Chapter 5: Possession in the Dust
The cool dark of the hogan was a shock, a cave of stillness after the blinding yard. Mara led her to the sheepskin by the dead fire pit, her movements urgent, wordless. Lusa went, her legs trembling, the new soreness between them a vivid, wet echo. Mara’s face was set, jaw tight, eyes avoiding the pouch that now sat on a low shelf like an accusation.
“Lie down.”
Lusa did, the wool scratchy against her bare shoulders. Mara knelt between her legs, pushing them apart with a firmness that bordered on roughness. The air in the hogan was close, smelling of dried herbs and cold ash and their own sharp, animal sweat.
Mara looked at her, at the glistening mess she’d made of her. Her expression was naked, a tumult of hunger and shame. “I can still smell her on you,” she muttered, though it wasn’t true. It was the sage she smelled, the cedar from the pouch, the lingering ghost of the old woman’s blessing.
“There’s only you,” Lusa whispered, reaching to touch Mara’s tangled hair.
Mara caught her wrist, pinned it gently to the sheepskin. Then she bent her head.
Her tongue was a rough, hot stripe up Lusa’s inner thigh, licking away the trails of their earlier joining. She was thorough, merciless, her mouth seeking every drop, every smear. She nuzzled into the coarse hair, inhaling deeply, then parted Lusa’s folds with her thumbs and buried her face.
The gasp Lusa made was sucked into the quiet of the room. Mara’s tongue was everywhere—broad laps over her swollen clit, flicking circles around it, then plunging deep inside her. Mara fucked her with her tongue, the wet, sloppy sounds obscenely loud. She drank from her, a thirsty, desperate animal, her nose pressed against Lusa’s flesh.
“Taste yourself,” Mara groaned, her voice muffled. “Taste us. It’s all me. It’s all fucking mine.”
Lusa’s hips came off the skin, seeking more pressure. The orgasm against the wall had left her sensitive, raw, but Mara’s mouth was building another one, hotter and tighter, coiling in her belly. Mara slid two fingers inside her, curling them upwards, finding that spongy spot with unerring accuracy. She pumped them slowly, in time with the lapping of her tongue.
“Right there,” Lusa choked out. “Oh, god, yes, right fucking there.”
Mara’s answer was to suck her clit hard into her mouth, applying a vibrating pressure, her fingers hooking and dragging inside her. It was too much. It was everything. Lusa shattered, a silent, breathless scream tearing through her as her cunt clamped down on Mara’s fingers in rhythmic, fluttering pulses. Mara rode it out, drinking every drop that came, until Lusa collapsed back, spent and shaking.
Before the tremors had even subsided, Mara was moving her. She rolled Lusa onto her stomach with a grunt, pulling her hips up so her ass was in the air. Mara’s hand came down on the pale curve of one cheek—a sharp, stinging slap that made Lusa jerk and cry out.
“You take it so good,” Mara breathed, her voice ragged. She spanked her again, the crack echoing off the rounded walls. The skin bloomed pink, then red. Mara leaned over, her chest pressing against Lusa’s sweaty back. She guided her dick, still slick from her mouth, back to Lusa’s entrance. It was looser now, well-used, and she slid in with one smooth, deep push.
“Fuck,” Mara hissed, her head dropping between her shoulder blades.
She set a brutal, driving pace from the start. No tenderness, no preamble. Just possession. Each thrust rocked Lusa forward, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the sheepskin. Mara’s hands gripped her hips, fingers pressing into the bruises she’d just made, holding her in place to be used. The sound was filthy: skin slapping skin, the wet suck of her cock plunging in and out, their ragged, grunting breaths.
“This cunt,” Mara panted, “this perfect, tight cunt. It’s mine. You hear me? You give this to anyone else, I’ll fucking lose it.”
“It’s yours,” Lusa sobbed, the words punched out of her with every drive. “Only yours. Always.”
Mara fucked her like she was trying to merge them, to carve a place so deep inside Lusa that no one else could ever reach it. Her climax built, a torrential wave. She came with a raw shout, her body locking, pulsing jet after hot jet deep into Lusa’s clutching heat. She collapsed atop her, a heavy, sweating weight, their hearts hammering against each other’s backs.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their breathing slowing. The room held the spent, salty scent of sex.
Mara finally rolled off, lying beside her on the sheepskin. She stared up at the smoke hole, at the distant circle of blue sky. “She was talking about me, wasn’t she,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “The medicine woman. The tangled spirit. The thirst.”
Lusa turned her head. She saw the tear track through the dust on Mara’s temple. “Maybe.”
“I’m scared of what I want from you,” Mara whispered.
Before Lusa could answer, a shadow fell across the doorway. Nizhoni stood there, having returned silently. Her eyes took in the scene: their naked, coupled bodies, the rawness in the air. Her gaze lingered on the red marks on Lusa’s skin, then on Mara’s desolate face.
She said nothing. She walked to the shelf, picked up the small pouch of cedar and sage. She held it for a moment in her palm, then placed it back down, precisely in its center.
“The kinaaldá outside,” Nizhoni said, her voice dry as the wind. “It held my granddaughter. For four days, she lay in it, facing the east.” She turned to look at them, her eyes ancient and knowing. “It is a powerful thing, a cradle. It shapes what is placed inside it.”
Her meaning hung in the air, thicker than the scent of sex. She turned and left, the blanket door falling closed behind her.
Lusa felt a cold clarity cut through the haze of her body. She looked at Mara, whose face had gone pale.
“What is it?” Mara asked, fear sharp in her voice.
Lusa placed a hand on her own lower belly. The truth arrived not as a thought, but as a certainty, deep and immovable. A shape being formed. “I think I know what the clear spring is drawing now,” she said quietly.