Chapter 2: Mutual Devouring
The buzzing phones created a fissure in the warm, tangled silence. Lois felt the exact moment Lara’s body changed against hers. The muscles, so relaxed a breath ago, tensed. The arm around her shoulder became less an embrace and more a bracket.
Lara let out a long, controlled exhale, her breath stirring Lois’s hair. “Duty calls.”
“Ignore it,” Lois murmured, though she knew it was futile. She could feel the shift; the expedition leader was reassembling herself from the pieces of the lover.
“I can’t.” Lara sat up, the sweep of her back a pale curve in the dim light. She rose with that contained, athletic grace and walked naked to the kitchen island, unconcerned with her nudity. It was functional now, not sensual. She scooped up her phone, her face illuminated by the cold glow of the screen. Her brow furrowed.
Lois watched her, pushing herself up on her elbows. The satiation was still a physical hum in her bones, but a familiar, anxious energy was seeping back in. The story was here, in this room, in this woman’s tightening shoulders. “Trouble?”
“A colleague. In Istanbul. A complication with a customs official.” Lara’s thumbs flew over the screen. She didn’t look up. “Requiring a… persuasive financial negotiation.”
“A bribe.”
“A facilitation payment,” Lara corrected, her tone all clipped business. She finally set the phone down and turned, leaning against the counter. Her gaze swept over Lois, still naked on the rug, and for a second, something flickered in her eyes—a flash of the raw hunger from before. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, banked by responsibility. “I need to make a call. It will be loud. And boring.”
“I should go,” Lois said, the words automatic. The professional script reasserting itself. Interview’s over. Get your quotes. Leave.
“Don’t.” The word was sharp, leaving no room for argument. Lara pushed off the counter. “The bedroom is soundproofed. For… privacy. Wait for me there.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an extraction plan. Lois felt a thrill, part annoyance, part fascination. Lara Croft was used to commanding situations, logistics, people. Explorers, she’d said. Lois decided to explore this.
She gathered her clothes, not bothering to dress, and walked past Lara toward a wide, arched doorway she assumed led to the private quarters. As she passed, Lara’s hand shot out, catching her wrist. Her grip was firm.
“The silk sheets,” Lara said, her voice low. “Try not to think about how much they cost. It’s vulgar.” A ghost of her earlier smile touched her lips before she released Lois and turned away, reaching for a landline phone with a snakelike coil of cord.
Lois stepped into the bedroom. It was another world. The modern minimalism of the living area gave way to opulent, curated darkness. Deep velvet curtains in a blood-burgundy shade were drawn across what must have been another wall of windows. The air was cool, scented with sandalwood and a faint, clean hint of gun oil from a meticulously disassembled pistol gleaming on a walnut dressing table.
The centerpiece was a vast four-poster bed, its dark wood frame seeming to absorb the soft light from a single bronze lamp. The sheets, as promised, were silk, the color of dark cream, shimmering like a quiet pool.
She tossed her clothes onto a low chaise lounge and slid between the sheets. The silk was shockingly cool and smooth against her sensitized skin. She lay back, listening. At first, nothing. Then, a faint, low murmur vibrated through the wall; an indecipherable bass tone of Lara’s voice, assertive and calm. Facilitating.
Lois stared at the canopy. Her body felt profoundly used and alive. The memory of Lara’s tongue, there, made her thighs tighten. A flush crept up her neck. She was here, in Lara Croft’s bed, waiting. Like a… she dismissed the thought. She was no one’s kept secret. This was fieldwork of a different and electrifying kind.
The dull murmur from the other room ceased. Moments later, the bedroom door opened soundlessly.
Lara stood framed in the light from the living area, now dressed in a simple, black silk robe belted tight at her waist. She had washed her face; the last traces of travel were gone. She looked composed, formidable, and utterly tired.
“All facilitated?” Lois asked.
“Expensively.” Lara untied the robe, let it slide from her shoulders. She approached the bed, not with the hungry fever of before, but with a deliberate, almost solemn intent. She slid in beside Lois, the mattress dipping under her weight. They lay on their sides, facing each other on the cool silk, inches apart.
“I don’t do this,” Lois said again, the words whispering between them.
“You keep saying that.” Lara reached out, tracing the line of Lois’s jaw with a single fingertip. “As if saying it will make it untrue.”
“What is ‘this’?”
Lara’s hand stilled. Her eyes, in the lamplight, were unreadable pools. “A pause. In the silence between one disturbance and the next.”
It was the most honest thing anyone had said to Lois in years. She moved first, bridging the gap, kissing her. It was softer now, deeper, a conversation without words. Lois tasted mint toothpaste and the lingering trace of red wine. Her hands came up to frame Lara’s face, holding her there.
The fatigue seemed to melt from Lara’s body, replaced by a slow-burning focus. She rolled Lois onto her back, settling over her, the solid weight of her grounding. She kissed her way from Lois’s mouth to her throat, to the flutter of her pulse. Her lips closed around a nipple, sucking it to a hard peak, her tongue laving the tip until Lois gasped.
“You’re so responsive,” Lara murmured against her skin, her voice a vibration. “Every nerve ending. Like a live wire.”
“You’re… thorough,” Lois managed to say, her back arching as Lara’s mouth moved to her other breast.
“Archaeology is the study of context,” Lara said, her hand sliding down Lois’s stomach, through the coarse, dark hair below. “Layer by layer.” Her fingers slipped through slick folds, finding her clit with unerring accuracy. “The surface tells one story.” She circled slowly. “But the truth…” she pushed two fingers inside Lois, deep and sudden, “…is always deeper.”
Lois cried out, her hips bucking. “Fuck, Lara.”
“Precisely.” Lara began to move her fingers in a slow, penetrating rhythm, her thumb keeping a maddening counter-rhythm on her clit. Her mouth returned to Lois’s, swallowing her moans. The dual sensations, the relentless, knowledgeable pressure, built a coil of heat so intense Lois felt lightheaded. She was climbing again, faster this time, the path familiar but no less staggering.
But then Lara stopped. Withdrew.
Lois made a sound of pure, agonized frustration. “Don’t you dare.”
Lara shifted, moving down Lois’s body with predatory leisure. She kissed the inside of her thigh, her breath hot. “Patience is a virtue. It reveals treasures.” She nudged Lois’s legs wider and lowered her mouth.
The first, slow lick made Lois jolt. Lara ate her with a dedicated, scholarly intensity, as if committing every gasp and twitch to memory. Her tongue was flat and broad, then pointed and probing, mapping her uttermost parts. Lois thrashed, her hands fisting in the silk sheets, the fabric whispering wildly in the quiet room.
“Please, I need…” Lois begged, incoherent.
Lara understood. She reared up, her own breath coming in short pants, her lips glistening. “You need to take.”
Before Lois could process the command, Lara was flipping them. Lois found herself straddling Lara’s hips, looking down at her. Lara’s hair was splayed across the pillow, her eyes blazing with challenge and invitation. She guided Lois upward, hands on her hips.
“Sit on my face.”
The crude, direct words sent a fresh shock of lust through Lois’s core. She obeyed, crawling forward on her knees until she was positioned over Lara’s mouth. For a heartbeat, she hesitated, the vulnerability dizzying.
Lara’s hands gripped her ass, pulling her down.
The world dissolved into sensation.
Lois cried out as Lara’s tongue speared into her, licking and fucking her from below. The angle was devastating, utterly consuming. At the same time, Lara’s thighs shifted beneath her, and Lois felt the hot, wet center of her press against her own mouth. The scent was overwhelming, musky and sweet.
69. The juvenile term flashed through her haze, entirely inadequate for the reality. This was a shared circuit of desperation, a closed loop of giving and taking that obliterated thought.
Lois lowered her head and reciprocated, drinking Lara in, mimicking the rhythm set beneath her. Lara moaned, the vibration against Lois’s clit almost unbearable. Lois lost herself in the taste, the texture, the frantic push and pull of their bodies. She fucked Lara’s mouth with her hips, riding that clever, relentless tongue, while she herself sucked and licked, following the cues of Lara’s bucking hips and broken, muffled praises.
“Yes, just like that, suck my clit, you perfect bitch,” Lara growled beneath her, the filthy words a hot brands against Lois’s flesh. The obscenity, coming in that cultured accent, undid Lois completely.
The climax slammed into them almost in unison. It began as a deep, shuddering quake in Lara’s body, transmitted through Lois’s mouth. The convulsion triggered Lois’s own release, a white-hot detonation that ripped through her, blinding her. She screamed into Lara’s cunt as she felt Lara scream into hers, a Feedback of raw, shared pleasure that seemed to echo in the soundproofed room.
Slowly, shaking, Lois collapsed sideways, unable to maintain her position. They lay gasping, a mess of slick skin and tangled limbs, the smell of sex thick and honest in the air.
Minutes bled into one another. The sweat cooled on their skin.
Lara was the first to stir, rising up on an elbow. She looked down at Lois, her expression unguarded, almost awed. She traced the line of Lois’s lower lip with her thumb. “You’re a quick study.”
“Good teacher,” Lois breathed, her whole body feeling liquefied.
A complicated shadow passed over Lara’s face. The post-coital clarity was settling in, and with it, the weight of contexts. This wasn’t her tomb-silence. This was a person, a journalist, in her bed.
Lois saw the calculation return. The distancing. She knew it, because she felt a version of it herself. The notebook was on the chaise. The story was still unwritten. The vulnerability was a gaping, uncomfortable hole in her professional armor.
“Stay the night,” Lara said, but it sounded less like a request and more like a logistical solution. “It’s late. You shouldn’t travel.”
“Okay,” Lois said, for the second time that evening.
Lara nodded, then got up, walking naked to an en-suite bathroom. Lois heard the shower turn on. An invitation, or a dismissal?
Lois lay in the immense bed, the scent of their sex on the silk, on her skin, in her mouth. The city beyond the velvet curtains was a mute, distant pulse. She had excavated a layer of Lara Croft no one else had seen. And she had, disturbingly, revealed a layer of herself she’d kept meticulously buried.
The shower stopped. Lara returned, damp and clean, wearing nothing. She slid back into bed, her back to Lois, curling on her side. A clear, silent boundary.
Lois lay awake for a long time, listening to Lara’s breathing even into sleep. The hum was different now. It wasn’t the hum of adrenaline. It was the low, persistent hum of a story that had just gotten dangerously, irrevocably personal. And outside, in the sleeping city, her phone on the living room floor began to vibrate again, a tiny, insistent warning against the deep, soundproofed dark.