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Leonie had never thought of herself as a needy person until after they had become lovers.
“It’s natural to want it after a fight,” Shamir had said. “When the adrenaline is still coursing through your veins and the flesh of your foes has left the heat of their bodies lingering on your skin. Every battle is like that,” she had said. “A conflict of desires.”
She had a tendency to do that—to conflate sex and war, love and lust, to boil every elevated concept of faith and trust and companionship and affection into the meanest, ugliest, basest human instinct: want. Their relationship was never about love, only about want. Never what about what they could do together, only about what they could do for each other. Even when Shamir didn’t mean for their relationship to feel transactional, it always did. This for that. Tit for tat. Even during sex, when Leonie figured anyone would become emotionally vulnerable, Shamir always managed to feel closed-off. She didn’t like to talk about past lovers, and she barely seemed to acknowledge Leonie as one in the first place. Leonie knew that Shamir was pragmatic, independent, and detached by choice—maybe even by necessity.
But they were also having sex, and despite everything Shamir said, her behavior in their most intimate moments contradicted it. She’d never been able to quite smooth out the typical Dadgan curtness from her speech, but she moved like she cared. She played Leonie’s body like a lyre. But anything else?
“No.”
Shamir looked up at her. She had the most obscenely beautiful look of complete and utter bewilderment on her face.
It was, quite simply, unjust.
“No?” Shamir asked. She had already undressed Leonie from the waist up and was working on getting off her trousers, kissing and then tugging and then kissing and then tugging, inch by sordid inch. Her mouth left wet trails on Leonie’s skin and Leonie could feel her own arousal staining through her clothes; she knew what had been coming next and anticipated it. But they made love constantly, practically through force of habit. Shamir’s mouth and hands had worn memories like grooves into her skin. Leonie had been conditioned to expect sex whenever they had downtime, to work off stress and to reaffirm their feelings for each other, so she was almost always ready for her touch.
Leonie grabbed her shirt with one hand and turned Shamir’s face away with the other, leaving Shamir awkwardly arched back and bent over her on hands and knees.
“I just…”
Shamir slid a hand over the one pressed to her face, easing it off so she could relax her neck. “Not in the mood?” She turned her head and pressed gentle kisses into Leonie’s palm, eyes filled with worshipful concern.
Leonie blushed. Her body screamed for carnal fulfillment. She needed only say one sentence to be made whole again in her lover’s arms, to put aside her self-interested stubbornness and accept that the only time Shamir could properly express her feelings was in bed. It wasn’t a bad thing to be made love to—certainly, it was preferable to what they could have been, intimacy without affection, physicality without expression. Sex for the sake of it. Their relationship could have been loveless when it wasn’t. The fact that Shamir could so effortlessly work orgasms out of her with her fingers may have had more to do with Leonie than with the specifics of their relationship—the word “easy” floated unhelpfully through Leonie’s mind—but she knew her feelings were reciprocated.
She just wanted to hear it.
“Do you love me, Shamir?”
Shamir froze. Not in the way Leonie wanted her to, of course—she never did. She didn’t look insecure; she looked angry. And anger was always Shamir’s first response to anything she didn’t like. Someone less familiar with Shamir might have taken her frigid silence for apathy. But Leonie saw it for what it was.
She squeezed her eyes shut out of frustration. It was such a little thing for most other people, to tell someone that you loved them. The people in her hometown said “I love you” to each other all the time. Leonie didn’t know much about Dagda; she hadn’t received much formal schooling outside of Garreg Mach, and Shamir was characteristically reticent about it. She wanted to believe that even people over there had a way of telling each other, at least.
“I do,” Leonie whispered, more to herself than to anyone else. If she said anything more than that, then Shamir would assume she was feeling insecure when she wasn’t. If she gave in now, she knew, then Shamir would go on as usual, rocking her gently into her climax, and the next day treat her as if nothing had ever happened. If she tried to delay it any further, then Shamir would get frustrated and give up on her for the rest of the night, and they wouldn’t get anywhere anyway.
By now, she knew painfully well why Shamir refused to talk about it. Talking about why she didn’t want to talk about it—talking about loss—made it real.
Leonie put her shirt back down, sliding her other hand out of Shamir’s grasp to rest it on her own bare chest. “Hey,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me anything for me to know how you feel. I know there are other ways to express it. But…”
Shamir’s glare was pointed.
Leonie traced circles on the ground with her finger. They had pitched their tent in a clearing in the woods, where the dirt was packed enough to lay down their bedrolls. Despite the privacy that their tent ostensibly afforded them, she could still hear the nighttime sounds of the forest all around them. Leonie had spent enough time around livestock in her youth to not be bothered by any of it, but now, in the summer heat and the darkness, she felt enshrouded and exposed all at once. The thought of clinging to her, making noisy, desperate love in the woods in the middle of the night, made her feel small.
“We’ve never really discussed what our future together might look like.” For someone who never showed her emotions on her face, Shamir was inhumanly perceptive and could sniff out a lie in a heartbeat. It was better to be honest. “You’ve never expressed any interest in returning to Dagda, or in settling down in my hometown like I’ve always wanted. You’re so beautiful and strong, you strike me as the kind of person who could lead this life forever. But I…” She hesitated.
It would be so easy to lose her over a difference in opinion. She had seen it happen in front of her own eyes. Shamir was a mercenary in every sense of the word. Everything she did, she did for her own gain.
“Never mind.” She grasped her discarded shirt, squeezing it tightly in her hand.
“You think I’d leave you over it?” Her tone was disarmingly flat.
Well, it always was.
Leonie looked away. Shamir had the strangest way of making her feel like an idiot with nothing but a single glance. Don’t you trust me? it asked. Is everything we have right now not enough for you?
“Well,” Leonie said quietly, “you’ve never said you’ve wanted anything beyond this. But I want to retire back home. E-even if we—if I—don’t start a family or anything… I used to think that making money was all there was to life. Now I’m realizing, after everything that we’ve been through, that it’s not.”
“Leonie.” Shamir pushed herself upright, sitting back on her heels, and furrowed her brow. “Why are you bringing this up in the middle of sex?”
“I got distracted,” she said honestly.
“Do you still want it?”
“Do you ever think more than a few days ahead?”
Shamir grabbed the hand twisted in her shirt and gave it a squeeze that was a little too firm to be comforting. “I’m glad you know what you want to do with your life,” she said. “But that’s your decision, not mine.”
“Would you want to?” Leonie looked up at her.
“Retire?” Shamir said. “Not especially.”
“You could become an instructor again.”
“I never officially was one.”
“Really?”
Shamir gave her the subtlest of smiles. “Not my fault if you never noticed.”
Leonie’s gaze fell to her lips. She reached up, slowly, and grasped the back of Shamir’s neck with both hands, easing her lover down on top of her. Leonie kissed her, shallowly at first, letting Shamir suck and tug on her lips and then slow, until Leonie started to kiss her back. She took her time, holding Shamir in place, waiting for her to figure out what Leonie wanted. When she slid her hand up against Leonie’s ribs, Leonie pushed it off. When she hooked her fingers around Leonie’s waistband, she pulled them away. She slowed until Leonie was the one kissing her, angling her head and opening her mouth in deference, and Leonie felt a hot swell of desire when she pushed her tongue inside, aching for Shamir to want her rather than the other way around.
The kiss was tentative, then—she’d allowed it tacitly but wasn’t used to it, it seemed. Ordinarily Shamir would be inside her by now. Maybe later in the night she’d let herself be touched, but Leonie was almost never the one to initiate.
Shamir pulled away. She was only a little short of breath.
“Leonie,” she said. “Let’s get your pants off.”
She was soaked. She moaned when Shamir’s fingers brushed her slit.
“We can switch after this,” Shamir said. There was an odd lilt to her voice, as though she were unsure of what to say.
She wanted badly for Shamir to be inside of her, but she knew even two orgasms wouldn’t be enough to give her the self-control and clarity of mind that she wanted. She knew they were on the same page now—that Shamir knew what she wanted and was willing to give it to her—but she felt desperate and pathetic, like her body was betraying her. Somewhere in her rattled brain lay the thought, Is this why she doesn’t respect me? and it sank like a rock and anchored itself to the inside of her skull, like a predator in wait.
“Get in, get in.”
It wasn’t enough, not until Shamir lowered her head and started making love to her clit, but the orgasm that followed energized them both enough to work her up to the next without stopping.
Shamir’s mouth was making obscene noises against her cunt when she finally started to come down from it, and she could tell from how sloppy Shamir’s movements had gotten that she was probably ready for a switch.
“Oh,” Leonie gasped, squeezing her eyes shut when her vision flashed white again. It lowered into a moan. “Ohh…”
Shamir moved her mouth away, panting against her lips. Leonie could feel every breath.
“Fuck,” Shamir hissed. Leonie fluttered around the fingers still inside her. Again again again again again.
Shamir raised her head. Her mouth was filthy. Whatever wasn’t dribbling down her chin was definitely ruining the blanket beneath them. She gave her fingers a waggle. Leonie whined and tightened around them again.
“We can keep going,” Shamir offered, the bright sheen of lust temporarily gone from her eyes.
No, Leonie thought, ravish me. She lay there and collected her thoughts. “Need a break,” she said.
Shamir took the time to wipe off her face and her hand. She wanted bruises, maybe a finger up her ass. She wanted so many things at once she couldn’t keep track of them all. Her whole hand. A toy. Commitment. A few more minutes with Shamir out of her, she thought, and she could do it.
“Do you want me?” Leonie looked at her.
“I always do.”
That had to be the post-coital afterglow speaking.
“You don’t believe me?” Shamir asked.
It must have shown on her face.
“If you don’t want me to know,” said Shamir, scowling prettily, “then don’t look at me like that.”
“You take twice as long,” said Leonie.
“That’s still not that long.”
“It’s at least twenty minutes.”
“I’m hardly frigid.”
“I never said you were,” insisted Leonie.
They smiled at each other. Shamir took off her shirt, and then the rest of her clothes. Even though they had done this plenty of times in reverse, Leonie had to be helped into position. Shamir was comfortably wet. Her breathing was calm and even. And Leonie had no idea how to pleasure her.
“I think I’ve done this, like, twice.” Both times they’d been going at it for long enough that she could have gotten off with anything. Shamir wasn’t really sensitive anywhere, either—other than her ears, which she hated and which Leonie found kind of cute, and she liked being kissed on the neck. If Leonie was lucky, maybe her collarbone and a bit lower than that, too.
But this was different. Leonie had managed to get to this point without talking, but, she thought, Shamir just wasn’t into her like that. Even aroused beyond belief, it took a while to get her going, and her orgasms were never anything to write home about (in a manner of speaking, not that Leonie ever would). She was tempted to ask if she was a bad lover, or if they didn’t quite have the chemistry with each other that she did with her past ones.
“How can I get you in the mood?”
Shamir looked up at her. “You’re really going to ask me that?”
“I figured you’d appreciate the honesty.”
That earned her a wry smile. “You…”
“What do you like about me?” Leonie pressed, knowing full well Shamir wasn’t the type to gush. “Other than my bowmanship, I mean. Is it my face?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then… do you think I’m ugly?”
“No.”
Leonie stared at her.
Shamir was the first to break eye contact, in a rare show of discomfort.
Leonie patted the bedroll underneath them. “C’mon! The more you think about why you like me, the easier it’ll be to get you in the mood.” She pressed a finger into Shamir’s abdomen, which had tensed up, to prove her point.
“You remember the first time we had sex?” said Shamir.
Leonie thought about it.
“We didn’t exactly talk about it before it happened.”
They hadn’t, Leonie remembered, but that was because Leonie had kissed her first. They’d been half-drunk at an inn and dancing around the idea for days, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when the dam finally burst. She remembered the intense sense of relief at knowing that the feeling was mutual. It had never bothered her that neither of them had discussed it beforehand.
Her mouth fell into an O shape.
“Don’t overthink it.”
Leonie reached over and brushed her knuckles against Shamir’s throat. “Now it just sounds like another test.” She paused, and then sat back on her heels. “Sit up.”
Shamir moved forward to close the distance between them. Leonie sucked languidly at her lover’s neck, feeling along her torso for neutral places she could tease or stroke to get them both to relax, and then drifting lower when she felt brave enough. She wondered why it always felt so natural the other way around.
She pressed a finger between Shamir’s legs, and felt her breath hitch.
“Mm,” said Shamir, and then, “not yet.”
She thumbed her clit for a few seconds, feeling Shamir pant and twitch her hips in response. Maybe this was going to be all right. She dipped two fingers in, and then pulled them out, stroking the opening where it was damp. Shamir rocked shallowly against them. She pushed two fingers inside her and waited for Shamir to adjust. Shamir lifted her hips. Leonie buried her face in her neck and held her tight. And they began to move.
They moved so slow at first it was unbearable. But eventually Shamir leaned back, and Leonie’s mouth found her clit, and Shamir tangled her fingers in Leonie’s hair and fucked her face so hard she thought her teeth were going to break. She came unexpectedly hard, enough to surprise them both, and Leonie gasped and then moaned and tightened around nothing. Shamir rode hers out slow, though it never lasted very long. Leonie tried not to be selfish, but her clit and her lips were throbbing. She’d expected to feel a relief of some sort, but all she could think was Not enough and More. Shamir pulled her up by the hair and looked her in the eyes.
“Ride my face,” she said.
Well, Leonie wanted to say, if you put it like that… but no words were coming out.
She crawled over Shamir’s body and lowered herself over her mouth. It didn’t take long.
Once she was absolutely sure she was done coming, she lay down next to her lover on the bedroll. This close, she could see Shamir’s pupils blown wide in the dark. Her gaze was giddily unfocused. She pulled Leonie in, tangling their legs together.
Leonie’s mouth felt dry.
“Want some water?”
She couldn’t keep her hands to herself after that, so she didn’t. Shamir had a particularly large mole on her left shoulder that Leonie was taking especial interest in today. She kissed it and then left it alone.
“Did you figure it out?” Shamir asked.
“Figure what out?” asked Leonie.
“Whatever was bothering you.”
She pressed herself to Shamir. It was hard to get this close during actual sex. She stroked the ridge of Shamir’s shoulder blade and thought about it. Once she had shut up and made love to her, it had all worked out. But getting there hadn’t felt natural.
“Do you like this?” said Leonie. “I mean, do you want me to do it to you more often?” She had walked in a few times on Shamir masturbating, though Shamir was never embarrassed by it and even offered to let her watch once. Leonie could relieve herself on her own, though it usually left her wanting to the point that she preferred to wait.
“I think I’d like that,” Shamir said. Her expression was warm.
Leonie swallowed. “Do you really mean that?”
“I wouldn’t lie about something like this.”
Leonie rolled on her side and kissed her, choking back an “I love you.” Shamir kissed her back lazily until she pulled away. She wanted to say something, anything, to fill the silence. She felt like she couldn’t shut up. But she couldn’t rely on Shamir to tell her everything. That wasn’t the kind of lover Shamir wanted. She would have to figure out how to win her over by herself.
“You know, you remind me of this fish I saw Seteth catch once.”
“I remind you… of a fish?” Her back was turned, so Leonie couldn’t see her face.
“Well,” said Leonie, “this one time I challenged Seteth to a fishing competition. We caught a lot, but there was this one I noticed in particular… with wings, and rainbow scales. It squirmed and struggled against the bait, and Seteth took a really long time to catch it. He looked so proud when he finally reeled it in. But I think I felt even prouder about it than he did.”
“Your point?”
“You remind me of that fish. What was it called…” Leonie tapped her chin. “A ‘Goddess Messenger.’ Rare and beautiful. Hard to find. Quick to slip away.” She buried her face in Shamir’s shoulder. “More predator than prey.” When Shamir didn’t respond, she left herself ramble. “I still don’t think I’ve reeled you in yet… but I’m working on it.”
“I’m not a fish,” Shamir insisted, loudly enough that Leonie knew she had annoyed her.
“You’re one of a kind,” Leonie grinned. “A special breed.”
“Whatever,” said Shamir, and reached behind and smacked her on the ass.
The rest of the night was peaceful.