Chapter 16: The Morning After
The silence after Kate’s pronouncement stretched, not empty, but thick with the gravity of what they’d done and what it would summon. The neon bled across the ceiling, slower now, dawn threatening the eastern smog. Selina felt the truth of it in the sudden tension returning to Kate’s limbs beside her. The aftermath was always colder than the act.
She woke to grey light and a specific, focused pressure. Kate was propped on one elbow, already awake, watching her. Her expression wasn’t soft with sleep. It was the look she wore surveying a battlefield: assessing, calculating, tracing contours and potential weaknesses.
Selina stretched, a long, feline uncoiling, her naked back arching, the muscles in her abdomen pulling taut. She deliberately pressed the full length of her body against Kate’s side, skin to skin, a claim and a challenge. “What’s on your mind, soldier?”
Kate didn’t answer with words. Her hand shot out, capturing both of Selina’s wrists in a grip like forged iron, pinning them to the mattress above her head. The move was instantaneous, pure tactical dominance. Selina’s breath hitched, not in fear, but in raw, sudden arousal. She tested the hold, found it absolute, and a dark smile touched her lips.
Kate descended. Her mouth was hot and demanding on Selina’s throat, sucking a bruise into the pale skin over her jugular. Then lower, teeth scraping the delicate ridge of Selina’s collarbone before biting down, hard enough to make Selina gasp and buck her hips. The sharp pain melted into a throbbing heat that pooled directly between her legs.
Then Kate’s mouth found her breast. She didn’t kiss. She took. Her lips closed around Selina’s nipple, sucking it deep into the wet heat of her mouth, her tongue a firm, relentless point against the stiffened peak. She teased it, grazed it with her teeth, until Selina was writhing, a low, continuous moan dragged from her throat. Her back arched, offering more, pressing herself harder against Kate’s face.
As suddenly as she’d been pinned, Selina was released. Kate was moving, a sleek, powerful slide down the bed. Her hands hooked behind Selina’s knees, pushing them up and out, spreading her wide open to the pallid dawn light. There was no preamble, no gentle exploration. Kate buried her face between Selina’s thighs with a singular, devastating purpose.
Her tongue wasn’t asking. It was claiming. It plunged deep inside Selina’s cunt in one long, thick stroke, fucking her with it, tasting the lingering echoes of the night before mixed with fresh, urgent need. Selina cried out, her hands flying to Kate’s head, fingers twisting violently into the short, red hair, holding her there. “Fuck, yes!”
Kate worked her with a brutal, focused rhythm. Long, deep licks that made Selina feel hollowed out and filled simultaneously. Then quick, maddening flicks directly over her clit, the pressure perfect, the timing erratic enough to keep her teetering on the edge. Kate’s nose pressed against her, her breath hot, the whole act obscenely wet and noisy.
“Don’t stop,” Selina begged, her voice shredded. “God, don’t you fucking stop.” Her hips rolled, grinding her swollen flesh against Kate’s mouth, seeking more friction, deeper contact.
Kate responded by pulling back just enough to push two fingers inside her, smooth and unyielding. She curled them immediately, a cruel, knowing hook, pressing upward against that spongy, electrified spot inside. Her mouth returned to Selina’s clit, her tongue now circling it with relentless, pinpoint precision while her fingers pistoned in and out, the heel of her hand knocking against Selina with every thrust.
The dual assault was untenable. It shattered her. Selina’s scream was a raw, torn thing as the orgasm detonated, a white-hot convulsion that seized every muscle. Her cunt clenched viscously around Kate’s fingers, her thighs trembling violently where they bracketed Kate’s head. Wave after wave racked her, leaving her gasping, seeing bursts of light behind her eyelids.
Kate didn’t let up. She drank from her, tongue lapping up every pulse of fluid, fingers working her through the diminishing tremors until the sensation bordered on painful oversensitivity. Only then did she slowly withdraw.
She crawled back up Selina’s body, a predator sated for the moment. She kissed her, deep and open-mouthed, and Selina could taste herself on Kate’s tongue—musky, salty, intimate. It was more possessive than any mark on her skin.
“Good morning,” Kate said, her voice a low, rough growl against Selina’s lips. A faint, wicked smirk touched her mouth.
Selina, still panting, swiped a thumb over Kate’s glistening chin. “Efficient,” she managed, her own voice hoarse. “Thorough. Top marks, Lieutenant.”
The smirk faded. Kate rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. The electric charge in the room ebbed, replaced by the returning weight of reality. “He’ll use the body. The placement. It’s a message to him, so he’ll send one back.”
Selina turned onto her side, propping her head on her hand. She traced the stark line of Kate’s jaw. “Let him. We knew the rules when we left it on his doorstep.”
“It’s not a game to him.”
“It’s all a game,” Selina countered, but the edge was gone from her voice. She saw the shadow in Kate’s eyes, the ghost of a different uniform, different rules. A loneliness that not even fucking until the mind blanked could entirely erase. She hadn’t just teased it apart; she’d climbed inside it. The realization was a quiet, dangerous thing in her chest.
Down in the steel-and-concrete canyon of the city, a siren wailed, distant and mournful. The message was delivered. The response was coming. Here, in this velvet-lined sanctuary high above it all, they had only this uncertain, stolen ground between them.
Kate turned her head, her blue eyes finding Selina’s green ones. The calculation was still there, but beneath it, something else flickered—a question, a vulnerability as stark as the bite mark on Selina’s collarbone. The next move was always a mystery. But for now, the board was theirs.