Chapter 3: Steam and Submission
The vibration died, then sparked back to life seconds later. Lois knew that pattern. It was Perry, or maybe Clark, the world’s most patient sentry. A story was breaking somewhere. She closed her eyes, trying to sink back into the musk-scented dark of the bed, but the spell was fractured.
Lara’s breathing remained deep and even. Lois carefully extricated herself from the silk, the cool air raising goosebumps on her naked skin. She padded across the darkened bedroom and into the living area, where her phone buzzed angrily against the polished concrete floor.
She snatched it up. 11 missed calls. 8 new texts. The screen’s glare was hostile. The top text from Perry was all caps: GET TO PORT AUTHORITY. POTENTIAL WITNESS IN THE SKYLINE SCANDAL FLEEING BY FREIGHT. MOVE YOUR ASS, LANE.
“Shit,” she whispered, the word swallowed by the room’s vast silence.
“Journalism waits for no one.” Lara’s voice came from behind her, not sleepy at all.
Lois turned. Lara leaned against the bedroom doorway, a silhouette wrapped in shadow. “I have to go. A source is running.”
“Naturally.” Lara pushed off the frame and walked to a sleek sideboard. She poured two fingers of amber liquid from a cut-crystal decanter. “I’ll call you a car. It will be faster than whatever you’d hail.”
“Thank you.” Lois scrambled into her clothes, her fingers fumbling with buttons. The urgency was a cold shower, but her body still hummed with the memory of Lara’s mouth.
Lara handed her the glass. “Drink this. You’re shaking.”
It was whiskey, smoky and expensive. Lois downed it, the heat a solid line to her stomach. “I’m not shaking.”
“Aren’t you?” Lara’s fingers brushed Lois’s as she took the empty glass. A static charge jumped between them. “The shower is through there if you need to clear your head. I’ll arrange the car.”
The shower was a gleaming chamber of white marble and frosted glass. Lois stepped in, not bothering to wait for the water to fully heat. The initial cold spray was a shock, a brutal clarity. She braced her hands against the wall, letting the water sluice over her neck and back, trying to wash away the scent of sex and sandalwood, the feeling of silk, the sound of Lara’s choked praises.
The glass door slid open.
Steam billowed in, carrying Lara’s shape. She was naked, her skin glowing in the ambient light from the bedroom. “You missed a spot,” she said, her voice low and rough with sleep or something else.
Lois turned. “I’m in a hurry.”
“I know.” Lara stepped under the rainfall, the water plastering her dark hair to her skull, streaming over the pronounced muscles of her shoulders, her breasts. “This will only take a minute.”
She advanced, backing Lois against the cool marble wall. Her body was a heated contrast to the stone. She captured Lois’s mouth in a kiss that was nothing like the ones before. This was possession, a brand. Her tongue thrust deep, a mimicry of a more intimate act.
Lois groaned into her mouth, her professional resolve crumbling. Her hands came up to grip Lara’s slick hips.
Lara’s mouth tore from hers, trailing down her throat, biting the tendon there just shy of pain. Her hands slid down Lois’s back, gripping the curves of her ass, grinding their bodies together. The friction of skin on wet skin was maddening.
“I can still taste you,” Lara muttered against her collarbone, her voice raw. “I can still fucking taste my come on your tongue.”
The obscenity, in that accent, here in this sterile white light, detonated something in Lois. She pulled Lara’s head up, kissing her with a ferocity that drew blood—a copper tang mixing with the water.
Lara dropped to her knees on the shower floor. Her strong hands hooked behind Lois’s thighs, yanking her forward. She didn’t tease. She buried her face between Lois’s legs, her tongue finding Lois’s clit with unerring, aggressive accuracy.
“Oh, God! Lara!” Lois’s head cracked back against the marble. The water pounded down on them both, mixing with the sweat and the slickness Lara was wrenching from her body. Lara ate her like a starved thing, a hard, flat tongue lashing her swollen flesh, then spearing deep inside her.
Lois looked down, the sight a brutal erotic shock. Lara’s eyes were open, watching her, fierce and unblinking even as the water cascaded over her face. Her cheeks were hollowed with the effort. The sounds were filthy, wet, explicit slaps of tongue on cunt.
“Come for me,” Lara demanded, her voice a guttural vibration against Lois’s nerves. “Come on my face right now, you ruthless fucking reporter. Do it.”
The command, the sheer degrading poetry of it, shoved Lois over the edge. A broken scream tore from her throat as her orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive, wrenching wave that buckled her knees. Lara held her up, drinking her in, tongue fucking her through the last violent shudders until Lois whimpered, oversensitive and raw.
Lara stood, water sheeting from her body. She looked utterly debauched, her lips puffy and shining. She reached past Lois, turned off the shower. The sudden silence was deafening.
“The car will be downstairs in four minutes,” she said, her voice now completely steady, as if she hadn’t just been on her knees. She handed Lois a towel.
Lois dressed mechanically, her body still singing. Lara handed her a small, encrypted satellite phone from a drawer. “My direct line. The number is programmed. For when your ordinary sources are… inadequate.”
It was a tool. It was a tether. Lois took it, her fingers closing around the hardened plastic. “This isn’t a pause anymore, is it?”
Lara’s smile was a thin, sharp thing. “It’s an excavation site. I’ve only just broken the surface.” She leaned in, kissed Lois once, hard on the mouth. “Now go get your story.”
The elevator descended, and Lois pressed the cool phone to her forehead. Her body ached in specific, glorious ways. Her mind was a riot of sensation and deadline. The car was waiting, a black sedan idling at the curb. As it pulled into the dawn-grey stream of traffic, her regular phone buzzed again.
Perry: WHERE ARE YOU?
She looked at the encrypted phone in her other hand, a dark, silent weight. She had two stories now. And one of them was already dangerously, brilliantly, underground.