Chapter 1: The Drunken Whisper of Want
The house was too quiet after the funeral, the kind of quiet that had a weight to it, that pressed down on the floors and made the walls feel closer. Nelissa lay in her childhood bed, the same white wrought-iron frame she’d had since she was ten, and stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars peeling from the ceiling. Their faint green light was a mockery now. They’d been a project with her mom.
Down the hall, the front door clicked open, then shut with a too-careful softness. A stumble. The clatter of keys on the entryway tile.
Lalisa was home.
Nelissa’s breath hitched, her fingers curling into the cool cotton of her pillowcase. She held it against her chest, as if it could slow the sudden, traitorous hammering of her heart. She listened to the footsteps—unsteady, the heel of a boot catching—move through the living room, into the kitchen. The fridge door opened, casting a brief rectangle of light she could see from her doorway, then closed, leaving the hallway dark again.
The scent arrived a moment later. It drifted down the hall, cutting through the lingering lavender of her mother’s last drawer sachet. Expensive vodka, sharp and clean, and underneath it, Lalisa’s perfume—sandalwood and night-blooming jasmine. And skin. Always that scent of warm skin.
Nelissa turned her face into the pillow. She shouldn’t. This was wrong, a sick twist in her gut she’d been carrying since the will was read, since Lalisa had moved into the guest room “just for a while.” It had been two months.
The footsteps approached her door. They paused. Nelissa went perfectly still, every muscle tense, her eyes wide in the dark. She could feel the presence on the other side of the wood, a shift in the air. A long, slow exhale.
Then, a soft knock.
“Nell? You awake?”
Lalisa’s voice was blurred at the edges, a low, honeyed thrum that moved through the door and directly into Nelissa’s bones.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
The knob turned. The door swung inward silently, and Lalisa was outlined in the faint ambient light from the streetlamp outside. She leaned against the doorframe, a silhouette of casual elegance even drunk. Her long blonde hair was loose, a cascade over one shoulder. She’d shed her blazer somewhere.
“Saw your light was off. Just checking,” Lalisa murmured, more to herself. She made no move to leave.
“I’m awake,” Nelissa whispered. The words were barely air.
“Can’t sleep either, huh?” Lalisa pushed off the doorframe and took two steps into the room. The scent of her intensified, mixing with the room’s memories. She didn’t turn on the light, but her eyes had adjusted. She looked at the half-finished drawing on the nightstand—Nelissa’s attempt, a few weeks ago, to sketch her and her mom laughing. It was shaky, unfinished. “This is nice.”
“It’s not done.”
“I know the feeling.” Lalisa’s sigh was a soft, weary thing. She sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. Nelissa held her breath. “I saw Mark today. The lawyer. He’s… finalizing things.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh.’” Lalisa reached out, her fingers brushing a strand of hair from Nelissa’s forehead. The touch was electric, a jolt that shot straight down Nelissa’s spine. Lalisa’s hands were always cool. “You cold? You’re trembling.”
Nelissa shook her head, a lie trapped in her throat. She was burning up.
Lalisa’s hand didn’t move. It rested against Nelissa’s temple, thumb stroking her eyebrow. The intimacy of it was devastating. This was how her mother used to check for a fever. But this wasn’t that. The energy was different, charged and hesitant all at once.
“I miss her so much it makes me feel crazy, Lalisa,” Nelissa choked out, the confession breaking free.
“I know, baby. I know.” Lalisa’s voice cracked. The pet name, one her mother used, now on Lalisa’s lips. It was too much. “It’s a hole. You just… live around it.”
Her hand slid down, cupping Nelissa’s cheek. Nelissa leaned into it, eyes closing. She was drowning in the scent of jasmine and vodka and longing. This was the forbidden heat she fantasized about in the deepest, most secret part of the night. It was here, now, real and terrifying.
“Lalisa…” she breathed.
“This is a bad idea,” Lalisa whispered, but she was leaning closer. The shadow of her enveloped Nelissa. “I’m your guardian. I’m… I’m a mess.”
“I don’t care.” Nelissa’s hand came up, her fingers finding the soft silk of Lalisa’s blouse, then the curve of her hip beneath it. The bone, the soft flesh. She traced it, a question.
Lalisa shuddered. Her breath hitched, a mirror of Nelissa’s own from minutes before. The air between them vanished. When Lalisa’s lips found hers, they were softer than she’d ever imagined, tasting of salt and spirits and desperation. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a collapse.
Nelissa responded with a hunger that shocked her, pulling Lalisa down, her other hand tangling in the golden hair. Lalisa made a low sound in her throat, part surrender, part anguish, and deepened the kiss. Her body pressed Nelissa into the mattress, a solid, thrilling weight. Nelissa’s legs shifted, accommodating her, and she felt it then—the hard, distinct press of Lalisa’s arousal against her thigh through the fabric of their clothes.
Lalisa froze. She broke the kiss, pulling back just an inch, her eyes searching Nelissa’s face in the dark, panic flickering in them. This was the line. This was the thing she was so insecure about, the truth of her body she carried like a secret shame.
Nelissa didn’t let her retreat. Her heart was a wild drum against her ribs. She moved her hand from Lalisa’s hip, sliding it between their bodies, her palm pressing gently, deliberately, against the firm heat she found there.
Lalisa gasped, her eyes fluttering closed. “Nelissa… you don’t have to…”
“I want to,” Nelissa whispered, the words full of a certainty she didn’t know she possessed. She was navigating by touch, by instinct, by a need that eclipsed every rule. Her fingers traced the shape of her, learning the unfamiliar landscape through the silk of Lalisa’s trousers. It was thrilling. It was Lalisa.
A tear escaped from Lalisa’s closed eyes, tracking a silver path down her temple and into her hair. She was trembling now, her confidence shattered, laid bare. Nelissa saw it—the beautiful, alluring woman the world saw, and the insecure person hiding beneath, terrified of this moment.
Slowly, Nelissa guided Lalisa’s hand away from where it was braced on the pillow, bringing it to her own mouth. She pressed a kiss to the palm, then to the wrist, where Lalisa’s pulse raced against her lips.
“It’s you,” Nelissa said, her voice steadier now. “It’s just you.”
That was all it took. The last of the resistance bled out of Lalisa’s frame. She sank into Nelissa, her face burying against her neck, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. The candle on the dresser guttered, making their single, entangled shadow on the wall leap and dance—a long, deliberate silhouette stretching over the bed where Nelissa lay, holding her, breathless and certain.
Her lips found Lalisa’s ear. The word escaped, a relic of childhood comfort, now twisted into a new, desperate invocation.
“Mommy…”
Lalisa went utterly still for one heartbeat, two. Then her arms tightened around Nelissa, a vise of need and grief and something else, something blooming and dangerous. She didn’t correct her.
The word hung in the air between them, a seismic shock that cracked Lalisa’s fragile control wide open. A ragged sound tore from her throat, half-groan, half-sob. All the gentle hesitation burned away, incinerated by that single, devastating syllable.
“You filthy girl,” Lalisa breathed, her voice now a dark, possessive growl. Her tears were gone, replaced by a fire that made her eyes gleam in the dim light. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”
“I do,” Nelissa whispered, pushing her hips up, grinding herself against the hard proof of Lalisa’s need. “Mommy. Please.”
Lalisa moved with a sudden, terrifying efficiency. She shoved back, kneeling over Nelissa, her hands rough as they grabbed the hem of Nelissa’s thin cotton nightshirt. The fabric tore a little at the neck as she wrenched it up and over her head, tossing it into the shadows. The cool air hit Nelissa’s skin, followed immediately by the scorching heat of Lalisa’s gaze.
“Look at you,” Lalisa muttered, her hands dragging down from Nelissa’s collarbones, over her small breasts, pinching her nipples until Nelissa cried out. “So fucking innocent. So ripe.” She leaned down, her mouth capturing a nipple, sucking hard, teeth grazing the sensitive peak. The sensation was brutal, exquisite, a direct line of electricity to Nelissa’s core. She arched off the bed, a string of incoherent pleas falling from her lips.
Lalisa’s own clothes became an impediment. She stood, a towering silhouette, and stripped with sharp, angry motions. The silk blouse, the tailored trousers, the lace. She let them fall, unselfconscious now, revealed in the fragmented light. The curves Nelissa had traced were there, soft and womanly, and between her legs, the hard, thick length of her stood erect, unmistakable and flushed with need.
Nelissa stared, her mouth dry, a primal thrill of fear and desire coiling tight in her belly. It was beautiful. It was Lalisa, wholly.
“See?” Lalisa’s voice was tight, her hand wrapping around herself, giving a slow, rough stroke. “This is what you did. This is what you get.”
She climbed back onto the bed, settling between Nelissa’s thighs, pushing them apart with her knees. Her body was a furnace. One hand pinned Nelissa’s wrist above her head; the other guided the head of her cock through Nelissa’s slick folds, not entering, just teasing, smearing her wetness, making them both shudder.
“You’re dripping for me,” Lalisa observed, a cruel, turned-on edge to her words. “Dripping for your mommy’s best friend. You’re a sick little thing, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Nelissa gasped, beyond shame, rocking her hips, trying to get more. “Yes, I am. Just… fuck me. Please. Mommy, fuck me.”
The plea snapped the last thread.
Lalisa drove into her, one brutal, relentless thrust that buried her to the hilt.
Nelissa screamed. It was a raw, tearing sound of exquisite violation. The stretch was immense, burning, a fullness she’d never imagined. Her nails scrabbled at Lalisa’s back.
“Take it,” Lalisa snarled into her ear, not moving, letting her feel every inch, the brutal occupancy. “You wanted it. You called for it. Now take your mommy’s cock.”
She began to move. There was no rhythm, no finesse. It was pure, punishing carnality. Deep, grinding strokes that shifted the bed frame against the wall with a rhythmic thud. The air filled with the sounds of their collision: skin slapping skin, labored gasps, the wet, obscene squelch of each penetration.
Lalisa fucked her like she was exorcising a demon. Like she was trying to fuse them together through sheer, brutal force. One hand still pinned Nelissa’s wrist; the other gripped her hip hard enough to bruise, holding her in place for the savage, pounding drives.
“Is this what you needed?” Lalisa grunted, her breath hot and ragged. “This what you think about in this little bed? You think about my dick splitting you open?”
“Yes! God, yes!” Nelissa chanted, her vision blurring. The pain had melted, transformed into a sensation so intense it bordered on agony. Each thrust scraped a spot inside her that set her whole nervous system ablaze. She was unraveling, coming apart under the weight and the force and the filthy, perfect words.
“Say it again,” Lalisa demanded, her pace never faltering, a relentless piston.
“Mommy!” Nelissa screamed, the word ripped from her soul. “Mommy, please! Harder!”
A guttural sound of triumph escaped Lalisa. She released Nelissa’s wrist, instead wrapping both hands around her thighs, hiking them up higher, spreading her wider, changing the angle. The next thrust buried her deeper, knocking a sobbing gasp from Nelissa’s lungs.
It was too much. The coil inside Nelissa snapped. Her orgasm detonated without warning, a convulsive, violent wave that clenched around the invading thickness, milking it, a pulsing, desperate rhythm. She choked, her back bowing, a silent scream on her lips as the sensations tore through her.
The fierce clenching was Lalisa’s undoing. With a broken shout, she slammed home one final time, shuddering, her body seizing as she spilled hot and deep inside Nelissa. Her weight collapsed, a sweaty, trembling mass, her face buried in the crook of Nelissa’s neck.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the slowing hammer of their hearts. The scent of sex and sweat and lavender filled the room, dense and inescapable.
Lalisa stirred first. She softened, slipped out. A slow, wet trickle followed. She rolled to the side, her back to Nelissa, staring at the wall where their shadow had danced just moments before. The silence now was different. Heavier. Laced with aftermath.
Nelissa’s body throbbed. She felt raw, used, completely spent. And more alive than she had in months. She reached out a shaking hand, her fingers tracing the knobs of Lalisa’s spine.
Lalisa flinched.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word flat and hollow. All the heat, the possession, was gone. What was left sounded like ruin.
The word was a void. It sat there in the dark between them. Nelissa’s hand froze, then fell back to the damp sheet. She stared at Lalisa’s back, the elegant line of her shoulder tense with a regret that was almost tangible. The heat of their bodies began to cool, leaving a sticky, uncomfortable chill.
Outside, a car door slammed. The real world, relentless, waited.
The real world, relentless, waited.
And morning came, slicing through the fragile gloom of the bedroom with a cheerfulness that felt like an assault. The smell of coffee and frying eggs drifted down the hall, a mundane incense. Nelissa woke alone. The space beside her was cold, the sheets tangled and stiff in places.
Her body announced itself all at once. A deep, throbbing ache between her legs. The tender map of bruises on her hips and wrists. The memory was a physical thing, a full-body flush that made her stomach clench. She touched the pillow where Lalisa’s head had been. Then she got up, moving carefully, and pulled on clean underwear and a school sweatshirt.
In the kitchen, sunlight streamed through the window over the sink. Lalisa stood at the stove, her back to the doorway. She wore a pale peach satin robe, tied tight at the waist. Her hair was swept up in a sleek bun. She was flipping an egg with precise, clinical flicks of the wrist.
It was a portrait of domesticity. It was a lie.
“Morning,” Nelissa said, her voice still sleep-rough.
Lalisa didn’t turn. “Morning. Eggs are almost done. Toast is in.” Her tone was flat, polished smooth of all emotion. It was the voice she used for telemarketers.
Nelissa slid into her usual chair at the small table. She watched the line of Lalisa’s back, the way the satin clung to her shoulders. She looked for a sign—a tremor, a slouch, anything. There was nothing. Just the efficient click of a spatula on the pan’s edge.
“Sleep okay?” Lalisa asked. It was a mundane, horrible question.
Nelissa’s face burned. “Yeah. You?”
“Fine.”
The egg slid onto a plate. Two pieces of toast followed. Lalisa brought it over, setting it down in front of Nelissa without meeting her eyes. Her makeup was flawless, her perfume already applied—jasmine, but it smelled different today. Like a shield.
“Thank you,” Nelissa whispered.
“You’re welcome.” Lalisa finally looked at her. Her eyes were clear, cool, and utterly vacant. The woman from last night—the one who’d wept, who’d snarled, who’d come apart—was sealed away behind a glass wall. “Eat up. You don’t want to be late.”
Nelissa picked up her fork. The eggs tasted like ash. The silence was a screaming thing. Every normal sound—the crunch of toast, the drip of the faucet—was absurd.
She couldn’t stand it.
“Lalisa…”
“The lawyer called while you were in the shower,” Lalisa cut in smoothly, leaning against the counter with her own coffee mug. A business stance. “We need to go over the investment portfolio from your mom’s retirement account. Maybe Thursday, after your study group.”
“I don’t have a study group on Thursday.”
“Then we’ll do it Thursday.” A sip of coffee. A glance at the clock on the microwave. “You should hurry.”
It was so brutal, this erasure. Nelissa felt a sharp, sick anger rise in her throat. Last night wasn’t a messy, shared secret. It was a mistake to be professionally managed, a spill to be wiped up before the guests arrived.
She pushed her plate away, the screech of ceramic on the tabletop too loud. “Look at me.”
Lalisa’s gaze drifted over, polite, inquiring. A slight arch of one perfectly groomed brow.
“Just… look at me,” Nelissa repeated, her voice cracking.
For a fraction of a second, something flickered in Lalisa’s eyes. A glimpse of the dark, desperate creature from the shadowed bedroom. Then it was gone, snuffed out. Her lips pressed into a thin, forgiving smile.
“You’re emotional. It’s understandable. It’s a difficult time.” She pushed off the counter and walked over, picking up the discarded plate. Her hand briefly brushed Nelissa’s shoulder—a touch so light, so impersonal, it was worse than a shove. “We’ll talk later. I have a late meeting tonight, so don’t wait up.”
And that was it. The conversation, the night, the cataclysm—all neatly filed away. Lalisa moved to the sink, turning on the water, rinsing the plate as if washing away all evidence.
Nelissa sat there, the phantom feel of Lalisa inside her still a raw, echoing truth in her own body, and watched the woman who had been her mother’s best friend, her guardian, her lover for one shattered night, calmly prepare for a day as if nothing had happened.
The chasm between the scent of jasmine and the smell of soap suds was infinite.
She grabbed her backpack and left, the door clicking shut behind her on a house that felt more like a museum than a home, curated by a beautiful, haunted stranger who refused to admit they were both now ghosts.
She grabbed her backpack and left, the door clicking shut behind her on a house that felt more like a museum than a home, curated by a beautiful, haunted stranger who refused to admit they were both now ghosts.
The school day was a broadcast from a distant planet. Words from teachers and classmates were just sounds, muffled and meaningless through the thick glass of her dissociation. Her body ached with a delicious, shameful soreness. Every shift in her chair sent a pulse between her legs, a direct line to the memory of being pinned, split open, owned. The phantom weight of Lalisa on top of her was more real than the trigonometry lecture.
She was in the hall after third period, a river of bodies flowing around her stationary form in front of her locker, when she heard it.
“—totally wasted at the funeral. Manoban, I’m telling you. Probably celebrating finally getting her hands on the house. And that poor, dumb kid.”
The voice was girlish, gossipy, laced with casual cruelty. It belonged to Stephanie Cole, a varsity volleyball star with a perfect blonde ponytail and a mean streak as wide as the court. She was talking to two other girls, their backs mostly turned, not seeing Nelissa frozen three lockers down.
“My mom said the mother was a mess for years,” Stephanie continued, popping her gum. “Probably a relief for everyone when she finally croaked.”
The world didn’t go red. It went white. A silent, static scream that filled every cavity of Nelissa’s skull. The hall noise vanished. All she could see was the back of Stephanie’s head, that shiny ponytail swinging like a pendulum counting down to zero.
Rational thought was a scrap of paper in a hurricane. There was only the wire-taut pull in her muscles, the salt-taste of violence on her tongue.
Nelissa moved.
Three long strides. Her hand shot out, fingers tangling in the sleek blonde hair at the nape of Stephanie’s neck. She didn’t pull. She yanked.
Stephanie’s shriek was cut short as Nelissa used all her weight, whipping her sideways. The large pane of safety glass in the classroom door beside them rushed up. Nelissa drove Stephanie’s face into it.
Not a tap. A smash.
The windowpane shuddered, a spiderweb of cracks exploding from the point of impact with a sound like ice breaking. Stephanie’s scream re-emerged, garbled and wet. Blood, shockingly bright, smeared the milky fractures in the glass.
Nelissa didn’t stop. The fury was a living thing, a geyser she couldn’t cap. She hauled Stephanie back by the hair and slammed her forward again. Another wet thud. More cracks.
“You bitch!” Stephanie gurgled, hands flailing, trying to grab at Nelissa’s wrists.
“Say it again!” Nelissa heard herself snarling, her voice alien, guttural. “Say one more fucking thing about my mother!”
She jerked Stephanie down and brought her knee up, hard, into her stomach. The air left Stephanie in a pained oof. Nelissa released her hair and shoved her, sending her stumbling into the bank of lockers where she slumped, sliding down to the floor, holding her nose. Blood streamed through her fingers.
The hallway had stopped. A ring of horrified, excited faces stared. Someone yelled for a teacher. The alarm was a distant bell.
Nelissa stood over Stephanie, chest heaving, her knuckles stinging. The rage drained as fast as it had come, leaving a vacuum. In that hollow quiet, a single, crystal-clear thought inserted itself, obscene and perfect: This is nothing. Lalisa fucked me rougher than this last night.
The principal’s office smelled of lemon disinfectant and old carpet. Nelissa sat on the cracked vinyl chair, hands folded in her lap, staring at a faded poster about respect. Her right hand was swollen. Stephanie was at the clinic getting her nose looked at. The principal, Mr. Davison, had droned on about zero-tolerance, about expulsion hearings, about the police being involved for assault.
She barely heard him. The throbbing in her hand was syncopated with the deeper, private throbbing between her legs. She kept replaying the feeling of Lalisa’s hand pinning her wrist, the brutal, claiming rhythm. The principal’s mouth moved. You have caused serious harm. All she could think was how Lalisa had looked saying You filthy girl. That had felt more real than any of this.
“We’ve called your guardian, Ms. Manoban,” Mr. Davison said, peering over his glasses. “She is on her way. You are suspended, effective immediately, pending review.”
The office door opened. Lalisa stood there. She was in her work clothes—a charcoal gray pantsuit, a cream silk shell, heels. Her hair was pristine. Her face was a mask of appropriate, concerned authority. She looked every inch the responsible professional, the grieving family friend stepping into a breach.
“Mr. Davison,” she said, her voice calm, carrying. “I came as soon as I could.”
She glanced at Nelissa. Just a flicker. But in that nanosecond, Nelissa saw it—not concern, not anger. A flash of something hot and dark, the same thing that had lived in her eyes in the candlelight before she took her. It was gone, replaced by a dutiful gravity.
“Ms. Manoban, thank you. As I was explaining to Nelissa, this is an extremely serious matter.”
“Of course,” Lalisa said, stepping fully into the room. She didn’t sit. She took a position near Nelissa’s chair, not touching her. Her perfume, the jasmine and sandalwood, cut through the lemon smell. It was the scent of the crime scene, of tangled sheets and torn innocence. Nelissa’s stomach flipped.
Lalisa listened, nodding in all the right places as the principal outlined the events. The violent, unprovoked attack. The damaged property. The injury.
“I understand completely,” Lalisa said when he finished. Her tone was all cool reason. “There is no excuse for this behavior. None.” She finally looked down at Nelissa, and her gaze was like dry ice. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Nelissa looked up. She saw the slight pulse in Lalisa’s throat. She saw the faint, almost invisible smudge of eyeliner at the very corner of her left eye, the only hint of the night before. She remembered the feel of Lalisa’s cock, a brutal, solid reality, and the way she’d sobbed as she came inside her.
“She said my mom was a mess,” Nelissa whispered, her voice scratchy. “She said it was a relief she was dead.”
Mr. Davison sighed. “Words are not an excuse for physical violence, Nelissa.”
“I know,” Nelissa said. But she wasn’t talking to him. She was locked onto Lalisa’s frozen gaze. You understand, she screamed inside her head. You know what it is to hold a mess inside you until it explodes.
Lalisa’s lips tightened almost imperceptibly. “Grief is not a license to maim,” she stated, the words clear and hard, meant for the principal. Then she added, softer, just for Nelissa, a blade wrapped in silk, “You will learn to control yourself.”
The double meaning hung in the air. Control your temper. Control your desires. Control the thing that got us here.
“Given the circumstances, the traumatic loss,” Mr. Davison was saying, “we will convene the review board next week. She is not to return to school until then. We strongly recommend professional counseling.”
“She will have it,” Lalisa said smoothly. “I will ensure it. Come on, Nelissa.”
Nelissa stood. Her legs felt weak. She followed Lalisa out of the office, down the quiet administrative hallway. The click of Lalisa’s heels was a metronome counting their isolation.
They pushed through the heavy front doors into the parking lot. The sunlight was blinding. Lalisa didn’t speak. She didn’t look at her. She just walked, fast and precise, toward her car.
She hit the key fob. The doors unlocked with a sharp chirp.
“Get in,” Lalisa said. It wasn’t a request.
Nelissa slid into the passenger seat. The leather was warm from the sun. The familiar, intimate space of the car closed around them, saturated with the smell of her, of them.
Lalisa got in, shut her door, and started the engine. She didn’t pull out. She just sat, hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two, her knuckles white. She stared straight ahead through the windshield.
The silence was absolute, and immense, and cracking with everything unsaid.
Nelissa watched her profile, the impossible sharpness of her jaw, the flutter of a muscle in her cheek. She could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest beneath the silk shell.
Slowly, deliberately, Lalisa turned her head to look at her. The polished mask was gone. Her eyes were black pools of sheer, undiluted chaos—horror, and desire, and a furious, terrifying possession.
She said nothing.
She just looked.
And in that silent, scorching look, Nelissa felt it all again—the grip on her hips, the bruising pace, the whispered obscenities. It was a promise and a condemnation, and it was far from over.