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The room had seemed uncomfortably warm before she’d taken off her clothes. Now, Gideon was shivering, just a little bit. Her front was warm, all snuggled up against the fabric of the couch, but there was a draft over her exposed posterior that was cold enough to make the fine hair that dusted her lower back stand up.
Before they’d started, Harrow had turned on the staticky radio for background noise, but it was no more than a murmur when combined with the thick sound of traffic outside the window of the cramped living room. Harrow had put her on top of a blanket spread over the couch and faced her toward a blank expanse of wall, which was painted an offensively neutral shade of grey. Gideon was bored.
“Harrow--” she began, and then stopped. She would do a lot more for her necromancer than wait for her in a room a few degrees too cool for comfort. Even if it was boring.
“I’ll warm you up in just a moment,” said Harrow from behind her. “I optimized the temperature controls. Trust me.”
Here, after everything, Gideon trusted Harrow like a fundamental constant of the universe. If she picked up an apple and dropped it, it would fall. If Harrow asked her to trust her and do something for her, she would do it.
That was the whole reason she was even here. She was pretty sure she didn't like penetration. Not for lack of trying-- before Harrow, she'd tried everything: her own fingers, carefully-procured purpose-built toys to, and, once, in desperation, an improvised insertable (in case it was the shape that was the problem). The only thing she'd ever gotten out of it was a faint burning sensation when she peed that she'd had to flush out by drinking about six gallons of water every day for a week. That had soured her on the whole concept. She got off just fine touching her clit, and, in her opinion, that was the end of that.
The only reason she'd even considered trying penetration again was because Harrow had asked. When Harrow touched her, it didn’t matter what Gideon preferred, because it meant that Harrow was close. Even then Harrow's fingers didn't do a whole lot for her-- she still needed that direct clitoral stimulation. But Harrow liked it, liked feeling how wet Gideon got for her. She'd fallen on a spike for her necromancer, and Harrow's fingers were a hell of a lot more comfortable.
When Harrow had asked about fucking her with a strap-on, Gideon had balked. They liked it well enough the other way around, and Gideon felt no need to fix something that wasn't broken. Except then Harrow asked her: why not? The whole story of the six gallons of water had poured out in a flood.
"You yellow-eyed moron," Harrow had said, after Gideon had finished. (It wasn’t even accurate, because they’d come back to their meat with each other’s eyes, and now Gideon’s were Drearburh black.) "That's why you need to clean your sex toys before you use them."
Gideon had squirmed uncomfortably under Harrow's admonishment. It wasn't like there had been sex ed for her in Drearburh. She really did not want to ask where Harrow had gotten hers, because the choices ran the gamut from bad (personal experience) to worse (Ianthe) to unthinkable (Gideon's father, AKA God).
"I promise nothing bad like that will happen," Harrow had said, after the silence had gone on too long and Gideon still hadn't answered her. "If it does, I now possess the capacity to fix it. Please?”
And there it was: the trump card that had always been Harrow’s to play, and that she now knew Gideon well enough to actually use it. “Anything you want, my penumbral queen,” she’d said, because she would swear fealty to this woman every day if Harrow would let her. (After they’d come back, she had sworn fealty to her every day, until Harrow had lost her temper and yelled that Gideon had done too much for her already and that she could not stand to accept any more. Gideon had yelled back at her for a while. They’d finally settled the argument with Harrow’s back against the wall and her feet off the ground while they pressed fingerprint bruises into each other’s flesh and rubbed off on each other’s thighs.)
So that was how they’d ended up here, with Gideon trying to be patient while Harrow took her sweet time strapping on.
Harrow stepped around the couch into Gideon’s line of sight. Gideon had to admit that it was pretty hot to see her necromancer with a slim length of black silicone jutting out proudly from her crotch. She belly-crawled forward so that she could reach out and pull Harrow in close, letting the toy rest on her shoulder while she pressed adoring kisses to Harrow’s belly. The first time she’d ever gotten her hand up her necromancer’s shirt, she’d learned that Harrow had pierced nipples. The sight never failed to rouse her. Just now, they were just above her eye line, but if she propped herself up on her elbows she could probably get one in her mouth, and that was usually a good bet because Harrow loved--
“Griddle, knock it off,” said Harrow, trying to sound stern. (Gideon could hear the laughter under the strict words, though, so she obeyed anyway, even though it dashed her hopes of rolling Harrow’s piercings under her tongue.)
“Lie there. Just lie there.” Harrow touched Gideon’s cheek, trailed her fingers over Gideon’s shoulder as she walked back out of sight. Eventually, she settled onto the couch astride Gideon’s thighs, with the toy nestled snug on the cleft of Gideon’s ass. “I’m going to rub your back. Will you be patient?”
Gideon nodded. Harrow’s skin was blazingly hot against her. She definitely wasn’t cold anymore.
“Good girl.” Harrow dug her hands into Gideon’s meat.
It’s not that the touch wasn’t nice-- Harrow was touching her, which Gideon always loved. It was just that she’d been lying there on the couch for ages while Harrow got ready, and she was restless. She shifted her weight, trying not to jostle Harrow too much.
Harrow pressed her palm flat between Gideon’s scapulae. “Will you stay still, please? I promise I’ll make it good.”
Gideon forced herself into stillness. For Harrow, she reminded herself. Eventually, she managed to truly settle into the touch. The sound of her own breathing filled her ears. Harrow was using the full weight of her body to push down into the thick muscles of Gideon’s shoulders, and it hurt a little, like sore muscles after a really good workout.
In short, the massage felt glorious. She pressed her forehead into the arm of the couch and tried not to drool.
And then Harrow stopped. Gideon could feel her crawling backward on the couch, and then her thumbs pinched into the muscles just above her knee.
Gideon yelped. Not because it didn’t feel good-- it really, really did-- but because she hadn’t expected it. “You’re a dirty cheater,” she said. (As they’d experimented together, Harrow had learned that Gideon’s thighs were absurdly sensitive and exploited that fact at every reasonable opportunity.)
“Shhhhhh,” said the dirty cheater, in lieu of argument. “Let me touch you.”
Gideon bore up under this sensual assault with something less than stoicism. As Gideon made soft needy noises, her necromancer worked her way up Gideon’s thighs painstakingly slowly, and Gideon could feel her blood heating by degrees. She could probably come like this alone if Harrow kept it up for long enough. To test the theory, she pressed her thighs together to get some much-needed pressure on her clit.
Harrow smacked her hip. “I can tell what you’re doing. Stop.” She pressed her bony knee between Gideon’s thighs, and Gideon couldn’t help but spread for her.
“Come on, Nonagesimus. I won’t break. Just fuck me.” (It was worth a try.)
“But I’m enjoying myself, Griddle.” Harrow worked her thumbs into the newly-exposed flesh of Gideon’s inner thighs until Gideon whined and worked her hips against nothing, because Harrowhark had always been evil and hadn’t changed just because they were in love. “Will you wait for me?”
Those were more magic words that Gideon could never argue with, so she resigned herself to her fate. She would die of sexy torment at the hands of her necromancer, with Harrow’s hands working slowly closer and closer to the spot where Gideon was increasingly wet, never quite reaching anywhere Gideon desperately needed friction.
Harrow leaned forward to nuzzle Gideon’s back. “Just a little while longer. Stay with me. I know you can do it.”
If Gideon survived this, she was definitely using this to blackmail Harrow into eating her out, because she was about to combust out of her skin. She whined and squirmed a little to show Harrow that she hadn’t been completely incapacitated with lust, and then went obediently still.
“Oh, Griddle,” said Harrow, after another short infinity. “You really are something else.”
That in itself might have been enough to push Gideon over the edge-- she was so worked up-- except then Harrow took her hands away.
“Whaa--?” said Gideon, articulately. She wanted to scream. She wanted to thrash. She wanted to flip them both over so she could edge Harrow for the next three hours in retaliation. Her muscles were unhelpfully relaxed, and supported none of these plans.
At last, Harrow patted her flank. “Up,” she commanded.
Gideon wobbled up onto her elbows and knees. It was impossible to ignore Harrow’s presence between her spread thighs. She had to move carefully, around her necromancer’s bony frame.
Harrow didn’t help, either: her hands got busy lining herself up, one hand on Gideon’s hip to control the angle. Gideon had to flex her feet and dig her toes into the couch cushion to get any kind of support for the position.
Finally, Harrow seemed satisfied with the position. Gideon leaned her forehead against the arm of the couch as-- fuck-- Harrow finally slid inside her.
All the breath, all the thought, everything coherent shuddered out of Gideon. There were weird things going on with her core muscles. She had to prop herself up on her limbs because at least those were minimally functional.
Through the onslaught, Harrow’s hand scraped against her scalp, and her other hand stayed steady on her hip. That was enough to ground Gideon. Harrow had her. She trusted Harrow. She could let herself yield, even as Harrow began to rock against her.
It was completely different from any other thing Gideon had ever put inside herself, because this was Harrow inside her. She clung desperately onto anything she could reach-- the armrest, the cushions-- as her muscles betrayed her. This was pleasure like she’d never felt before, shimmery and unreal, as unstoppable as Harrowhark herself.
Gideon craned her neck, desperate to see Harrow’s face. She could only glimpse it out the corner of her eye, but Harrow was smiling down at her in that quiet way she had when it was only the two of them together.
“Let go, Gideon,” Harrow murmured. “You’re doing so well.”
Gideon trembled to hear it. Her whole body rocked with the motion of her hips-- Harrow’s hips-- their hips together. She was coming, she realized dimly, falling apart over and over again with Harrow inside her, with Harrow above her, with Harrow bending over her to put her back together.
At some point, her legs gave out entirely, and she flopped face-first onto the couch cushions. Harrow didn’t miss a beat, guiding her down and lying lightly on top of her, pressing her body flush against Gideon’s back, where her bone jewelry would leave little divots. She nipped lightly at Gideon’s deltoid. “Can you give me a little room?”
Harrow was pulling at her hip, bony fingers pinned against the couch by Gideon’s weight. Gideon did her best to lift herself up, and Harrow slid her hand the rest of the way underneath them to touch Gideon in exactly the way Gideon liked best.
Fuzzily, Gideon groped for language. There was something important, something even more crucial than the deluge of pleasure that was Harrow wrapped all the way around her from the inside out. “Harrow,” she managed. “Harrow-- I-- you--”
Harrow was stroking Gideon’s hair, even though it had gotten sweaty with the sex. “Shhhh, Gideon. I know. I know. I love you, too.”
That was all right, then. Gideon convulsed one last time, so violently she was distantly afraid she might have dislocated Harrow’s shoulder.
Everything seemed very soft to Gideon as Harrow wormed her arm out and then withdrew. There was a damp cloth, cleaning the residue from her thighs, and then Harrow put a blanket over her. Gideon scrunched down onto the pillows to drowse as Harrow continued to bustle around the room. She didn’t have the energy to do much, though when Harrow returned to join her, she gathered her wits enough to rearrange the blanket over both of them and wrap Harrow up in the circle of her arms.
“C’n I?” she asked. (She wasn’t sure how much energy she had to return the favor, but Harrow deserved it.)
Her necromancer rubbed her cheek over Gideon’s clavicle. “You did well. You owe me nothing.”
Something in Harrow’s tone caused Gideon to marshal the dregs of consciousness together for one last charge. “You came? Fucking me?”
Harrow did not answer, but pressed her face into Gideon’s chest, which was as good as a yes.
“Good,” said Gideon, decisively. That was it. Harrow had converted her. They were definitely doing that again.