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This is a giant fucking mistake.
It’s what Cruz has been telling herself since Aaliyah kissed her that morning.
She knows what she should have done. The moment she felt Aaliyah’s mouth against her own, the moment she discovered what she tasted like, how soft the stroke of Aaliyah’s tongue was, Cruz should have sent a distress signal to the QRF team and removed herself from the situation. Maybe let one of Joe’s gorillas beat some sense into her punch-drunk head.
The Marine inside her knows she should have done all that. Any threat to the mission must be assessed and eliminated. But doing it would have meant admitting to a weakness, and Cruz had no weaknesses.
So, she had steeled herself, had trusted her resolve.
And her resolve had shattered under a single, whispered breath.
“Come here.”
Only a fleeting thought had gone to her mission when Cruz had crossed the dressing room like a woman under a spell. A feeble whimper in the back of her mind, reminding her that she was a soldier undercover, a machine in service of her country.
But a machine doesn’t get its heart stuck in its throat, doesn’t feel its skin tremble and heat up under the stroke of gentle hands. A machine doesn’t want.
Never had Cruz been more aware that she was human, made of flesh and blood and want, than when Aaliyah had pressed her mouth to her stomach. Every kiss hot, lingering, like Cruz was something to savor slowly.
It’s in that moment that Cruz had understood that she was compromised. Her mere thoughts and desires were akin to committing treason, because had Hillary not walked into that room, Cruz would have dropped to her knees and pledged allegiance to Aaliyah with her head between her legs.
They should have sent a fucking drone to do the job. Something without feelings. Without a pulse. Something lifeless that wouldn’t have whispered “take me” before Aaliyah could even finish making her offer.
This is a mistake, Cruz tells herself again, staring outside the window of the hotel suite they checked into. She hears Aaliyah dismiss her security team, the quiet click of the door closing. She turns at the same time as Aaliyah does and catches her exhaling sharply, as though her lungs could expand only now that they are alone.
Gravity pulls Cruz to Aaliyah, it makes her legs move twice as fast as they normally would, because being apart for another second is something she cannot stand. She grabs Aaliyah’s face, stares into those piercing green-gray eyes and sees in them the same desire Cruz feels pulsing in her own veins.
It’s a mistake, one she’ll be damned for.
But she has never wanted anything more in her entire life.
She kisses Aaliyah with a hunger she isn’t familiar with. Their mouths meld together, gliding and responding to each other like they spent a lifetime doing this. But they haven’t. This is as far from anything Cruz has done in her life as she could get, and maybe it’s the champagne that’s affecting her, too, but she feels drunk on Aaliyah.
On her sighs in-between kisses, her tongue licking into Cruz’s mouth, the intoxicating scent of her skin, of her hair that feels like silk through Cruz’s fingers.
Cruz has wanted for things in her life, things she could rarely have. A roof over her head, food in her stomach at the end of a day, to go to bed without the pain of fresh bruises on her body.
It’s a different type of want the one she feels as Aaliyah’s hands explore her body, the body Aaliyah ripped her dress open to have access to. She wants to have, and to be had, too, to let Aaliyah lay claim to every inch of her.
“I’ll buy you five more,” Aaliyah had panted after tearing Cruz’s dress, barely managing to get the words out in the urgency to return to Cruz’s mouth. Cruz cannot quite believe it, that this stunning, perfect woman could want her so intensely.
She doesn’t want you, she wants the lie you told her, a voice hisses in Cruz’s head. Cruz ignores it, choosing to focus on how good Aaliyah’s palms feel splayed on her abdomen.
She wants to be wanted like this, always. By Aaliyah and no one else.
They grab at each other, pressed flush and somehow still trying to get closer. They stumble and almost fall in their eagerness to move and keep kissing at the same time. It pulls a laugh from both, Cruz captures Aaliyah’s mouth with her own and the taste of that laugh goes to her head faster than red wine.
She has never laughed during sex. Lightness or joy did not belong in any of her previous encounters. Neither did intimacy.
She wonders if Aaliyah is feeling the same way, too. If her heart is also expanding with a happiness that doesn’t fit in her body.
God, she wants to believe it.
Cruz lets Aaliyah tug her into the bedroom, a heated frenzy moving them both. It’s only when Aaliyah makes quick work of Cruz’s bra and lets the garment fall to the floor that they slow down.
Aaliyah takes a step back, breathing heavily through parted, kiss-bruised lips, and lets her eyes roam over Cruz’s body. It’s hard for Cruz to stay still, to suppress the instinct to squirm away and cover herself.
She feels the flutter of nerves deep in her stomach, the re-awakening of a vulnerability she hasn’t felt in years. It’s not the first time she has found herself in this position, down to only her underwear in front of someone who is fully clothed.
But unlike her clients, Aaliyah doesn’t look at her like a piece of meat, something to mangle and then spit out. She takes in every new inch of naked skin, and when her eyes meet Cruz’s again, it isn’t just lust that Cruz finds in them. There’s a tenderness there, too, the crystal-clear green made soft by a loving gaze Cruz has never been on the receiving end of.
Aaliyah closes the space between them, her fingers trace Cruz’s collarbone, feather light.
“You are so beautiful,” she whispers with a sweet kiss that makes Cruz tremble.
She cannot remember the last time she felt truly beautiful, she isn’t entirely sure she ever did. She never believed that word when it would come out of her clients’ mouths, it was always accompanied by slimy leers and even slimier hands. Edgar would call her ‘hot’, though much more often he’d call her ‘bitch’, and ‘whore’, and every degrading insult he could come up with to remind her she was trash.
But Aaliyah had called her ‘pretty’ from the very first day they’d met. Even after Joe’s torture training had turned her face into a bloody pulp, Aaliyah had kept reminding her that she was beautiful.
Aaliyah whispers it again, before deepening the kiss, and her voice is so earnest that Cruz wants to believe it. She wants to shed the rough, dead layer of outer skin and see herself the way Aaliyah sees her.
Her naked body rubs against the fabric of Aaliyah’s dress as they kiss. The feeling is maddening, it makes Cruz’s head spin with desire, she squeezes her hands around Aaliyah’s hips to keep them from tearing at the garment.
Aaliyah moans into her mouth, rocks her hips forward, and then she is turning in Cruz’s arms, graceful like water. She moves her hair to the side, revealing the small zipper at the top of her dress. A clear invitation.
Cruz pulls the zipper down with shaky fingers, all the way to the small of Aaliyah’s back. It’s like unveiling a treasure. Smooth, golden skin reveals itself to Cruz, the elegant line of Aaliyah’s spine that begs to be traced by her fingers, her lips.
Cruz tentatively pushes her hands underneath the fabric of Aaliyah’s dress, splaying her palms over her shoulder blades and caressing the warm skin with indulgent slowness.
Aaliyah sighs in response to her touch, Cruz feels the soft shiver that runs down her spine. It’s her rough, calloused hands that are eliciting this reaction, and the awareness emboldens her, if only a little bit. Her heart is thundering in her chest.
Cruz mouths at Aaliyah’s neck as she blindly pushes the expensive fabric off Aaliyah’s shoulders, down her arms and further, until the dress slides off her body and pools at her feet. She does the same with Aaliyah’s bra, her blood stirring at Aaliyah’s whimper of relief once her breasts are free from the lacy contraption.
Then Aaliyah leans back and lets her body sag against Cruz’s, her head tipping back onto Cruz’s shoulder in surrender as Cruz’s hands slide over her stomach.
“I dreamed this,” Aaliyah whispers, voice like gravel as Cruz kisses the column of her neck. Cruz lingers over her pulse point, intoxicated by the thrumming of Aaliyah’s heartbeat under her lips and tongue.
She feels Aaliyah reach for her arm, guide her hand up her clenching abdomen and over her breast. Fingers close over hers, inviting her to squeeze.
The curve beneath her ragged palm is impossibly soft, Aaliyah’s nipple pebbles under the swipe of her thumb. Cruz feels inadequate to touch something so perfect, but she never wants to stop, not when Aaliyah arches into her touch, not when she lets out the sweetest noises Cruz has ever heard.
“Aaliyah...”
It’s the only thing Cruz can utter, the only word she remembers through the haze of want that clouds her mind.
Aaliyah raises her arm, tangles her hand in Cruz’s hair and turns her head enough to capture Cruz’s mouth with her own. It’s a filthy, wanton thing, the angle forcing them to chase each other’s lips in a way that is as messy as it is perfect.
They separate only long enough for Aaliyah to turn around and grab Cruz’s face with both hands, pulling her into a searing kiss. Cruz tightens her arms around Aaliyah’s waist, suppressing the instinct to squeeze even tighter because Aaliyah’s body is naked against her own and Cruz has never felt something so wonderful, something so immediately addictive.
She understands now what it means to crave another human being the way her lungs crave oxygen.
“Get on the bed,” Aaliyah breathes hotly against Cruz’s lips. It’s a plea, but Cruz obeys like to a command.
She lies on the massive bed, propped up on her elbows so she can watch Aaliyah as she follows and climbs into bed with her. She bends over Cruz, on her hands and knees, the shift of her shoulder blades reminding Cruz of a jaguar.
Cruz yields under the gentle press of Aaliyah’s palm over her chest, lets herself be lowered into the soft sheets, cool against her naked back. Then, Aaliyah blankets her with her body and her mouth is back on Cruz’s, kissing her with a warmth, a tenderness that Cruz has never experienced in her life.
There is a lack of haste in how they explore each other, the rush from moments ago giving way to something slower, gentler. Cruz isn’t used to this, to indulging in the languid glide of lips, to fingers stroking the underside of her jaw, tickling her separated ribs with gentleness.
Edgar would have pried her legs open by now, flipped her over and poured his frustration into her. And after him, the rare one-night stands she’d had had been so underwhelming, so defined by her inability to let her guard down and relax, that Cruz had given up on trying to enjoy sex for good, sticking to her fingers or beating the shit out of a punching bag to blow off steam.
She has never felt so much at the hands of another human being, never felt the slow, aching warmth that spreads everywhere Aaliyah touches her.
Aaliyah shifts on top of her, an almost imperceptible grinding motion in time with their kisses. But Cruz feels it, she is hyper-aware of every single spot Aaliyah’s toned body is touching hers. Their breasts rub together, Aaliyah rolls her hips and Cruz feels her against her abdomen, warm and soft, the lace of her underwear damp.
Cruz’s breath hitches, her lungs stuttering as arousal surges through her.
The sound makes Aaliyah pull back. She holds her weight on her elbows and looks down at Cruz with wide eyes, care pouring from her gaze.
“Am I too heavy?”
Cruz shakes her head, lifting up in search of Aaliyah’s mouth again, but Aaliyah resists.
“Are you sure? Your ribs…”
“No, stay,” Cruz begs. She loops her arms around Aaliyah’s back, keeping her in place. “Stay here, please.”
There’s a desperate edge to her voice, but Cruz couldn’t care less. She exhales in relief when Aaliyah relaxes again on top of her, whispering a gentle “Of course” against her lips.
Cruz runs her hands over the expanse of Aaliyah’s back and lets her eyes fall closed as Aaliyah presses small, lazy kisses to her cheeks, her nose. No one has ever treated her with this much kindness, responding to her needs, caring about her comfort.
Edgar would crush her with his weight, pass out drunk or high on top of her while he was still inside her. Waking him in the attempt to dislodge herself from underneath him would often get her a slap to the face. With him, she always felt like she had to hold her breath.
Aaliyah makes Cruz forget the dull pain in her ribcage that has accompanied her every inhale since the torture. The weight of her is perfect on top of Cruz’s body. It’s a salve, and Cruz doesn’t want to let go of it.
“I enjoy being on top of you,” Aaliyah says, nuzzling the hollow of Cruz’s throat. “I imagined it, what it would feel like.”
Cruz opens her eyes, weaves her fingers through Aaliyah’s hair and pulls it back so she can see her face. Her pupils are blown, keep darting to Cruz’s lips, the want in them unmistakable.
Aaliyah moves her mouth to Cruz’s ear, teasing the shell of it with her lips. She drops her voice down to a whisper. “I imagined what it would feel like to have you on top of me, too.”
Heat flares up Cruz’s neck and cheeks, all the way to the tips of her ears. Aaliyah laughs quietly, her mouth curved in a mischievous grin that somehow makes those full, pink lips even more alluring.
“Still so shy,” she says, kissing the corner of Cruz’s mouth.
“I’m not shy.”
“The shiest girl I’ve ever met.”
“Stop…” Cruz mumbles, blushing harder, but unable to hold back a smile.
Smiling and laughing around kisses is a foreign feeling, beautiful like the woman who is the cause for it.
“I wish you could always be like this,” Aaliyah says, her mouth tickling the skin of Cruz’s neck.
“Naked?”
Aaliyah laughs and lifts her head to look at Cruz, the green of her eyes glimmering.
“I would not complain about it, but no. I meant this.” She traces the line of Cruz’s lips with her fingers. “Happy. Smiling. Your smile is so pretty.”
Cruz blinks, surprised. An ache spreads in her chest in response to Aaliyah’s words, as though her heart skipped a beat and started pumping twice as hard to try and recover its rhythm.
Cruz was wary of kindness; soft words were only ever spoken to her when people wanted something in return from her. And when fake kindness didn’t work, violence and humiliation rained down on her.
There is nothing fake about Aaliyah’s kindness. It is sincere in a way that disarms Cruz, leaving her at a loss for how to respond to it. It makes the lie she is telling Aaliyah only more excruciating.
“You’re shaking,” Aaliyah notices. “Have I said something I shouldn’t have?”
Cruz shakes her head and kisses Aaliyah’s worried pout, swallowing back the impulse to tell Aaliyah the truth, to tell her that she can’t find her words because no one ever told her she has a pretty smile.
“I’m nervous a little,” Aaliyah confesses when they break the kiss, her lips curling in a small, embarrassed smile of her own. “Are you nervous?”
The teasing is gone from her voice, bashfulness tinges her cheeks pink, so unlike the self-assured woman that Cruz has come to know.
It’s reassurance she is searching for, Cruz realizes. That her feelings aren’t one-sided. Cruz can give her this. It’s the one fucking thing she can be honest about.
“I am, yeah,” she answers.
Aaliyah nods with a little exhale, fixating her gaze on the mindless patterns her fingers are tracing over Cruz’s chest.
She is quiet for a moment, then asks, “Have you ever done this?”
What should be a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question gives Cruz pause. She thinks of the years at her old club, touching other dancers so the old businessmen paying for a show would slip a few more bills into her thong. She thinks of Edgar, the times he brought another girl into their bed without asking, just assuming Cruz would perform for him until he was horny enough to join. She remembers the hole he punched into the bedroom door when she told him she no longer wanted to do it, the busted lip that kept burning for a week.
She has touched a woman’s body before, but answering ‘yes’ to Aaliyah’s question feels wrong. What little experience Cruz had, it was a performance, always.
“Not like this,” Cruz finally answers.
She keeps the rest to herself. She doesn’t want Aaliyah to find out how deep the rot goes. There are layers to it, but what she said is the truth. She has never done this. She has never held someone as beautiful as Aaliyah in her arms and felt her entire body burn. She has never been held.
“Have you?” she asks back, though she suspects the answer already.
Aaliyah pulls her bottom lip between her lips, then nods. “Not in a long time. I had a little bit more freedom before Ehsan. But those times, they weren’t like now.”
She shifts her weight onto one elbow and puts her own palm to her chest.
“This was quiet.”
Cruz is still processing the meaning of Aaliyah’s words when Aaliyah reaches for her hand and presses it against the same spot where she had pressed her own, holding it there.
And Cruz feels it, that heart that will be the ruin of them both, pounding like a wild thing against her palm.
“You make me feel my heart, Zara.”
For a moment, Cruz cannot speak. Her gaze drifts from her hand on Aaliyah’s chest to Aaliyah’s eyes, flickering with a vulnerability that makes Cruz feel evil.
Zara.
The deception she cannot escape. Cruz hates Zara, and she wants to be her. She wants to be the person deserving of that adoring gaze, someone who is worthy of Aaliyah’s love.
Aaliyah wouldn’t want Cruz, she wouldn’t dare touch such a damaged, corrupt being the way she wants to touch Zara. But Cruz pretends that she would. Even if it’s selfish, even if she’s going to hell. Because her heart has never felt so full. It pulses and yearns for what it has never had.
“You make me feel mine,” Cruz whispers.
It’s the realest thing Cruz has ever felt, and it is wrapped in a web of lies.
Aaliyah smiles then, parts Cruz’s lips with hers, and Cruz knows then that there is a spot waiting for her in the deepest circle of Hell. She will accept eternal damnation though, as long as Aaliyah keeps kissing her like this.
The guilt gnawing at Cruz’s insides is muted by Aaliyah’s warm mouth. Cruz loses herself to the taste of her, to the heady feeling of Aaliyah’s tongue teasing her lip, begging for entrance.
Cruz buries her hands into Aaliyah’s hair and lets Aaliyah kiss her however she likes, body buzzing and heat simmering in her belly.
“I spent weeks wanting to kiss you,” Aaliyah says between shapeless kisses. “To taste you.”
Cruz never wants Aaliyah to move away from her face, though she is helpless to resist when Aaliyah’s lips drift to her jawline and then lower, down her neck, patiently seeking out every sensitive spot that will drive Cruz insane.
The careful drag of teeth over her pulse point makes her hips jolt. The lips and tongue soothing the sting pull a whimper from her throat. She is quivering, at the mercy of Aaliyah’s wandering hands and mouth.
Cruz’s eyes flutter closed when Aaliyah moves to her chest. She feels Aaliyah’s hand caress the swell of her right breast, lips close around her nipple, sucking softly and stealing the breath from Cruz’s lungs.
Cruz cannot settle into the sensation, Aaliyah’s breath ghosts over her heated flesh and then she is shifting again, kissing a pattern across Cruz’s sternum to her other breast. Cruz clenches her thighs and braces herself for the bliss of Aaliyah’s mouth again.
It never comes.
The pause is long enough that Cruz opens her eyes and glances down. She finds Aaliyah’s face hovering over her left breast, staring at it as she breathes through her nose in short puffs. Her eyes are a shade colder, her lips pursed in a tight line, and for a moment, Cruz isn’t sure what happened, mind made hazy by arousal.
But then, she follows Aaliyah’s gaze to the spot on her chest. She sees what Aaliyah is seeing, and tenses.
“The first time I noticed it, I thought it was a birthmark,” Aaliyah whispers. “I think I wanted it to be.”
Aaliyah’s thumb traces the circular brand that mars Cruz’s breast. Her touch is whisper-soft against the raised tissue, and Cruz has to suppress the instinct to recoil. It’s the first time someone touches her scar, the first time she allows someone to do it.
“It’s a burn,” Cruz hears herself say, the words pushing out of her mouth before she can force them down.
“Was it him? That man?”
Aaliyah’s eyes find her own, sadness and anger swirling in them.
Cruz nods, sees the muscle in Aaliyah’s jaw tense in response to her answer. Instinctively, she caresses Aaliyah’s cheek, wishing she wouldn’t grind her teeth and hurt herself, not for her.
She isn’t sure what moves her, maybe it’s the lack of pity in Aaliyah’s eyes, but Cruz finds herself stretching her left arm across the bed, revealing the brands on her bicep and the inside of her elbow.
Aaliyah follows the movement with her gaze, her chin wobbles at the sight of the scars. Cruz doesn’t have to explain what caused them, the shape of them unmistakable.
Aaliyah’s fingers glide over Cruz’s skin, from one mark to the other, causing a tingling sensation with how light she is touching Cruz. It’s uncomfortable, almost. Her body doesn’t know how to react to tenderness.
“Do you have more?” Aaliyah asks after a long silence, searching Cruz’s eyes.
Cruz hesitates. It’s overwhelming, to expose herself like this, and anxiety twists her stomach into a knot. Her body is a tattered patchwork of imperfections, beauty was beaten and lashed and burned out of it. It’s not a thing to admire.
But Aaliyah wants to see, and Cruz can’t deny her.
She reaches for her underwear with trembling fingers. Aaliyah shifts to the side and sits back on her haunches to allow Cruz to lift her hips, keeping her hands to herself, which somehow makes Cruz feel even more exposed.
She pulls her panties down her thighs and kicks them off once they are past her knees. And then she is naked.
Cruz holds her breath, taut like a bowstring ready to snap. She is completely bare, no part of her hidden to Aaliyah’s gaze, and even with her eyes fixed on the ceiling Cruz can feel her stare on her. She knows exactly what Aaliyah is seeing.
The scar looks just like the others, the same hideous shape, the same ridged tissue, but Cruz loathes it more than any other mark on her body.
The greatest indignity Edgar forced upon her, his punishment for a customer who was nice enough to make Cruz smile at the end of a grueling shift. The beating Edgar had given her had left her with two cracked ribs and an eye swollen shut for almost a week, but Cruz didn’t remember that pain. It had been obliterated by the agony of the incandescent tip he’d pressed into her skin, between the apex of her thigh and her mound.
He'd been meticulous in his butchering, burning her close enough to her sex that even the skimpiest panties would hide the brand. But it was there, and would stay there if she ever thought about leaving him, to forever remind her that she belonged to him, and that she was damaged goods. No one would want damaged goods.
A whimper crawls up Cruz’s throat when she feels Aaliyah’s fingertips over the sensitive skin around the scar. She doesn’t allow the sound to leave her mouth, a herculean effort that makes her lip quiver and her jaw hurt.
Still, she can’t bring herself to look.
It dawns on her that this is the first time she is truly feeling the impact of what Edgar did to her.
She never cared before. Joe’s clinical examination of her body had triggered a shiver of discomfort and not much else. Her body was made of scar tissue. She hardly paid attention to the scars anymore, shame a foreign feeling because she never felt the desire to be looked at, to be wanted.
But under Aaliyah’s gaze, shame burns Cruz more than Edgar’s cigarettes ever did, and it takes everything within her not to cover her face with her hands and curl up in a ball.
She doesn’t move, though. She lays perfectly still, focusing on the irregular pace of her heartbeat.
She half-expects Aaliyah to withdraw. Instead, the hand that is touching her settles, curls warmly around her hipbone.
Then, Cruz hears a sniffle.
The sound unlocks something within her, she finally musters the courage to look at Aaliyah and finds her green eyes fixed on the scar, veiled by tears.
Aaliyah’s thumb brushes the edge of the brand and when the muscle of Cruz’s thigh instinctively twitches, Aaliyah makes a tiny, terrible noise deep in her chest, like a sob that was forcefully choked back before it could escape.
“I want to kill him,” Aaliyah says. “A man who can do this doesn’t deserve the air in his lungs.”
The pain in her voice is so vivid. Cruz cannot bear it.
“I’m—”
“Don’t say you are fine. Do not lie to me.”
Aaliyah’s eyes are blazing when they meet Cruz’s. Cruz remembers seeing Aaliyah like this only once, when she had told her what Sami had tried to do.
This anger that radiates off Aaliyah, Cruz realizes, isn’t directed at her, it is for her. For what she had to endure. It makes Cruz think, maybe for the first time in her life, that she didn’t deserve any of it.
Cruz cannot tell Aaliyah that Edgar is dead, that he can’t hurt her anymore. But she doesn’t want her past to taint this moment. Sadness and rage battle for prominence in Aaliyah’s eyes, and Cruz wants neither for her.
She reaches for Aaliyah’s face, catches with her thumb a lonely tear at the corner of her eye.
“They don’t hurt anymore,” she promises with a sad smile. “They’re just ugly.”
“Ugly…”
Aaliyah’s eyes soften at once. She turns her face enough to press her lips to Cruz’s palm, then lies back on top of Cruz.
She studies Cruz’s face, taking in her features like she is seeing her for the first time. Her fingers brush over the fading bruise around her eye, the scar in the middle of her forehead, courtesy of her brother who threw her math textbook at her when she was twelve years old.
Then, the jagged scar above her right eyebrow. Cruz prays Aaliyah won’t ask, because she cannot bring herself to speak about that one. She won’t be able to come up with a convincing lie to replace the shard of a shattered champagne glass that splintered her skin open, digging deeper while a hand kept her face pressed to the floor of the champagne room.
Cruz’s silent plea is answered because Aaliyah doesn’t ask anything. Her lips replace her fingers over the mark, over every mark on Cruz’s face until they find Cruz’s mouth again.
“The first time I saw you, I thought you were beautiful like the moon,” Aaliyah says, kissing Cruz again even more delicately. “I wondered if you realized I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”
Cruz remembers feeling Aaliyah’s gaze on her whenever they were close. Those green eyes following her every move. On the beach, in the ocean where the reflection of the water turned them blue, in bed watching movies Cruz had never heard of.
“And in the steam yesterday…” Aaliyah continues with another kiss, “I wanted to look at you. To really look. But… I didn’t want to steal it. I wanted you to want me to look at you.”
Before Cruz can tell her that she does, that it’s all that she wants, Aaliyah makes her way down Cruz’s body. She kisses the scar on top of her breast, drags her open mouth over the bruises across her stomach.
It’s soft, and sweet. It feels like worship.
Aaliyah moves lower, her hair tickling Cruz’s skin as she goes. Cruz’s body feels alight. Her legs instinctively part to make room for Aaliyah, heat pooling in her belly at the sight of Aaliyah lying between them. She is trembling, her body twitching with want; she really had no idea that a mouth kissing her inner thigh could feel so delightful.
She instinctively tenses when she feels Aaliyah’s hot breath over her scar. There is a pause, Aaliyah glances up at Cruz like she is asking for permission.
She presses her lips to Cruz’s scar.
“Qamar,” Aaliyah whispers, and Cruz feels the prick of tears behind her eyes.
Aaliyah keeps kissing that mark, that ugly, horrid mark that Cruz hates with every fiber of her being, and it’s like with every kiss she can feel some of that ugliness melt away.
She doesn’t feel shame anymore. In that moment, she only feels good.
And before Cruz can prepare herself for it, Aaliyah’s mouth is on her.
Cruz gasps. A sound she doesn’t recognize leaves her mouth and her hips involuntarily buck against the soft slide of Aaliyah’s tongue through her.
Aaliyah curls a hand around Cruz’s thigh, splays the other over her hipbone to keep Cruz still and licks her a bit more firmly, a little deeper, and it’s still gentle but the slight change in pressure is enough to make Cruz’s eyes roll back in her head.
Pleasure surges through her like a flame, from her center up her spine and down to the tips of her toes. Cruz tries to breathe but the air feels too hot for her lungs. She grips the sheets so hard her knuckles go white in the attempt to ground herself but it’s of little use. Aaliyah does something with her tongue and then sucks softly on her clit in a way that pulls a curse from Cruz’s mouth as her entire body shakes.
Aaliyah moans softly at that, Cruz hears it and feels the vibrations against her sensitive flesh, the way Aaliyah’s lips twitch against her sex, and even without looking Cruz knows she is fucking smiling.
Even more than whatever wicked, wonderful thing Aaliyah is doing to her, it’s realizing that Aaliyah loves this, that she takes shameless enjoyment in pleasuring her what makes desire burn through Cruz.
Reduced to want and impulse, Cruz looks down for a moment. A moment really is all she manages, because the sight of Aaliyah between her thighs, eyes closed in concentration as her head bobs slowly, is too much for Cruz.
And then Aaliyah opens her eyes and stares back. A flash of those gorgeous eyes dark as a storm is all it takes. Cruz lets her head drop back against the pillow, neck straining with a whine she can’t hold back.
The hot coil in her belly wrings impossibly tight, she builds to the peak faster than she ever has in her entire life.
Too fast. Cruz is overwhelmed all of a sudden, the pleasure too much. She gasps for air, fearing the intensity of that wave that keeps building.
She grips the back of Aaliyah’s head, and even as the words leave her mouth strangled, her hips still roll into Aaliyah’s face with a will of their own.
“Fuck— wait, wait.”
Aaliyah stops right away, the deprivation almost painful to Cruz. She tries to pace her breathing as Aaliyah crawls back up her body, to bring herself back from the edge she denied herself.
“Are you okay?” is the first thing Aaliyah asks, searching Cruz’s face for any trace of discomfort.
Her cheeks are flushed, her mouth glistening. She is so breathtakingly beautiful that Cruz struggles to find her voice.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Cruz shakes her head. She would laugh if she wasn’t so out of breath. “No. God, no. You’re so…”
She lacks the vocabulary to put into words how perfect Aaliyah is, definitely doesn’t know how to tell her that no one has ever made her feel that good and feeling so much is scary.
Cruz foregoes words and instead takes Aaliyah’s face with both hands and kisses her. She can taste herself on Aaliyah’s tongue and it pulls a moan from her, she finds herself lifting up and deepening the kiss to taste more.
Aaliyah is smiling when they break the kiss, a teasing glint in her eyes. “I like how you taste too.”
Cruz blushes furiously, feeling warm all over.
Aaliyah nuzzles her cheek. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks again, a little more serious.
Instead of answering, Cruz kisses Aaliyah, deep and slow, until the throbbing between her legs is back with a vengeance. She wraps her arm around Aaliyah’s waist, unwilling to detach from her for even a second, then thrusts her hips upwards and rolls them over.
It lacks any grace, Aaliyah lands on her back and lets out a surprised gasp into Cruz’s mouth but Cruz gives her no reprieve between kisses. She doesn’t want to slow, doesn’t want to think. She wants to lose herself in Aaliyah.
They move together, an entanglement of limbs and hot skin, and it’s dizzying. Cruz wants to be mindful not to crush Aaliyah with her weight, but Aaliyah keeps grabbing for her, pulling her closer as their mouths grow hungrier. She strokes Cruz’s shoulder, shamelessly splays her palm over Cruz’s ass and pulls their pelvises flush.
Cruz can’t help but flinch when Aaliyah’s fingertips slide up her back and meet her crisscrossed scars. She tries to hide the reaction, but Aaliyah cups her face and makes her look at her, slowing everything down for a moment.
There is a silent question in her eyes, as though she understood that this change of pace isn’t accidental, that there’s a deeper reason as to why Cruz stopped her earlier.
“Please,” Cruz rasps out, not even sure what she is pleading for. “I… I want to…”
Aaliyah nods, understanding Cruz better than she understands herself.
“Help me,” she says, then takes Cruz’s hands and guides them to the waistband of her underwear. They tug it down Aaliyah’s legs together, something feral stirs inside Cruz at the feel of lace that was worth hundreds of dollars now soaked through and ruined.
Aaliyah pulls Cruz back to her. She kisses her throat, her mouth, lingering. She holds Cruz close with a hand cradling her cheek, then she tips her head back against the pillow and rests her other arm beside her face, offering herself up to Cruz.
“Touch me, Zara,” she whispers, breathless. “I want your hands on me.”
Cruz swallows hard, the inside of her mouth suddenly wet as her gaze travels down Aaliyah’s naked body, mesmerized by the beauty on display. She finds herself caught between desire and insecurity, her hands lumbering and awkward as they curl around Aaliyah’s sides, squeezing softly.
Aaliyah’s body is so different from her own. Softer, fuller. Unmarred.
The skin of her abdomen is so warm under Cruz’s palm as she strokes over it. “You’re fucking perfect,” Cruz murmurs, not realizing the words came out of her mouth until Aaliyah laughs quietly.
Cruz’s eyes drift up at the sound. Aaliyah is biting her lip, her chest colored with a lovely flush. She keeps squirming subtly under Cruz’s touch, following it, inviting it. She is nothing short of a vision like this, sprawled out between the sheets, her body open for the taking, and something inside Cruz screams, feverish and famished, a primal thing deep within her that tells her to devour and consume.
Her restraint is put to the test when she cups Aaliyah’s breasts and Aaliyah makes a little, needy noise. Cruz thumbs over stiff nipples and suddenly there’s a hand curling around her bicep, pulling her down with surprising strength. Cruz catches herself on one elbow and finds herself lying half on top of Aaliyah, her right hand caught between their chests and pressed over Aaliyah’s breast.
Aaliyah kisses her then, until every worrying thought vanishes from Cruz’s mind and all she can focus on is Aaliyah’s mouth on hers.
“It’s okay,” Aaliyah says, arching into Cruz’s touch. “I won’t break.”
But I will, Cruz wants to say.
It should scare her, how well Aaliyah seems to read her, how intimately she understands her desires and her fears. But it doesn’t. Aaliyah makes her want to crack herself open and be known for the first time in her life.
She gives in to the want that burns in her chest and presses Aaliyah into the mattress, shifting fully on top of her and allowing her hand to squeeze harder at Aaliyah’s breast. Aaliyah gasps, appreciative, so Cruz does it again, before bending over her and putting her mouth on Aaliyah’s breasts, moaning as she sucks.
Her thigh slips between Aaliyah’s legs and Aaliyah pushes her hands into Cruz’s hair, holding on to her.
“Please, Zara,” she whimpers after pulling Cruz into a messy kiss, her perfect eyebrows pinched in a small frown that betrays how desperate she is. She grinds up against Cruz’s thigh, leaving a wet streak, and it feels so good that Cruz is sure a landmine blowing off her leg wouldn’t be enough to make her forget this.
The writhing of her urges Cruz’s hand down, past Aaliyah’s navel, between legs that spread wider like an invitation. Aaliyah shivers when Cruz runs her fingers through her, so hot and slick that Cruz finds herself looking down, the sight of her hand between Aaliyah’s thighs knocking the breath out of her.
Soft palms cup Cruz’s jaw and redirect her attention to the most beautiful face Cruz has ever seen, somehow even more gorgeous with pleasure twisting its features.
She tells Aaliyah that, a whispered “you’re beautiful” that slips from her lips into Aaliyah’s. It sounds weird to Cruz’s ears, her own voice too rough and trembling to be whispering sweet nothings like a lover. But Aaliyah smiles, bright and soft, like this is the first time she is hearing those words.
Cruz strokes her slowly, trying to get the pressure right, trying to read on Aaliyah’s face what works and what doesn’t. And with each stroke, Aaliyah is more expressive, more open and unashamed in her want. She makes these soft, little sounds in time with the roll of her hips, her long eyelashes flutter, casting flitting shadows along her cheeks.
“Like that,” Aaliyah whimpers when Cruz rubs small circles on her clit, curling her arms around Cruz to keep her close and gasping “yes” against the column of Cruz’s neck when Cruz’s fingertips find purchase through slickness.
The praise is like a drug flooding her bloodstream, Cruz immediately craves more. She realizes in that moment that she could spend the rest of her life servicing Aaliyah, learning her and discovering every little thing that makes her unravel.
She would happily trade her loyalty to her country for an absolute devotion to the woman beneath her.
Aaliyah pulls Cruz down into a kiss, thumbs tracing Cruz’s cheekbones with a softness that doesn’t match the sinful way her body is moving against Cruz’s.
She puts her mouth to Cruz’s ear, voice breaking around a moan. “I want you inside me.”
The plea is quiet, a whisper reserved only for Cruz. It makes it feel sacred.
Cruz’s heart clenches and swells in her chest. She tries to keep it together as well as she can, but she is no less overwhelmed than when Aaliyah was using her mouth on her.
She kisses Aaliyah and moves her fingers lower. She wills gentleness into her touch, so unlike what her hands are familiar with. Her hands that are used to drawing blood and breaking bones. They are trained to hurt, to destroy.
The thought of hurting Aaliyah makes her stomach churn.
What she is doing is a crime. Aaliyah is so trusting and vulnerable, guiding Cruz through the intricacies of intimacy with the utmost tenderness, and it’s not even Cruz’s real name the one she stutters out when Cruz sinks into her.
Cruz’s fingers slip inside wet heat with ease, there is barely any resistance as she pushes to the hilt and stills, watching in awe Aaliyah’s mouth open around a silent cry.
She thrusts experimentally and the base of Aaliyah’s spine lifts off the bed. Aaliyah hooks a leg over the small of Cruz’s back, bends the other to the side so Cruz’s movements aren’t restrained, so her thrusts can reach deeper. She slides her hands into Cruz’s hair, her soft pants fill the small space between their lips.
It’s the most intimate thing Cruz has experienced in her entire life, being inside Aaliyah like this, being surrounded by her and feeling wanted by her, feeling chosen.
“Zara—”
Aaliyah’s accent is thicker with arousal, her tongue rolls over the ‘r’ in the most exquisite way.
The envy Cruz feels in that moment is blistering. She no longer knows where Zara ends and Cruz begins. All she knows is that she wishes it was her real name tumbling from Aaliyah’s lips, that she could hear Aaliyah’s voice cracking around the ‘r’ and the ‘z’ of Cruz, not Zara.
Cruz increases her pace, stroking with determination. She curls her fingers and Aaliyah tosses her head back, her chest expanding on a sharp inhale as she twists her hips to chase Cruz’s hand.
“There… harder,” she moans.
Cruz obeys like her life depends on it, slack-jawed watching Aaliyah take her pleasure without shame or shyness. She thinks of Aaliyah’s confession, her fantasy about being ravaged on a beach in Turkey. She imagines how beautiful she’d look, writhing in the sand while the sunset makes her skin glow, imagines she could taste sea salt on the skin of Aaliyah’s thighs.
Aaliyah grabs at Cruz’s body like a tether when her legs start trembling. Cruz feels her tighten around her fingers and doubles her efforts, mindless of the ache in her wrist.
Aaliyah tenses. Eyes failing to stay open, teeth digging into her bottom lip to mute sounds that make Cruz want to rut against the mattress to calm the pulsing ache between her legs.
She comes with her forehead pressed against Cruz’s, keening quietly into Cruz’s mouth and clinging to her as she rides every wave. Cruz works her through every clench and spasm, watching in wonder what she is sure to be the most erotic thing she has ever witnessed.
After a lifetime of deprivation, Cruz feels greedy. She wants this again, she wants to make Aaliyah unravel for her, over and over.
Aaliyah is still quivering, still catching her breath, when Cruz hastily moves down her body, planting wet, hungry kisses on Aaliyah’s breasts, her belly. She pulls Aaliyah’s legs over her shoulders, grips her waist and licks into her.
Aaliyah makes a strangled noise, her hips jerk hard but Cruz pulls her closer and takes as much of her as she can in her mouth, moaning at the taste that spreads on her tongue.
“Zara— oh, God.”
Aaliyah sounds wrecked and it only spurs Cruz on. She is messy with her tongue and lips, she lacks the precision and elegance that Aaliyah showed her before, but it doesn’t seem to matter because Aaliyah weaves her fingers through Cruz’s hair and lifts into her mouth, begging with her body for another release so soon after the first one.
Cruz presses her fingers back inside, tries as she can to coordinate the curling of them with the strokes of her tongue. Aaliyah moans again, that false name that Cruz wants so badly to be hers. Her fingers clench and release over Cruz’s head, as though worried that she might tug too hard.
“Do it”, Cruz wants to tell her. She wants Aaliyah to take everything she needs from her.
She doesn’t feel used with Aaliyah. She feels desired. Needed.
It doesn’t take long, Aaliyah still so sensitive from her first orgasm, but Cruz would be happy to stay there for hours. She builds Aaliyah up, pays attention to her quiet commands, to all the ways her body responds to her, until Aaliyah’s thighs tighten around her head and she is coming again.
Cruz only stops after Aaliyah weakly pushes her head away, shaking with oversensitivity. She slumps against the mattress like she is made of jelly while Cruz kisses her thighs and tummy, reluctant to leave that warmth.
She is still inside Aaliyah when Aaliyah pulls her back up and kisses her, her mouth like velvet against Cruz’s, her soft moans as she tastes herself so wonderful.
“So this is what it feels like…” she breathes into Cruz’s mouth, her lips stretching in a lovely, lazy smile that makes Cruz want to shelter her from all evil.
Aaliyah whimpers softly when Cruz withdraws her fingers, her arms wind around Cruz a little tighter, like she is scared Cruz is going to disappear. Before Cruz can wipe her fingers on the sheets, Aaliyah grabs her hand and brings it to her lips.
She kisses Cruz’s damp fingertips, her knuckles, then takes them into her mouth, pulling a sharp exhale from Cruz. It should look obscene, Aaliyah sucking her fingers clean, but somehow it feels like an act of love, and Cruz can only watch with dark eyes, bewitched.
When they kiss again, Aaliyah’s taste is fuller on her tongue, it makes Cruz clench hard around nothing.
They settle against one another, but their lips don’t separate for a long time. Minutes get eaten away by the push and pull of it all, every kiss melding into the next one, punctuated by hitched breaths and small moans. They kiss like they have nowhere to be, like nothing exists outside the warmth of this bed.
It’s Aaliyah who breaks away eventually, though they stay close enough to share the same pillow.
“I’m out of breath still,” she says with a small laugh, and Cruz finds herself looking away as she smiles a little smile of her own. Aaliyah catches the bashfulness in it and laughs again.
“You cannot possibly still be shy after what you just did to me.”
Her laugh is lovely, it carries no trace of mockery, and Cruz’s smile blooms. She preens a little at the indirect praise, her heart feels light in her chest when their mouths collide softly once more, light in a way she can’t remember ever experiencing.
Aaliyah keeps her hand on Cruz’s face when they part, gently stroking her cheekbone with her thumb. Her fingers trace light patterns over Cruz’s jawline and down her neck, until they’re teasing the hollow between Cruz’s collarbones.
“Is this okay?” Aaliyah whispers, keeping her touches gentle even after Cruz nods. Her voice is huskier than it was a moment ago, the energy between them shifts again to something more charged.
Aaliyah casts a hot glance over Cruz’s body before meeting her eyes again.
“You made me feel so good,” Aaliyah says, “I want to give that to you.”
Cruz’s pulse ticks up, desire and anxiety relighting inside her.
“I want to touch you, Zara. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. Will you let me?”
The plea is quiet, breathy, like restraining herself from touching Cruz is making Aaliyah ache. Her gaze is so open, so full of want and adoration, and there is nothing Cruz wishes more than to give herself over to Aaliyah and let her undo her.
But something holds her back. Even though she is soaked and painfully sensitive, the sharpness of her need is dulled by the nervousness that won’t leave her be.
She yearns and fears in equal measure, because Aaliyah’s touch is only a whisper on her skin, and yet, Cruz is shivering already. She remembers the pleasure Aaliyah bestowed on her when her mouth was between her legs, and the loss of control that came with it.
Her greatest fear, that loss of control. The reminder of just how damaged she is.
“You can tell me to stop if you need to,” Aaliyah says quietly. “I will.”
Cruz recognizes something unspoken in that promise, as if Aaliyah understood that the abuse Cruz endured runs much deeper than what she let on. And though agitation is still crawling beneath her skin, Aaliyah’s thoughtfulness soothes her.
She is being given a choice, she could say ‘no’ and, for the first time in her life, she knows she’d be listened to. For the first time in her life, she feels safe in the arms of another human being.
Aaliyah’s smile is warm like the first rays of dawn when Cruz finally nods, murmuring “yes” so quietly there is barely any sound to the word.
Aaliyah tucks a strand of black hair behind Cruz’s ear, caresses the shell of it like she is something precious before kissing her again, a patient brush of lips that slowly melts away Cruz’s tension.
Aaliyah’s hand trails over Cruz’s knee while they kiss, up the inside of her thigh, across her hip, unhurried and delicate, until Cruz’s entire body warms with excitement and she is leaning in for more, dragging her thumb over Aaliyah’s bottom lip to open her mouth with her own.
It’s too late, Cruz realizes when Aaliyah’s thigh slides between her legs. Too late for any pretense of control. She has surrendered to the woman pressed flush against her. All Cruz can do while Aaliyah flexes her thigh against her core, while she kisses Cruz’s cheek and jaw, is roll her head back against the pillow and let herself feel.
Deft fingers replace Aaliyah’s thigh a moment later, soft and sure, every stroke flooding Cruz’s body with bliss. Cruz feels Aaliyah’s breath tremble across her cheek, Aaliyah’s mouth hot against her neck as her fingers move downwards.
They dip inside and Cruz loses her breath.
Everything about it is slow, deliberate. Cruz, with her eyes closed, feels like she is floating. Aaliyah moves her fingers at a languid pace. She feels so good, fits inside her so perfectly, that Cruz never wants to be apart from her again.
She never believed in romance, the expression ‘making love’ only made her roll her eyes. But this isn’t just sex. She has never had sex like this.
“Look at me.”
The soft command reaches Cruz through the fog of pleasure. She tries to obey, immediately chasing Aaliyah’s lips to ground herself, but Aaliyah curls her fingers as her pace picks up, and Cruz’s vision is driven to white.
Her senses are in overload, all she feels is heat and pleasure and Aaliyah. She is being taken apart, piece by piece, and all she can do is trust Aaliyah to put her back together again. And she does. Aaliyah makes Cruz feel whole for the first time in her life.
The molten pleasure that roils inside her grows until Cruz is on the edge again, it sits just out of reach, almost unbearable in the moment before. Her body bends and quakes. It’s the most intense feeling Cruz has ever experienced, terrifying and wondrous.
Aaliyah coaxes her through it. And then she is free-falling.
That agonizing pressure gives way to ecstasy. It feels like it’s never going to end. Cruz doesn’t want it to, she wants to remain suspended in that weightless bliss.
When she comes back to her body, Aaliyah is curled up against her side, an arm splayed protectively across her breasts, anchoring her back to reality.
Whatever was left of Cruz’s barriers crumbles and her feelings pour out, unrestrained. Her body doesn’t give her any warning. Tears spill from her eyes before she can do anything to stop them, she is barely able to quiet the sobs that want to escape her throat.
Aaliyah doesn’t say anything, she only cuddles closer and plays with her hair, which only makes Cruz want to cry harder.
She feels safe. She feels held. She doesn’t know what being loved is supposed to feel like, but to her, it’s this. To be embraced at her most vulnerable. To be naked in her body and in her soul and not feel afraid.
Aaliyah gave her this. Cruz now understands what it means to feel loved.
And it did what a lifetime of abuse and humiliation couldn’t do. It did what Joe’s torture failed to do.
It broke her.