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Carmilla knows Laura has nightmares. Once in a while. Laura pretends she doesn’t, and when she wakes up she says she doesn’t remembers them, but her diary says otherwise.
Yes, okay, Carmilla reads her diary. It’s not her nightly reading or anything, she prefers Anaïs Nin to Laura’s nauseatingly girlish scribble, but like… once in a while. An entry or two. Nothing scandalous, and she skips over the parts about her because the one time she didn’t she threatened to lose her hematological supper from the way the words had nearly jumpstarted her quiet heart to start beating again. It’s not an experience she wants to relive anytime soon, however much she was smiling during it.
But, an entry or two, only the ones not about her, she can stomach, morally and physically.
And what Laura doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Her, being herself, clearly. Because Carmilla’s pretty sure if Laura did know, future generations of students would whisper about the ghost of the murdered vampire roaming the halls of the philosophy section of the Silas campus library.
Usually the nightmares feature the Dean, especially in the beginning. Dark shadows, a pit, the Dean, and a certain idiot leaping over the edge. As soon as Laura cries her name in her sleep, Carmilla knows it’s that kind of dream. They’re less frequent now, but Laura still ends up holding her tighter than normal some nights. Sometimes it’s a car crash instead, and Laura mumbles about her mother before she wakes herself up with a jolt. Those dreams aren’t new, and she shakes them off easily. Luckily, Ell or the choking in blood doesn’t return, and the only time Laura apparently dreamed of her as a giant black cat, it involved shopping for some kind of leash.
Of all things she wouldn’t be caught dead doing…
In any case, nightmares are fairly harmless. No fun – she of all people knows that, even if her nightmares are a silent and subdued affair that so far haven’t alerted or woken Laura in any way. But harmless. And not nearly frequent enough to do anything but dutifully shake Laura awake and soothe her skittish heart with kisses and words of comfort.
So it’s with little pretense that one night that she wakes again to Laura’s whimpers and moans of distress, she gets up loyally from her side of their cramped college room (it’s a rare night that they’re in separate beds) and gently shakes her awake.
“Creampuff, you’re dreaming again.”
Laura’s eyes flutter open, and she looks up with wide startled eyes and parted lips that slowly form a little circle.
“Oh.”
Carmilla smiles fondly at Laura’s sleep muddled state and smoothes her hair from her forehead. Laura turns into the touch with a soft smile and closes her eyes.
“Just a dream,” Carmilla says.
Laura’s lips quirk into a smile and she presses her face against Carmilla’s hand.
“Yes, it was,” she purrs, and Carmilla raises an eyebrow. Laura coming out of a nightmare is Laura sighing in relief and squeezing her hand for comfort, not Laura the kitten rubbing against her hand and smiling like she knows a secret.
“What are you smiling at?”
Laura's smile grows. “Nothing.”
Carmilla’s eyebrow rises higher. Laura looks away self-consciously, but her smile doesn’t falter. Carmilla shrugs and turns to her bed, but Laura tightens her hand on her wrist and pulls her back.
“Stay."
The demand is not unusual. In the few days they sleep apart for whatever reason (usually Laura falling asleep too early or Carmilla staying out until the crack of dawn) and Laura does have a nightmare, she slides into her bed and her arms like she never wants to be anywhere but.
However, the way Laura’s eyes are still glinting and her smile is turning slowly mischievous is anything but routine.
Carmilla quirks her head curiously, and Laura grabs hold of the front of her nightshirt and pulls her in suddenly for a bruising kiss that makes her breathing hitch and makes her nearly fall forward in surprise. Laura goes with the momentum, wraps her arms around her neck and pulls her into her bed.
“What are you – ”
“Bad dream,” Laura whispers, smiling like she’s lying. “Make it better?”
Laura flips them and bucks her hips against her thigh. Carmilla instantly loses the rhythm of her breathing and Laura repeats the movement like she can’t wait for her to regain it.
“Now?” Laura growls, tilts Carmilla’s face into the kiss, and slides a hand under her shirt.
Carmilla moans in equal surprise and pleasure when Laura bucks her hips again and squeezes her breast, but kisses back wholeheartedly.
Now sounds good.
She wakes up smiling and somewhat sore and with the scent of Laura all around her. She decided a while ago that, short of ‘with Laura in her arms’, it’s the absolute best way to wake up.
She rolls over and scrunches her nose in distaste at the post-it note crinkled beneath her face.
Good morning, sleepyhead! Or afternoon, probably. ;) I had class. Wanna grab coffee at 12.30?
She smiles and checks the time. Just before noon. Not officially afternoon yet. She falls back on the bed and curls around the pillow, breathing in Laura’s scent. What a night. What a dream Laura must have had to need so much… ahem… comfort.
She frowns thoughtfully. What dream did she actually have? She never asked. They didn’t end up talking much, after all.
Her eyes creak open and she smiles slyly. There is a way to find out.
She reaches for Laura’s diary in its ‘super secret spot’ (behind a row of 1st semester textbooks – she found it in about 5 seconds flat when Laura had flaunted her hiding skills), flutters through the pages, and smiles. Laura works quick.
Had a dream last night. Different kind. Very different kind. Not a nightmare for once… though there was plenty of action and I did plenty of crying. But like… crying out, if you catch my drift. Of course you catch my drift, you’re me in the future, haha. Hi me! Anyway. Kind of wish Carm hadn’t woken me up because it was just getting good. The dream was with Carmilla and holy crap she was –
She snaps the book shut, eyes wide, and grins.
So, it was that kind of dream, huh?
A sex dream, from Laura the Innocent.
She snorts quietly. She supposes that epithet stopped being accurate about six months ago. Also, the dream sure explains Laura’s unexpected pre-dawn come-on and how unprecedentedly quickly (and loudly) she came around her fingers – twice.
She plays with the cover of the diary. She’s itching to keep reading. Holy crap she was – what?
Pissing me off as usual and just gearing for some make-up sex…?
Pushing me up against a wall and having her way with me…?
Going down on me like there was no tomorrow…?
Carmilla smirks. All viable possibilities. Also, all potentially good ideas.
What was she doing?
She keeps the book shut, however. Principles and all. Besides, her imagination combined with the memories of last night is good enough to fill in the blanks for her.
She puts the diary back in its place, wipes the sleep from her eyes, throws some clothes on, and, forgoing make-up and a comb completely, heads out to coffee. She’s fairly sure her sleep-tousled state will only remind Laura of the night they had, and make her smile and kiss her more eagerly.
She does her best to compose her own smile while Laura babbles happily about her class and subtly footsies her under the table. She hides her smirk behind her coffee cup when she fails abysmally, and only smiles wider when she notices Laura is doing the exact same thing.
A few nights later, Carmilla wakes up not to the sharp intake of breath and jolt of fear she’s used to, but to a breathless moan left against her collarbone where Laura’s face is pressed against it. She wipes her bangs from her eyes and tightens her arms around her automatically.
“Laura,” she murmurs against her temple as the girl writhes in her arms.
All she gets in return is a moan and a whimper – and the slightest buck of Laura’s hips against her thigh.
She raises an eyebrow, the diary entry and the nighttime events of a few days ago suddenly returning to her thoughts.
Is she having another one of those dreams?
Laura jolts against her and cries out, and Carmilla frowns in concern.
“Nnnnggghhh,” she cries softly. Carmilla bites her lip – it could be either a noise of arousal or an aborted ‘no’. Laura jolts in her arms again and her eyebrows pull together in concentration or fear as she makes the sound again.
It feels more like a ‘no’ or a cry for help – despite the way her hips bucked in tandem with the sound – and even if there’s a good chance it’s a false alarm that Laura will grumble about in her diary later, there’s no way Carmilla will deny giving her relief. She shakes her gently awake.
“Hey, wake up.”
Laura wakes with a start of surprise and wide startled eyes that take her in like she was expecting someone else. Carmilla smiles soothingly, glad to have woken her up after all, because this Laura – alarmed and rigid and holding tight to her hip like she wants to ground herself – is clearly coming out of a nightmare.
“Bad dream?”
Laura shakes her head to clear it, fingers kneading into her hip. “Yeah. Sort of.” She swallows tightly and frowns. “Sorry.”
She smiles back. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Laura laughs nervously, eyes flitting away. “Right. Of course. I… yeah.”
Carmilla frowns curiously, taking in the emotions flickering across dimly lit Laura’s face. She thinks she sees a hint of shame or guilt, quickly hidden, but in the faint half-light of early morning, she can’t be sure. Her frown deepens. Laura usually shakes the dreams off quicker than this. “What did you dream?”
Laura clears her throat awkwardly and looks away again. “Oh, the usual, you know. We don’t have to talk about it.”
Carmilla nods, tightening her arms. “You okay now?”
“Yeah, totally, completely all good,” Laura stammers.
The way she’s avoiding her gaze tells Carmilla she definitely isn’t yet.
Gently, Carmilla tilts Laura’s face up, catches her skittish gaze, and presses a chaste kiss to her lips. Laura stays completely still, indecisive, only her eyelashes fluttering open when Carmilla pulls back and brushes the hair from her face.
“Better?”
Despite the tension in her body, a small smile tugs at Laura’s lips. “Mhmm.”
Carmilla smiles, and leans in again, lingering.
When she pulls back, Laura’s eyes stay closed and the uncertain, apologetic look is gone. The way she has slowly relaxed tells her that she’s getting closer to completely all good.
She wonders what Laura dreamed that lingers so much. She won’t push – but she can ask in other ways.
She skims her fingers across Laura’s skin beneath the hem of her shirt, a questioning touch that deliberately roams lower. Laura licks her lips, lets out a shuddering breath and looks about to relent, giving Carmilla a rather unexpected answer, but then she tenses and lightly stops her. Carmilla retracts her hand, and with a disarming smile, kisses away Laura’s embarrassed look.
As she thought – not a sex dream.
“Try to sleep,” she murmurs, pulling Laura closer and pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“Thanks,” Laura says, burying her face in the crook of her neck. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Laura wraps an arm around her waist and tightens it thankfully. Carmilla smiles and closes her eyes.
She wakes up with familiar routine – empty bed, Laura’s lingering scent all around her, and a post-it glued unceremoniously to her face.
She should probably tell Laura to stop doing that. Despite the girl’s good intentions, Carmilla would rather not have a repeat of the time Laura’s fondly scribbled message (including about thirteen hearts and smileys) had ended up stenciled on her cheek with permanent marker when she slept in too long.
This time, the message is not quite as nauseatingly adorable, despite the heart Laura ended it with, because Carmilla’s instant impulse after reading it is to crash that damned coffee-date at Bagels and Beans with Danny.
Okay, she’s biased. She knows that. But who can blame her when she had to sit through almost a full semester of heart eyes and subtle flirting between her current girlfriend and the overgrown, cocky sorority sister, especially when said Amazonian returns any dirty look Carmilla sends her with equal venom. She knows Danny and Laura are friends now, but that just means she’ll keep the glaring to a minimum – or at least only behind Laura’s back. Doesn’t mean she likes it.
She resists throwing on her tightest leather pants and crashing the date. But class doesn’t start for another three hours, and she did the required reading about seventeen times over in the last four decades.
An idea hits her. There is, after all, some other reading she can do…
She should probably reexamine the ease with which she’ll encroach Laura’s privacy for the sake of sating her curiosity, but morality is an outdated human social construct anyway.
She flips to the right page, sits back in Laura’s bed, and starts on today’s entry.
So... I had another good dream. Must be on some kind of roll. No nightmares in a while. Maybe it’s Carmilla. Probably is. I love sleeping with her… Next to her, I mean. Haha, both, actually. Anyway, this time, it wasn’t a nightmare. This time the dream was… ahem… different. Again. I know I shouldn’t feel guilty because it was just a dream, but good god it was a good dream –
Carmilla smiles. Seems she was wrong in thinking it wasn’t a sex dream.
- and it wasn’t about Carmilla.
Her smile falters.
Wait…
She skims through the rest, eyes wide and disbelieving.
No frickin’ way.
…she’d won the Adonis hunt and apparently I was the prize. And I clearly wasn’t complaining.
Her blood boils, and she slams the book shut and glowers at the cover, hands tightening until they threaten to snap the book in two.
Fucking Danny.
She finishes the rest of the entry, but it offers no retraction or repudiation or reversal of the facts. She doesn’t believe it. Laura had a sex dream about Danny. Laura had a sex dream about Danny while in her bed. Laura had a sex dream about Danny while in her arms.
Jesus.
Jealousy and possessiveness are new to her. She’s never cared about something or someone enough to bother with them. The closest she’s gotten to jealousy is a slightly misplaced, only marginally reasonable dislike of exes of past lovers, but they never stuck around long enough for her to bother identifying what she was feeling.
But with Laura…
Yeah, subconscious infidelity or not, she’s jealous as hell.
The feeling triples when she realizes who Laura is with at the very moment, and she jumps to her feet, ready to storm into Bagels and Beans, upend a table or two, and challenge Danny to a righteously imbalanced lover’s duel – settle this thing once and for all.
She stops herself though, post-it clutched in one hand and diary in the other. Because even though relieving Danny of one of her limbs doesn’t sound like a half-way bad idea, she knows it won’t temper her jealousy. If Danny had made any kind of advance on Laura, she’d be pissed only, not jealous, and quartering would be a completely acceptable course of action.
But this isn’t a Danny thing. This is a Laura thing. Laura moaning in pleasure – about someone else – as she ground herself on Carmilla’s thigh in her sleep. Laura reliving it and describing Danny’s sexual endeavors in writing. Laura having coffee with her sort-of-ex right this second because of it.
The post-it crackles in her hand as a chilling explanation for the reason Laura shyly stopped her questioning advance last night hits her. Stopped her despite the way she’d apparently been ready, eager, already turned on, and despite the fact that she’d wanted to.
She tries to push the thought away, but like the unbidden possessiveness and jealousy, it weasels its way under her skin until all she can think is that maybe Laura just hadn’t wanted her: maybe she’d wanted Danny.
Her stomach turns unhappily. She quickly stuffs the ruined post-it and the diary behind the row of textbooks and turns to the shower, intent on washing away the idea that feels like a layer of grime on her skin every place she held Laura against her last night.
It doesn’t work. Two hours of running water just leaves her overheated and still fuming, Laura’s description of her dream forming unwelcome images in her visual cortex and the mutinous feelings still colonizing her mind like a fungus.
Class is a nightmare. She misquotes Sartre four times, and her professor ends up using her as the prime example for what happens when you don’t do the prepared reading. She pyrokinetically sets his hair on fire on the way out, and quickly escapes the crime scene while the rest of the class cries out in alarm and confusion at the unexpected proof of spontaneous combustion.
Laura has class and various extracurriculars until well after sunset, giving Carmilla the chance to cool down, both literally and figuratively.
She sets the shoelaces of her own combat boots on fire when she gets home.
Figuratively cooling down doesn’t work any better.
She knows blaming Laura for the dream isn’t reasonable. But the M-rated diary entry, the midnight kisses that feel like lies, the treasonous coffee date – well, she has plenty of thoughts about that – thoughts that slowly wind and writhe inside her as the clock marks the hours, until her jealousy threatens to burn a hole in the pit of her stomach. No matter all of the of course not’s and don’t be stupid’s and be reasonble’s she throws at them, it makes no difference – she cuts off one head and two grow back.
And she knows she can’t do a bloody thing with what she’s feeling. She can’t say anything without admitting that she read Laura’s diary. She’ll just have to bear it – suffer in silence and hope her passive aggression and pissy mood don’t register on Laura’s radar.
As soon as Laura bumbles in though, murmuring cheerful hello’s and chatting animatedly about her day, Carmilla knows it’s a lost cause.
Laura drops her bag next to her closet and hops to her bed over for a routine, harmless kiss. “Hi babe.”
Carmilla bristles when Laura’s lips land on her cheek, then she instantly chastises herself.
Stop it. You’re being stupid.
“Sorry it’s so late.”
Carmilla catches a whiff of Laura’s perfume as she retreats.
Did she put on more than usual?
She pushes away the thought. Of course not.
“What’s for dinner?” Laura asks, opening their fridge.
Didn’t get any because I was too busy replaying your diary entry in my head.
She clears her throat. “Thought you were getting it. Coffee with Danny run long or something?” Carmilla prods.
Laura laughs. “That was hours ago. Doesn’t matter, I think there’s still pizza in the common room freezer.”
She bounces from the room, returning a few minutes later.
“I grabbed Hawaiian. That okay?” she asks as she scrolls through her Tumblr feed.
Carmilla grunts, crosses her legs, and turns back to her book.
She hasn’t read a sentence in minutes. The words swim in front of her, wobbling and warping until they form Laura’s handwriting and Danny’s name.
She closes the book and grabs another one.
It doesn’t help. She turns to a rare page with a picture and focuses on that instead.
A few minutes of staring later, Carmilla hears an oven chime from the distant common kitchen. Pizza’s finished.
She keeps mum.
Laura lingers, oblivious.
Soon, Carmilla can smell something burning.
She stubbornly turns another page in her book, barely reading a word.
Laura kicks off her boots, and Carmilla’s eyes roam over the single black stripe on her pantyhose that disappears under the sinfully short checkered dress.
“Dress up for your coffee date, did you?” she murmurs, barely keeping the snide edge out of her voice.
“Oh, you like it?” Laura asks, pulling at the edge of her dress excitedly. “Got it at Pull & Bear last week. Finally something in my size,” she jokes.
Carmilla scowls and turns back to her book. “I’m sure Danny liked it as well.”
Laura raises a confused eyebrow and opens her mouth to answer, but then her eyes go wide and she exclaims: “Damn it, the pizza!”
Damn the pizza indeed. Daring to interrupt her passive aggressive tactics. She’s not sure what the endgame is, but if she can’t bring up what’s really gnawing at her, she’s not above snide comments and petty resentment.
The smell of burnt pizza wafts into their room, and Carmilla crinkles her nose in distaste as Laura drops the ruined item on the desk.
“Ugh, Carm, why didn’t you say something?” she says, pouting. “You must’ve smelled it burning.”
She shrugs and turns haughtily away. “You’re the one who wanted pizza.”
Laura raises an eyebrow and takes in her stiff, aloof composure. “You’re cheerful.”
“Not hungry.”
It’s a lie. It’s been a while since she’s had blood, and human food has been even longer.
“Not hungry and grumpy. That’s a new one,” Laura says.
Carmilla purses her lips and obstinately turns another page in her book.
“So you’re not joining?” Laura asks as she sits down, fork and knife in hand.
Carmilla passes her gaze over the burnt pizza crust and sniffs in aversion.
“I’ll pass.”
“Alright.” Laura takes a bite and chews in silence, absentmindedly nudging her mouse to bring her laptop out of sleep. Despite the slightly crisp pineapple and ham, she groans in enjoyment. “You’re missing out,” she sing-songs, looking her way. “How are you not hungry? I didn’t see a new container of blood.” She cracks a smile. “Have you been secretly snacking on someone?”
“Have you?” Carmilla snaps, catching Laura’s eyes sharply.
Laura frowns. “What?”
She turns abruptly away. “Nothing.”
Laura puts her fork down. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
Carmilla chews sullenly on words she can’t say – words she probably wouldn’t say anyway.
Laura waits, and the seconds stretch.
“Professor gave me a hard time today,” she finally says through clenched teeth.
Laura’s frown smoothes. “Aw, honey.”
Her skin crawls with something between irritation and shame at Laura’s instant sympathy, and it hits her again how bothered she is by everything she learned today.
“What happened?” Laura asks kindly.
Her mind jumps from jealous thought to jealous thought with lightning speed, a two second time-lapse of the last hours of mental combat.
“Don’t want to talk about it.”
Laura takes a bite of pizza and waves her fork dismissively. “I’m sure he was just being an ass. You’ve followed all your classes like four times already, what could he possibly have left to teach you? You’re practically a war-weary veteran at being a college student.”
Carmilla stays quiet, and feels, more than sees, Laura’s sympathetic gaze roam over her. She finishes her pizza, prattling intermittently about class. Carmilla nods where is expected, but stays silent, until peaceful silence falls over the room without further effort. She nearly sighs in relief, the effort to keep from snapping building with every passing moment.
Laura changes into her pajamas and settles into bed with her laptop, and Carmilla almost relaxes at what seems like the final hurdle for keeping her jealousy under wraps, until Laura suddenly speaks again.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you,” she says, and Carmilla tenses instantly at her excited, utterly oblivious tone. “Danny asked me to help her out with the Adonis Festival coming up.”
Carmilla clenches her jaw. The Adonis Festival. Of all things. “Really?”
“Yeah! Something about an elaborate obstacle course and a staged foxhunt.”
“And will you be the fox?” she mumbles, biting the inside of her cheek with subdued rage.
“What?” Laura asks.
“Nothing.”
Laura shrugs and continues happily scrolling through Archive of Our Own. “It’ll be pretty cool, I think.”
Definitely – and I’m sure you’ll be able to spend a lot of quality time together, Carmilla thinks savagely.
God damn it. She can’t let it go.
She looks over to the other side of the room, and she knows it’s a lost cause to try, because all she ends up doing is following every movement Laura makes with jealously narrowed eyes.
Laura absentmindedly scratches her hip, and Carmilla sees unfamiliar fingernails pressing crescents into the unblemished skin. Laura brushes a few stray strands behind her ear, and Carmilla burns with jealousy at imagining different hands running through her messy, sex-tousled locks instead. Laura laughs lightly at a passage in her story, and Carmilla writhes internally at the sound, magnified a hundred times inside her mind, as a certain redhead trailed biting, playful kisses across Laura’s neck.
Fucking Danny.
She should not have kept reading Laura’s diary.
Laura yawns and closes her laptop. She glances over at Carmilla. Carmilla looks quickly, resolutely away.
“It’s getting late.”
Carmilla stays silent, stiff as a board, as Laura continues studying her intently.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Fine.”
Her tone is Oscar-worthy; she nearly convinces herself.
“Soooo…. You want to come over here?” There’s a playful smile in her voice.
“Not really,” Carmilla grunts.
Laura raises an eyebrow, but, after a moment, scoffs and laughs lightly. “Alright then, lazy pants.” She puts her laptop away, clicks off the light, and comes over to her side of the room instead, completely oblivious to the way Carmilla has to resist the urge to cringe with every step she nears.
“You know, maybe you should sleep on your own side tonight,” she snaps just as Laura sits down on the edge of her bed.
In rapid succession, Laura’s eyebrows shoot up, then contract in confusion.
“What? Why?”
Her fingers clench on the book cover. “Never mind.”
A beat.
“Carm, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Laura falls silent, frowning thoughtfully, before she seems to make up her mind. “Forget about the stupid professor, babe,” she says. She slides closer on the bed, reaching out and gently brushing her fingers through Carmilla’s bangs, while her other hand squeezes her knee playfully. “I’m sure I can make it better…”
Carmilla pulls sharply away, eyes flashing.
“Oh, so, now you want me, mmh?” she demands.
Laura pulls back, startled. “What? Of course I do.” Her frown deepens. “I thought that was obvious. And mutual.”
“So did I,” Carmilla shoots back. Silence falls hard when she offers nothing else.
“Okay…” Laura trails off, glancing at the dark shape of her own bed. “We can just sleep then, I guess?”
She snorts. “Sleep. Right.”
“Okay, seriously, what’s wrong?” Laura demands with a long-suffering sigh as her tolerance breaks.
Carmilla’s breaks in the same instant, and she glares at her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says with bitter sarcasm. “Maybe I just don’t feel like waking up my girlfriend from a sex dream about someone else again.”
Laura freezes, eyes wide.
“Oh my God.”
Carmilla scoffs. “Yeah, I’m sure you moaned that plenty while you were dreaming about Danny.”
Laura’s mouth drops open another inch, but then she shuts it with an audible clack and frowns. “Wait, how do you know about that?”
“You… moaned her name,” she lies quickly.
Laura’s frown smoothes to a look of amused dismay. “Oh, God.” She covers her mouth with a hand, but it’s not enough to hide the embarrassed laugh.
Carmilla’s not laughing. If anything, the fact that Laura offers no recognition of her anger at all only makes it worse.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Laura says, chuckling. She grabs her hand and squeezes it. “I swear it was the first time. And hopefully the last.”
First – she believes (Laura’s diary backs her up on that).
Hopefully the last…
Carmilla snatches her hand back. “I have trouble believing that.”
Laura frowns and the sheepish smile drops from her face. “Why?” she asks, baffled.
Because you wrote two full pages describing it. Because you rushed off to have coffee with her. Because it’s Danny.
“You sure sounded like you were enjoying yourself,” she says instead.
“Maybe – while I was asleep,” Laura points out.
“So you’re not denying it?”
Laura pulls back, frowning incredulously at Carmilla’s ardor. “It’s completely beside the point.”
“Not to me.”
Laura laughs, a humorless, disdainful scoff. “Okay, you know you’re completely overreacting, right? It was just a dream.”
“Just a dream, uh-huh,” she drawls sarcastically. “I’m sure it came out nowhere.”
“Jesus, Carm, what the hell?” Laura says, rising to Carmilla’s challenge. “I can’t help what I dream!”
Carmilla scoffs. “Right. But you have a sex dream about her and the first thing you do is go have coffee with her.”
Laura guffaws. “Is that what this is about?! We had that planned for a week already!”
“Well then, I guess you were just excited to see her,” Carmilla says maliciously.
Laura’s cheeks flush red. “I can’t believe you! You know there’s nothing going on between us!”
Carmilla closes the book with a snap. “Were you still thinking about her when I kissed you last night?”
Laura pulls back like she’s been slapped, eyes wide and incredulous. “How dare you?”
“Were you?”
Laura shakes her head, bitter disbelief and pain tightening her features. “Screw you,” she says, voice low and sharp. “I’m not having this conversation.” She stands up abruptly.
Carmilla’s stomach turns with rage, regret, and venomous satisfaction. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business,” Laura snaps, haphazardly snatching up her phone and pillow. “Let me know when you come to your senses.” She storms out the door and slams it hard behind her.
Carmilla throws her book after her; it hits the door and thuds forlornly to the floor.
It’s the last sound in the room for the rest of the night.
They don’t talk for three days. Perry shoots Carmilla stern, disapproving looks anytime she comes across her in the hallway. Apparently Laura didn’t feel the need to keep their fight private. Carmilla resists the urge to hiss at her or set something else on fire.
With a gruff it’s my room too, Laura returns to her own bed the second day. It might as well only be her room for all the acknowledgment she gives Carmilla. She studies wearing headphones, she calls her dad and easily changes the subject when he asks about Carmilla (her heart aches at that), she invites LaFontaine over for tea (the redhead throws Carmilla awkward, skittish looks like they fear the extent that her jealousy ranges), and she ignores her so efficiently that Carmilla ends up checking that her teleportation powers haven’t also gone on the frits, next to setting things on fire.
They haven’t. Carmilla returns the iciness with matching stubbornness. Back to old ways, apparently.
But that’s a lie, and they both know it. Because it hurts. Laura’s cold shoulder freezes the air in the room. The few feet between them span a mile. And her own bed feels achingly empty. She doesn’t know when it happened, but apathy has become absolutely impossible when it comes to Laura. And Carmilla can see by the way Laura’s cold, proud aloofness is broken by the occasional honest look of hurt that she thinks Carmilla doesn’t catch, Laura feels the same.
By day three, Carmilla’s jealousy has faded. Somewhere, far away, suppressed under a Mount Everest of denial, she knows she overreacted. Laura had abandoned any interest in Danny far before she and Carmilla had even kissed for the first time, and Danny – luckily for her – has enough of a sense of self-preservation to have kept a respectable, friendly distance from Laura ever since. Carmilla knows she’s in the wrong – about the dream, about the coffee date, and about accusing Laura of any kind of infidelity.
Now – day three – it’s just a matter of pride.
Laura’s waiting for an apology.
Carmilla rolls over in her (too empty) bed and huffs.
She can keep waiting.
A sharp intake of breath breaks the silence that’s blanketed their room for three excruciating days. Carmilla automatically focusses on the sound in the darkness, originating from Laura’s sleeping form, but she quickly chastises herself. Laura has made it clear she needn’t bother.
She hears it again, louder, more urgent. Laura is having a nightmare. The unrest is familiar – the short, aborted breaths, the intermittent thrash. She’d been better the last few months – fewer nightmares, more good dreams, even a sex dream, for God’s sake. This is the first nightmare in at least five weeks.
Carmilla swallows thickly. She thinks she can imagine a reason why they’ve returned.
She closes her eyes and blocks it out.
Laura moans, a subdued cry of pain or fear. Carmilla’s heart clenches in sympathy and she turns over in bed automatically.
Laura has kicked down the blankets in her sleep. They’re tangled between her legs, and Carmilla follows the smooth line of moonlight across one of her calves and thighs to where it disappears under her pajama shorts. Laura squirms again, and the tendons in her thigh stand out. The image is familiar, burned into her retinas along with scattered sounds of enjoyment from all the time she’s spent between Laura’s legs, a witness to the slow journey of Laura letting go, giving in, time and time again.
She shakes the image from her mind, the bitterness of their fight burning it away, as Laura relaxes around a sigh of relief.
Good, she thinks. Then she won’t have to wake her up and force both of them to tensely try to fall asleep on opposite sides of the room again.
Maybe she should apologize. She knows she was unreasonable, she knows she was wrong. But knowing and feeling are two very different things, because when she thinks back on what happened, the memories instantly jumpstart the possessiveness, the jealousy – feelings that fight all the harder the more they fade, and that give no quarter to regret.
Laura groans again, and Carmilla shuts her eyes tight.
Just fall asleep. Just fall asleep. Just –
The mantra is as effective as she could have expected, and Carmilla sighs in irritation.
And then Laura moans – a low, full-body sound that hits something unexpected and deep inside her and has her instantly snapping her eyes open in the mental equivalent of a double take.
Laura’s still asleep. Her eyes are closed, her face serene. But her body is coming down from a straining arching motion and her hand has wandered down her body and is lying on her bare stomach where her pajama top has ridden up in a semblance of innocence – only a semblance, because Carmilla is fairly sure the tips of her fingers have dipped below her waistband.
Carmilla narrows her eyes.
What the hell?
Laura moans again, jolting on the bed. Her hair is splayed across the pillow like a golden halo, and she presses her cheek against it with a soft groan of what can only be pleasure.
When Carmilla looks back down, she swears her hand has sunk two inches.
Under her waistband.
This cannot be happening.
Not a nightmare. A sex dream.
Tonight, of all nights.
Laura breathes in keenly, and Carmilla looks at her, evaluating. She lets her eyes wander, taking in every detail; the pleat of her shirt exposing her bellybutton; the shadow cast on her hand by the elastic of the waistband of her pajama; the relaxed, guileless curve of her body accentuated by muscles fostered in Krav Maga; the dimples at her hips illuminated by the moonlight shining through the open window; every miniscule hair rising as a gust of cool air skates across her skin and raises goose bumps.
Carmilla swallows thickly to banish the way her mouth has slowly gone dry.
She shakes it off, just as Laura shudders and groans again.
She wants to look away. She swears she does. But her eyes are focused on the achingly slow descent of Laura’s hand into her panties, and she can do nothing but watch and wait with bated breath.
Laura turns her head lazily, seeking some unknown warmth or comfort, and the ghost of a smile tugs at her lips. Her hand slides lower, and she mumbles a soft yes.
Who is she dreaming of?
The thought comes to her unbidden, but inevitable. She strains her ears to hear a name, but Laura mumbles something incoherent and groans softly and offers no answer to the question that still brings jealous bile to her throat. She pushes it away.
Laura’s hand dips lower, wrist relaxed, fingers loose, and Carmilla can’t believe Laura is practically masturbating in her sleep to whatever is happening in her dream – a sex dream that makes its presence known outside of the subconscious. Apparently when the girl dreams, it’s all or nothing.
With a cry, Laura suddenly throws her free arm above the pillow and turns into the movement. Her hand lolls leisurely on the pillow and she turns into it like the touch mimics her phantom lover’s caress. Carmilla eagerly follows the line of moonlight from fingers brushing lightly over Laura’s pouted lips to elbow to strip of skin exposed under her button-down pajama blouse. She can’t believe Laura practically wears a tux to bed – at least the hotpants balance things out.
Speaking of hotpants – Laura’s hand is moving within them. Slowly, so that Carmilla has to strain to see, but moving nonetheless.
Carmilla presses her legs together at the sight, suppressing the instant arousal that shoots through her even at the thought of Laura asleep and enjoying herself.
Who is she enjoying herself with?
Suddenly, Laura breathes in sharply, and Carmilla holds her breath as her chest rises a few inches and freezes at its precipice with a brisk shock – a shock that jolts her subconscious awake.
Her eyes flutter open.
Carmilla stops breathing and watches.
Laura silently orients herself in the room. Her eyes flick across the ceiling and she lets go of the breath her sleepy mind had held on to in tangent with the lingering dream. A small smile tugs at her lips, and Carmilla knows she’s remembering.
But remembering who?
As though in answer, Laura’s eyes flit to the side – catch Carmilla’s – and Laura’s breath hitches as she stops breathing as well.
And then, after what feels like far, far too long, her breathing steadies.
Carmilla holds the stare, frozen, knowing by the way that Laura returns her determined gaze unflinchingly, that the story isn’t nearly over.
Slowly, Laura licks her lips, rakes her eyes up and down Carmilla’s side of the room – and then slips her hand back to its destination.
Carmilla breathes out and watches.
Laura’s movements are deliberate. Carmilla can see it in the way the fabric pulls taut against her knuckles and the tendons in her hand stand out as her hand moves. In sleep, the trek of her hand was a subconscious reflex. Now, everything about it screams intent.
Carmilla watches, barely daring to breathe, as Laura touches herself. Her stomach, just visible under the edge of her buttoned top, contracts and expands in rhythm to her hand, muscles pulling tight and relaxing as her hand does the same. She breathes out and pulls her lip between her teeth like she needs something to hold on to, just as her free hand clenches on the bedding and gives her it. She breathes out haltingly, short shocks of air like she’s not sure if she should inhale or exhale, and her hips cant up against her exploring, rhythmically moving fingers.
And through it all, Laura never breaks eye contact.
Carmilla narrows her eyes. She knows what she’s doing. Laura is taunting her. Flaunting what they both know Carmilla can’t have unless she acknowledges that she screwed up.
And yet…
At the same time, Carmilla gets the distinct feeling that Laura is inviting her.
She gives in to it like the movement of Laura’s hand is a pendulum on the end of a hypnotist’s finger, and she slides out from under the blankets and sits up.
Laura follows her movement intently, never relenting with the slow, sure movements of her hand. Carmilla digs her nails into the mattress as she perches on the edge of her own bed, watching.
Laura’s bottom lip slides out between her teeth with a wet smack as she breathes out deeply and arcs into her own hand.
Carmilla slowly gets to her feet, the movement as magnetic and inescapable as the way everything tightens inside her in time with Laura’s ragged breathing.
Laura sighs in pleasure.
Carmilla takes a step.
Laura’s eyes flutter closed before refocusing on Carmilla – a foot closer than she was.
A hypnotic moan.
Another hypnotized step.
Every sound, every movement, every reciprocal lustful sigh Carmilla has to repress, is followed by the instantly honored urge to close the distance between them just a few inches more.
This isn’t a good idea. Carmilla knows that. She’s a masochist for doing anything but stubbornly turning back to her bed and banishing the sight, sound, and thoughts of Laura from her mind.
But Laura holds her spellbound so that the world narrows down to the steady movement of her hand and the coaxing call of her body.
She sinks down on the edge of the bed, fingers automatically clasping the sheets by Laura’s side as the girl moans encouragingly.
Laura’s lips curl with a smirk, quickly aborted as another groan pushes it from her face. She mumbles a breathy yes, all the while holding Carmilla’s gaze – a challenge, a taunt, a reminder of what she can’t have.
Carmilla shakes. Laura dares – oh God, please dare.
She wets her lips. Her ragged breathing dries them instantly.
“Who are you thinking of?”
Laura bites her lip, never breaking eye contact, as her fingers continue drawing tight circles between her legs. She breathes out in a shudder, but doesn’t answer.
Carmilla clenches a fist in the blankets. “Who?”
Laura breathes out, eyes hard, and falls still.
“Do you really want to know?”
Her voice is low, cross, and a little hostile. Carmilla grits her teeth automatically, bitter rage and pride rearing their ugly heads again. Laura narrows her eyes like she knows it, and pointedly lifts a knee, slides her hand lower, and presses her head back with a sigh of desire.
Something snaps, and, in a flash, Carmilla finds her fingers wrapped like a vice around Laura’s wrist. She holds it tight in front of her, far from its destination.
Laura breathes in sharply and narrows her eyes – startled but defiant.
The air crackles as their gazes lock, and Carmilla wonders when they got this close.
“Don’t,” Carmilla hisses, pulling hard on Laura’s wrist and sending a jolt through her body.
She freezes when she hears the same word mirrored in her thoughts.
Don’t.
Laura pulls on her wrist, eyes flashing, but Carmilla is frozen. She swallows thickly, eyebrows pulling together tremulously at the light quiver in her hand – because she knows instinctively that the same way something snapped inside her – guided her hand, brought back that jealous bile to her throat – something broke.
Her fingers loosen.
Laura’s angry frown – defiant to a fault – softens into confusion.
She’s an idiot. Jesus, she’s an idiot.
“Carm…?”
And Laura’s known it – gets it, gets her – from the first stupid shout.
Laura’s eyebrows tug together in concern as the realization hits her, painted clear as day across her features, and Carmilla doesn’t hide the shaky apology aching for release.
She lets go of the grip on Laura’s wrist.
It’s not the only thing she’s sorry for.
She just hopes she’s not too late with the apology.
She slides her hand down Laura’s arm to her neck while the other comes up and softly cups her cheek. Laura’s breath hitches in surprise, but she doesn’t pull away when Carmilla leans in and lightly brushes her lips over hers, imbuing the invitation for a kiss with as much regret and love as she can muster.
Laura freezes and Carmilla thinks she’s about to be shoved away, but then, gradually, Laura sighs like she’s been waiting for nothing else, wraps her arms around her neck, and kisses back.
When they pull apart, Laura cups her cheek, brushes her thumb over her bottom lip, and smiles, and Carmilla knows she’s been forgiven.
Thank god.
She returns the smile with a relief she feels in her bones.
Laura wipes her thumb over her lip again, hand still cupped against her face.
Carmilla absently licks her lips, and nearly falls off the bed in surprise. Jesus. She doesn’t know how in the hell she didn’t noticed it was that hand. She flicks her tongue across the moisture off her bottom lip again, swiping past Laura’s thumb as she goes, and something tightens inside her at the sudden sensory overload.
She catches the hand so quickly that Laura lets out a soft sound of surprise – a sound that’s repeated when she kisses each of Laura’s fingers in turn, lapping lightly at the sensitive pad of her fingers and savoring the familiar taste.
“Keep going,” she murmurs after a moment, and urges Laura’s hand back under the band of her pajama pants. Laura groans – a clearly unintended sound that nearly makes Carmilla follow Laura’s hand just to feel how wet she is.
Slowly, she starts to move, and Carmilla follows every movement like memorizing a dance.
Laura’s lips part, and she licks them like she knows they need the preparation for the short, aborted groans her throat supplies. Her knee rises, and her hand takes the new freedom with deliberate and pronounced enthusiasm. In tandem to her whimpers and subdued moans, her other hand loosens and contracts on Carmilla’s side where it’s snaked its way under her shirt.
And throughout it all, she never breaks eye contact. Carmilla doesn’t even need the vague reflection of herself in Laura’s brown eyes to know who she’s thinking of.
The knowledge is more satisfying than she could have ever expected.
She slides a hand under Laura’s button-down pajama shirt, cups a breast, and lightly twists a nipple between her fingers. Laura closes her eyes and bites her lip. Carmilla repeats it, and Laura bucks into the touch with a moan.
She looks great like this. Laura has a perpetual air of naivety and innocence around her during the day, but Carmilla learned long ago that when the sun goes down, she becomes something else entirely. Someone surprisingly free and uninhibited in pursuing her own pleasure, and exceptionally eager in reciprocating. And like this – hand between her own legs and mind focused only on climbing that ladder into oblivion – she’s the most mesmerizing thing Carmilla has ever seen.
Don’t get her wrong, Carmilla loves being the one that makes her come undone, but there’s something irresistible in seeing how committed Laura is to this. How she touches herself with the unhurried confidence that can only be fostered by experience, so that Carmilla just knows that not only is Laura not new to this, but that Carmilla herself as the object of her desire is not a novelty. She wonders how long Laura has been fantasizing about her. Reprimanding herself in the quiet of her own mind when Carmilla somehow made it into her thoughts again – thoughts instantly tainted by the fact she’d been about to come against her own fingers.
She smirks. Laura choses that moment to open her eyes, and she returns the smirk with a cockiness that makes Carmilla’s heart jump.
“Oh, Danny,” she suddenly moans, smiling wickedly.
Despite the fact that she hears the more than ample embellishment, amplified by the wicked smirk on Laura’s lips, Carmilla’s stomach jolts with a knee-jerk reaction of jealous rage. She narrows her eyes, taking in the challenging glint in Laura’s eyes.
So.
Laura wants her jealous, huh?
Fine.
She’ll give her jealous.
In a blur, she straddles Laura’s hips and traps both of her wrists against the mattress above her.
“What name did you just say?” she demands, eyes flashing.
Laura’s lips quirk with a smile before she composes her features into something girlishly startled and innocent. The wetness glinting off her fingers in the moonlight offsets her features, but Carmilla is almost convinced when she stammers: “Yours?”
“Are you sure about that?” Carmilla returns, turning a deliberate circle with her hips. Laura strains up against her. The blankets and her pajamas offer far too many barriers to gain any kind of satisfaction from the movement, and Carmilla smirks. “Mm?”
Laura swallows thickly. “Yes.”
Carmilla clicks her tongue and tightens her hands, lightly digging her nails into Laura’s wrist. “I don’t believe you.”
Laura's breath shoots into her throat. Carmilla eagerly follows the way her chest heaves and falls as she submits to her. She turns another calculated circle with her hips, and Laura groans in frustration and desire at her simultaneous proximity and infuriating distance.
Carmilla smirks. She quite likes this.
Can’t touch. Don’t touch – no, no. Don’t you dare.
Giving Laura a taste of her own medicine, for once.
She crosses Laura’s wrists and pushes down with one hand so the other is free to finger a button on Laura’s pajama shirt.
“Who did you dream of just now?” she asks, voice low and dangerous.
A button pops. Laura jerks like a sharply snapped elastic band.
“You.”
Carmilla slides a hand under the fabric, undoing another button as she goes, and kicks away the blanket separating them below their hips.
“Who were you thinking of when you were touching yourself?”
Laura breathes out hard and forms a word on the end of her exhale: “You.”
Carmilla digs her nails hard into Laura’s wrists and cants her hips, making Laura arc against her in a mixture of pain and pleasure.
“Who do you want?”
She roughly palms Laura’s breast, and Laura strains into her touch and bucks against Carmilla’s hold on her wrists, to no avail.
“You.”
Another button pops open. Laura shudders.
“And who do you belong to?” she purrs, tweaking Laura’s nipple and pulling at the hardened bud with cool fingers.
Laura moans, a heady, pleased sound that nearly makes Carmilla grind down against her to satisfy her own need that grows in tandem with Laura’s.
“Oh – you.”
A moan. Always a convincing addition to an answer.
She traces her finger down the remaining buttons, loosening them as she goes. The last one hangs on with admirable determination, but she pops it with vigor, and Laura shivers as the night air raises goose bumps on the stunning contours of her bared body.
Carmilla’s smile widens. Laura at her mercy like this is new, to say the least. She’ll go to her grave denying it, but she’s usually the one submitting to Laura as the girl groans her desire from above her and takes what she needs with a sexual enthusiasm and lack of inhibition she admires and loves. Carmilla’s never left dissatisfied, but Laura comes first – literally – and clearly, the girl has gotten used to it, because she squirms and writhes beneath her with a mixture of frustration and longing neither of them are used to. Laura is submitting, happily and utterly at her mercy, and her sounds, her movements, the crescent of nails she’s pressed into her own palms, make it clear that Carmilla is not the only one enjoying the new dynamic.
“Do you want me to touch you?” Carmilla purrs, tracing a finger over Laura’s bare chest. Her fingertip slides over a nipple, and Laura’s answer falls on a sharp intake of breath.
“Yes.”
She watches her nipple contract under her touch and in the brisk night air.
“Where?”
Laura bucks her hips. Carmilla chuckles.
“I see.”
Though her hand aches to mimic Laura’s own – still shining with moisture where Carmilla holds her wrists trapped – it’s too early in the game. Besides, the way the moonlight plays with the shadows of Laura’s body as she writhes, so reminiscent of her desperate movements in the sex dream – a dream about her, apparently – is too tantalizing to resist.
She cups an exposed breast with her free hand, leans down, and locks her lips around a hardened nipple.
Laura cries out and squirms. Carmilla watches in hyperacute detail as, millimeters from her eyes, goose bumps rise across her skin. She swirls her tongue against Laura’s breast, and smirks with Laura’s predictable but never unwelcome reaction.
“Oh, please.”
Her smile grows, lips pulling taut against Laura’s nipple.
Not yet.
With her free hand, she subtly slides her own panties down her hips and shimmies out of them, all the while continuing her slow ministrations on Laura’s breast that make the girl plead for more. She places a knee between Laura’s legs, and Laura instantly grinds up against her, searching for friction.
“Don’t,” Carmilla warns. Laura whines. “If you’re mine, be mine.”
Laura swallows thickly but nods. Her hips lie compliantly still against the mattress; instead she slowly raises her knee between Carmilla’s legs. Carmilla smiles.
That’s more like it.
She tugs off her own pajama shirt – Riot grrrl concert, 1992 – and throws it sideways into the dark. Laura whimpers softly at the sudden sight of her naked body and her hands clench and unclench on empty air in a clear gesture of wanting, yearning, imagined touching.
Carmilla smirks. She knows she looks good naked – and she’s not above taunting Laura with it.
She runs her free hand over her own moonlit skin, across her breast down to between her legs and up again. Laura follows the movement without blinking. Her eyes linger on her breasts as Carmilla's her hand does the same, lightly playing with her nipple and moving her hips in tempo to her fondling. The swell of her buttocks grazes across Laura’s knee as she moves, but she doesn’t touch down.
“Do you like what you see?”
Laura nods. “Yes.”
The way her eyes follow every subtle movement and her breathing catches every time Carmilla twirls her own nipple between her fingers tell Carmilla it’s nothing but the truth.
She groans softly, letting her head loll back a fraction of an inch. Laura makes a high-pitched pleading sound. Carmilla is glad her satisfied smirk is hidden from view.
Despite the fact that she had an endgame at the time – a wicked one, but, Carmilla supposes, a valid reason nonetheless – Laura had clearly enjoyed the little show she’d put on, provoking her, tempting her, seducing her from afar. It’s only fair she lives it up a little herself now.
She inches her hand down. Laura’s eyes follow, and her breath catches when she slides her fingers inside herself.
God. She gets it now. The appeal of control. The appeal of denying the one she yearns for what she wants. She feels like Laura’s held the reigns for so long that she forgot how to really ride.
Luckily, once learned, never forgotten, and she touches herself with leisurely confidence as Laura watches her, mesmerized and utterly at her mercy. She’s not sure what she’s getting off to more – the skilled, satisfying movement of her hand spreading the moisture where she needs it and rubbing in all the right places, or the way Laura’s eyes and breathing follow every movement with complete rapture and barely disguised desire and desperation.
“Do you want to touch me?” Carmilla pants. She wonders when her own breathing got so uneven.
Laura nods instantly, swallowing thickly to regain the use of her vocal chords.
“Yes.”
Carmilla pushes her fingers inside herself pointedly, the movement bringing her in close. She feels Laura’s irregular breath on her cheek, and she murmurs the next question by her ear.
“Do you want to feel me? Feel how wet… I am?” The t, accentuated with intent and seduction, falls like a whip on the air.
Laura moans, straining up. “Oh – yes.” Carmilla feels her thigh shake in her effort to keep from grinding up against her. “Please.”
“I suppose you’ve been good,” Carmilla purrs, sitting back and lightly tracing a wet finger across Laura’s cheek.
Laura nods vigorously and pushes against Carmilla’s hand on her crossed wrists.
Carmilla chuckles darkly and tightens her hand. “Not that good.”
Laura whines in dismay and a hint of confusion, struggling lightly again. Carmilla clicks her tongue disapprovingly and wipes her finger down the ridge of her sternum to her bellybutton, leaving a flawless, straight streak that shines in the moonlight.
“I’ll decide how you feel me,” she says, smiling devilishly.
Inch by inch, she slides down to meet Laura’s thigh, prolonging the moment and keeping Laura mesmerized. Her wide eyes follow every movement, mirroring Carmilla’s own hypnosis when Laura was challenging her with a first-row seat to her private sexual gratification, taunting Carmilla with the knowledge that she couldn’t touch. The tables are turned, and Laura’s hands clench into fists under Carmilla’s wristlock as she watches Carmilla slide down against her.
Carmilla savors the moment. She’s aching. Watching Laura writhe with arousal in her sleep, watching her touch herself, and now, knowing how completely at her mercy Laura is – she’s dripping without Laura ever even touching her.
She smirks – she supposes touching herself is as close to cheating as she could get. But, oh, it’s the best kind of cheating.
Her descent stops as she finally meets Laura’s thigh, and both of them shudder at the abundant moisture she smears on her skin in the process.
“Are you wet?” she hears herself asking, as she sets a leisurely rhythm of her hips on Laura’s leg.
Laura stays agonizingly still, watching her in rapt attention, only nodding with sharp, repetitive desperation. “God, yes.”
She grinds down pointedly. “Wet like me?”
Laura swallows thickly. “Yes.”
“Wet for me?”
Laura whines. “Yes.” Carmilla plays with the edge of Laura’s waistband, never breaking her rhythm, and Laura follows it up with a desperate: “All for you.”
“Mmm, we’ll see about that,” Carmilla murmurs. She lazily slides her hand into Laura’s panties and ghosts her fingers over where she knows Laura wants her. Laura whines and cries out in response – pleading, broken bursts of sound. Carmilla delicately draws a fingertip between Laura’s wet folds, exploring the copious dampness.
“Oh God, Carm, please,” Laura whimpers, and rises against her fingers.
“Mmm.” Carmilla lets her fingers delve deep, and then retracts. She takes in the sheen of damp coating her fingers in the moonlight. “I guess you can be trusted.”
Laura nods frantically and opens her mouth to speak – Carmilla stops her with her finger against her lips. Slowly, she traces her wet fingertips over Laura’s lips as the girl looks on with wide, aroused eyes. Her tongue darts out against her lip, and Carmilla tightens her grip on her wrist.
“Don’t.”
Laura freezes instantly.
“I want to taste you when I kiss you.”
Laura groans and strains upwards, lips parted and breathing heavily. Carmilla meets her halfway. She twists her wet fingers in Laura’s hair and pulls her hard up against her in a bruising kiss. Her hips buck as soon as the taste coated on Laura’s lips hit her tongue, and she knows that she’s going to break soon.
God, she’s going to break hard.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” she says breathlessly on Laura’s lips.
Laura groans, a low needy sound. “Touch me, please.”
Carmilla slides her hand to her breast, kneading hard. Laura whimpers in encouragement and shuts her eyes tight at the first touch that really gives her what she needs.
Carmilla bites her lip as she watches her, and starts up her own rhythm on Laura’s thigh again. “What else?”
“I want – I want your fingers inside me.”
That can be arranged.
She gives Laura what she wants – no pretense, no more teasing, just giving in. The girl cries out loudly and clenches around her fingers as she starts a rhythm – fast, deep, and a little rough. Laura meets it turn for turn, moaning in approval.
“And?” she groans, her hips never ceasing their rhythm as takes whatever pleasure she can.
“Oh God,” Laura moans. “I want – I want to you take me – oh – harder.”
She complies, and Laura’s body jolts with the rough tempo she sets.
She presses her cheek to Laura’s and turns her head to expose her neck. She scrapes her teeth from her earlobe down across her throat, relishing the feel of power as Laura shudders beneath her. The way Laura pushes up hard against her fingers the moment her teeth touch her skin show her she definitely didn’t misunderstand the meaning of take me.
“And?” she whispers by Laura’s ear.
“Oh – fuck.”
Laura cursing is always a good sign – it means she’s getting desperate, and more importantly, close to the edge.
“And?”
Laura swallows hard – Carmilla feels the movement beneath her lips – as well as the vibration of her voice when she speaks:
“I want you to bite me.”
Carmilla freezes, eyes shooting open and hand fumbling the rhythm. Laura shuts her eyes tight and bucks her hips to pull her deep.
“Carm, oh, please don’t stop.”
She jumpstarts the movement again – Laura nods desperately and meets her – but Laura’s name, half a question, freezes in her throat at the unexpected and somehow alarming request. Her eyes flit across Laura’s face, searching for indecision.
“Bite me,” Laura repeats, practically begging.
Jesus.
Carmilla breathes hotly on Laura’s throat, and the girl moans encouragingly, whining and bucking up against her as Carmilla pushes inside her and grinds herself down hard, and Carmilla knows there is no ambiguity, no doubt – just longing, begging, wanting.
“Please,” Laura groans, turning her face and exposing her neck.
Laura wants this, really wants this – needs this – and, good God, with the option on the table, she’s suddenly not the only one.
Her fangs slide out between her lips instantly, leaving two thin parallel lines across Laura’s neck. Laura moans encouragingly and nearly impales herself on her fangs as she strains up against her. Carmilla licks her fangs and sights her target – a raised, thready pulse beating rapidly and steadily under Laura’s heated skin.
Her fangs sink deep just as her fingers do, and Laura cries out in simultaneous pain and pleasure.
Blood coats her tongue, and her hips buck hard in response. Laura whines in approval, urging her on – she needs no more encouragement than that. Mingled with the slight sheen of sweat on Laura’s neck and the lingering taste of her from their wet kiss, her blood tastes like her – and like the soul of all desire. Something pure, dark, wanting.
Carmilla’s used to the taste of blood overwhelming anything else, but the way Laura whines and cries out in satisfaction, inches from her ear, as Carmilla pushes her fingers knuckle-deep in and out of her, and her own hips snap forward against Laura’s thigh in a steady rhythm – this is different than anything she’s ever had.
Laura groans and starts muttering, short, aborted yeah’s that tell Carmilla she’s close and that have her sucking harder, swallowing her down, and taking all she can.
Her fangs slips deep into the fresh wounds just as Laura arches up against her and takes her fingers deeper than ever, and it’s too much. She bites hard, letting the blood drip across her bottom lip as she comes completely undone, and she cries out in pleasure as Laura does the same.
Carmilla rocks with her as she feels her clench around her fingers, but she’s been robbed of all senses except that sixth, unnamed one – the blood and the pleasure and the visceral, marvelous mix of it has blinded her, shredded her senses, and she’s succumbing to that age-old cliché of burning in light because she everything dims to sharp pinprick of carnal desire that hits her like a stake to the heart.
Thankfully, her maker postpones their meeting.
She breathes hard against Laura’s neck and shakes as she comes down, body flush against Laura’s equally quivering skin. Her fingers are still buried deep, but she feels no inclination to remove them, not when she can still feel Laura contracting with aftershocks that her own body mirrors.
Slowly, her vision returns. Her eyes focus on the thin rivulet of blood that trickles over Laura’s heaving chest.
Holy Mother of God.
She doesn’t realize she’s said it out loud until Laura giggles beneath her.
She lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It shudders into an unexpected, free laugh that vibrates all along their bodies where she’s still draped heavily over Laura, legs scissored below and fingers linked above.
She props herself up on her elbow and opens and closes her mouth, still breathing raggedly, as she searches for words. “I – that was – like – did you – I mean – Jesus.” She shakes her head incredulously.
“Yeah, Holy Mother of God just about covers it,” Laura says with a teasing smile.
Carmilla returns the smile brilliantly, snakes her hand around Laura’s waist to pull her close, and leans in for a kiss.
Laura chuckles and presses her hand against her collarbone, holding her back. “I love you, babe, but even I have my limits.”
Carmilla raises a confused eyebrow.
“Wipe your lips, idiot.”
Carmilla snorts. Right.
She licks them instead. It tastes just as good as fresh from the source. Laura shakes her head in amusement at her impish expression, but wraps her arms around the back of her neck to pull in for a kiss nonetheless. Carmilla returns it with an ardor and tenderness that feels almost out of place in the pattern of intimacy of the last two hours, but at the same time, feels as inevitable as the way her heart shoots in her throat and closes it off with feeling.
“I should make you jealous more often,” Laura says when they pull apart.
Carmilla settles next to her and runs her fingers happily around her bellybutton. “Definitely.” A beat. She frowns despite the warmth seeping into her skin along every place Laura lies against her. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Laura says instantly, chuckling disarmingly.
“I’m not used to being jealous.”
“You do it well,” Laura teases. Carmilla pouts, and Laura kisses it lightly away. “Tip, for next time: believe me. Accept that a dream is just that, nothing more. I’d much rather dream of you.”
“That’s… actually very good to hear,” Carmilla says with a still slightly abashed smile. “Makes me feel like an idiot though.”
“That’s ‘cause you are.”
“Hey.”
Laura laughs and pulls her close. “Don’t worry though: you are definitely forgiven after just giving me the best orgasm of my life.” She pulls her in for another kiss, lingering and biting playfully so that Carmilla knows what’s on her mind even before her lips pull up with a grin. “I can’t believe you came from biting me.”
“I can’t believe you let me.”
Laura chuckles, a bit embarrassed but not even a little ashamed. “Well, you seemed to need to work out some insecurities about who I belong to, so I thought letting you mark me wasn’t a half bad idea. And – ” Laura adds quickly as Carmilla frowns in concern – “I’d been fantasizing about it for months.”
Carmilla closes her mouth and smiles, her quick unease forgotten. She wipes Laura’s hair from her neck, admiring the two clotted puncture marks. “Looks good on you.”
“You’re partial,” Laura jokes. “You look good on me. Even without bite marks, anyone can see that. Even Danny.”
Carmilla smiles, pleased. “You should have coffee with her tomorrow. Don’t wear a scarf.”
Laura laughs. “You’re evil.”
“Um, vampire.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Laura returns, gesturing to her neck with a flourish.
Carmilla smirks. “Definitely one for the books.”
“Mmhmm,” Laura hums, settling into her arms before she pulls back with a jolt. “Oh, I didn’t tell you! Tonight wasn’t the first time I had sex dream about you. I had another one last week!”
“Really?” Carmilla says, a note of feigned, playful skepticism in her voice.
“Yes!” she says. “I even wrote about it in my diary.”
“Did you now?”
Laura nods and reaches behind the row of textbooks. She opens her diary and starts flipping through the pages excitedly. Carmilla smiles fondly.
Suddenly, a post-it note flutters out from between the pages of the diary.
“What’s this?” Laura asks in confusion, picking it up.
Carmilla’s stomach drops.
Oh no.
Laura’s eyebrows pull together with a frown as she looks between her diary and the note, reading her own handwriting about the coffee date.
Oh crap, no.
Carmilla stiffens, eyes flicking around the room. There must be some way out of this. There’s got to be. She looks quickly at the door, then down at her own naked body.
Worth it, or not?
But she’s already too late, because Laura’s eyes go wide as she puts two and two together, and slowly her gaze turns icy as she looks up at her.
“Carmilla…” she says, voice soft and dangerous.
Carmilla swallows audibly.
“Please tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
“I – ” can explain doesn’t cover it.
“I – ”’m sorry is way too soon.
“I – ” She subtly edges backwards on the bed. “I love you?”
Laura shakes her head slowly, openmouthed and wide-eyed with disbelief.
“I don’t suppose you’d be up for settling this with some more hot make-up sex?” Carmilla tries, shrinking against the wall.
The post-it crunches in Laura’s hand as she balls her hand into a fist.
Carmilla swallows hard.
She’s a dead woman.