Chapter 6: Speed and Obedience
The morning air was sharp, carrying the damp, fungal scent of the forest floor and the distant, clean smell of the creek. Natasha stood on the back patio, steam curling from her coffee mug into the chill. She pointed with her free hand toward the tree line. “See the red marker on that oak? Then the silver reflector on the pine further east, then the broken stump by the rock outcrop. A full loop. As fast as you can. I want to see what you’re made of.”
Hannah didn’t need a second invitation. She was already coiled, a spring pressed to its limit. She shot forward, a pale streak blurring into the undergrowth. One second she was there, the next, a shudder of movement in the distant bracken. Natasha lifted her wrist, tapping the chronograph on her watch. She listened. No sound of cracking twigs, no rustle. Just a low, rhythmic whump-whump-whump of displaced air, like the wingbeats of a large bird moving too fast to see.
A flicker at the silver reflector. A shudder near the stump. Then she was coming back, a grey arrow resolving from the green-gold gloom of dawn, feet barely skimming the ground. She decelerated in a spray of pine needles and leaf litter, skidding to a perfect halt exactly where she’d started. Her chest expanded with deep, measured pulls, the cool air turning to mist in front of her wide, exhilarated mouth. Not a gasp. The controlled respiration of a supreme athlete.
Natasha glanced at her watch. Her eyebrows lifted. “Thirty-eight seconds. For a two-kilometer loop with forty meters of elevation change.” She let out a slow whistle, the professional in her ruthlessly impressed. “Good girl.”
Hannah’s whole being seemed to glow. She stood taller, a grin splitting her face, sharp and brilliant. She preened, shaking out her arms as if settling feathers. The approval was a physical warmth on her skin.
“Come on,” Natasha said, turning back toward the house. “Let’s eat.”
Inside, the evidence of the night was being meticulously erased. Two staff in dove-grey uniforms worked in silence, one applying a enzymatic solution to the last dark stain on the hallway floorboards, the other polishing the adjacent wall with a soft cloth. They didn’t look up. Their movements were efficient, impersonal. The house consumed its dramas and presented a blank, elegant face.
Natasha moved into the kitchen, all glass and dark walnut. Hannah, still naked, hopped onto a stool at the island, watching as Natasha pulled eggs, butter, and a loaf of sourdough from the cool, humming fridge.
“Can I help?” Hannah asked, her voice loud in the quiet.
“Just sit. Watch.”
So Hannah watched, her head cocked, as Natasha cracked eggs one-handed into a bowl, whisked them with salt and pepper, melted butter in a pan until it foiled. The sounds were domestic, simple: the sizzle of egg hitting hot fat, the scrape of the spatula, the crunch of the toaster lever. Natasha moved with an economical grace, every motion purposeful. It was a kind of magic, Hannah decided. Turning separate, cold things into something warm and whole.
Natasha slid a plate in front of her: fluffy yellow eggs, two slices of golden toast. She took the seat opposite with her own plate. For a few minutes, there was only the sound of cutlery on ceramic. Hannah ate with a shocking delicacy, chewing each bite thoroughly.
Then her fork stilled. She stared at a bit of egg yolk on her plate. Her voice, when it came, was lower, flattened. “They called me Specimen Seven. Mostly. Sometimes ‘the subject.’ My name was a… contaminating variable.”
Natasha paused, a piece of toast halfway to her mouth. She set it down. She said nothing.
“The tables were cold. Always. Even with the straps, you could feel the cold coming up through the metal into your spine.” Hannah’s gaze was fixed on a point a thousand miles away, in a sterile white room. “Wires on my temples, my chest. Needles in the crook of my arm, taking things out, putting things in. They’d talk over me. ‘Adrenaline spike.’ ‘Catalase levels anomalous.’ ‘Subject is agitated.’ I was never Hannah. I was a set of readings.”
She took a shuddering breath. The air in the kitchen grew heavy.
“The first time I killed… it was a guard. Big guy. Smelled like stale coffee and ammonia. He was supposed to give me a pre-procedure sedative. He liked making it hurt. Jam the needle in, twist.” Hannah’s fingers twitched on the tabletop. “Something in the cocktail they’d given me that day… it misfired. Instead of making me sleepy, it just burned. Every nerve was a lit fuse. He leaned in to check the strap. I got my teeth into his neck.”
She looked up then, her grey eyes clear and terribly empty. “I wasn’t strong enough to break the straps. So I just… held on. Drank. Until he stopped shaking. It didn’t taste like blood. Not really. It tasted like the door sliding open. It tasted like quiet.”
The confession hung between them, a stark, ugly truth. Hannah looked back down at her plate, her shoulders tightening, bracing for the recoil. For the fear. For the end of the eggs and the toast and the warm kitchen.
Natasha pushed her chair back. The sound was loud. She walked around the island. She didn’t touch Hannah’s shoulder, didn’t try to hug her. She simply placed her palm flat on the crown of Hannah’s damp, grey hair. The contact was firm, anchoring.
“You’re not a specimen anymore,” Natasha said, her voice leaving no room for argument. It was a verdict, delivered from the bench. “You’re ours.”
Hannah’s eyes squeezed shut. A single, hot tear tracked through the fine dusting of freckles across her nose and fell onto her bare thigh. She leaned into the touch, a small, desperate nudge of her head.
Then her nostrils flared. A quick, involuntary sniff. Her eyes opened, the vulnerability instantly blurred by a different, sharper awareness. Her gaze dropped from Natasha’s face, down over the silk blouse, to the junction of her thighs, concealed by tailored slacks. Her tongue darted out, wetting her lower lip.
“You’re… you’re wet again,” Hannah murmured, the awe in her voice undercut by a predatory focus. “From my story? From the kill?”
Natasha’s hand slid from her hair to her chin, gripping it firmly, forcing Hannah’s face up. Her thumb pressed into the point of her jaw. “Eyes up here. You behave.”
Hannah met her gaze. The hunger didn’t vanish, but it banked, controlled by a stronger need—the need to obey. To please. In Natasha’s clear green eyes, she saw no fear of the story, no disgust at the confession. She saw possession. A map with boundaries.
“Can I sleep in your bed again tonight?” Hannah asked, the words rushed, hopeful. “Like last time? I’ll be quiet. I won’t… startle.”
Natasha held her chin for a moment longer, considering. The memory of the purring, the profound quiet of the girl asleep against her, warred with the visceral image of the head in her mouth hours before. Both were true. Both were Hannah. The dangerous child was a package deal.
She released her chin. “Alright. You can. But only,” she said, emphasizing each word, “if you behave today. No incidents. Understood?”
Hannah’s head bobbed in an eager nod, a bright, disarming smile breaking through. “Understood.” She looked at her plate, then back up, the smile turning sly at the edges. “Does behaving include finishing my eggs?”
“It does,” Natasha said, returning to her seat, a faint, unshakeable warmth in her own chest. She picked up her fork. “Eat up. We have training to do.”
The eggs were finished, the plates cleared. The silent staff had vanished, leaving the kitchen gleaming and empty. Natasha assessed the naked girl perched on the stool. “We can’t train if you’re going to be a distraction to yourself. Or to me. You need clothes.”
Hannah’s face instantly shuttered. “No.”
“It’s not a request. It’s a practical necessity.” Natasha walked to a mudroom closet, pulling out a pair of her own soft running shorts and a loose tank top. She tossed them onto the island. “These will do. Put them on.”
“They smell wrong. They’re tight. They’ll catch on things.” Hannah pushed the fabric away as if it were contaminated.
“Hannah. Now.”
The girl’s eyes flashed with a mulish, panic-adjacent defiance. She snatched the clothes, but instead of putting them on, she flung them across the room. They hit the glass wall and slid to the floor. When Natasha took a step toward her, Hannah scrambled backward off the stool, a low hiss escaping her throat.
“Fine,” Natasha said, her voice calm but firm. She retrieved the garments. “We’ll do it together.”
It was like trying to dress a feral cat. The moment the hem of the tank top brushed Hannah’s head, she exploded. She trashed, her limbs becoming a whirlwind of sharp elbows and kicking feet. A guttural snarl ripped from her chest, completely inhuman. The soft fabric tore at the neckline with a sickening rip as Hannah clawed at it, her fingers hooking like talons. The shorts, halfway up her thighs, were kicked off in a frantic, rolling spasm that sent her thumping onto the polished concrete floor.
Natasha stood over her, breathing heavily, the ruined clothes in her hands. Hannah lay on her back, chest heaving, pale skin flushed with angry red marks from her own frantic struggle. Her wide eyes were wild, showing a rim of white.
“This is ridiculous,” Natasha muttered, but the anger was undercut by a pang of understanding. The clothes were just the latest in a lifetime of enforced confinement. She dropped the shredded fabric.
She knelt, then simply opened her arms. “Come here.”
Hannah stared, the wildness receding into confusion. She uncurled, hesitated, then crawled into Natasha’s lap on the floor, her body damp with the sweat of her rebellion. She tucked her face against Natasha’s neck with a shuddering sigh, her bare skin cool against the silk blouse. One of her hands came up, splaying possessively over Natasha’s breast.
Natasha grabbed her wrist, not roughly but with absolute finality. She pulled the hand down and placed it firmly in Hannah’s own lap. “Those,” she stated, her voice leaving no room for negotiation, “are for my wife.”
Hannah rolled her eyes, a shockingly normal teenage gesture amid the chaos. She rested her head back on Natasha’s shoulder, her lips brushing her ear. “You didn’t hate it this morning,” she muttered, her voice a low, smug vibration. “You’re wet again. Right now. I can smell it.”
Natasha’s breath hitched. Gosh, she needed her dick’s wife. The sheer, blunt thought was a lightning strike in the quiet room.
Hannah smirked, feeling the subtle tremor that ran through the body holding her. “Do you want it?” she whispered, the question obscene and childish all at once. “Your wife’s dick?”
Natasha’s cheeks flushed hot. She tried to keep her voice steady. “Why would you think that?”
Hannah nuzzled closer, her nose cold against the frantic pulse in Natasha’s throat. “Your thoughts get loud sometimes,” she whispered, the words sinking into Natasha’s skin. “Like a radio tuned wrong. All static and want.”
Her tongue darted out, a quick, wet stripe along the column of Natasha’s neck.
Natasha shuddered. “Hannah, don’t—”
It was too late. Hannah’s mouth settled over the spot where her pulse hammered. Teeth pressed down, a precise, gentle pressure that promised puncture. Then they broke the skin, not with a savage tear, but with a slow, deliberate penetration.
The sharp, bright pain melted instantly into a wave of dizzying, wrong sensation. Natasha gasped, her hands flying to Hannah’s shoulders to push her away, but they lacked force. She felt the pull, the soft, insistent suction. A soft, thready moan vibrated against her neck—Hannah’s moan.
The girl drank, and the sound she made was one of pure, overwhelmed pleasure. A starving thing tasting ambrosia. Her sucking grew more eager, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Natasha’s head, her fingers tangling in her red hair. It wasn’t violent. It was intimate, a corruption that felt like worship.
It was intimate, a corruption that felt like worship. Natasha’s vision pulsed at the edges, a pleasant, dizzying drain that softened the hard lines of the kitchen into watery watercolors. Her grip on Hannah’s shoulders went slack, fingers curling into the fabric of her own ruined blouse instead.
Hannah pulled away with a soft, wet sound. A thin line of crimson connected her lips to the wound for a second before snapping. She licked her lips slowly, deliberately, her wide eyes glassy with satiation. “Thank you,” she breathed, the words thick. Then, softer, “Mother.”
The word landed in the silent room with the weight of a stone dropped in still water. Natasha’s breath caught. A strange, fierce warmth bloomed in her chest, a feeling so profound and unexpected it momentarily dwarfed the throbbing in her neck. She reached up, her fingers trembling slightly, and cupped Hannah’s cool cheek. The girl leaned into the touch, nuzzling her palm.
“Come on,” Natasha murmured, her own voice sounding far away. She used her thumb to wipe a smudge of blood from Hannah’s chin. The gesture was instinctual, maternal. It felt right in a way that terrified her.
She led Hannah by the hand down the hall, past the spot on the floor that now smelled only of chemical lemon. The master bedroom was cast in the soft, blue-grey light of late afternoon. Natasha let go of her hand and moved to her dresser.
“Stay there,” she said, nodding toward the foot of the bed.
Hannah stood obediently, her naked form pale against the dark wood floor, watching as Natasha began to undress. Natasha unbuttoned the stained silk blouse, let it fall. She stepped out of her slacks, unhooked her bra. She felt Hannah’s gaze like a physical pressure, a cool touch lingering on the curves of her breasts, the dip of her waist.
She could hear the soft, quick pant of Hannah’s breath. When she glanced over, Hannah’s tongue darted out to wet her lips, her eyes dark and fixed. She took a half-step forward, a predator drawn to warm skin.
“Sit,” Natasha commanded, her voice low but firm. “And wait.”
Hannah whined, a high, frustrated sound in the back of her throat. She dropped onto the edge of the mattress, her body thrumming with restrained energy. “Can I at least sleep naked?” she asked, the plea wrapped in a petulant grumble. “The sheets feel wrong on my skin. They’re too… much.”
Natasha considered her, this feral creature bargaining for the comfort of her own bareness. She pulled a simple sleep shirt over her head. “Fine. You can sleep naked.”
The tension bled from Hannah’s shoulders. She scrambled under the duvet as Natasha walked around to her side and slid in beside her. Hannah immediately turned, pressing her back against Natasha’s front, fitting their bodies together like spoons. She let out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to come from the very bottom of her lungs.
Natasha wrapped an arm around her, feeling the rabbit-fast beat of Hannah’s heart gradually slow. She hummed a few bars of that same Russian lullaby, her chin resting on the girl’s strange, grey hair. The scent of pine and cold air still clung to her.
Sleep took Natasha quickly, a deep and dreamless plunge after the day’s adrenaline.
The shift was subtle. The weight on the bed changed. A cool breath ghosted over her stomach as the duvet was pulled down. Natasha swam halfway back to consciousness, aware of a presence moving in the dark. She felt warm, open.
Then she felt a cool nose nuzzling the inside of her thigh. A low, appreciative purr vibrated against her skin. The sound coiled directly into her groin. Hannah’s tongue, that impossibly clever, cold tongue, licked a slow, flat stripe up her center.
Natasha moaned, the sound soft and thick with sleep. Her hips rolled of their own accord. Her hands came down, fingers tangling in Hannah’s short hair, not to push away, but to pull her closer, to guide her. “Yes,” she sighed into the dark.
Hannah needed no further encouragement. Her mouth was a study in devastating precision. She mapped every fold, learned every rhythm that made Natasha’s back arch off the mattress. She consumed her with a focused, hungry reverence, purring all the while, the vibration amplifying every touch.
The first climax broke over Natasha like a warm wave, pulling a choked, guttural cry from her throat. Hannah didn’t stop, didn’t pause for breath. She gentled her mouth, softening to tender, teasing licks that coaxed the sensitivity back into a sharp, new need.
“Please,” Natasha begged, her fists tight in Hannah’s hair.
The second peak was slower, deeper, a rolling thunder that left her shuddering and boneless, gasping for air against the pillows. Hannah finally lifted her head, resting her chin on Natasha’s thigh. Her eyes glittered in the sliver of moonlight from the window.
“Do you still want it?” Hannah whispered, her voice rough. “The dick? You thought about it before. In the kitchen.”
Natasha, wrung out and floating, laughed a breathless, helpless laugh. The caution, the professionalism, the entire façade of the collected lawyer shattered. “God, yes,” she gasped. “I can’t help it.”
In a swift, powerful motion, Hannah flipped her onto her stomach. Natasha buried her face in the pillow, a fresh thrill shooting through her. She heard a soft, wet sound, a shuddering intake of breath from behind her.
Then she felt it. The blunt, hard pressure, insistent and ready, pushing against her. It was smooth, cooler than human skin, and unmistakably real. Hannah’s body draped over her back, a comforting weight.
“Okay?” Hannah breathed into her ear.
“Yes. Just… yes.”
Hannah pushed inside, and Natasha cried out, the sound muffled by linen. It was a perfect, relentless stretch. Hannah began to move with a rhythm that was neither frantic nor gentle, but devastatingly efficient. Each thrust was a direct strike to a nerve cluster Natasha didn’t know she had.
Her moans were loud, shameless, torn from a place of pure, animal surrender. She pushed back against each drive, meeting that impossible speed, her fingers clawing at the sheets. “Don’t stop, don’t you dare stop,” she chanted, the words slurring together.
Hannah’s breath came in hot puffs against her neck. One of her hands slid beneath Natasha, fingers finding that throbbing, oversensitive spot and circling it in time with her thrusts. The dual assault shattered Natasha completely. She came a third time, a silent, screaming convulsion that locked every muscle before melting her into the mattress.
Hannah followed with a sharp, sudden stillness, a quiet grunt pressed into Natasha’s shoulder. She collapsed, a boneless weight, her cool skin damp against Natasha’s back.
For long minutes, the only sound was their ragged breathing slowing into sync. Natasha felt the peculiar appendage between Hannah’s legs soften, then retract, vanishing back into whatever physiological mystery she contained. Hannah nuzzled her neck, right over the tender bite mark.
“Did I do good?” she whispered, the question small and startlingly young.
Natasha couldn’t form words. She simply reached back, her arm aching, and pulled Hannah’s head closer to hers. She kissed her temple, a salty, damp press of lips to skin. It was answer enough.