Chapter 7: The Ghost's Gift
The climbing was a blind, scrabbling agony against stone that wept cold salt water. Her lungs burned, each gasp echoing too loud in the tight fissure as shouts and scraping sounds followed from below. She hauled herself up, fingers bleeding, and spilled out onto a flat expanse of jagged rock floor.
Amelia lay there for a moment, shuddering, the visions of Ewan and Tavish’s blissful dissolution seared behind her eyes. The air here was still, thick with the dust of ages and a profound, whispering silence. She pushed herself up, her eyes adjusting to a new, faint green luminescence seeping from cracks in the ceiling.
The chamber was broad and low, a forgotten loft above hell. The floor was a carpet of bones—long femurs, shattered ribs, skulls with empty sockets gazing at nothing. They were strewn carelessly, the final remains of other offerings to the thing in the water. A heavy stone urn, taller than her knee, stood near the fissure’s mouth.
She moved without thought, driven by a primal need for a door, a barricade, anything. Grunting with the effort, she shoved the urn, its base screeching across rock, until it settled directly over the crack she had emerged from. They wouldn't shift that in a hurry, coming up that near vertical shaft.
Time to think. To fucking think. Her back pressed against the cold urn, she slid down to sit amidst the dead. The Laird’s contemptuous voice slithered through her panic. Good magic. Strong, subtle, cunt’s work. He had spat it like a curse. And she had seen no women among the cowled figures below. Not one.
Perhaps their hungry god, Sheratheon, could not digest that particular flavour of power. Perhaps the very thing they scorned and offered in sacrifice was the lockpick she needed. The logic was insane, a thread spun from terror and instinct, but it was all she had. Her magic had always been of feeling, of want, of the body’s deep truths. Not fire and force like Aliandra’s, but persuasion and illusion rooted in desire.
It was rooted in this.
Her trembling hands went to the button of her trousers. The fabric was damp with peat and sweat. She shoved them down her thighs, the cold air a shock against her bare skin. She sprawled back, her curls mingling with the dust of bones, and her hand scrambled beside her, closing around the first solid length her fingers found.
It was a femur, old and smooth, its ends rounded by time. She brought it to her nose, inhaling the scent of cold stone and deep time, not decay. It was clean. She guided it between her legs, the chill of the bone a stark contrast to the heat of her own flesh. She rocked her hips, grinding the solid curve against the damp fabric of her panties still tangled at her knees, feeling the pressure against her swollen clit.
“Come on,” she whispered to the empty air, to the whispers she could now feel crowding the chamber’s edges—not malicious, but attentive, a silent audience of the wronged. “You want life? Here it is.”
She hooked a thumb into the waistband of her panties, yanking the soaked cotton aside. The rounded head of the bone found her slit, already slick with fear and a rising, desperate arousal. She pushed, and the unyielding, cool intrusion made her gasp. It was too wide, too hard, a brutal invasion, but she forced it deeper, fucking herself with the leg bone of some long-dead soul.
Her other hand pressed hard against her clit, fingers working its piercing in frantic, rough circles. This wasn’t pleasure; it was a ritual demolition, a raw offering. “Take it,” she grunted, her hips pistoning, the bone sliding in and out with a wet, filthy sound. “You like hunger? You like fucking consumption? Eat this!”
The spectral whispers became a roar in her mind, a chorus of forgotten women. Her back arched off the cold stone, every muscle corded tight. The climax tore through her like a lightning bolt, violent and unpretty, wracking her body with convulsions as a guttural, raw-throated shout was ripped from her lungs. Light exploded behind her eyes, not green, but gold.
She collapsed, spent, the bone clattering beside her. The air crackled. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
A woman stood amid the bones. She was tall and fierce, with a wild mane of red hair that seemed to move in a spectral wind. She wore a simple, homespun shift, stained dark across the belly with ancient, violent blood. Her eyes were chips of granite, holding millennia of fury and grief.
“Ye called, lass,” the spirit said, her voice the sound of wind through heather and over sharp rocks. “And I have waited centuries to answer.”
Amelia scrambled back, yanking her trousers up, her heart hammering against her ribs. “Who are you?”
“I am Ailsa,” the ghost said, her form shimmering. “They drowned me in the sea-cave below for refusing their Sleeper’s kiss. My babe with me.” Her hand rested on her stained belly. “My rage is the salt in this stone. Their god cannot taste me. It finds no purchase in a womb that chose death over its corruption.”
“They’re coming for me,” Amelia breathed, the reality crashing back. “Right now.”
Ailsa’s spectral head tilted. “Aye. The Urn will not stop the living for long. But they are blind to the old ways. The paths between.” She gestured, and a section of the wall behind her shimmered, revealing not stone, but a glimpse of turbulent, moonlit sea crashing against cliffs. “My death-place. A back door.”
“Why help me?”
“Your magic stinks of life,” Ailsa said, a grim smile touching her lips. “Of cunts and creativity. It is a poison to that shadow. Using it here, on my bones… it is a bell they have not heard rung in an age.” The ghost’s form began to fray at the edges, the image of the sea-cave growing more solid. “Hurry. My anchor is here, but my strength is not endless.”
A heavy thud reverberated through the stone urn blocking the fissure. Then another. A crack splintered the ancient pottery. A male voice, muffled but close, cursed. “It’s blocked! She’s up there!”
Amelia lunged, not for the ghost, but for the vision in the wall. She plunged through the shimmering air just as the urn shattered inward. The last thing she saw over her shoulder was Ailsa’s spirit turning, her face contorting into a silent scream of rage directed at the fissure, her form swelling to fill the chamber with blinding, white-hot fury.
Then Amelia was falling through cold, damp air. She landed with a jarring splash in shallow, surging seawater, the wind knocked from her. She was in a low cave, the mouth a ragged arch framing a violent night sea and jagged cliffs. Behind her, the wall was solid, dripping rock. No door. Ailsa’s passage had sealed.
Gasping, she crawled onto a slim shelf of rock, soaked and shivering. She was out. But the howling wind carried a new sound, weaving through the boom of the waves—the distant, dissonant clang of a bell from high above on the cliffs. It was not a celebratory chime. It was an alarm.
The Laird knew she was loose. The hunt was on, and now it would sweep across the island itself.
The hunt was on, and now it would sweep across the island itself.
Amelia pressed her back against the wet cave wall, the salt spray mixing with the metallic fear-sweat on her lips. They would expect her to run for the high ground, to hide in the peat and heather. The barrow’s entrance would be a buzzing hive of them. Their minds, conditioned by ritual and hierarchy, would look upward and inward, not down here at the churning, forgotten skirt of the land where the sea gnawed the rock.
She would stay at the sea level.
She forced her trembling body to move, sliding into the surging water that filled the cave’s floor. It was numbing, pulling the breath from her chest in a ragged gasp. She half-waded, half-swam through the surging channel, the boom of water against stone a deafening blanket over any sound she made. She remembered the approach in Connor’s boat, the jagged outline of the cove. The Sul na Mara had been tied to a tooth-like rock just east of the standing stones’ perch.
Her fingers, already raw from climbing, scraped against barnacles as she pulled herself around the final outcrop. The cove opened before her, a bowl of violent black water and moon-washed stone. And there, rising and falling with the swell, was the boat. A single figure stood on the rock beside it, a dark silhouette against the sky, staring up toward the cliffs where the alarm bell still clanged.
She sank lower into the water, only her eyes and the top of her head above the surface. The swim across the cove’s mouth was a battle against the sucking current and her own exhaustion. Every stroke was an act of will. She approached from behind, where the rock shielded her from the sentry’s line of sight. Her hand found the cold, slimy line of the mooring rope.
She followed it up.
Her head cleared the rock’s edge just as the sentry, a young man with a pinched face, turned at a particularly loud shout from above. He didn’t see the water-darkened shape rising behind him. Amelia didn’t have the strength for subtlety. She grabbed the collar of his oilskin jacket and yanked with all her weight.
He toppled backward with a choked cry, landing on her. They were a tangled, wet heap on the rock. He was stronger, scrambling to get his knees under him, his fist already drawing back. She saw the manic fury in his eyes, the same fervor that had watched Ewan and Tavish be consumed.
Her magic was spent, a hollow ache in her core. So she fought dirty. Her hand shot between his legs, grabbing not his balls but the rough fabric of his trousers, and she twisted and pulled with a violent, jerking motion. The fabric bit deep into his groin, a shocking, debilitating pain. He howled, his punch faltering.
She bucked, rolling him onto his back. Now she was on top, her knees straddling his ribs. He gasped for air, his face a mask of outrage. “You bitch! The Laird will—”
She didn’t let him finish. Her fist, small but hardened by panic, connected with his throat. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was a silencing one. He gagged, his eyes bulging, his hands flying to his neck as he rolled onto his side, retching salt water and pain.
Amelia stumbled to the boat. Her motions were clumsy, frantic. She fumbled with the knot on the mooring line, her cold fingers slipping on the wet rope. “Come on, you fucker,” she hissed at it, pulling with her teeth and nails until it finally gave. She shoved the rock with all her might, falling backward into the boat as it scraped free into deeper water.
The outboard motor. Connor had primed it with a rubber bulb, pulled a cord. She found the fuel line, squeezed the bulb until it felt firm, her eyes darting back to the sentry who was now struggling to his knees. Her hand found the choke, pulled it out. She wrapped the starter cord around its pulley and yanked.
Nothing. A hollow, grating cough.
The sentry was on his feet, stumbling toward the water’s edge.
She yanked again. The engine sputtered, died.
“Hey!” he roared, his voice ragged. He was wading in, reaching for the gunwale.
Amelia threw her weight into a third pull. The engine erupted into a screaming, two-stroke snarl. She shoved the throttle lever forward with the heel of her palm. The boat lurched, propeller chewing water, and shot backward out of the cove. The sentry’s grasping hand closed on empty air, his furious scream lost in the engine’s whine.
She spun the tiller, fighting the torque as the small boat slewed around. The bow rose and then slammed down as it met the open swell. She was no skilled boatwoman. The dark mass of Hollow Skerry fell away to her left, its single cluster of lights looking suddenly feeble and menacing. She aimed the nose of the Sul na Mara into the blackness of the open sea, on a direct line away from the island, toward the distant, invisible mainland.
She trusted to luck, to Ailsa’s rage, and to the simple, desperate math that a mob of cultists could not walk on water. The motor screamed its single, defiant note against the vast, consuming dark.
The motor screamed its single, defiant note against the vast, consuming dark. It was a raw, mechanical sound that vibrated through the soles of her feet and up into the hollow of her chest, the only warmth in the universe. She held the tiller in a white-knuckled grip, the boat slamming into troughs of black water that sent freezing spray into her face, each impact a physical blow.
She did not look back. To look back was to see the greenish glow of the barrow’s mouth receding, or the pinpricks of torchlight beginning to swarm down the cliffs like angry fireflies. She fixed her eyes on the horizon she could not see, steering by the chill of the wind on her left cheek, by the simple, desperate imperative of away. The memories of the ritual chamber tried to surface—the wet, slurping sounds, the bliss on those dissolving faces—and she fed them to the howling wind, let the salt scour them raw.
Time lost meaning. It was measured in gallons of fuel, in the gradual, gritty feeling of the engine missing a beat, coughing. Her body became a single ache of cold and exhaustion, a vessel of shudders. The sky began to lighten, not with sunrise, but with a thin, grey leaching of the black, revealing the heaving, leaden expanse of the sea around her. The mainland appeared as a smudge of deeper shadow, then as a jagged line of cliffs.
The engine died with a final, sputtering sigh just as the bow nudged a pebble beach in the lee of a headland. The sudden silence was a roar. She stumbled out into the shallows, knees buckling, and crawled on hands and knees onto the stones, vomiting salt water and fear. She lay there until feeling returned as a thousand prickling needles, then forced herself upright.
Upstairs, in the room Jenny shared with Aliandra, the tension was a live wire. Aliandra yanked a black turtleneck over her head, her movements sharp with contained violence. “A week, Jenny. A week till that fucking letter reached us, all formal fear. Now radio silence. It’s not right.”
Jenny, buttoning her own flannel shirt, nodded, her face usually so soft now set in hard lines. “Mum and Dad said to wait. They said barging over there could mess up everything.” She spat the words.
“Fuck their caution,” Aliandra snarled, lacing her boots with punishing force. “I don’t care what anyone says. I’m going on the evening ferry. I’ll turn that whole rotten island inside out.”
“Then I’m coming too,” Jenny said quietly, finality in her voice. “You shouldn’t go alone. Not to a place that makes Amelia send a letter like that.”
They were a united front, a storm brewing in the small bedroom. They armed themselves with quiet determination—a switchblade from Aliandra’s drawer, a heavy flashlight from Jenny’s—and marched downstairs, their footsteps heavy on the creaking wood. They were braced for argument, for a fight with Will and Samantha, who were no doubt in the kitchen making breakfast.
The scene in the warm, yellow-lit kitchen stopped them dead.
Will was leaning against the counter, a mug halfway to his mouth, his face pale. Samantha sat at the table, her hand over her mouth. And there, at the head of the table, cradling a steaming mug with both hands as if drawing all heat from the universe into her core, was Amelia.
Her blonde curls were damp from the shower, her face scrubbed clean and unnaturally pale. She looked up as they entered, and her eyes—those bright, clever eyes—were windows into a profound, hollowed-out darkness. A silence thicker than peat smoke filled the room.
“You’re back,” Aliandra breathed, the fury draining from her, replaced by a wave of dizzying relief that instantly curdled into deeper worry.
“Just now,” Amelia said, her voice a raspy thing, used up. She gestured weakly to a the envelope on the table beside a butter dish. “I sent that days ago. Made it to the post in Morrow Head after… after the first night. I almost caught up with it before it arrived.”
Jenny rushed forward, pulling out a chair and sinking next to her, wanting to hug her but fearing the fragility she sensed. “What happened, Mills? What did those bastards do?”
Amelia took a long, shuddering breath. She looked at each of them—at Aliandra’s fierce concern, Jenny’s soft horror, Will’s academic curiosity now poisoned with dread, Samantha’s maternal fear. The comfortable kitchen seemed to warp around her, the ghosts of bone-dust and salt water clinging to her still.
“Connor was a gift,” she began, the word foul in her mouth. “A beautifully wrapped one. He wasn’t just a fisherman. He was a… a deliveryman. For them.” She swallowed, her throat clicking. “The House Beneath. It’s real. They have a barrow. And a god.”
Her gaze went distant, seeing not the checkered tablecloth but the glistening purple-black of the altar stone. “They wanted a sacrifice. Me.” A broken sound, almost a laugh, escaped her. “They got two of their own instead. I used a… a glamour. Made them look like us. The thing in the water… it consumed them. They were smiling while it unmade them.”
Aliandra’s hand found hers on the table, grip like iron. “What thing?”
“Sheratheon,” Amelia whispered, and the name dropped the temperature in the room. “It’s a hunger in the dark. It likes… feeling. Ecstasy. It feeds on the peak of life as it dissolves you.” She looked directly at Aliandra, a confessional terror in her eyes. “I got out. A spirit in the upper chamber, a woman they murdered centuries ago, she showed me a way. I stole Connor’s boat.”
She fell silent for a moment, gathering the shattered pieces of the story. “The Laird knows I’m alive. He knows what I did. He called my magic ‘cunt’s work’.” She said it with a stark, unproud clarity. “It’s why their god couldn’t taste me in the spell. It’s why the dead woman helped me. It’s the only weapon I had.”
Her knuckles were white around the mug. “They’ll be looking for me. Not just on the island. They have a compact. Power is seeping into the stones, he said. Into the sea. Into their blood.” She finally looked around at all of them, the full weight of her exhaustion and terror settling into the space between them. “It’s not over. I think I’ve just started it.”
I think I’ve just started it.”
Silence pooled around the words, thick and heavy. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked once, twice, a metronome measuring the collapse of their normal world. Will set his mug down carefully, the ceramic clink deafening. Samantha’s hand remained pressed to her lips.
Aliandra’s grip tightened on Amelia’s hand, her knuckles bleaching white. “Cunt’s work,” she repeated, the crude word a stark weapon in the warm kitchen. A connection slammed into place behind her eyes, violent as a thunderclap. “That’s it. That’s the key.”
“Ali,” Jenny started, her voice soft with warning.
“No, listen.” Aliandra released Amelia’s hand and stood, pacing the linoleum. “My father. His obsession. He wasn’t just trying to inherit a family quirk. He was trying to steal it. For them.” She stopped, staring at the rain-streaked window as if seeing a different night. “The Crow Spirit is old. It’s vicious. But it answers to women. Only ever to the women in our bloodline. He could never make it obey.”
Amelia’s exhausted eyes widened. “They wanted a weapon they could control. A bird of prey to go with their… shadow.”
“And he failed,” Aliandra said, turning back, her face a mask of cold fury. “So their play changed. If you can’t steal a weapon, you destroy it. You destroy its keeper. They want me dead because I’m a fucking landmine in their path. A power that by its very nature they can’t possess.” She looked at Amelia, a brutal understanding passing between them. “But you… you showed them something else. You used a different flavour of the same essence. Life force. Creation. The body’s truth.”
“It repelled it,” Amelia whispered, remembering the ghost Ailsa’s words. It finds no purchase.
“It’s a weakness,” Jenny said, leaning forward, her practical mind cutting through the horror. “You said it yourself, Ali. Cunt magic. That’s what they scorned. That’s what saved her.” She said the word without flinching, turning it into a tactical term. “If it’s strong against their god, then they’re shit-scared of it.”
Will cleared his throat, the academic re-engaging. “A matriarchal, generative power versus an entropic, consuming one. A classic dialectic. But historical precedent suggests such cults don’t just fear opposition. They seek to eliminate it root and branch.”
“They’ll be coming for you, Ali,” Amelia said, the certainty hollowing her voice. “Not just to stop you. To make an example. To show what happens to women with power they can’t leash.”
“And they’ll be coming for any others like you,” Aliandra said, her gaze locking onto Amelia’s. “Any witch whose craft is rooted in the body, in desire, in life. They can’t risk another Ailsa waiting in the stones. Another Amelia spoiling their feast.” She stopped her pacing, planting her hands on the table. “We don’t hide. We don’t wait for the evening ferry. We build a fucking wall they can’t crawl over.”
“What are you saying?” Samantha asked, her voice small.
“We recruit,” Aliandra said, the word final and hard. “We find every woman we know who has a shred of the real craft. The hedge witches, the sex workers who know the old prayers, the artists who weave intention into their work, the midwives who whisper babies into the world. We find them before the House Beneath does. We turn my family’s House into an arsenal.”
Jenny stood up, aligning herself with Aliandra shoulder-to-shoulder. “A force of warrior witches.”
“Before it’s too late,” Amelia finished, the phrase hanging in the air like a vow.
The planning lasted hours, fueled by strong tea and a feverish dread that superseded exhaustion. Maps were unfurled on the kitchen table, names scrawled on notepaper—contacts, rumors, old friends from Aliandra’s mother’s circle who had slipped away after her death. The scope was overwhelming, a desperate net cast into the dark.
As the grey afternoon deepened into night, a brittle silence settled. Will and Samantha retreated to their study, murmuring about researching protective wards, their world upended. Amelia, utterly spent, was led to the sofa, where she collapsed into a dreamless sleep almost before the blanket was tucked around her.
Aliandra watched her for a long moment, the rise and fall of her breath, the flicker of nightmares behind her eyelids. A protective rage, cold and sharp, solidified in her chest. Jenny’s hand found hers, lacing their fingers together.
“Come upstairs,” Jenny whispered, her voice barely audible. “You’re vibrating.”
They left Amelia sleeping, the living room dark save for the embers in the hearth. Upstairs, Jenny closed their bedroom door with a soft click. The familiar space—the piled books, Jenny’s half-finished canvases, Aliandra’s collection of feathers and bones—felt like a fragile diorama of a life that might already be over.
Aliandra stood in the center of the room, staring at her own hands as if they belonged to someone else. The Crow Spirit rustled at the edge of her perception, a dark, agitated flutter. She felt filled with broken glass.
“Hey.” Jenny’s voice was closer now, right behind her. Her hands came to rest on Aliandra’s hips, her breath warm against the nape of Aliandra’s neck. “Let it out. Before you cut yourself on it.”
Jenny turned her around gently. There was no softness in Jenny’s eyes, only a mirror of Aliandra’s own fierce determination. They kissed, and it was not comfort. It was a collision. A claiming. Aliandra’s tongue pushed into Jenny’s mouth, hungry and angry. Jenny bit her lower lip in response, a sharp, bright pain that grounded Aliandra in her skin.
Hands wrestled with clothing, not undressing but rending barriers. Buttons popped. Fabric tore. Soon they were naked, skin to skin in the cooling room. Jenny pushed Aliandra back onto the bed, following her down, their bodies aligned. Aliandra’s back arched as Jenny’s mouth found her breast, sucking hard, teeth grazing her nipple until it was a taut, aching point.
“They want to erase us,” Aliandra growled, her fingers tangling in Jenny’s red hair.
“Fuck them,” Jenny breathed against her skin, her hand sliding down Aliandra’s stomach, over the smooth mound, and into the wet heat between her legs. “This is what they’re afraid of.”
Aliandra gasped as Jenny’s fingers plunged inside her, two fingers curling deep, fucking her with a relentless, driving rhythm. It wasn’t gentle. It was a declaration. Jenny’s thumb pressed hard on her clit, a rough, perfect counterpoint. Aliandra bucked against her hand, her heels digging into the mattress. She grabbed Jenny’s wrist, guiding her, demanding more, harder.
“Yeah, like that,” Aliandra hissed, her head thrashing on the pillow. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
Jenny obeyed, her own breath coming in ragged gasps. She watched Aliandra’s face, watched the tension of the day, the terror for Amelia, the furious responsibility, twist into raw, physical need. She added a third finger, stretching Aliandra open, the sound wet and obscene in the quiet room. Aliandra cried out, a guttural sound ripped from the base of her throat.
She rolled them over, pinning Jenny beneath her. She didn’t kiss her. She stared into her eyes, her own pupils blown wide with power and fury, silver and fractured black. “My turn,” she whispered, and moved down Jenny’s body.
She pushed Jenny’s thighs apart, burying her face between them without ceremony. Her tongue was a flat, broad stroke against Jenny’s soaked cunt, then a pointed, insistent pressure on her clit. Jenny’s hips jerked off the bed. Aliandra held her down, her hands gripping Jenny’s ass, pulling her closer, deeper. She licked and sucked, devouring her, channeling all her chaotic, violent fear into this single, consuming act.
Jenny’s hands fisted in the sheets, a stream of filthy encouragement tumbling from her lips. “Right there, yes, fuck, Ali, just like that, make me come, make me fucking come—”
Aliandra pushed two fingers back inside her, crooking them up, and sealed her mouth over Jenny’s clit. She sucked, hard, and Jenny shattered. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, breathless convulsion that bowed her spine before a broken cry echoed in the room.
Before the tremors had even subsided, Aliandra was moving up her body, guiding Jenny’s hand back to her own dripping core. “Now me,” she demanded, her voice raw.
Jenny, still pulsing, obeyed. Her fingers were slick with her own release as she pushed them back into Aliandra. She fucked her fast and deep, her thumb a relentless circle. Aliandra rode her hand, her movements desperate, her forehead pressed to Jenny’s shoulder. She came with a choked sob, not of pleasure alone, but of release, a tempest of emotion spilling out as her body clenched around Jenny’s fingers.
They lay tangled together afterwards, sweat cooling on their skin, the room smelling of sex and salt. The world outside, with its hungry shadows and ringing bells, was still there. But here, in the damp heat between them, was a fortification. A kept promise.
Jenny traced the line of Aliandra’s jaw. “We find them,” she whispered into the dark. “Every last one. We find the witches. And we teach that fucking House what happens when you threaten a witch’s own. We'll have a little time to gather our strength. They've just been compromised, they'll have to take stock, try to limit the damage. We use that time.”
Aliandra turned her head, catching Jenny’s finger in her teeth with a gentle, possessive finality. Outside, the wind picked up, whistling through the eaves. Somewhere, far across the water, a bell began to toll.
Aliandra's teeth released Jenny's finger just as the door creaked open. Amelia stood in the threshold, a blanket clutched around her, eyes wide with leftover terror. "I heard—" she started.
"Come here," Aliandra said, reaching out. It wasn't comfort. It was an invitation to the same survival.
She moved on instinct, the blanket falling from her shoulders as she crossed the room. Amelia dropped to her knees beside the bed, then crawled forward until she was between Aliandra and Jenny, the warmth of their bodies a shock against her cold skin. Aliandra's hand found the back of her neck, pulling her down.
"Let me take it out of you," Aliandra murmured against her ear, her fingers already working at the buttons of Amelia's shirt. Jenny's hands were there too, tugging at the waistband of her trousers, sliding them down her hips. They worked together, stripping her with a practiced, hungry efficiency. Amelia's breath came in short, sharp gasps as they laid her back on the mattress.
Jenny went low first, her mouth finding the wet heat between Amelia's thighs. She licked a long, flat stroke from her perineum to her clit, and Amelia's hips bucked off the bed with a strangled moan. Aliandra moved up, straddling her chest, her own cunt glistening and swollen. She lowered herself, pressing her wet folds against Amelia's open mouth. "Suck me, Mills. Drink me down."
Amelia obeyed, her tongue laving against Aliandra's clit, tasting her salt and heat. Aliandra rode her face with a slow, grinding rhythm while Jenny worked her tongue deeper into Amelia's pussy, fucking her with it, lapping at her clit, sucking the swollen bud between her lips. The dual assault was a drowning sensation, pleasure pulling her under. Jenny's finger slid inside her, curling, pressing, and Aliandra's thighs clenched around her head as she came with a wet shudder.
"Don't stop," Jenny gasped, pulling her mouth free. "She's close. I can feel her."
Amelia cried out as Jenny's tongue replaced her finger, diving deep, and Aliandra's voice was a growl above her. "Let go, sweetheart. Let us have it." Amelia shattered, a hoarse scream tearing from her throat as her orgasm ripped through her, her body convulsing between them, their mouths never leaving her until the last tremor faded. She lay there, limp and gasping, their warmth a shield against the cold dark beyond the window.