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The energy of the waiting room is tense. Anticipatory. Agitated, Willow bounces her foot, leg crossed loosely over her knee, and stares hard at the door as if through sheer willpower alone Willow can beckon Annibala to come and play another round of their losing game.
Quit putting it off already, Willow thinks, prickly because that is what not knowing does to her. She’s sure Annibala is making her bite her nails down to the quick purposefully if only to heighten her sensitivity to her malevolent, all-consuming presence. She wants honest, unfettered reactions only. She wants to bare her, strip her down, and expose her, Annibala wants her rawest, purest form, which disturbs Willow on more than one level. But these are the stakes, and Willow has never done anything half-assed. She can lean into the role, try on the person suit Annibala is designing for her, it’s what she should do, it’s what she will do. It’s the only reason Willow is here, after all.
Right? Right.
This is the trap Willow is setting, the lure she has baited with fresh flesh, she will resume her therapy, it’s only natural, after one has been pardoned from the BSHCI barely, just barely, with grey matter scrambled and a mind in shambles. Willow is to come to Annibala’s office every Thursday at seven-thirty sharp, just like old times, just about. Willow is a hesitant disciple but she not-so-secretly yearns to be baptized in blood instead of toxic shame and self-hate. She is afraid of her own capabilities yet endlessly fascinated by Annibala’s. One of them will kill the other or they will be drawn into the maelstrom of flesh and death and madness together, that’s how this will go.
Jack Crawford isn’t so convinced - but his desire for vengeance and righteous justice outweighs his misgivings. Willow’s desire for the same screams over the unease and anxiety that sizzles through her nerves as she sits in a velvet chair and waits like prey.
The door opens, unhurried and nearly with a flourish, to reveal Annibala in a tailored, elegant suit. She looks dangerously elegant in her severe scarlet blouse and cream blazer, Willow can’t deny or seemingly ignore it, and her eyes are drawn to her long, muscular legs, as much as she hates herself for it.
There’s no point in feeling self-conscious, and that isn’t why Willow is looking. Recently, she has been sampling Annibala’s taste in aesthetics, dressing herself up in suits and pencil skirts and even trimming her hair for the first time in a decade, but she’s come from a crime scene today that she was called to at six am in the morning. A flannel and an old pair of jeans are her armor for today.
Willow looks up just in time to find her appreciative stare is not at all one-sided.
“Will,” She greets with a voice as melodic and tempting as a siren’s. Willow inclines her head in acknowledgment - a smile would feel too forced, she never extended meaningless polite pleasantries before, but before it was instinctive, natural, and because of this part she is playing it feels more uncanny than not. Her anxiety often fights for a smile, which, on her face probably looks more like a sneer than not.
“Dr. Lecter,” Willow responds in kind and though Annibala’s expression is unwavering they both know it is a pointed reminder of a line Willow is still not ready to cross.
Annibala steps to the side and holds the door open for Willow as she walks in. Every time she crosses this threshold Willow thinks she is traveling further down a path she will never be able to divert from. It feels a bit like ritualistic sacrifice every time, a part of herself she is unwillingly yet voluntarily cutting off and leaving in this room, an offering.
Willow is hyper-aware of Annibala here, everywhere she is, her presence hangs heavy in the air, unlike the soft and seductive perfume she wears. The very air seems displaced around her, making room. It takes half a second for Willow to brush by Annibala and in that half-second hairs raise on the back of her neck and her heart falls into her stomach. It’s as thrilling as it is terrifying.
Willow turns her head slightly to keep Annibala safely in her peripheral. Annibala crosses the room with light steps in heels that match her blouse - Willow takes a second to wonder if that heel has ever met another’s eye - and she settles into her normal chair. She is poised, serene, completely relaxed. Willow follows to sit uncomfortably in hers. The words unsaid hang heavy around them like thick fog, Willow is sure she isn’t the only one who hears the whispers.
Out loud, she says, “You look comfortable.” It comes out like an accusation because it is.
Annibala cocks her head daintily and hums, softly amused. “I suppose I am. Now, anyway. The days always seem to stretch longer when one finds themself lost in a labyrinth of a mind that is not their own. Of course, there is no need to explain this to you.”
“No,” Willow agrees, clasping her hands together as she leans forward. The gold bracelet Annibala gifted her after her name was cleared jingles softly as it collides with her watch. “Much time is spent trying to live inside craniums that are not our own.”
“Indeed,” Annibala mirrors her posture, not slouching as severely as Willow is, of course. “Should I assume, then, that that is why you look distinctly uncomfortable?”
Willow makes a soft, ambiguous sound in the back of her throat. “You’re asking me which mind I’ve encountered lately has disturbed me the most? That’s a tall order, Dr. Lecter.”
She doesn’t mean to look uncomfortable, but Willow realizes with no small amount of irritation that she’s not as well adept at hiding her true nature as Annibala is. Still, it can work in her favor. Annibala might work more vigorously to soothe Willow, and Willow will gratefully welcome any and all advances.
“Annibala, Will, please,” Annibala says, reproachful, yet almost coy about it. “I realize that we have left many things unsaid about our relationship. I feel it would be a disservice to us both if I did not attempt to give them a voice.”
That’s putting it lightly, Willow shakes the thought off. “I know who you are, as you know who I am.” She says simply, even though the words fight to retreat back down her throat. “I said I needed to learn how to deal with you, and I meant that. That is the whole point of me being here but I do want to be here.”
“Do you?”
Annibala’s question is genuine, and Willow sees the light of it in her eyes.
“You fascinate me,” Willow confesses. “You infuriate me. I am trying to navigate how these two can coexist.”
The best lies, after all, are reanimated from ugly, intimate graves of truth.
“What is it like, your navigation?”
“Foggy,” Willow admits. “Uncertain. But there’s a light in the distance, strong and sure, and it’s…..calming, until it isn’t.” She takes a moment to think about this, straddling the line between authenticity and fiction. “It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. But I don’t know where it is the light shines.”
“You find comfort in your tunnels.” Annibala observes. “In shadows. In places you can easily retreat to, should the destination prove dissatisfying.”
“Not dissatisfying. Disquieting.”
“And what is disquieting to you, Will?”
This is her chance. Willow’s tongue traces the back of her teeth as she prepares to strike. It isn’t at all accidental that she tilts her head in such a way that bares her throat. “Well, my day has been spent trying to deconstruct the latest Ripper murder, so.” Willow drawls, purposefully adding a splash of intrigue into her voice. “I suppose that’s why I’m a bit more…tense than usual.”
Willow finds that she is not as loathe to recount the gory details of the tableau Annibala left her as she should be. It is frightening, unspeakably so, and so she cannot even allow the words to take shape in the form of thoughts heard only by herself. Of course, deep down, there is horror, buried in a coffin and scratching to escape. Willow’s humanity recoils from the savage beauty her monster huddles close to. She cannot explain it.
Perhaps this excitement, thrilling only in the way adrenaline found in escaping death is, has sunk it’s claws in so deep is because Willow yearns as fervently as a starver to sink her teeth into something Annibala will not present as subterfuge. No lies, no trickery, only the bare bones of the truth Willow has uncovered from the dirt herself. It feels like a prize, like a reward. Like the sacrifice she has made of herself has finally been reborn into a perfected form.
What it comes down to is that Willow, as much as she may despise Annibala for what she has done and continues to do, also desires company in the ruins, so that they may rot there together.
An eye for an eye.
Annibala’s maroon, sharp eyes take on a predatory gleam. “Oh? The Ripper has gotten under your skin more so than usual?”
“That implies there’s been a moment the Ripper has left.”
“And this disturbs you?”
“Shouldn’t it?” The question can’t help but sound rhetorical. “Today I saw an artist’s entrails strewn across a canvas and hung under a spotlight in the Baltimore Museum of art. His body was kneeling before it, hollow. His art killed him. His art had finally been elevated, but at what cost? I couldn’t stop staring at it. I couldn’t stop seeing it for what it was.”
In one fluid movement, Annibala’s hand reaches behind her to sweep her long golden waterfall of hair over her shoulder. “I have told you before that what you need is a way out of dark places when Jack sends you there. You see your mind as a prison, Will, and only you have the key. But you alone have the means to reconstruct the foundation, rather than allow it to crumble.”
You have toppled your own bricks and left them bloodstained, Willow thinks with a sudden swell of bitterness, but that won’t serve her here. “Maybe it crumbled so easily because it was never well-constructed in the first place.”
“Perhaps,” Annibala allows. “Foundations built upon lies are often doomed to surrender to the force of truth.”
“There is such a high, frankly unreasonable value placed on truth,” Willow smiles, with teeth. “Truth isn’t always so great.”
“No?”
“If it were, most wouldn’t work so hard to hide it. There are those who revere me for my ability to see the truth, and those same people also despise and fear me for it. I understand fear and loathing. The truth dresses itself up in nightmares and presents itself to me in bloodied glory. It’s…..difficult, to build my church upon that rock.”
“There are universal truths and personal truths. People fear what they do not understand, and people fear what they do understand because it is not understood.”
“I understand my nightmares. Walking corpses that cling onto my life to drag me into the maelstrom of death and madness. Sometimes, I offer my hand before they ask. They want me to worship them on an altar of bones, they want me to save myself and burn the entire world down.” Her voice is too breathy for what she is describing, and it is not from fear, no, rather the opposite. This is on purpose, though not entirely put-on. “Death haunts me. It, at times, seems more real than life itself. I see it in the cosmos, celestial bodies burning out and looking all the more lovely for it.”
“And this causes you distress?”
“It causes me delirium. My nightmares feel like heaven mocking me. The truth is pretty and sweet until it escapes from my grasp like a wisp of smoke. It taunts me.” Willow shifts on the chair, subtly, and a tremor wracks through her lower belly. Fuck, too much. “I can’t sleep.”
Annibala’s delicate, rose-petal lips subtly part, Willow watches as words cycle through her mind, dancing on the tip of her tongue, just out of reach. Her empathy reaches out instinctively. Annibala doesn’t hesitate before she speaks, not ever, and Willow’s empathy sneaks through her fortress like black smoke to uncover why. She lands on something tangible; a proposal. An offer to nudge Willow closer to the edge of the cliff they stand precariously on. A suggestion that isn’t a suggestion, not really, it is a challenge to dig deeper; Annibala into her skin, and Willow her own grave.
Like divine judgement, Annibala’s lids lower, her lashes flutter, and she reaches a conclusion that makes her skin seemingly glow in the dim low light. It makes Willow’s skin prickle and unconsciously lean closer still.
“You are stressed. Overwhelmed, overworked, and worn out. You cannot quiet your mind.” Annibala says simply, as if it is something so simple. “I may have a suggestion.”
Willow nods, settling back slightly into the chair now, suddenly acutely aware she is tip-toeing around traps laid beneath leaves. “Okay.”
“It is unorthodox.”
Willow struggles to hide her amusement. “Nothing about this is orthodox. But you haven’t scared me off yet.”
“It is only a suggestion,” Annibala says, mildly. Then, “What sort of methods are at your disposal pertaining to stress release?”
Willow swallows with an audible click. “Alcohol, mostly.”
Annibala’s brow flexes, quietly displeased. “Alcohol should not be used for medication. You’re numbing yourself. You shouldn’t scorn your feelings and banish them.”
“So what I should do instead is….?”
“Accept them. Nourish them.”
“Nourish them? My feelings are ravenous.”
“Feelings, like anything else, need proper sustenance. Give into what you crave, Will. Do not punish the hunger for what it is,” Annibala says softly, sweetly, slowly. Her eyes seem to throb with heat. “Let it consume what it desires.”
Willow swallows again, her throat suddenly sandpaper dry.
“And your suggestion is?”
“How is your sex life?”
Willow almost chokes on nothing, never having expected that. Not so bluntly. Not so soon. She wasn’t expecting the word sex to drip off of Annibala’s tongue like silken honey, and it affects her more than she thinks it should, more than is healthy.
Should she play the ingenue or the seductress?
Willow has long been aware of the effect she has on others. She is not unattractive. With her dark curls and seafoam blue eyes, Willow knows what she looks like on paper. She might not be a swimsuit model on a poster teenage boys hang on their bedroom walls, but she cleans up nice, and she is aware of men’s eyes and where they are drawn to when she enters a room.
The problem is Willow’s eyes are drawn to men’s chins and noses and necks. The problem is that Willow is who she is, and underneath conventional beauty standards, she has never been able to view sex as anything other than a frivolous waste of time that offers more risk than reward. Her bed has never seen any repeat performances as Willow either can’t get out of her head or she becomes lost in her partner’s. It is alienating, unnerving, and Willow resigned herself to nights untouched and preferred it that way, really.
Of course, Annibala is the exception.
Of course, Annibala is the first person Willow is genuinely attracted to who just so happens to be this century’s most prolific serial killer.
That sums up her sex life pretty aptly, actually.
Annibala’s eyes are twin suns burning through her skin which suddenly feels overheated and much too thin, and Willow’s own eyes suddenly feel warm and heavy.
“Well,” Willow clears her throat, feeling pink stain her cheekbones. “Unsurprisingly being released from an asylum after being accused of serial murder, mutilation, and cannibalism, verdict notwithstanding, hasn’t made me the world’s most eligible bachelorette.”
This is, of course, entirely Annibala’s fault, and Willow can feel the smugness emanating off of her in crashing waves. “And your masturbatory habits?”
Willow doesn’t want to tell her that occurrence is even more rare than when she does happen to take someone home, because if she does, she feels like she’ll have to explain the last time she got off was imagining dragging a knife down the middle of Annibala and tearing her apart with her bare hands. “Regular? I don’t know, it’s the same problem, I can’t get out of my head.”
“Sex is a very intimate act. It requires vulnerability, strength and weakness in equal measure. We give a piece of ourselves to another person and we can only hope they will be gentle with it. Of course, this suggestion would prove entirely futile if you were not comfortable with your partner. It would only worsen your condition.”
“There are not many people I find myself - comfortable with.” Willow’s stomach does a strange thing - it tightens, unravels loose, and falls to tatters somewhere far outside of her body. She breathes through the sensation. “And I’m guessing that was not your entire suggestion.”
Outside, Willow hears the beginnings of a soft pouring of rain.
“I have a theory I would like to test, if you are amenable,” Annibala says, tapping one manicured nail against a knuckle. “More of an experiment, really.”
“An experiment?” Willow echoes. Her eyes dart away despite herself. “Would that make me the guinea pig?”
She looks up in time to see the slight curve of Annibala’s lips, a small smile that has slipped by, surprised her, and is almost as tense as Willow feels. There is no possible way Annibala could feel something as human as nerves, Willow rebukes her empathy, but then, there is potential for rejection here, and Willow imagines that is entirely unfamiliar for Annibala to feel.
“Guinea pigs do not have the autonomy to make their own decisions.”
Oh.
Annibala wants her consent. Not that it matters, whether or not she does want this, she will consent, this will further her mechanisms, this is her design. But does it really mean so much to Annibala? Willow has never had a choice in any of this. If she did, it would have been when Jack Crawford first walked into her classroom asking to borrow her imagination.
Annibala never asked to borrow her imagination. She simply took it and ravaged it, and left Willow with only pieces of things horrifying and true, much too true.
Kintsugi, but with human blood instead of gold.
And now, Annibala is offering her an escape?
No, it is an offer of something more sinister.
Annibala does what she does, and Willow is left scarred by the consequences. But this suggests culpability. If Willow agrees, if she takes a step further down this darkened road, something new will branch off and it will be made of quicksand, something Willow can only sink into. Something she will be consumed by if she is not careful, does not tread lightly, does not have a lifeline to cling tightly onto.
But there is only Annibala to hold onto here.
Willow allows herself a moment of treacherous indecision. But her resolution takes ahold of her chin and snarls at her. Divert the course, take her hand, lead her down a road of your own creation. This is how it needs to go.
But, because of her own sick cravings, it makes this all the more damning.
If Willow wants this, it makes the lie all the more believable, because it is not a lie at all.
If this is what she truly hungers for, Willow knows she cannot blame Annibala, not for the simple act of feeding her, but it is a betrayal to herself.
So if Willow does this, it will become another nightmare that haunts, more sleep that eludes her.
It will be a design that takes physical form.
“What did you have in mind?” Willow says, in her voice, in her own words, but it sounds as if it comes from a different person entirely.
In an instant, the air is much too thin, charged with something electric and dangerous, much more dangerous than before.
Annibala’s lips part, slightly. “Oxytocin has a calming effect. A release of oxytocin might allow you to sleep better, as well as soothe the anxieties that plague you. I am offering to assist you in achieving release.”
To hear such clinical language delivered in such a seemingly impersonal tone shouldn’t go straight to her head and pool liquid warmth in her belly, but Willow can feel herself getting wet.
Willow allows herself a moment of silence, as if she really has to think about it. “If that’s what the doctor recommends,” She tries to say evenly, but her voice wavers, exposing raw desire.
Annibala clears her throat and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “This sort of treatment hasn’t been utilized in recent years. However, I believe that unorthodox forms of therapy can yield results, especially in unorthodox cases.”
“Yeah,” Willow hears herself say, distantly, nodding as she leans back into her chair like someone who’s just been sedated. She looks across the room at Annibala through her heavy lashes. “So, where should we do this?”
Annibala’s eyes sharpen. “Are you comfortable?”
Willow shouldn’t be. Thunder rumbles outside, and she feels a hunger inside of her roar to life with it. Her heartbeat is rapturous, pounding a wild rhythm of fear and thrill. “Yes.” She says lowly, ignoring her all of her misgivings, which are too few given the situation at hand.
“Then stay there.”
With that, Annibala rises, slow and languid. Willow can only describe it as stalking as Annibala makes her way over, with all of the power and self-assuredness of a predator who has cornered meek, wounded prey. Willow knows that this is the last sight many have seen before they have died by the hands that come to rest on either side of the armchair now, caging her in. Trapping her.
Willow has no desire to escape.
Willow swallows repeatedly. She can feel her pulse hammering in the tips of her fingers, the tip of her tongue, behind her eyes and sharp in her throat. Annibala’s eyes snare her own and for a moment, the fog lifts and the light at the end of the tunnel blazes brighter, illuminating everything gory and glorious.
Willow sees herself reflected in those maroon eyes, the color of old blood, and she sees her monster side by side, merging, becoming.
Annibala’s eyes narrow, vulpine, her golden lashes flutter and brush softly against Willow’s cheekbone as she leans forward. She murmurs, sotto voce, “Relax.”
And Willow’s breath snags in her throat as Annibala suddenly, with fluid grace, drops to her knees in between her legs. Large and looming and imposing one moment to servile and seeking the next. Willow jerks involuntarily as Annibala’s lovely, lethal hands press her thighs further apart.
Willow can’t fight off the widening of her eyes, nor the soft, almost wounded noise that involuntarily tears itself from her throat at the sight. It’s obscene; it’s prepossessing. It’s right. Annibala is looking at her right now like Willow is one of the meals she fastidiously and perfectly prepares, delicious and entirely her own design, something she is biting to sink her teeth into.
Willow knows she will not be able to bring herself to report this particular mark of progress to Jack. She’s entirely too affected to pretend this is for the greater good.
“Come closer,” Annibala says in a near whisper, dragging Willow to the edge of the chair with that effortless strength of hers, and Willow concedes, goes willingly. With a snap, her fingers undo the button of Willow’s jeans and then move to slowly slide the zip down. The wait is a unique kind of torture. Willow’s breaths are coming out serrated and fast, cutting her throat and her lips, and she tastes blood even though she isn’t bleeding. With direction from Annibala she lifts her hips up so that her jeans can pool uselessly around her ankles, and then all at once she is sitting in her psychiatrist’s office in nothing but her thin henley, her worn flannel, her white panties and her armor quickly crumbling.
She’s soaked through and Willow doesn’t have time to feel shame, because Annibala is pressing in close and inhaling like she’s smelling something sweet and divine. Willow does bite through her bottom lip, then, and is rewarded with the taste of her own blood.
“Don’t be obscene,” Willow breathes, because it is the only thing she can think to say, this is more intense than any of the wild fantasies she has nursed secretly in the dark, much more pleasurable and that only makes it all the more painful. This is not an act; it would be easier if it were.
Annibala flicks her dark eyes up, pupils almost having swallowed her irises whole. “Do you object?” She asks, and just as Willow opens her mouth to say - she doesn’t know, exactly - Annibala’s tongue strikes out and licks a wet stripe against the already damp fabric. Willow chokes, mouth wide open so the noise she makes is loud, echoing against walls that have heard screams.
“W-What are you planning on doing?” Willow gasps, trying frantically to recover herself with her gossamer-thin composure. It is in vain. Annibala licks once, twice, and Willow throbs with it, feeling herself leak heavier and fiercer.
“Foreplay is often overlooked,” Annibala answers, placing a soft kiss on her inner thigh. She continues like this for a moment, just dragging her lips in soft flutters further towards where Willow is aching with it, leaving fiery sparks seared deep into sensitive skin. “It is a disservice to focus solely on release. The best delicacies in life are savored, this is no different.”
Of course. Annibala is feeding her own hunger as well.
Willow squirms, heat crawling under her skin and burrowing in deep as Annibala takes her right leg to heft over her shoulder, and then the other. With a guiding hand pressed soft against the small of her belly Willow shoulders hit the back of her chair, her lower back is stuck against the chair and her hips cant upwards without her conscious consent. Annibala continues savoring, her kisses growing sloppier and wetter, bestowed everywhere except where Willow is most desperate for her.
And then, teeth are introduced. Willow feels a whisper of them against her flesh as they skim, then nip, then sink in, carefully at first. The skin swells, tender and pulsating, heightening her need to dangerous peaks. Annibala starts sucking, teeth pressing further down, testing skin and its malleability, and her tongue laves wetly. Willow keens, low in her throat. There will be bruises. Marks.
She never expected Annibala to be this way, but she doesn’t know why she didn’t.
Annibala drives Willow crazy in every which way, it only makes sense that sex would feel like madness with her.
Annibala is passionate. Devoted.
She wants to ravage Willow in every way she can and, in this, Willow is tempted to let her.
Willow looks down through tear-glossed eyes to gaze upon the flushed stains that are dark against her pale skin. They are rosy and vibrant, broken blood cells that will devolve into purple and blue, maybe black. Annibala’s eyes are closed and her expression is nearly serene as she continues her assault on Willow’s thighs.
She’s tasting you, Willow thinks, hazily. Maybe it should frighten her - Annibala could bite down hard, tear away chunks of flesh, Willow is on her back and in no position to fight, and it wouldn’t be Annibala’s first time tasting human flesh. Maybe the only time swallowing it raw and bloody and pure. Willow wants to ask if she would, but she can’t find her words. She can only gasp and moan incoherently as Annibala teases this treacherous trust out of her.
This is trust. Annibala could do anything, and Willow, in this moment, would let her. It sends a sharp spike of cold piercing through her burning heart.
She could do anything, and what then?
You can’t trust her but you do, in some ways.
You trust her in ways you have never trusted anyone else.
And you distrust her in ways you never thought possible. That shouldn’t be possible.
If she hurts you in a way that is right, is that all it takes?
What suddenly jolts Willow out of her impending self-flagellating spiral is the feeling of two firm, demanding fingers pressing down against the most sensitive part of her. Willow spasms and her eyes struggle to focus against the sudden burst of sharp pleasure. Those fingers press down, again, and then drag up roughly, forcing out a high-pitched keen.
When the fog clears Willow looks down to find Annibala, her lips flushed and damp and discerning.
“Stay with me, Will.” Annibala says, quiet and raspy.
Willow looks at her with burning eyes. “Where else would I go?”
Annibala’s eyes are probing, perceptive, and alight with some strange, impassioned fervor. “You have everywhere to go.”
“Why would I want to go?” The question is wretched, and the closest to a confession Willow can bring herself to make. She squirms down lower, thrusts her hips up slightly, because it is easier to accept giving into Annibala if she is blinded by madness, and she doesn’t want her own madness to be seen through. This is a trap, but one Willow is caught in too. So she takes a deep breath and says in almost a snarl. “Don’t you dare psychoanalyze me right now.”
Annibala hums, low in her throat. “Difficult to avoid,” She says. “I can’t exactly switch it off, and I think you know that by now.” But she relents, and hooks two fingers into the waistband of Willow’s panties.
Willow doesn’t need any prompting, she raises her hips and uses her right hand, as jellied and useless as it feels, to help strip off the last barrier between her and Annibala. The last physical one, anyway.
It is strange to lie there, so exposed in such a debauched way, but this is nothing, it is the way Annibala has bared her mind that Willow finds truly disconcerting and struggles earnestly against. Still, this is perhaps the most lewd thing Willow has ever done, and her thighs twitch as if to close instinctively.
Annibala doesn’t let her, her hands keep her thighs parted, and Willow is breathless because of how Annibala looks at her.
She looks at Willow as if this is all she has ever wanted, her eyes as bright as celestial rebirth.
“Beautiful,” She breathes, swaying closer. Her eyes flutter closed and she looks as if she is experiencing some divine agony. “I imagine this is what it was like to taste the forbidden fruit.”
And then, her tongue darts out to taste.
Willow jerks, a full-bodied wave of ecstasy so defined it is almost painful crashing through her. Annibala’s ministrations have left her painfully sensitive, and the slow, languid drag of her tongue through her dripping, tender folds is almost too much to bear. Willow’s own tongue is traitorous, letting slip wanton cries and soft sighs for more. But it is incessant, unceasing pleasure, unforgiving and merciless, and Willow is helpless to do much but surrender to it as it drags her under.
Annibala’s fingers press hard into her hips, and the pressure there tightens the coil of arousal in her stomach almost more than the steady swirl of her tongue around her clit, almost. Blunt fingernails carve crescents into skin that will be marred in indelible ways even after the physical evidence fades. Willow will never be able to forget this, she will never be able to forget the heat, nor will she pretend she will not loathe the absence, no, rather the opposite. She is on fire but, unlike last time, all she desires now is to feed the flames. Feed the sickness inside. Feed herself until she never hungers again.
Oh, this is dangerous, but it’s far too late.
Annibala’s lips form a tight suction around her clit, coaxing cries and pleas for mercy, for release, for more, for everything. Willow is leaking steadily, trying to abate her reactions, raw as they are. Annibala must notice, because Willow swears she begins licking into her rougher, wetter, with impossibly more fervor than before.
Her toes curl, her legs tremble, and Wilow gasps as Annibala flicks her tongue over her clenching entrance. “There, fuck.”
Annibala hums into her, but her tongue retreats. Willow groans, feeling incomparably empty, emptier than her skull was left after her memories were burned, emptier than when those who she tried to protect were taken, emptier than the nights spent in her cell, teeth gritted and brow sweat-soaked, imagining many scenes that pale in comparison to this.
The pressure inside of her is tight, almost painful. It writhes under her skin, begging to be released. Annibala drinks her fill, hitching her hips up and continuously going deeper, and deeper, all while maintaining the same infuriating steady pace. Her tongue is a tease, testing and testing, and with shaking thighs Willow can’t help but hug her head tight and press her in further, cradling her in her own warmth.
Annibala comes up for air, suddenly, with a harsh gasp that sounds like it rushes through her lungs like the storm steadily raging outside. She looks wrecked; there is no more elegant way to put it. Her eyes are as black as a starless sky and her mouth is red and wet, her chin is dripping with it. It hits Willow like a punch to the gut. She looks disheveled, hazy, but still cognizant enough to lick her lips and take Willow in, in all of her ravaged glory.
“Can you come like this?” Annibala asks, her cheek hot against Willow’s kiss-bruised thigh. She seems to know Willow can’t. Willow makes a low sound in the back of her throat that could be considered a growl as Annibala’s lithe fingers ghost just inches from where Willow needs her most.
“Want you inside me,” Willow rasps and Annibala’s throat works as she swallows. “Do you want to be inside me?”
More than you already are?
Annibala’s index finger skims gently through her slick folds, collecting wetness and massaging her fluttering cunt, ever so lightly. The pad of her finger circles her entrance and, without warning, suddenly sinks inside. Willow clenches around her, her muscles tensed, having been breached so abruptly. It pulls a long, low sound from her lips, and she relaxes as Annibala sinks in further. She burns inside, pleasantly, and her hips thrust forward, taking Annibala’s finger deeper and deeper.
“Fuck,” Willow hisses under her breath. Annibala’s eyes are overbright with feeling, strangely soft, yet heavy with something that speaks of consumption. Her stomach curls, tighter and tighter when a second finger joins. Her cunt is throbbing in time with her heartbeat.
It starts slow, exploratory. Willow rocks her hips and closes her eyes, her breaths hitching and little ah, ah, ah’s, falling from her lips like petals from a cherry blossom tree in spring. Then the fingers inside of her scissor, stretching her wide, and Willow gasps and jolts upright when they curl and brush against something delicately soft deep inside of her.
“Good?” Annibala asks lowly, working a third finger inside of her. Willow grits her teeth, the third is more difficult than the first two, but Willow is soaked and before long Annibala has three fingers buried inside of her to the third knuckle. “Good.”
Like she’s reaching inside of her, pulling out her innards, dissecting her with a surgeon’s focus, sharp and precise, it’s too much. Annibala’s pace quickens, the pressure increases like a supernova, blazing bright and furious, and the corners of Willow’s vision blacken.
And a scream gets caught in her throat, coming out as a weak, winded rasp as Annibala places a long, lingering kiss on top of her swollen clit. Willow is teetering precariously on the edge, swaying and oscillating and her stomach tightens with the sensation of vertigo, and she’ll freefall, she’ll plummet, she’ll fall to her death, like this. She has never been adored like this, devoured like this. It makes her distraught, it fills her with delight.
But Willow doesn’t have a mind about her to ruminate on why she should keep standing, instead of surrendering to gravity and its unstoppable will.
“Yeah, yeah,” Willow says, senselessly. Her fingers thread into Annibala’s silken hair and she holds on tight, she needs something to hold onto or she’ll break, but she wants to break, into bits and pieces so she can be cradled and put back together by the same hands that were her undoing. She can’t explain it, cannot rationalize it, she cannot ignore it. Annibala’s tongue flattens and licks, and she doesn’t let up. “Yeah.”
Willow is barely aware of another hand sneaking past the barrier of fabric that still covers her heaving torso, not until bare skin requites with her own, and Annibala pulls away suddenly again, her fingers stilling inside of her.
“You aren’t….” Annibala asks, in wonder. Her lips have gone slack, and her eyes shine.
“I got dressed in a rush,” Willow says through panting, halting breaths, and then Annibala’s hand is squeezing, rough and greedy, and a rash of heat spreads through Willow’s chest like wildfire. A thumb circles a rapidly hardening nipple and an index joins to twist and pinch. Annibala's hand is just above her heart as if, if she could, Annibala would tear it straight from her chest. Willow bows into herself, shaking.
Their consummation, of course, could only be a consumption. Annibala catches it on her tongue when Willow comes, and she drinks her down like sweet wine, like blood, like ambrosia and like poison and this is a pyrrhic victory - for whom, Willow cannot say. She cannot think. Cannot breathe.
She understands now la petite mort - the little death.
And with arms outstretched, she falls.
No, before that, she seals her fate. She pulls Annibala up into a kiss that is biting, mean, that conveys gratitude and forgiveness and everything the opposite. It is an apology and a gloat. A vain struggle for the upper hand, which she has never had, and doesn’t know how to have without Annibala’s hand in her own. Was this meant to be a cure or simply more irreparable harm? Does it even matter? She doesn’t mind the bitterness of herself on Annibala’s tongue, though she cannot bear to have her close afterward, preferring to keep her regrets close to her chest in the apocalyptic afterglow. Will she sleep tonight? Will she dream?
Willow doesn’t refuse the invitation to dinner.
Because her appetite for Annibala, unfortunately, will never be sated. Of this she is sure.