The ’please’ arrived without permission.

Gia heard it come out of her own mouth and noted it the way you note a door swinging open that you thought was locked — the fact of the unlocking more significant than the door itself.

PAH!

He pulled out.

The sound that Gia made at the absence was not a word.

Celia was already moving.

She’d been watching from two feet away — her spine upright, her thighs pressed together and failing to suppress the rhythm the mark had installed — and when he turned toward her the thought she’d been managing for the last five minutes dissolved completely.

’I’m not going to hold still,’ she thought. ’I’m not going to be dignified about this.’

She wasn’t.

Her hands found his shoulders the way they’d found them during the burn — the grip of a woman identifying the only solid thing in a shifting room.

He sat her on the edge of the flat rock, the cold-warm stone at the backs of her thighs, and positioned himself between her knees.

"Celia."

"Don’t talk," she said. "Just—"

PAH!

The entry face-to-face, this time — the full, slow press of him into her where she had no angle to look away from, no rock to press her cheek against, nothing to do with her eyes but look at his face looking at hers.

"HNGHH~~!! Haa — God — ’God’—"

Her heels hooked around the back of his thighs and pulled.

She heard herself do that and filed it.

The mark in her thigh pulsed.

’Yes,’ it said. ’This. Face-to-face because then he sees you. Because then it counts differently.’

’Because then it’s not just filling the absence — it’s filling the ’specific’ absence, the shaped, personalized, you-in-particular absence.’

She pressed her face into his neck.

"Ounghh~!! — I hate what you did to me—"

The words came out warm against his skin, which was not how you delivered something you meant.

"No you don’t," he said.

He wasn’t wrong.

PAH! PAH!

"Aanghh~~!! Hnghh~!! — deeper, I need — the ’mark’ needs—"

The distinction arrived in her mouth before her brain could audit it.

Not ’she’ needed. The ’mark’ needed.

As if it were a second resident, tenant to her body, with its own preferences and its own appetite and its own specific way of noticing whether it was being fed correctly.

"HIEKK~!! Haah — yes — yes that’s—"

Her inner walls closed around him and the mark pulsed in answer, the deep-inside-point of it firing like a nerve that had been waiting for exactly this signal.

Nara watched.

Her chin was on her own folded arms, her cheek against the rock, her breathing still returning from the previous position — and she watched Celia’s face while the same thing happened to it that had happened to hers.

The losing.

The slow, sequential surrender of composure — not because she was weak, because the mark was thorough. It didn’t ask for weakness. It asked for honesty. And Celia was, against her every careful intention, being honest.

’So that’s what I looked like,’ Nara thought.

She pressed her fingers to her own thigh.

The warmth flared.

The echo of his rhythm — still there, still running, patient and installed — pulsed once under her fingertips and she exhaled through her nose in the specific way of a woman managing a response she did not consent to having.

She managed it poorly.

PAH! PAAAH!

"AANGHH~~!!! — Raven — I’m ’crying’ — why am I—"

Celia’s voice broke completely at the deep thrust — not pain, the specific overwhelm of a body receiving too much honest sensation from too many directions at once.

The tears arrived with no drama. Just present suddenly, tracking down her face while her hips moved to meet him and her heels pulled and her mouth kept making sounds she had no editorial control over.

"Hnghh~!! Ounghh~!! — don’t stop — ’even if I cry’ don’t—"

He didn’t stop.

PAH! PAH! PAH!

"Haahh~!! Haahh~!! — it’s ’warm’ — the mark is warm again — it’s—"

The heat had returned — not the initial burn of installation, different, the living warmth of something running at full function, the mark cycling through whatever it was doing at a frequency that matched the thrusts, pulse for pulse.

"HNGHH~~!! Aanghh~!! — I feel it everywhere I feel it in my—"

She stopped.

Her eyes went wide.

’Chest,’ she thought.

’I feel it in my chest.’

’That’s — that’s not where he put it — that’s not the thigh, that’s not the inside place — that’s—’

The throb in her sternum, faint but definite, a second anchor point she hadn’t consented to.

"What—" Her voice was wrecked. "What else did you—"

"Just wait," he said.

PAH!

He pulled out again.

Celia’s body registered the absence with a sound she couldn’t prevent — the short, wet, involuntary sound of walls that had organized themselves around an occupant and were now making their opinion of his departure audible.

Gia was already on her back.

Not arranged — self-arranged, her hips elevated on her own folded hands, her knees pulled up and apart, the offering-position, the position that said ’here’ without any auxiliary vocabulary.

Her face was flushed from the clavicle up.

The throb in her thigh was visible — Nara could see it, the slight, rhythmic twitch of the skin there where the mark ran.

"Your thigh," Nara said.

"I know," Gia said. She wasn’t looking at her thigh. She was looking at him.

He came to Gia.

The easy, unhurried crossing — never hurrying, which was its own specific madness, the madness of a man who was entirely certain that the destination wasn’t going anywhere.

He pressed her knees a degree wider.

Gia let him.

"Gia."

"I know," she said again. Softer this time. In the voice of a woman who has assembled the sentence ’I know exactly what I’m agreeing to’ and is agreeing anyway. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

PAH!

The entry — Gia’s arched back absorbing it from below, her spine bowing in the direction of the thrust, her heels rising off the rock.

"HNGHH~~!! Ounghh~!! Haa — ’yes’ — that — the mark — the mark is—"

Her hands flew to the back of his neck.

Pulled.

’Pull him in,’ the mark said. Not in words. In warmth, in the specific pulse-direction that oriented toward ’closer’ and ’deeper’ and ’more fully occupied’ with the patient insistence of something that had been installed to want exactly that.

She pulled.

"Aanghh~~!! HIEKK~!! — I’m milking — I can ’feel’ myself milking you — why can I feel—"

The awareness of her own walls was new.

Not the sensation — she’d always had that. The ’awareness.’ The clear, catalogued, monitoring awareness of what each part of her was doing, each grip and release and draw, as if the mark had given her an observer’s seat inside her own body.

’Good,’ the deeper voice said. ’Keep going. This is what you’re for.’

"Ounghh~!! Hnghh~!! — don’t stop—"

She wasn’t asking anymore.

PAH! PAH! PAAAH!

"AANGHH~~!!! — I’m — something is — I’m going to—"

The throb in her thigh fired at the deep thrust — the long, full-depth one, the PAAAH! of it — and the echo traveled the installed path, arriving at the chest-point she hadn’t known she had until she felt it match Celia’s report.

’Oh,’ she thought, distantly, from the observer’s seat. ’There it is.’

’He built a second one in.’

’While we weren’t noticing.’

"HNGHH~~!! OUNGHH~!! — ’chest’ — I feel it in my ’chest’—"

"I know," Nara said.

From the rock.

Her fingers were still on her own thigh.

The throb under them had moved, sometime in the last several minutes, from the mark to the sternum — the quiet, settled throb of a secondary anchor she had not been asked about and had not been told was coming.

She pressed her hand flat against her own chest.

Under her palm — warm. Patient. Running.

"Raven," she said.

He looked at her over Gia’s shoulder.

"You put two," Nara said.

Not a question. Not accusing. The flat, arriving recognition of a woman who has finished cataloguing and arrived at the final count.

He didn’t confirm it.

He didn’t need to.

The warmth under her palm confirmed it with the steady, installed pulse of something that was not going to apologize for being there.

PAH! PAH!

"Aanghh~~!! Haahh~!! — I love — why do I want to say—"