just said so.”
Taissa twists to stare at her, sharp-eyed. “The fuck are you talking about?”
Van swallows against a beat of uncertainty. Something in Tai’s gaze these days—something just this side of feral—has been pulling her up short. Something ever since Lottie died. Before that, even. Since the ice cream parlor, or the candle in the kitchen, or that poor waiter—
She shakes her head, forcing a grin. She grasps Taissa’s wrist, raising her hand to eye level.
“These talons are a bit much.”
Taissa relaxes. She flexes her fingers, admiring the shine of a fresh manicure. “You did it, too, hypocrite.”
“Um, I let them do a little polish,” Van argues. “Because you dared me to.”
“You loved it.” Taissa slides her fingers between Van’s. They look so strange together, too neat. Too nice. Van hasn’t felt nice in a long fucking time.
“I dunno about loved,” she says guardedly. Tai snorts.
“Liar. Have you ever had a manicure before?”
“Wasn’t exactly my speed.” All of this—the pampering, the massages, the champagne—isn’t Van’s speed. Least of all wasting time paying someone to turn her hands into their fucking art project.
But Tai needed it. Tai, whose kid turned away from her in what looked weirdly like disgust. Tai, whose marriage is so shattered, she actually brought Van along to stare at the glittering remnants of the car crash.
Tai needed it, so along for the ride Van went. It’s like that sometimes. It’s been like that for…
Who even cares anymore? It just is. It was always going to be this, from the minute she turned up in that doorway.
Oblivious, Tai slides her a coy look. “Maybe I just wanted to feel pretty. Do you not think I’m pretty?”
Heat leaps to Van’s cheeks, her smile significantly less forced now. “You so do not need me to tell you.”
“Don’t I?” Taissa breaks her grip, rolling lazily onto her back. As if led by gravity itself, Van follows, unable to resist. The California King mattress is a potent kind of absurd, the kind that filters under all of her reservations and washes them clean away. The kind that makes her forget that this hotel-spa-resort-whatever-the-fuck Tai’s dragged them to is ostentatious at best, utterly beyond anything Van’s ever had. Or wanted. Or needed.
This isn’t Van, this fucking place, like that stupid restaurant wasn’t Van. Wasn’t Tai, either, once upon a time, but times change. You blink, and twenty-five years are gone, and maybe the girl you once knew like the constellations branded into your own skin changes, too.
Changes, and doesn’t. The way Tai smiles is no different. The way she reaches up, cradling Van’s face, is exactly as she remembers.
Same as it ever was, she thinks dumbly, gazing down into eyes that have seen too much of her. Too much of everything. Eyes that, despite it all, still crinkle at the corners and send her heart into space.
“Maybe I want to hear it,” Taissa purrs. Her thumb traces the angle of Van’s cheekbone. “Maybe I want to feel beautiful.”
“You are,” Van tells her hoarsely, her uncertainty receding as it always does under the power of that smile. Those eyes. These hands. The way Taissa’s body shifts beneath her own, eager to drink up every heartbeat, every lush inch of connection.
She leans down, helpless, Tai’s mouth sweet against her own. This bed is too big, too starch-white, too pristine for people who have done the shit they have—but Taissa’s fingers sliding into her hair, those freshly-manicured nails raking across her scalp, still bring on the old shivers. The best kind. The kind that sidle down the back of Van’s neck, between her shoulders, between her thighs.
“I want to feel good,” Taissa tells her almost plaintively, breathing the words into Van’s mouth as if breaking contact would break something else. “Make me feel good, Van?”
The heat beneath her skin climbs, flames clawing for the sky. Van exhales, trying to find her balance.
“When did you become such a pillow princess, anyway?”
She half-expects that sinister beat to repeat itself, that flash of something in Tai’s eyes—but Tai rolls her head back against the pillow and cackles, and it is so her, Van aches to bottle the sound. Aches to bottle everything in this moment, down to the velvet-soft bathrobes and idiotic luxury of the wall sconces above the bed.
“You know when,” Taissa tells her, voice sweet and sly. She reaches up, gathering Van’s hand in her own, pulling it to rest along the curve of ribcage. “Out there. In the woods. When someone mounted me against a tree and…”
She sighs as if they’re back there now, as if they’re still young and foolish and trying to unlock doors better left nailed shut. She sighs like Van’s hand is slipping between shorts and skin, like Van’s hips are notched against her from behind, like they’re reveling in a freedom only found in the wild.
Van’s chest aches. She blinks rapidly, her vision doubling something fierce. Taissa: adult and warm and clean, with sculpted nails and oiled skin. Taissa: teenage and strong and steady, wearing the same six shirts, stripping Van of everything that isn’t true necessity.
Taissa, loving her the way no one else has, or could, or wanted to. Taissa, burning everything to the ground if it meant having another day with her.
“Make me feel good, Van,” Taissa repeats, honey-warm. “Please.”
Instinct takes over before Van can think better of it. She drags a hand down the plush robe standing between her and Tai’s bare skin; bends, lips grazing the corner of Taissa’s, ghosting along her jaw to the pulse point fluttering at her throat. She rolls her hips experimentally, throbbing when Tai groans agreement and arches up to meet her.
Her fingers are working open the knot obstructing everything she craves when Tai stretches luxuriantly and points toward their bags.
“Brought something just for the occasion.”
Van hesitates, cocking her head. “What?”
Tai only smiles, and how could Van have thought there was anything feral about her? She is so content here, hovering in that home-place between teasing and sincerity. She is so content, even as she pushes herself up into Van, kissing her firmly enough to drive thought from Van’s mind.
She’s always been like this, Tai. No different now than when they were seventeen. No different at all.
Maybe that should scare her.
Maybe all of this should scare her.
The bag, which Taissa had packed almost before Van could register they really were leaving the house, is all clothing and hair care, and—there, in a pocket she hadn’t noticed before, something else. She glances back over her shoulder, torn between amusement and desperate arousal.
What else is new? she thinks with a jolt of too-young-for-her-body glee. What else is fucking new?
“Why, Miss Turner,” she drawls, straightening out of her crouch with the package firmly in hand. “You shouldn’t have.”
Taissa gives her that catlike grin, shrugging. Her nails are too long, too sharp, too neat, and for a moment, Van can only look at them. Can only think about pain, about damage, about claws rending delicate flesh. About how much can’t be put right with a few stitches.
She absently drags a finger across her cheek, the scar tissue rigid beneath her touch. Taissa’s smile falters.
“Van—”
“Good,” Van interrupts. “I’m good.”
She shrugs out of her robe, almost perversely glad to feel the air on her skin. The thread count on everything in this room is higher than she’s worth. There isn’t anything in this room she’s worthy of—
Except for her. Except for Taissa, coiled on the bed like she’s considering leaping off it after all. Like she’s considering trying to smooth out the scar tissue, make it better. Fix it.
Fuck that, Van thinks, and maybe she’s imagining the pounding behind her eyes. Maybe she’s imagining the way the room dips for just a moment, wavering until a squint of the eye might show the roots and soil under all this fucking finery.
Taissa watches hungrily as she slips into the boxers, fumbling a little with the dildo. “Need help?” she asks. She isn’t making fun. Van almost wishes she would.
“Out of practice,” she grunts in return, and Taissa sprawls back against the pillows, satisfied.
“Good.”
Good, that Van hasn’t been getting her needs met quite as much as she might have suggested. Good, that Van is back in Taissa’s bed. Good, good, good, that Van’s mouth, Van’s skin, Van’s everything is Tai’s to claim like she never walked away.
When the toy is firmly in place, Van closes her eyes for just a minute. Leans back against the desk, letting herself breathe. Letting herself feel the carpet beneath her bare feet, the hard edge of the desk against her backside, the world she’d been sure she’d lose weeks ago.
When she opens her eyes, Taissa is still watching her from the bed. The heat of her gaze is nothing compared to the smile on her lips. Van raises an eyebrow.
“What?”
“You look good,” Tai says, like this is the first time they’re running into each other. Like they’re just meeting up over coffee, purely to see what comes next. “You’re so…”
Fucking beautiful, Van silently finishes for her, and while she doesn’t believe it—has never believed it—she knows in her heart Tai does. Knows way down in that locked-chest part of her that Tai means it, like she knows they’re damned, like she knows there are some things she no longer deserves. Hasn’t deserved since she was eighteen years old.
And even so. Here she is. Here they are. Is she going to apologize?
Not ever.
“Make me feel good,” Taissa commands, a queen upon her throne of pillows, and Van comes to her without wasting another breath. Tai doesn’t stop her from prying open the robe this time, only reclines as if every motion of Van’s hands is by her own decree. She is silk the likes of which can only put the richest fabrics to shame. She is more than Van has deserved in a long, long time.
She reaches for Van, and this time, the bite of nails into the nape of her neck makes her shudder. The bite of Taissa’s teeth in her bottom lip follows, rougher than expected, soothed by a swipe of tongue a second later. Van leans into it, lets the shock of pain roll over her even as she lets her body sink into all the spaces of Taissa’s. There is something so simple about it all, something that lets her forget just how complicated this shit can be. So long as there is a bed, a wall, a floor, Tai—she can forget everything she’s ever done wrong in her life. Everything she let herself become. Everything she will go to the grave carrying on her back.
Taissa scrapes those nails across bowed shoulders, scratching fire over Van’s spine, and Van arches into the sensation without protest. She leans her head into the cradle of Taissa’s shoulder, sucking fervent marks into the skin of throat and collar. Beneath her, Taissa’s chest heaves, each gasp sparking fresh desire. Beneath her, Taissa’s legs spread wide, her nakedness on full display for no one but Van.
Van, who thought she’d lost this woman forever. Van, who suspected maybe that was the final sacrifice demanded of her. Van, who has her now, has her on her back, has her open and panting and more vulnerable than a predator ever allows herself to be.
Van, looking down at her, at the crinkle of eyes and that wicked smile. Van, who loves her so completely, she thinks it might be killing her.
“Make me,” Taissa begins, and groans when Van slides into her without hesitation. She shifts until their bodies are perfectly, wondrously aligned, until Taissa is an inescapable force guiding her deeper. The arm around her shoulders tightens, Tai’s legs urgent around her hips. She presses her face into Taissa’s shoulder, closing her jaws in a vicious snap that only makes Tai cry her name with that much more eagerness.
This wrenching desire belongs to someone much younger, someone she’d thought dead and buried, and she embraces that person without pause. She works her hips in deft thrusts, one hand braced against Taissa’s breast, following the thunder of that familiar heartbeat. She lets it guide her, lets herself ride the waves of that pulse like a map to freedom, to safety, to home. Taissa makes a wounded noise, all chest, her nails skinning Van’s back raw, and it’s all Van can do not to come on the spot.
“Make me,” Tai begs, “make me, make me, Van—”
Feel good, she begs, forget, she begs, get it right this time, she begs, and Van reaches down to grasp the hilt of the toy. She guides herself out, her hand instinctively rolling down the slick shaft. Tai makes that noise again, that deep-hurt desperate noise.
“Give me,” she begins, stopping only when Van closes a hand over her mouth. Tai exhales, eyes dilated, hips rolling up to meet Van’s thigh.
Van can’t find the words to tell her; she is all hands, all instinct, all insistent pressure, turning Tai bodily over until this regal woman she’d lost forever is on her knees. Van folds around her from behind, hands braced against hipbones, fingers digging with bruising force. She rocks her hips, dragging the dildo against Tai’s dripping sex, rubbing a friction neither of them will be able to stand for long. Taissa tilts her head back, searching, and Van lets her kiss land with all the violence of a punch. She reaches around, stroking into wet curls, her lips parting when Taissa urges her tongue inside.
“More,” Tai begs, “Van, I need to feel you.”
She never used to beg like this, even when she was on her back, or her knees, or angled against a tree trunk at Van’s mercy. She never used to beg like this, and even as she does it now, Van understands there is power in each plea. There is power, and Tai holds it as she always has, as she ever will. Van has never been able to deny her.
Run with me, Van.
Leave the table, Van.
Give it what it wants, Van.
She shuts her eyes tighter, her kiss slanting toward brutality. Her left hand builds a rough tempo against Taissa’s clit; her right presses the strap in, hard and fast and with no warning. Taissa whines into her mouth, a slick surrender all its own. She bucks backward, almost upending Van’s position on her own knees, almost forcing the toy out again. Van groans.
“If you want it,” she warns in a low, almost angry voice, “then let me give it to you.”
Taissa’s fists wrench the sheets tight, obediently bowing low when Van presses against the top of her spine. She is open-mouthed, panting into the pillows, a parade of filth sunk into thousand-thread-count cases. She is sweet silk, the most intoxicating drug Van never could kick.
God help her. Some addictions are forever.
Van pushes in again, slower this time, letting Tai feel every inch. The scratches on her own back burn, the throb between her own legs dire. She ignores it all, ignores everything that is not the juncture of her body and Taissa’s. Ignores everything but Taissa scrabbling at the sheets with those stupid, too-long nails, as if she wants to tear clean through the satin.
There is too much to say, too much she doesn’t understand. Too much that sits beneath her skin and burns. She shuts her teeth on all of it, lets her breath sharpen, her thrusts intensify. The mattress is solid as the earth beneath her knees. If she shuts her eyes, she can smell woodsmoke. If she shuts her eyes, she can hear nails scratching sigils into moss.
If she shuts her eyes, she can push herself harder, can push herself into Taissa—into the life she’s lived without Van, into the world she’s torn down just to let Van back inside.
Taissa is gasping, guttural sounds tearing from her throat. She is scalding when Van runs her fingers between her folds. She blisters where Van’s skin meets her own. She is whimpering, pleading, praying as though Van is some ancient deity deserving of such ardent love.
Make me feel good, Van.
Make me feel, Van.
Make me, Van.
Van wraps around her as tightly as she can manage, buried deep, riding the wracking shudders that drag up Taissa’s frame. Her skin is too tight, the scratches feeling more like welts. She feels as though she can—should—come apart, as though she can slough off this version of herself she’s been carrying for two decades and step out of bed eighteen again. Eighteen, powerful, so ready for things to change.
But they don’t, she thinks helplessly as Tai’s fingers finally slacken around the sheets. They don’t change. Not really.
“God,” Tai groans. “God, you’re so good.”
Van can’t spare the energy for words. She leans down, kisses the side of Taissa’s neck, lets the patter of her slowing heart rest against her lips. She is still buried deep, still holding Taissa at her mercy. No small part of her wants to flip Tai over and fuck her again, fuck her until there is no toy, is no space between, is just them as they were always meant to be.
As if hearing her thoughts, Tai raises her head, looks over her shoulder. There is sly delight in that smile.
“You liked it.”
Van nods slowly. Taissa reaches back, grasping hold of the shaft before Van can ease herself free. She keeps Van’s gaze, her eyes lidded as she tilts herself back and urges Van to hold.
“Again,” she commands. “Again, Van.”
And Van—who has so little control these days, who understands should and can’t and ignores both despite knowing better—licks her lips. Nods again. Her hips are already in motion, her body following the old creed on instinct. Taissa’s eyelids flutter. She releases the toy, reaches up, folds wet fingers into Van’s hair. Drags her down into a crush of a kiss.
“Again,” she repeats against Van’s mouth. “Then I’ll give you pillow princess.”
As if she’s ever needed her fingers, Van thinks with a stir of affectionate hunger. As if it’s ever been about following rules of any kind. As if she won’t, when Van finally relents, gives back tenfold.
“Again,” Taissa says, her voice rooted deep in Van’s soul. “Make me feel good, Van. You know I’ll do the same.”