⋆ 𝑒𝓁𝓁𝑒.

Natasha was one of your aunt’s daughters. Her mother had married your uncle 3 years before, making her, the redhead and her sister officially part of the family. Everyone liked Nat as soon as she became part of the group and her sister Yelena, with her sharp wit, was, if possible, even more beloved by everybody. As soon as the two girls regularly entered your lives, you had followed everyone’s advice and started to hang out together. You’d always felt very lucky for having cousins of your same age range, making them some of your closest friends ever, and having the chance of adding someone else to the group immediately sounded like the best idea ever, or at least that’s what you had thought at first.

That was because you didn’t like Natasha, you just didn’t. If at first, while witnessing her interactions with other people, she seemed to be the sweetest girl in the world, once you finally got to know her personally you started loathing her. She wasn’t necessarily a bad person, she was just so irritating all the time. And the worst part was that, apparently, she only acted that way with you, not with her friends, not with your other cousins, not even with her own sister, just with you. If you thought that, thanks to uni’s social life, you had met the cockiest motherfuckers in the world, you were utterly wrong. Natasha was the most terrible one of them all. It was constant teasing, constant comments, constant jokes, constant snickering and each time you heard her voice or looked at her, you wanted nothing more than to wipe that smug smirk off her pretty face.

You didn’t know how it all started. Well, of course you knew that one time, at your grandma’s house to celebrate her birthday, Natasha had been particularly annoying since the moment you’d gotten there, which resulted in you being bitchy and her pulling you into the bathroom and kissing you once she had you trapped against the locked door. You hated it, every second of it and the fact that you ended up begging her to keep going while she was with her fingers knuckle deep inside of you wasn’t of any importance. You weren’t proud of what happened that day, but you were too nice to deny her when a couple of days later she was at your door ripping your clothes off of you. You were both attending the same uni and, despite literally never seeing each other in academic nor social settings, you started finding the closeness to be a much bigger impediment to your initial want to put a stop to your newly found situation. You were growing weaker and weaker to her charm, only while in the bedroom of course, and your intent to end it all kept getting pushed to the back of your mind each time you came with her name on your lips, until it was completely gone.

And that’s how you ended up at yet another family gathering partly ruined by her, this time to celebrate Thanksgiving, having to try to push away the tingle between your legs at the sight of her in her usual casual clothes hiding the defined muscles underneath as she talked with her dad and your grandpa about something involving a bike she was fixing up for herself. You were keeping your distance for your own sanity, but you could clearly hear their words and her low, raspy voice regularly adding to the conversation. You didn’t know what the hell they were talking about and either way, you had stopped actively listening long before, once you got lost in the view of her hand as she held her glass. The second she noticed your eyes fixed on her, you were thankfully saved from her most definitely coming over to tease you, by your cousin Clint, bored out of his mind and equally in need of leaving as soon as possible, even if for very different reasons than you. Ok, maybe him being the person talking to you didn’t exactly make him your savior, he was the person Natasha had gotten the closest to after all, which meant that, as soon as she once again turned to get a peek of your outfit she particularly appreciated, he immediately called her over, most definitely hoping to lure her away from the party. She couldn’t have been more obvious with the way her eyes kept ranking your body head to toe as she listened to his frustrated rambling, but thankfully Clint’s desperation blinded him from noticing the less than innocent way in which her gaze was on you.

“I’m begging you Nat, I’ll get on my knees! Just one!”

You both couldn’t help but chuckle at the grown man’s antics, when you suddenly realized that you had no idea of what the hell they were talking about. You barely had the time to open your mouth to ask them directly, when, of course, she interrupted you without a care to keep talking to her friend.

“Fine, but I’m taking half of it”

As soon as the first word barely left her mouth he was throwing his fist in the air and putting his coat on to go to the guest house she was staying in with you. Because of course you had been placed in the same room, in the small guest house in the backyard that only consisted of one room with one bed. You didn't know why, but everyone apparently thought of you two as some sort of best friends just because you both went to the same uni, despite, again, the known fact that you did not have one single class together, lived in different places and had completely different friends, meaning that you only saw each other when she called you over or randomly popped up at your place to fuck, but of course they didn't know any of that.

“A quarter..”

He was already leaving once he spoke his final words, leaving her alone with you to shake her head at her friend’s antics.

“Fine”

You hated how easily she seemingly had you under a trance as she murmured the word while smiling to herself. She was able to put you out of it equally fast, though, as she turned to you to regard you before leaving the celebration to follow after Clint.

“Are you coming?”

Her almost soft tone had to have given you some sort of whiplash as you stood there, looking at her without being able to utter a single word for a second, before regaining control over your own mind, and sanity, once you noticed her lips starting to curl into her usual mischievous smirk.

“Don’t worry, I’m gonna stay here a bit longer”

She was once again putting at risk your ability to talk as she ran a hand through her short hair to get it out of her face and moved closer and closer to you, sneaking her gaze towards the other side of the room where most people had moved to, before reaching behind you to get a snack from the table you were leaning against, pressing her front against yours and letting your feel a certain something poking your lower belly.

“I’ll wait for you then”

She looked way too pleased by your slightly widened eyes as you tried to contain your emotions in order not to draw any attention to the two of you.

“You’re packing?”

Her brows furrowed as you whisper yelled at her, before speaking matter of factly.

“Of course I’m packing, I’m always packing when I’m with you”

She didn't give you the time to respond to her, immediately licking the chocolate off her fingers while shamelessly looking at your cleavage before turning to go to the guest house. She was infuriating, her and her constant horniness. You decided to casually join some conversations here and there for the brief rest of the night, until almost everyone had gotten to bed, including a much more relaxed Clint, and it was just you and your aunt gossiping in the living room. The moment your phone buzzed in your lap you almost had a feeling of who might had been trying to get in contact with you, so you cautiously lifted the screen, in case a certain someone decided to share something a little too private, and noticed she had sent you a picture.

The moment you clicked on it, the initial, brief awe you found yourself lost in at the sight of her posing with her tongue peaking out and the hood of her sweatshirt over her cap, was unfortunately wiped away once you finally read the caption under it. You couldn’t help but mentally facepalm at her dumb words, even if you had to reluctantly admit that the text was successful in making your heart leap at its crude nature.

“Not enough pressure on my 🍆”

Her finger was pointing to the word “pressure” printed on her hoodie, why did she have to be that way? You knew what she wanted from you, it was all she seemed to be thinking about, like some pussydrunk teen, and the way she didn’t even ask you if you were down for it, expecting you to just indulge her wish, didn’t sit right with you. Who did she think you were? Her whore always waiting for her like a pet?

You locked your phone with a frustrated sigh and got up from the couch, quickly finding an excuse with the immediate questioning you got from your aunt as to why you'd go back to your room so early.

By the time you walked across the whole backyard and got to the entrance of the guest house you were finally able to make out her figure, sitting on the wicker armchair under the small porch with all the lights off, in complete darkness, to hide the very end of a hand rolled cigarette between her fingers and the suspiciously smelly smoke coming from her.

“Your tits look good in that shirt”

You knew it was coming, as soon as you had chosen your outfit, you knew some sort of comment was to be made by her, although it had taken her a bit longer than you had expected. You were wearing a quite simple blouse with a boob window, in reality nothing as scandalous as it sounded, but the complete opposite in Natasha’s eyes. The way your jeans perfectly hugged your ass and the sway of your hips anytime you had walked past her, were just the cherry on top to the main course right below your pretty face.

You barely looked at her as you kept walking by her past the door without acknowledging her words, hearing her chuckle at your usual uptight self. You hated to admit it, but the way she was manspreading, making a bulge under her sweatpants slightly visible, while she casually smoked, had made you even more willing to help her out with her “pressure issue”, not that she needed to know about your enthusiasm anyway. By the time you were just starting to get undressed she entered the room, locking the door behind her and standing against it to shamelessly look at your ass as you leaned down to take your shoes off. As soon as your pants were off too and you were about to slip off your shirt she spoke up.

“No no no, keep that on”

Despite the way too pleased look on her face, you were silently thankful for the piece of clothing still on you in the slightly chilly room. You didn’t even bother to take your warm, ankle high socks off and left yourself fall on your back on the bed, feeling satisfied after noticing her swallowing and wetting her own lips as her eyes stayed fixed on your boobs’ slight jiggling as you had dropped on the mattress. Once you got comfortable on top of the soft duvet, you made sure to look right at her as you slowly spread your legs and immediately started lightly rubbing yourself through the fabric of your own underwear, moaning softly at the light stimulation as a way to tease the motherfucker in front of you. Without uttering a word, she left her spot by the door and walked over to you, stopping at the foot of the bed to grab her cock through her pants and slowly pump it. Pushing down her sweatpants just enough for the dildo strapped to her hips to spring out, she gave you a peak of the beautiful, defined v lines you had kissed over so many times and the bottom of the tattoos on her torso and abdomen you had to admit you loved. There was some ink peeking out from the cuff on her wrist as well, making the sight of her strong hand holding the base of her cock even more pleasing.

“Come here, get it wet”

You wanted to come up at least with a remark at her blunt order, but found nothing but anticipation in you and your body, as if moving by its own accord, immediately left your spot to kneel on the bed right in front of her crotch. You didn't waste any time, you couldn't have even if you wanted to, and, as soon as your lips touched the head of her cock, you tried your best to relax your throat in order to take as much of her length as you could, earning a pleased hum from her at the sound of your gags every time she reached the back of your throat.

“Now that's a cocksucker”

Her words pulled your eyes to her face and found her looking intently at you. The groan that came from her once you stopped bobbing your head to stay still with her cock still in your mouth sent a strong twing of arousal through you as she easily understood what you wanted.

She gently grabbed your head with both hands to keep you in place and immediately started to move her hips to fuck your face. Relishing the sight of a string of spit dropping on the part of your chest exposed by the cut in your shirt, she started pushing even deeper to see just how far you were willing to go for her. The resistance was clear as she pushed a bit more of her cock with every other thrust, until you finally couldn't wait anymore and grabbed her ass to give her a push and hopefully make her understand what she needed to do. With one final thrust she managed to push herself past your tight throat until your nose was touching her crotch. She couldn't help herself and rushed to get her phone from her pocket to snap a picture of you looking up at her with watery eyes as you grasped her ass cheeks through her pants to keep her from moving away. It was only once the need to breathe got the best of you that you pushed yourself off of her, sucking in a deep breath while Natasha stared with hooded eyes at your swollen lips and the spit connecting them to her cock.

“You say you hate me but you need my cock that much?”

You hated so much how true her words were and tried to distract yourself from the thought by lying back down and grabbing her cock now covered in your spit.

“Well, you're obsessed with my pussy so it's even”

She just smirked at your remark, deep down knowing that you were so fucking right. She couldn't get enough of it, all the girls she had fucked and she had to loose it for her stepcousin? Well, she honestly didn't give a shit, as long as you were careful she was going to keep fucking you like the slut she knew you were for her deep down.

“For the first time I've gotta say you're right”

You didn't even have the time to process her words and the shock that they had caused when she suddenly moved your underwear to the side and grabbed your ass tightly to lift your hips and get a taste of you, moaning exaggeratedly at her now favorite snack. Despite the leg shaking orgasm you knew she would've easily gotten out of you with her mouth, you pushed the delicious thought to the side and firmly grabbed her hair to lift her from your center.

“Right now I need your cock balls deep in my pussy, not your mouth”

Her lips looked way too delicious as they glistened with your juices and as they curled up she suddenly left go of your ass, making you yelp as you fell back to your lying position, before grabbing your thighs and pushing them to each of your sides, waiting for you to keep them there yourself with your arms to fully open yourself up for her. From the position you had a clear view of her strap as she rubbed it over your wet folds before finally pushing its head inside of you. She could never get enough of seeing your reaction at her entering you for the first time and once again, she couldn't help but keep her eyes on your face from the first moment. She fucked you just with the tip for a bit in order for you to get used to her and, gradually pushed more and more inside as you rubbed your own clit. You knew you were very far away from everybody else, but you still tried your best to keep your volume as low as you could, making her smirk at the clear signs of your struggle to do so.

“More, go faster”

She loved it every time when your uptight, moralist voice turned in a second into the pathetic begs of her own cockdrunk whore and who was she to give up the chance of fucking her personal pussy when she asked for it? After lifting up her hoodie a little to get a better view of your center begging to be filled up more and more, she firmly grabbed your waist, gradually thrusting faster and harder until she had set a pace that knocked your breath away every time she pushed her hips forward and her tip stroked your g spot so deliciously a deep sensation quickly started to build up inside of you. Her flexed abs and veins popping up on her hands made the pleasure she was making you feel, become even stronger, getting your orgasm closer by the second. It honestly amazed you how fast she was always able to make you cum and, despite not wanting to show her any weakness, you admittedly always felt a little self conscious because of it. You could barely keep it anymore, though, it was going to happen in a matter of seconds and your mouth opening in shock told her everything she needed to know.

“Wait, I think I'm gonna-”

You didn't have the chance of finishing your sentence before an earth shattering orgasm hit you so strongly that small, clear droplets spilled out of you every time she pulled back.

“Holy shit”

She panted the words to herself before swiftly pulling out completely and quickly rubbing her fingers over your clit, making you moan loudly as you squirted even more for her while you rode out your orgasm. By the time you were done, your legs were a little shaky and you were almost sobbing from how intense and quick it all was. Once you looked back at her, though, you knew you would've gladly done it as many times as she wanted. Her abs were a little wet from your orgasm, with a couple of drops still lingering on her tattooed skin, and, once your eyes locked with hers, she looked like the most dangerous predator eyeing its prey, ready to eat it in one bite, and, god, wasn't she going to do exactly that.

After all, maybe Thanksgiving was actually going to be even better with her.

.

.

.

The bartender's name was Jake, or maybe Jack, or possibly something that started with a J that you had already stopped caring about approximately eight minutes into the conversation.

You were paying attention to Natasha instead.

Specifically to the stillness that had settled over her in the last few minutes, the kind that wasn't relaxed at all—the coiled, dangerous, watching kind of stillness you'd learned to recognize the way you learned to read weather. The way the air changed before a storm moved in, that particular drop in pressure that meant something was coming and there was no point pretending otherwise. 

Natasha was leaning against the far end of the bar with her drink loosely in hand and her eyes fixed on you, looking completely calm, and she was absolutely not calm at all. You could tell by the line of her jaw, gone tight in a way she probably didn't know was visible. By the way her thumb moved slowly and deliberately over the condensation on her glass, round and round, a motion that looked idle and wasn't. By the quality of her gaze, which had shifted somewhere in the last ten minutes from I'm watching because I always watch to I'm watching because I have already decided something, and you felt that shift from across the room like a change in the air, like the moment before thunder when everything holds its breath.

Jake-or-Jack said something. You laughed, because it was the social thing to do, and also because you caught Natasha's jaw tighten fractionally from across the bar and felt warmth bloom low in your stomach that had nothing to do with the bartender and everything to do with her.

You hadn't meant for this to happen, exactly.

Okay…you had maybe, a little bit, meant for this to happen.

It had started innocuously enough—your usual Friday, your usual bar, the one tucked down a side street that nobody found unless they were looking for it, with its low lighting and decent whiskey and a jukebox someone kept loading with Fleetwood Mac and old Motown. A corner booth had become so thoroughly yours over two years together that you half-expected to find your names worn into the wood. You'd been sitting at the bar while Natasha grabbed the booth, and the new bartender had materialized in front of you with the focused energy of someone making their intentions very clear, and you had glanced over your shoulder without quite meaning to.

Natasha had been looking back at you from across the room with that expression. The low, flat one. The one that promised several things. Your brain had made a decision that the rest of you hadn't been fully consulted on, because you turned back to the bartender and smiled at him. Something across the room had gone very, very still.

That had been twenty minutes ago.

In your defense, you hadn't thought it all the way through.

The problem with loving Natasha Romanoff was that the most dangerous thing about her had never been her training or her aim or the efficiency with which she could dismantle a room full of people. The most dangerous thing about her was the way she looked at you when she'd made a decision, and you'd been living with that danger for two years, and apparently you had not built up as much immunity as you'd thought. Every time she leveled that gaze at you from across a room, your body responded before your brain got a vote, warmth spreading through your chest and down into your stomach and further, and you'd gotten very good at pretending you weren't affected and very bad at actually not being affected, and that was the situation you were currently in.

Jake-or-Jack leaned a little closer and said something about your eyes, which was not a particularly original line. You were opening your mouth to respond with something noncommittal—you'd been about to wrap this up, because twenty minutes felt like enough and Natasha's silence from across the room had crossed a threshold you could feel in your chest—when a hand closed around your wrist.

Sure and steady, fingers curling around the inside of your wrist right over your pulse point, which was doing things it had no business doing in a crowded bar. You knew whose hand it was before you turned around. You'd have known it anywhere, in any light, in total silence.

"We're leaving," Natasha said. She said it to you, not to the bartender, without room for negotiation. Her eyes hadn't moved off your face. In your peripheral vision, the bartender had gone very quiet in the specific way people went quiet when they realized they'd fundamentally misunderstood a situation they'd wandered into. Natasha picked up your jacket from the barstool with her free hand, held your wrist with the other, and then glanced at the bartender exactly once with an expression that contained an entire paragraph without a single word.

The bartender took a small step back.

Smart, you thought, as Natasha steered you toward the door. Very smart of him.

(-)

The night air was cool when you stepped outside, carrying the smell of rain that had fallen earlier in the evening, the pavement still dark with it, the streetlights catching the wet surface and scattering light in long pale streaks. Natasha's hand had migrated from your wrist to the small of your back—guiding, certain, the steady pressure of her palm through your shirt saying this way without saying anything at all. Three blocks between the bar and your apartment. She didn't speak for any of them, and you'd been with her long enough to know the texture of her silences, to understand what lived inside them. This one wasn't cold or angry. It was focused the way Natasha got focused when she'd made a decision and was moving toward it with her full attention, and you'd learned a long time ago that focused Natasha was its own category entirely. One that made the hair on your arms stand up, your pace quicken slightly, and your heart do something unreasonable against your ribs for the entire three blocks.

You got the door open, stepped inside, and made it exactly two steps into the entryway.

Then Natasha's hand spread flat between your shoulder blades and walked you forward until your back met the closed door with a soft thud that seemed very loud in the quiet apartment. She was right there behind you, and then beside you, and then in front of you—like the space between two points was a formality she was choosing to observe. Close enough that her breath was warm against your face in the dark, her body not quite pressing you into the door but near enough that you felt the heat of her along your whole front. The only light came from the city through the windows, catching the pale lines of her face, the green of her eyes that had gone very dark.

She looked at you for a long moment without speaking, like she was reading something carefully and wanted to get every word exactly right before she committed to it.

The apartment was quiet around you. The refrigerator hummed somewhere in the kitchen. Outside, a car passed, its headlights sweeping brief and pale through the window and gone. You stood in the dark entryway with your back against the door and Natasha in front of you and your pulse going absolutely haywire, and you waited.

"You looked at me first," she said finally, unhurried. "Before you smiled at him." Her head tilted fractionally to the right. "You wanted to see what I'd do."

She wasn't wrong. She'd never been wrong about you—not since the second week you'd known each other, not once in two years, not about anything that actually mattered. You'd known exactly what you were doing at that bar and you'd done it anyway, because the look on Natasha's face when she decided something was worth almost any consequence, and the look on her face right now, here in the dark of your entryway with the city light catching her eyes, was confirming that assessment entirely.

Her eyes dropped briefly to your throat—to the place where your pulse was visible, giving you away completely—and her expression settled into one of satisfaction.

Then she kissed you, and you stopped thinking.

Her hand came up to grip your jaw and tip your head back, her mouth covering yours with the focused certainty of someone who had already decided what she wanted and was simply taking it. You made a sound against her lips and her grip tightened just enough to feel, just enough to know she had you exactly where she wanted you, and your hands found the front of her jacket and grabbed on. She kissed you until you were breathless and then she kept kissing you thoroughly, like she had all the time in the world and wasn't planning to waste any of it. The heat of her mouth and the press of her fingers against your jaw and the solid reality of the door behind you combined into something that made your knees unreliable, and you held on tighter.

When she finally pulled back it was only far enough to speak, her lips still brushing yours, her breath warm against your mouth.

"He was looking at you," she said, her voice perfectly even, "like you were something he could just decide to want. Like there was any version of tonight where that was going somewhere." Her thumb moved against your jaw. "Did you like knowing I was watching?"

Your lips parted.

"Yeah," she said quietly, reading the answer off your face before you could find words for it. "I know you did." The corner of her mouth moved. "That's what I thought."

She bit your lower lip—precise, measured, the pressure building slow before it sharpened into something bright and clean—and the sensation of it shot down your spine, your hips pressing forward involuntarily. Natasha felt it and made a low sound against your mouth that was somehow more devastating than the bite itself. She did it again, slower, holding the pressure with the patient certainty of someone who knew exactly what it was doing to you and was doing it on purpose, and the sound that came out of you was not quiet. She released it and kissed down your jaw instead, lips and teeth both, taking her time with the line of it like she was mapping something she intended to revisit. Her mouth found the soft skin beneath your ear, her teeth grazing it, and you made a sound that echoed in the entryway. Your hands fisted hard in her jacket.

"Mine," she said into your throat. Her lips moved against the mark she'd just made, pressing the word into your skin. "You're mine." It carried the weight of something she meant all the way down, something that had been true for two years and that she said now like she needed you to feel it, not just hear it. "And I think you forgot that tonight. So I'm going to remind you."

She bit down on your throat—harder this time, the kind that would still be visible tomorrow—and you gasped, your head falling back against the door and your whole body arching toward her because there was nothing else to do with itself. She worked the mark with her lips, pressing warmth into it, and then found a new spot lower on your neck and did it again. Your hands were pulling at her jacket uselessly and your hips were searching for friction that wasn't there yet.

Her hand left your jaw and found your hip instead, gripping hard through the denim, and she pulled you off the door, turning you toward the hallway with her mouth still at your throat. She guided you with the calm efficiency of someone who had already mapped out exactly where this was going and was simply executing the plan.

The bedroom lamp was already on from earlier, throwing the room in warm amber that caught the edges of things and softened them—the rumpled corner of the duvet where you'd sat to put your shoes on before leaving, the surface of the nightstand with its familiar clutter, the pale expanse of the bed. Natasha walked you to the foot of it and stopped, and you stopped with her, and she let go of your hip to look at you.

Really looked, like when she wasn't performing looking but actually doing it. Her eyes moved over your face, your expression, your mouth, the marks she'd already put on your throat that were going pink at the edges, and whatever she found there settled something in her own expression, some last piece of a decision clicking into place.

Her hands found the hem of your shirt, and she pulled it up and over your head in one smooth motion, dropping it somewhere behind her without glancing at it. She reached around and unclasped your bra with practiced ease, sliding the straps off your shoulders and letting it fall. Then she stepped back and just looked at you in the amber light, completely at her pace, taking you in the way she sometimes did when she thought you weren't noticing—like you were something worth stopping for.

You stood there under her eyes and felt the weight of them everywhere they landed. Your collarbone. The curve of your breasts. The soft plane of your stomach. She tracked all of it with the focused attention she gave to things that genuinely mattered to her, and your skin prickled in the wake of every place her gaze moved, warmth blooming beneath it like she was touching you without touching you at all.

"You know what I kept thinking about," she said, her voice quiet and conversational, "while I was sitting across that bar watching you?" She worked your jeans open—button, zip—and pushed the denim down over your hips with the same easy efficiency she brought to everything she'd decided to do. "I kept thinking about how everyone in that room could look at you and have absolutely no idea." You stepped out of the jeans. She hooked her fingers into your underwear and that followed, and then you were standing in nothing but the amber lamplight with Natasha still completely dressed and her eyes moving over you like she was reading something she'd written and was checking every word. "No idea you were already taken. No idea you'd come home with me. No idea that the only reason you were smiling at him was because you wanted to see my face when I'd had enough." She tilted her head. "We're going to fix that."

She turned to the nightstand. Opened the drawer—the bottom one, the one that was hers by habit and two years of accumulated presence—and reached past the familiar contents to something further back, something she'd clearly placed there recently. When she turned back around you had one full second to register what she was holding before your brain processed it.

A…black sharpie? You had expected the strap, maybe a vibrator. 

She held your gaze and brought the marker to her teeth. Pulled the cap free. Spit it onto the nightstand without blinking, her eyes on yours the entire time, and the casual deliberateness of it—the easy confidence of someone who had thought this through and was now simply doing it—sent heat through you so fast it was almost dizzying. Your whole body flushed with it, a wave that started in your chest and moved outward to your fingertips, and Natasha watched it happen with dark, satisfied eyes.

"Lie down," she said. God knew you wouldn’t disobey.

The bedding was cool against your back, the lamp warm on your face, and you lay there in the amber light and watched Natasha settle onto the bed beside you, the marker in her hand, her eyes already moving over your skin like she was deciding where to begin.

Her free hand came to rest flat on your sternum, grounding you, and she held it there for a moment, feeling your heartbeat. It was going faster than usual, she could definitely feel that, and she was filing that away with satisfaction.

"I'm going to write on you," she said, like it was perfectly reasonable, like this was just what happened on Friday nights. "So you remember. So there's no confusion—for you or for anyone else—about who you belong to." Her thumb moved once in a slow arc over your sternum. "And you're going to lie still and let me do it."

She pressed the marker to the skin just below your collarbone and began.

You felt every stroke of it—the cool drag of the felt tip moving in clean lines, Natasha's eyes fixed on your skin with the same concentration she gave to anything she cared about doing correctly. She wrote N.R. in clean capital letters, each stroke of the marker intent and clear. When she finished she leaned down and pressed her lips to the letters, her mouth resting against the ink for a moment like she was sealing something in. Then she bit the skin just above them, the sensation pulling a ragged sound from your chest, your back arching off the bed.

She pressed her free hand flat on your sternum and pushed you back down without a word.

She moved to the curve of your left breast and wrote mine along the inner curve of it, lowercase, small and neat. Her lips followed each letter, kissing them, and then her teeth closed on the soft flesh above—held there, real pressure, long enough to make you grip the sheets and hold your breath—and released. She moved to your ribs, just below your heart, and she said the words aloud quietly as she wrote them, her first language falling from her mouth low and even: "moya malen'kaya shlyukha." Each word deliberate, shaped with a particularity that English didn't have room for. My little slut. Written on your ribs in the language she dreamed in, the language that lived closest to whatever was most true about her, and you felt those words go into your skin and stay there.

She kissed the Russian. Then she bit the skin directly below it, lower on your ribs where the flesh was more sensitive, and held the bite until your hands were fisted in the sheets, your hips pressing down into the mattress and a broken sound working its way continuously out of your throat. And then she released it and soothed the mark with her tongue.

"Good girl," she whispered, quiet and hypnotic, already moving lower.

She wrote belongs to N.R. across your stomach in full, large letters, her free hand pressing flat on your hip to hold you still when you shifted. You felt every letter form beneath the marker, the cool felt tip moving over your skin, and the combination of the sensation and the knowledge of what she was writing and the weight of her attention and the heat still blooming from every bite she'd left was building something in you that had moved well past want and into something more like desperation. Your skin felt oversensitized everywhere she'd touched, every bite mark a point of awareness, and she hadn't even gotten to the part where she touched you the way you needed. You were already so wound up it was embarrassing.

She moved lower still, her free hand pressing your left thigh open, and she wrote her initials on the inside of it—N.R. again, high up where the skin was thin and sensitive—and every single stroke of the marker there registered at double the intensity, your thigh flexing involuntarily under each one, a sound building steadily in your throat that you couldn't fully suppress. She held your thigh flat with her forearm when you tried to close your legs and took her time with it, each letter carefully precise, and when she finally sat back and looked at the full picture of what she'd made of you, you were breathing hard through your nose and your hands were twisted in the sheets and the ache between your legs had become something enormous.

Natasha looked at you in the amber light, her eyes moving over every mark in sequence—N.R. at your collarbone, mine on your breast, the Russian on your ribs, belongs to N.R. across your stomach, her initials high on your inner thigh—reading all of it, her expression private and thoroughly, completely satisfied. Like you were a room she had arranged exactly to her liking and was now standing in the doorway of, finding everything precisely where she'd intended it to be.

"Tam," she said softly, to herself and to you both. There.

She capped the marker and set it aside on the nightstand, her hand moving between your thighs and pressing against you fully—palm flat, fingers together, the whole weight of her hand cupping you. What she found there made her exhale slowly through her nose in a way that was somehow more devastating than anything she could have said.

"Oh," she said, low and intent, her hand not moving yet, just resting against you while she felt everything. The slick heat of you, soaking against her palm. The way you clenched instinctively at the contact, your body reaching for pressure it wasn't getting yet. She held her hand still and let you feel her there. Your hips tried to roll forward and her free arm pressed flat across your pelvis to hold you down again. 

"Look at this," she said softly, almost to herself. Her fingers shifted, just slightly, parting you, and the slick sound of it in the quiet room made heat crawl up your chest. "You're soaking." She pressed two fingers against your entrance, holding them there, not pushing in, just the firm presence of them while you clenched desperately around nothing, and your whole body shuddered. "Absolutely soaking, and I've barely touched you." 

She drew her fingers upward slowly, dragging through your folds, gathering heat and slick on the way to your clit, and pressed down in one firm steady circle that made your back bow completely off the bed, a moan tearing out of your throat loud enough to embarrass you. She kept the pressure—the same firm circle, again and again, merciless and even—and your thighs shook on either side of her hand, your hands abandoning the sheets to grab at the duvet. She watched your face fall apart with dark attentive eyes and did not let up. 

"Who does this to you?" Her voice was completely even, like she was asking something mildly interesting rather than doing what she was doing to you. "Who gets you this desperate without even getting you to the bedroom first?"

"You," you gasped, your voice wrecked already. "Natasha—it's always you—only you—"

"That's right." She lifted her hand entirely.

The sound you made at the loss of it was not something you were going to think about later. Your hips chased after her fingers into empty air and found nothing, your whole body furious and bereft, and Natasha watched you do it with an expression of warm, focused satisfaction.

She brought her fingers to your lips and pressed them against your mouth—slick and sticky, carrying the evidence of how badly you'd wanted her for the past twenty minutes—and your lips parted for her on instinct, completely automatic. She pressed two fingers onto your tongue and you tasted yourself, salt and want. Natasha's eyes went somewhere very dark and very focused, fixed on your mouth with an intensity that made heat pool low all over again.

"Taste how wet you are," she said, quiet, watching every movement of your lips. "Every bit of that is mine. The fact that you get like this—" she pressed her fingers slightly deeper and you took them, "—is mine. The fact that some bartender couldn't get you half this wound up just by existing near you is mine." She held your eyes. "Your body already knows who it belongs to. Doesn't it?"

You nodded around her fingers, which was not the most dignified thing you'd ever done and you were entirely past caring.

She slid them free and kissed you instead, her tongue against yours so you tasted yourself on her mouth too, her free hand curving around your jaw like something she was keeping safe. When she pulled back she looked at you in the amber light—marked up and absolutely desperate—and the expression on her face was patient and certain.

Her eyes came up to yours and stayed there. 

"Every mark on your skin is mine. Every sound you make in this room is mine. You went and smiled at that man and spent twenty minutes letting him think he had a chance, and every second of it you were already mine, had been mine, were going to come home with me and end up exactly here." She pressed her palm harder against the Russian writing for a moment and then released it. "Didn't you know that?"

"Yes," you said, meaning it completely.

Something in her expression softened without losing any of its heat, a shift so small someone who didn't know her would miss it entirely. But you did know her, had known her for two years, and you felt it like a change in the room's temperature. She leaned down and pressed her lips to your forehead, deliberately tender, and then sat back and looked at you with dark eyes.

"Come here then," she said. "Show me.”

You pushed yourself up and moved to straddle her thigh, her hands coming to your hips before you'd fully settled, positioning you with the calm authority of someone who had already decided exactly how this was going to go. She tilted your hips to the angle she'd chosen—slightly forward, the one that would give you the friction you needed while keeping control of how fast you got there firmly with her—and you sank down against the firm solid press of her thigh, the feeling of her muscle between your bare legs pulling a sound from you that filled the whole room.

The friction was immediate and overwhelming. The rough drag of denim against your bare, slick skin, the heat of her leg solid beneath you, the pressure hitting your clit on every roll of your hips. Your hands braced on her shoulders and your body found a rhythm before your brain had caught up with events. The fact that you could feel how wet you'd made the fabric of her jeans within seconds of settling against her was humiliating and you were completely past caring about it.

Natasha's hands stayed on your hips, thumbs moving slow over the marks she'd written there, tracing N.R. on your left hip with proprietary deliberateness, following the lines like she was reading something she'd authored and was revisiting. Her eyes moved over you constantly—your face, then your throat with its darkening bites, then the words on your collarbone and your ribs and your stomach, reading all of it, tracking each mark in sequence before coming back to your face to read what was happening there. You felt every place her gaze landed. Felt the weight of her attention moving over her own work, and something about being looked at like that, like you were something she'd made and was pleased with, made the heat in your lower belly spike sharply.

"There she is," Natasha said, her eyes still moving. "My pretty little slut. Right where she belongs." 

Her grip on your hips shifted and pressed you forward, grinding you against her thigh with more friction. Your whole rhythm stuttered and you cried out, your nails digging into her shoulders. She guided you back to the pace without commenting on the sound you'd made. 

"That's it. Work for it." Her eyes moved to the mine on your breast and stayed there for a moment, and then came back up to yours. "You let him look at you for twenty minutes," she said, conversationally, like this was a perfectly normal thing to be discussing while you were falling apart on her thigh. 

"Twenty minutes of some man who doesn't know the first thing about you thinking he had a chance." 

Her thumbs pressed into the marks on your hips, careful pressure. 

"Your body was already doing this. Already wound up from across the bar because I was watching you." She tilted your hips again, a small adjustment, and the new angle made you keen and lose the rhythm entirely for a moment. "He couldn't have done that if he'd tried for an hour."

"No," you managed, barely a word.

"No," she agreed. Her right hand left your hip and came down sharp on your ass—a clean crack of her palm that made you lurch forward with a gasp, the sound and the sting blooming together. She caught you with her left hand and guided your hips back into the rhythm before the echo had faded. 

"Keep moving." Her voice hadn't changed at all. Even and certain. "Don't stop."

You kept moving. The sting from her palm radiated heat through you that layered over the friction in a way that made your whole lower body feel electric, warmth spreading from the impact outward and downward, concentrating where you needed it. She let you find the rhythm again, gave you long enough to really chase it, to feel the build starting to steepen, and then her hand came down a second time, harder, on the other side. You cried out and your hips snapped forward involuntarily. She felt the way the impact made you grind harder against her and made a low sound of satisfaction deep in her throat.

"Good girl," she said, rubbing slow firm circles over where she'd struck, her palm soothing the heat she'd made, while her other hand kept your hips in motion. "You feel that? Your body can't even help it. Every time I touch you, every time I give you something, you take it and you want more." A third strike—harder still, on the same spot as the first—and you made a sound that wasn't a word and ground down against her thigh hard and she caught you and kept you moving, the rhythm she'd set relentless and steady. "That's mine too. Every greedy, desperate part of you is mine." She rubbed the mark slowly, thoroughly, the sting radiating into warmth under her palm. "Say it."

"Yours," you gasped. "I'm yours, Natasha—"

"Yeah, you are." Her hand gripped your hip again and tilted you slightly, and the angle change made the friction hit your clit directly with every roll, so precise and deliberate that it forced a broken, continuous sound out of you that you couldn't moderate. "You're mine, and you knew that when you sat at that bar and smiled at him, you wanted me to come over and take you home and remind you of it." Her free hand moved up your side and pressed flat over the Russian on your ribs—her palm steady over the ink, over her own words written into your skin—and held it there. "Didn't you?"

"Yes," you said, ragged and completely sincere.

"I know." She pressed her palm harder against the words on your ribs. "I know you did. And here you are." Her eyes moved over you once more, all of it, everything she'd marked and bitten and written, taking inventory. "Here you are, exactly where you wanted to end up." 

Her voice shifted slightly, going private, the way it did when it was just the two of you and she forgot to hold back the part of her that was simply fond of you. 

"My greedy girl." She tilted your hips forward, pressed you against her thigh with more friction than you'd had yet. You sobbed with it and your rhythm went completely to pieces. "Come on. I want to watch you."

The build was steep now, urgent, all the accumulated tension from the bar and the walk home and the entryway and the sharpie and her fingers on your tongue converging into something that was right there—right there, close enough that every roll of your hips was chasing it. Natasha's hands guided and her eyes moved over the marks she'd made and her voice kept going, steady and certain: good girl, that's it, you feel so good losing it like this, look at you, mine, all of this is mine, you came home with me and there was never any question was there, no, because you're mine and you know it—

Her right hand came down on your ass again, and you sobbed aloud, grinding down against her thigh and chasing the edge with everything you had, your nails leaving marks in her shoulders, your whole body shaking with want.

"Natasha—" The word came out broken. "I'm going to—please, I need to—"

"I know," she said. Her hand moved from your hip to the small of your back and pressed you forward, changing the angle one final time, and the new pressure against your clit was so perfectly placed that you couldn't breathe for a full second. Her other hand came to your jaw, tipped your face down to hers, made you look at her from inches away. 

"Look at me," she said, her voice dropping low and very steady. "Right here. Eyes on me. Stay with me."

You looked at her. Her eyes were present and completely fixed on yours, holding you there with the same certainty she held everything she'd decided to keep, and there was something about being seen that completely—about having every part of you accounted for, looked at, held—that cracked something open in your chest even as everything else was cresting.

"Moya," she said. Soft and certain, just for the room. Mine.

Everything broke.

The orgasm came in a long rolling wave that moved through you from the inside out, your whole body shaking with it, Natasha's name leaving your mouth in pieces. Your thighs locked against her leg, your hands grabbing her shoulders, and she held you through every second of it—her hands firm and steady and grounding, her voice continuous in your ear, good girl, there you are, I've got you, that's it, mine, all mine, so good for me, stay with me, I've got you—talking you through every shudder until the wave finally ebbed and you went heavy and soft and boneless against her, your face dropping to the curve of her neck.

Her hands moved to your back. Long slow strokes from your shoulders to your hips and back, steady and unhurried, keeping you tethered to the room, to the bed, to her.

You stayed there for a while. Just breathing. The amber light, the warm sheets, the distant sound of the city through the window, the solid reality of her arms around you and her hands moving on your back and her heartbeat steady against your cheek. You let it all come back slowly, in pieces, the way it did after something that had taken everything from you and given it back rearranged.

"There she is," she said quietly, her lips pressed to your hair. "There you are."

She took care of you after, because she always did—damp cloth from the bathroom, brought back without ceremony, her hands gentle and methodical as she worked over your skin. You lay loose and boneless in the amber light and watched her face while she moved, the focused expression having softened into something that only surfaced in rooms like this one. Something that she didn't perform for anyone and that you'd come to understand was among the things she trusted you with most.

She was careful with every mark. The bites, she pressed the cloth to gently and then examined after, her eyes moving over each one like she was checking her work and finding it satisfactory. The ink she left entirely alone, tracing each piece of writing once with her fingertip as she passed, reading it again. 

When she finished she set the cloth aside, laying down beside you, and you went into the space of her arm without having to think about it—two years of that particular muscle memory, the shape of her so deeply familiar that your body found it the way it found other things it needed. She pulled the blanket up over you both and the room settled around you, safe and quiet.

Her fingers moved into your hair. Slow passes from your forehead back, steady and even, the rhythm of it grounding you further with every stroke, the last tension leaving your shoulders by increments until you were fully, completely soft.

She held you like that for a long time without speaking. The city made its distant sounds. The lamp threw its amber warmth across the ceiling, and the shadows in the corners of the room were familiar and kind, and Natasha's heartbeat was steady against your cheek, and there was nowhere else you could possibly want to be.

Her lips pressed to the top of your head and rested there, right where they belonged.

"Moya," she murmured into your hair, barely above a breath. It was the same word she'd said all night. She’d said it at the entryway, said it during, said it at the end, but it was different now, stripped of the performance of possession, distilled down to something smaller and more essential. It wasn't a claim. It was just true, the way her heartbeat was true, the way the weight of her arm around you was true, the way two years of this—of her and you and the particular life you'd built in this apartment with its familiar corner booth at a bar three blocks away—was true. Something that didn't need to be proved or written into skin. Something that simply existed between you like it always had and always would.

You pressed your lips to her collarbone and felt her exhale, slow and even, and felt her arm tighten just slightly around your shoulders.

Outside, the city went on doing what cities did. In here, there was just the amber dark and the weight of the blanket and Natasha's hand moving through your hair in its slow steady rhythm, like she had the entire rest of the night and had chosen exactly this.

The marks would last a few days. The bites would be purple by morning, would soften to green and yellow by the middle of the week, would fade entirely by the weekend. The sharpie was another matter—it would smear in the shower if you weren't careful, ghost at the edges, migrate slightly with time, but the ink would cling longer than the bruises if you were gentle with it. And you thought you might be gentle. You thought you might want to look down at your collarbone tomorrow morning and find N.R. there looking back at you. You thought you might want that for as long as you could possibly keep it.

"Next time," Natasha said, her voice quiet and edged with something that was trying to sound casual, "maybe I do this to you back there."

You lifted your head to look at her. Her eyes were half-closed, the lamplight soft on her face, the corner of her mouth curved with something that wasn't quite trying to be innocent but was giving it a go.

"You'd let me," she said, which was completely true and you both knew it.

You put your head back down on her chest and felt the quiet laugh move through her, safe and real, felt it rise and subside, felt the return of her hand in your hair and the steady rhythm of her breathing.

"Moya," she said again, softer still, and it sounded like the last thing before sleep—something said not because it needed saying but because it was simply what was true and she wanted to say it one more time.

"Yours," you said into her skin. 

The lamp held its amber warmth and the city kept its distance and Natasha's hand moved slow and easy through your hair. You fell asleep covered in her writing, held in her arms.

Right where you wanted to be, so maybe your plan had worked all along.