Night Tide

by Anna Burke

  Probably not.

  At least the fire was warm. She pulled a thick wool blanket out from a chest and spread it on the hearth. Darwin, who was no stranger to comfort, settled in the center of immediately. Lillian shed her jacket and sat cross-legged next to the dog while Ivy arranged the food she’d brought on an end table she’d procured from beneath a sheet. Cheese, bread, and fruit. Her hands were stiff as she broke open the wrapping around the cheese. She needed to warm up but sitting near Lillian without something to do with her hands was too daunting.

  “Does your cousin really have a climate bunker?”

  “Yep. I’ve seen it. It’s like an underground mansion.”

  “That’s—”

  “Incredibly hypocritical,” Ivy said before Lillian could get angry again. “But also interesting from an engineering perspective, and pointless.”

  “Pointless?”

  “Would you live in a bunker?” Ivy settled by the fire and tried not to show how desperately she needed the warmth.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Are you claustrophobic?”

  “I like the sky,” said Ivy. “And I don’t think we deserve to hide underground.”

  “That’s not what I would have thought you’d think.”

  “Has it occurred to you that you might not know what I think about everything, Lee?”

  “Has it occurred to you that I might not care?”

  She didn’t flinch at Lillian’s tone. “Then why are you here?”

  Lillian looked away. The firelight turned her brown eyes golden and played across her skin. They both knew why they were there: to finish what they’d started, whatever it was. Lillian didn’t answer the question this time, either. Ivy hadn’t expected her to. They ate in silence, both watching the flames.

  “You started this,” Lillian said after a while. “Do you remember? You were such a dick that first day at orientation.”

  “And you fainted.”

  “I don’t like heights.”

  “You were fine today on the cliff.”

  “I was ten feet from the edge, not climbing a ladder. There’s a difference.”

  “I was nervous at orientation,” said Ivy.

  “That doesn’t give you the right to be a bitch.”

  “Yeah. I really was a bitch to you.” Ivy knew it had been the truth then, even if she’d grown in the intervening years.

  “Recognizing the problem is the first step toward recovery,” said Lillian.

  “Why would I want to recover? I don’t need people to like me. I need them to do what I want.”

  “What about common courtesy?”

  “It doesn’t exist. It’s a social construct that keeps women lower on the ladder.”

  Lillian opened her mouth, then shut it.

  “Bitch Feminism,” Ivy continued.

  “You’re . . . not wrong. But you can be tough and still be a decent person.”

  “Maybe. But think how boring school would have been if we’d been decent people.”

  “I am decent,” said Lillian.

  “Are you?” Ivy leaned forward and stroked Lillian’s scarf, pressing her hand through the material against Lillian’s collarbone before pulling away. “Because I’m not the only bitch in this room.”

  Lillian’s cheeks flushed. “I would have been your friend if you’d let me.”

  “You hated me the minute you saw me,” said Ivy.

  “That’s not—”

  “Come on. Admit it.”

  “No.”

  “Why? Worried you’ll hurt my feelings?” She was always surprised how low her voice got when she was teasing Lillian.

  “You don’t have feelings.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” said Ivy.

  “Prove it. Tell me about the last time you felt something.”

  Ivy held her eyes as she answered. “Today. On the cliff, with you.”

  Lillian searched her face and then reached for Ivy’s scarf, pulling her closer and forcing Darwin to scramble for safety as she tumbled into Lillian’s lap. Lillian’s hands and clothes were fire-warmed and hot to the touch as she clung to her shoulders, half in her lap, half sprawled across the hearth. She tried to right herself, but Lillian kissed her with a fierceness that disabled thought. She wrapped her arms more tightly around Lillian’s neck. One of Lillian’s hands gripped her hip and the other cupped her cheek, her nails digging into skin through cashmere, all the while keeping her lips upturned to Lillian’s. She couldn’t breathe. Not because Lillian’s tongue brushed hers and stole her breath, but because the unspoken answer to the question she hadn’t asked coursed through her bloodstream.

  She’d felt something on the cliff, and Lillian had too. She felt it in the roughness of Lillian’s teeth on her lips and in the way her hand covered the curve of Ivy’s hip, protective, assertive, simultaneously holding her up and pinning her down. Ivy trembled. It started in her stomach, a fluttering that spread along her bones until she shook all over, wracked by years of wanting this.

  Lillian pulled away. Ivy gasped and opened her eyes to find Lillian staring at her in concern.

  “Are you all right? You’re shivering.”

  She couldn’t speak. She reached for Lillian instead, tumbling them onto the blanket and bearing them down with the weight of her body. Lillian exhaled softly, the sound almost a moan as Ivy sought her lips and then the line of her jaw, nipping the skin along it until she came to Lillian’s neck. Lillian’s hands slid beneath Ivy’s sweater and along her back, hot and sure, holding her closer. She bit down. Lillian did moan this time, and the sound sent a white heat through Ivy that dispelled the shaking and left her hungry. A part of her worried that marking Lillian’s skin would leave her in an awkward position at work. That part was small and easily ignored, and Lillian gasped as Ivy worked her way down, leaving behind bruises that filled her with a tenderness that made her want to scream.

  She tugged Lillian’s scarf off. The cloth fell to the floor, where Darwin was quick to take advantage of this new bed. She straddled Lillian as Lillian’s sweater and shirt followed, leaving her half naked before the fire. Lillian’s simple black bra shimmered in the light of the flames, and the line that ran down Lillian’s stomach caught shadows like spilled ink. Ivy paused, letting the clothes fall from her hands, and took Lillian in. Lillian let her. Her black hair was flung across the blanket, and her eyes—she would never really be able to look away from those eyes—were half veiled by her lashes.

  “You’re gorgeous,” she said in a whisper that cut her throat.

  And then she raked her nails down Lillian’s sides as Lillian had done to her that day in the clinic. Lillian arched her back and cried out, twisting her hips up into Ivy and turning her head to the side, her lips parted and flushed. Ivy repeated the motion, dragging her nails up over Lillian’s ribs, counting them as she went, her thumbs tracing the tense line of Lillian’s abs as she bucked beneath her. Red marks left a testimony to her passage, and in them she read their entire history.

  She undid Lillian’s bra with hands that blissfully obeyed her. Lillian’s nipples, darker than Ivy’s, were hard and perfect and she scratched her again as she leaned in to kiss them.

  Hands grasped her hair and held her as her tongue traced the curve of Lillian’s breast, circling the center until Lillian forced her over it. Then, unable to continue teasing with Lillian’s body urging her on, she took her nipple in her mouth.

  “Ivy, oh my god, Ivy.”

  Lillian, saying her name. Lillian, arching into her, begging with hips and hands and ragged gasps as her teeth and tongue claimed her body, roughness the only way she knew how to be with this woman.

  Lillian’s fingers released her hair long enough to pull Ivy’s sweater, shirt, and scarf off all at once, but Ivy didn’t let her take back control. She kept her hands on Lillian’s breasts, rolling her nipples between her fingers as she bit Lillian’s ribs. Lillian’s cry was lower this tim
e, a primal sound that undid something inside her, though she hadn’t thought there was anything left to undo. Her lips found Lillian’s hips and the dip between, and the leggings were hardly a barrier as she pinned Lillian’s legs with her weight.

  “Lil,” Ivy said, tasting her through the fabric. She eased the hem of the leggings down, exposing the gentle slope of her hips and the soft skin beneath her belly button, smooth against her lips. Below, where Ivy wanted to be, Lillian’s dark hair was neatly trimmed. She kissed that, too, not biting, but simply brushing her lips over the surface. Lillian tensed, her whole body poised as Ivy drifted lower. One stroke of her tongue. Lillian shuddered, her breath coming faster, and Ivy observed, transfixed, as Lillian’s chest rose and fell above the skin she’d marked.

  Lillian’s leggings were now in her way. She tasted Lillian again, sliding through her and over her, her own desire a living thing, and tugged on her pants. They slid down slowly, and she had to move to pull them off entirely. When she finished, Lillian lay before her, and she found she couldn’t move from where she knelt at her feet. I’ll remember this forever, she thought. And I’ll never look at this fireplace the same way again.

  Her hesitation gave Lillian time to move. She sat up in a fluid fall of tangled hair, and Ivy gasped as she was pushed against the warm stones of the mantel. Lillian fumbled with Ivy’s belt and together they removed her jeans and socks, leaving Ivy in her underwear with stone digging into her spine and Lillian in her lap, holding her wrists as she returned the kisses Ivy had left on her body.

  The exquisite agony of pain and desire flooded her nervous system. Lillian seemed to know instinctively where she was most sensitive, and Ivy saw blue behind her eyelids when Lillian bit into the muscle of her shoulder. The sound she made might have been human; she didn’t know, and she didn’t care. Her body no longer belonged to her. The softness of Lillian’s lips and the sharp edge to her bites caressed her neck and down between her breasts. Lillian undid her bra, temporarily freeing Ivy’s hands—not that she had any willpower left to put them to use—and the blue light splintered her vision as Lillian took her nipple in her mouth. The gentleness of her tongue was a promise and a taunt. She struggled to free her hands, which had been pinned again, only to hear Lillian laugh.

  “I need to touch you.”

  “You’ve had your turn.”

  “I—fuck, Lil.”

  Lillian dragged her teeth over her nipple. Electricity jolted directly to Ivy’s clit. She struggled harder, desperate to touch Lillian, to feel the skin of her hips and her ass and the flare of her waist, the hard muscle of her thighs, anything—everything. Lillian turned her attention to Ivy’s other breast. She licked the curve, tracing the swell where it met her ribs and sternum, coming close but not quite closing on her. Her lips just brushed the nipple. Ivy writhed against Lillian’s grip, her head flung as far back as rock would allow, her chest canting toward Lillian’s mouth and every centimeter of skin dying for her touch. When it came at last, Ivy nearly did, too.

  Lillian released one of her wrists. This knowledge seemed distant and unrelated to the feeling of Lillian’s mouth until she felt Lillian’s hand slide between their bodies and under her underwear, fingers warm as they rested against Ivy’s center. Lillian broke away from her nipple and kissed her neck again, tenderly this time, and she turned her face to meet Lillian’s.

  Heat pooled in her abdomen as Lillian stroked her, teasing her opening and running up and around her clit. She parted her lips, and Lillian claimed her mouth the same way, driving deeper with every stroke, pausing sometimes to tease and lick and suck as her hand brought Ivy closer and closer to the brink. The trembling that had come over her earlier returned. Everything in her body felt loose, like she might break apart into base matter as Lillian found her rhythm. Lillian’s other hand still held her wrist, and that grip seemed to be the only thing grounding her as Lillian brought her over the edge. She screamed, and the sound echoed in the empty house as the fire crackled behind her and Lillian Lee didn’t stop.

  “Lil, please—” she said, her body hypersensitive to every touch. Lillian responded by slipping one finger inside her. Her body spasmed around it, tightening, and she let Lillian turn her until she was on her back on the blanket with her underwear on the ground and Lillian’s mouth on her clit. She clutched the ledge of the hearth and her own hair as Lillian’s tongue, relentless, brought her to a second climax with a ferocity that lifted Ivy off the hearthstone, her legs wrapped around Lillian’s shoulders, and Lillian’s name flaying her throat as she repeated it until it felt like the only word she had ever known.

  • • •

  Lillian stroked Ivy’s side, her fingertips skimming over the pale skin and the red marks left by her teeth. They marred the creamy white of her skin, and looking at them broke something in her chest. Ivy lay in her arms. Ivy Holden, green eyes closed and her body limp, lay in her arms. She should be running, but instead she memorized the small scar just above her hip and the freckle on her thigh and wondered if she had ever seen anything this beautiful. The sound of Ivy saying her name still lingered in her ears.

  One of the bite marks encircled Ivy’s shoulder. Another marred her left breast, and still more lined her ribs and neck and—oops—even her jaw. A mark for every insult they’d ever traded, every hurt they’d ever caused one another. Her own body bore a matching constellation.

  Ivy’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled, a crooked thing that lifted one corner of her mouth. Lillian hadn’t seen that expression on her face before. It tugged at her own lips as she stroked Ivy’s cheek. She wanted to say something, but she was afraid of what might escape if she opened her mouth, so she stayed silent as Ivy caught her hand and kissed the center of her palm. The motion looked unconscious, natural in every regard, and yet it burned.

  My poison ivy.

  Ivy reached up to touch Lillian’s face. She pressed her fingers to Lillian’s lips and her crooked smile deepened as she traced them. Lillian felt the touch in her marrow.

  “Your lips have always gotten to me,” Ivy said. “You used to drive me crazy when you chewed on those fucking pens.”

  “You said it was a gross habit.” She remembered the taunts, and the way Ivy had stared at her—only now she saw it in a different light.

  “I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

  Ivy’s hand drifted down Lillian’s sides and over her ass. Lillian shifted as desire followed, and Ivy, noticing, nudged her leg between Lillian’s. Ivy’s thigh pressing into her brought her body fully awake. Her hips moved without her permission, riding Ivy as fingers explored the curve of her ass and the cleft between. She half fell across Ivy when she lifted her body to meet Lillian’s need. Her hair curtained their faces. Ivy’s eyes looked black in the shadow and she pulled Lillian close, hands on hips and ass, urging her on. Lillian’s breasts brushed hers as she rocked to Ivy’s rhythm, unable stop herself from succumbing to the irresistible pull of Ivy, Ivy, Ivy—

  She didn’t realize she was speaking aloud, half sobbing as Ivy brought her to climax. Just before she came, Ivy captured her mouth with hers, and Lillian gasped out a string of expletives mingled with praise. Ivy rolled her gently over, cradling her head. She closed her eyes to catch her breath. They flew open again when Ivy, stretched out beside her in the wrong direction, closed her mouth over her clit.

  It was the same thing she’d done to Ivy. That didn’t make the shock any less intense, or the almost painfully sensitive skin any less on fire. Ivy lifted Lillian’s leg and half turned her hips so she was ensconced between Lillian’s thighs. Her tongue circled her, easing her back up and then taking her down, firmly in control, and her whole body tensed as Ivy’s tongue swirled in increasingly small, tight circles. Her thighs tightened around Ivy as she came again. The orgasm made her head spin, and the firelight threw strange shadows across the room. Ivy turned her the rest of the way over until she lay on her stomach. The blanket was slightly scratchy against her cheek and smelled like wool a
nd mothballs, but above those scents she smelled Ivy’s perfume. She inhaled it in gasps as her body shook.

  Ivy lay down on top of her and kissed her ear. Lillian tried to move, but her body was weak with the aftermath of Ivy’s touch, and Ivy felt right lying there, her weight a comfort and a warmth. Ivy deepened her attentions to Lillian’s ear, reminding her of all the times she had whispered something cruel to her during a lab that required close contact, and how, even then, she’d been sharply aware of the feeling of Ivy’s breath and the heat of her body.

  “Oh god,” she said as Ivy’s hand parted her from behind and slid inside her. She hadn’t thought she had strength to move, but Ivy’s fingers slid in and out of her, slowly, and Ivy nipped her ear with precision as she whispered, “you’re not done yet, Lillian.”

  “Ivy, please, I can’t, oh shit, oh, holy shit—”

  Ivy bit her shoulder, sharp enough to hurt, sharp enough to cleave a path from Ivy’s mouth to Lillian’s center as she lifted her hips and fucked her.

  • • •

  The fire died as they lay beneath another blanket, legs and arms entangled, Lillian’s head on her shoulder and her heart in Lillian’s hands. She breathed in the smell of Lillian’s hair. It flooded her system like a drug. Maybe that’s what she should tell her doctor. I need a prescription of Lillian Lee. Not that she would ever tell Lillian about her condition. She shut down that line of thought and focused again on the simplicity of lying by a fire with a woman she—no, don’t even think it.

  Her phone alarm went off. Lillian propped herself up on her elbows, hair mussed, and reached for it.

  “We should get going,” Ivy said reluctantly.

  “Yeah.” Lillian looked down at her, and Ivy saw the closeness that had grown between them start to fade.

  Darwin stirred from the nest he’d made of their clothes and watched with canine interest as they dressed and packed up their bags. Ivy scattered the remains of the fire until only glowing coals remained.