#splattywrites

This wasn't the first time this had happened.

It was always men, and it was always the ones who just didn't seem to get it. You liked to think you were a nice person—you genuinely tried to be, tried to lead with warmth and give people the benefit of the doubt—but maybe that was exactly the problem. Maybe the polite nod and the friendly smile read as something other than what it was, which was you being too kind to say what you actually meant, which was: please stop talking to me. Please take your cologne and your name-dropping and your incremental lean and redirect them toward literally any other person in this building.

Kate and Yelena had been gone for twenty-three minutes.

You'd clocked what they were up to the moment they'd both excused themselves to the bathroom at the same time, with the poorly concealed urgency of two people who had been eye-fucking each other across the table for the better part of an hour. You'd checked your phone with resignation, having seen this coming from the moment Yelena had suggested this particular bar—which had, you'd noted upon arrival, a single-occupancy bathroom that locked from the inside. You were happy for them. Genuinely, completely happy that they were in love and passionate about it in bar bathrooms on Friday nights. You were also alone now, your drink getting low, with a man standing approximately eight inches closer to you than he'd been when he first materialized at your elbow, and the gap was still shrinking.

He had been talking for a while now. You'd stopped absorbing the content of it around the five-minute mark, somewhere in the middle of his third celebrity name-drop, which you were fairly certain represented a one-time encounter he'd since promoted in his memory to a close personal friendship. Since then you'd been performing the minimum facial expressions required to sustain the impression of a conversation—a small nod here, a neutral sound there—turning your glass slowly on the bar and waiting for literally anything else to happen.

"—so at that point I just told him, look, I know more about this than you do—"

"Mm," you said.

"—and honestly the numbers backed me up completely—"

"Hm."

He shifted his weight, leaning further on the bar in a way that angled his whole body toward yours, and you noticed immediately. He had the confidence of someone who had never seriously entertained the possibility that this conversation might be going worse than he thought, not aggressive but something almost worse than aggressive, simply and completely certain of himself in a way that made your skin prickle. He'd had you at hello, if you were being honest with yourself. You had thought he was nice and this would simply be a casual conversation.  And then he'd opened his mouth, and here you were.

He leaned in slightly when he laughed at something he'd said, and his breath reached you, and you thought very privately that he could use a mint. Several, maybe. A whole pack and a lifestyle change.

"You know what I mean?" he said.

"Totally," you said, having retained nothing.

He smiled, encouraged—the wrong reaction on your part, you knew it the moment his posture opened up—and his eyes dropped to your mouth in a way he'd been doing periodically for the last ten minutes, a recurring check that had started to make the back of your neck prickle. He looked back up and seemed to think the eye contact was going well.

"So what's your sign?" he asked.

"Stop," you said, laughing it off because it was a little funny, like a stop sign. You were still trying to be nice.

He laughed too. "You’re a funny one. Can I buy you a drink?”

"I'm good," you said, lifting your current one to demonstrate.

"Come on," he said, with the smile of someone who had decided your no was a negotiating position rather than an answer. "Let me get you something. I know the bartender."

You looked at him steadily. "No, thank you."

He smiled again, wider, like your refusal was a move in a game rather than a conclusion, and you thought if you had a dime for every name he'd dropped tonight, for every thinly supported claim, for every moment of this conversation—you'd be somewhere considerably more pleasant than this bar stool. He said something else, something about a rooftop bar nearby, and you were doing the math on how bad it would actually be to just text her, whether that was the nuclear option or just the sensible one, when his hand settled at your hip.

He wasn’t aggressive about it, not trying to hurt you or restrain you. He genuinely thought this was a reasonable course of action based on the way he perceived the conversation to be going.

It wasn't.

You went very still, but he kept talking. You weren't hearing it anymore. You pulled out your phone, angled it away from him, and typed. You knew she’d be able to decipher the words being typed, so it didn’t worry you that you couldn’t quite see the entire keyboard as your thumb slid against it.

Bar n Clement. Kate and Ylena in bthroom. Man tlking to me 

The three dots appeared before you'd finished the sentence.

Are you okay?

He wont take th hint

On my way.

You locked your phone, tucked it away, and turned back to the man with the polite expression of someone who had just quietly solved the problem and was simply waiting for the solution to arrive.

"Sorry," you said. "You were saying?"

He was saying something about interest rates. You chose to sing the ABC’s in your head to pass the time.

(-)

You heard the motorcycle before the door opened.

It cut through everything—the music, the hum of conversation, the man who had now progressed to telling you about his apartment—and it didn't go to your ears so much as land somewhere lower, somewhere that didn't require conscious processing. A sound you'd learned to recognize the way you recognized her voice. Your body knew it before your brain had finished the sentence, some deep-wired thing that had developed over a year and a half of her arriving places and your nervous system treating it like a fixed point.

The door opened and she was moving before you'd fully located her in the room.

The leather jacket was the dark one, worn soft at the elbows and fitted to her like it had been made specifically for the geometry of her shoulders, which knowing Natasha it might well have been. Dark jeans, her boots, her hair down and longer than it had been last spring. She had all her ear piercings in, the small silver ones climbing the curve of her left ear, the simple ones in her lobes. When she was just herself, the version of herself that existed in the spaces between everything else, and you thought every time you saw her like this that it was your favorite version, which was saying something because you were partial to all of them.

She wasn't scanning the room. She already knew where you were. She'd known before she walked in.

Her eyes found you and she read the situation in the two seconds it took her to cross half the distance—the man at your side, the placement of his hand still at your hip, the careful neutral set of your face that she knew was not relaxed neutrality but managed neutrality, which were two different things and she had always been able to tell them apart. Something in her expression did a thing, like the physical look of a decision completing itself. She was already done deliberating before she reached you.

Natasha didn't look at him at all.

Her hand came to your jaw—warm, certain, the cool familiar weight of her rings—and she kissed you. You tasted coffee and underneath it the warmth that was just her, and you felt it move through you from the point of contact outward. Down your spine, into your fingertips, somewhere warm and low. The man ceased to be a factor you were tracking for several consecutive seconds.

Her thumb moved once across your cheekbone when she pulled back. Those green eyes, darker in the bar light, asked their question without asking it out loud.

You were fine. She already knew you were fine. She was checking anyway, because she always checked, because that was who she was underneath everything else.

The man had recalibrated. You could hear it in the way he broke the silence. "Okay, so—" his hand hadn't moved from your hip, and now his other arm was beginning to move, angling toward Natasha— "if you're both—I mean, I'm very open-minded—"

Natasha looked at his hand on your hip.

Then she looked at his face. The sequence of it was very controlled, very still, and you watched something happen to his expression in real time—the beginning of the understanding that he had fundamentally miscalculated something—and then his arm finished its motion, trying to loop around toward Natasha's shoulder.

She caught his wrist. One hand, smooth and immediate, and then she had his head and it met the bar with a sound that made the nearest tables go completely quiet. The efficiency of someone who had done this many times and saw no reason to perform it. He made a sound that was both startled and pained. She let him start to straighten and her knee found his stomach before he'd finished the motion, and the air went out of him entirely, and he folded. She stepped back and looked at him on the floor for a moment with the expression of someone completing a checklist, and then, almost as an afterthought, she placed one boot on his crotch and applied just enough weight to make her feelings on the matter clear.

She held it for a moment. Then she stepped off when she was satisfied.

The bar was very quiet.

Natasha reached past you for a cocktail napkin. She wiped her hands—methodical, unhurried, the way she did most things—and set it down. She looked at her hands briefly, checking, and then looked at you with an expression that had loosened around the edges, the loosening that happened when the thing she'd been carrying since your text had been handled and set down.

"Ready?" she said.

You looked at the floor. You looked at her. "We should probably—"

"No," she said.

"But—"

"No." Her hand found the small of your back, steady and familiar through your shirt, and she steered you toward the door with the calm certainty of someone who had already closed the chapter.

Outside, the night air was cool and smelled like the city, and the motorcycle sat at the curb where she'd left it, and Natasha was already pulling the spare helmet free and holding it out.

You took it and stood with it in your hands, looking at her in the low light from the bar window—hair loose around her shoulders, rings catching the light, the leather jacket, the small silver piercings along her ear—and felt the thing that had been sitting warm in your stomach since the sound of the engine on Clement Street.

"Nat."

She raised an eyebrow.

“Aren’t you—”

"He had it coming," she interrupted. The corner of her mouth twitched into her familiar smirk.

The laugh arrived before you could do anything about it. "Okay," you said. "Okay. But are we—should we be worried about—"

"Get on the bike, baby," she said.

You didn’t argue with that tone. She swung on in front of you with the easy automatic grace of someone who had been doing this for decades, and you wrapped your arms around her waist and pressed your face between her shoulder blades and felt the warmth of her through the leather, the solid reality of her back against your chest. The engine came alive beneath you both—low and certain, a sound you felt in your sternum—and just before the helmet went on, she paused.

"The cops know better by now," she said.

You didn’t question it.

(-)

Natasha kept her eyes on the road and let the rhythm of the bike work through her the way it always did, stripping things down to their simplest version.

She'd been moving before she'd finished your text. She had just grabbed her jacket and her keys without deliberation. The whole ride over she'd been running the numbers on how long you'd been sitting there being polite while some man who didn't deserve a minute of your time had taken twenty-four of them, and by the time she'd walked through that door she'd already decided.

She hadn't been angry, exactly. Anger was loud and imprecise and she'd never found much use for it. What she'd been was certain, in the way she was certain about things that mattered to her—clear-eyed and calm and entirely, completely sure of what was going to happen next.

You pressed closer against her back through a long curve and she felt your arms tighten at her waist and one hand press flat against her stomach briefly, just a moment of contact, and it moved through her chest and settled there warm in a way she'd stopped trying to catalog because the catalog had gotten too long.

Mine, something in her said, the way it always said it. Simple and blunt and not interested in being argued with.

Yeah, she told it. I know.

(-)

The apartment was quiet when you got in, smelling like home, and Liho appeared from the hallway within seconds—black cat, hazel eyes. She wound around Natasha's ankles with focused thoroughness and then, after visible deliberation, extended the same courtesy to you.

"Hi, Liho," you said. “Have you behaved?”

Liho walked away, which was the typical response you got.

Natasha hung up the leather jacket and turned, finding you watching her with an expression she recognized—that look, the one you had when you were feeling something large and hadn't decided what to do with it yet. She crossed the room, taking your face in her hands and kissing you. You got your hands into the front of her shirt, and she walked you toward the bedroom without breaking the kiss.

She sat you on the edge of the bed and stood in front of you in the lamplight and just looked at you for a moment, really looked, the way she let herself look in rooms like this one when there was no performance required of her. She'd seen you in lamplight hundreds of times by now, in this room and in rooms that weren't this room, and she should have been past the part where the sight of you did something to her chest. She wasn't past it. She suspected she never would be.

She reached for her own shirt first and pulled it over her head, set it aside, stood there in the unselfconscious way she'd arrived at gradually over years—the scars, the map of everything she'd survived written into her skin, none of it something she needed to manage or explain. You looked at her the way you always looked at her and she felt it land in the place it always landed, which was the place she'd never thought to armor because she hadn't known anyone would aim there.

She reached for you, undressing you with careful hands, each piece of clothing removed deliberately, her eyes following what her hands uncovered with the focused attention she gave to things she found worth her full care. By the time she pressed you back against the pillows there was warmth in her chest alongside everything else, something she'd stopped trying to name because naming it hadn't ever done justice to it. She settled over you and looked at your face again in the lamplight.

She kissed your throat first, finding the spot below your ear that she'd mapped the very first time and committed to memory because your breath changed there without fail. She let herself stay there for a while because she wanted to, her mouth warm against your pulse point, feeling your heartbeat quicken under her lips while her hands moved down your sides in long, slow strokes. She found your breast and her thumb traced circles against it until you arched into her hand, and she kept the pace deliberate, not rushing toward anything, letting the warmth build at whatever pace it wanted to build.

She kissed down your body after—your collarbone, the center of your chest, the soft curve of your ribs—pressing her lips to each place with intention, spending time where your breathing changed. She found the birthmark at your hip and pressed her mouth there, acknowledging it, and felt the small sound you made above her move through her chest. She kissed along the inside of your hip where the skin was thin and sensitive and felt you shift against the mattress, and she took her time there too, not because she was teasing but because she was here and she wanted to be here, wanted every part of this the way she'd wanted it since the first time she'd understood that she wasn't going to stop wanting it.

She pushed your thighs apart gently and settled between them, looking up at you with dark eyes that seemed to explain everything she wanted to do to you.

She slid her hand up the inside of your thigh and found you through your underwear and pressed, and the sound she made at what she felt there was involuntary and entirely sincere—quiet and satisfied, something low in her pulling tight in response. She pressed again, feeling the soaked fabric give, and felt your hips tilt toward her hand before you'd decided to move them.

"Christ," she said softly, almost to herself. She rubbed slow circles against your cunt through the fabric, learning the pressure that made your thighs tremble, and listened to the sounds you were making above her get less managed. "You're soaked through. All of this is for me?"

“Natasha—please—"

"I know,” she said, grinning at you.

She hooked her fingers into your underwear and drew them down and off in one smooth motion, and then her hand was back and there was nothing between her and you. She slid through your folds slowly, thoroughly, the way she always started—learning you again even though she already knew every part of you. She pressed two fingers to your entrance and felt you clench toward them and held them there, not pushing in yet, just letting you feel the promise of it.

"You did a good job,” she said. “Texting me tonight. I hate that you had to deal with that.”

"Natasha," you said. "Please—can you just—”

She pushed inside, both fingers deep and immediate, your back coming off the mattress before she'd finished the motion. She curled them on the first stroke, finding the right place with the accuracy of someone who had learned you completely, and the sensation of that curl dragging against your inner walls made you make a sound that filled the room entirely. She held that angle and started to move—not slow, because tonight wasn't a slow night, because she could feel how wound up you were and had been since the bar—purposeful and steady, the curl on every stroke deliberate, her thumb finding your clit and pressing in circles that matched her rhythm. Her free hand spread flat across your lower stomach and she felt the movement of her fingers from the outside and you clenching around her.

"Natasha—" Your voice was already broken at the edges. "I'm already—I'm going to—"

"Not yet." She eased the pressure by a fraction, held you right at the edge with the particular patience of someone who found the edge interesting. "You can wait."

"I really—I genuinely—Nat—please—"

"You can," she said, against your hip. "You're going to be so good about it." Her fingers pressed deeper and you made a sound that wasn't a word. "Aren't you?”

"Yes—yes, please—I'll wait—"

"Good girl." She felt you clench hard at that, the immediate response you always had, and the pull in her stomach went sharp and low. She added a third finger gradually, feeling you stretch around them, heard the sound you made—different from the others, fuller—and held there for a long moment, just letting you feel it, before she began to move again. The fullness of all three, the curl on every stroke, her thumb working your clit without mercy,  was intoxicatingly intense and you were gripping the sheets in both fists, making sounds that had moved well past language.

She built it and held it and built it and held it—watching your face the whole time, reading every shift and sound and the way your expression kept cresting toward something and falling back—and when she finally pressed her thumb hard over your clit and curled her fingers one final time and said "okay", the orgasm that broke over you came from somewhere compressed and suddenly released, rolling through you in long deep waves. Your back came fully off the mattress, your thighs locked around her hand, and she worked you through every second of it without stopping until you were trembling and pulling weakly at her wrist.

She slid free, looking at her hand for a moment. Then she started moving down your body.

Her lips at your ribs, your stomach, the soft skin below your navel, each place acknowledged with the warm press of her mouth. She found the mark she'd left at your hip and pressed her mouth there briefly, and then settled between your thighs and looked up at you.

She let the spit gather slow in her mouth and released it—warm and deliberate, landing directly on your cunt—and the sound you made was completely undignified and she felt a low pull of satisfaction move through her at it before she lowered her head.

The first press of her tongue was thorough and exploratory, moving through your folds like she was relearning something she already knew. She didn't go to your clit first. She mapped the rest of you with slow attention, the taste of you moving through her, and you found her hair with one hand and held on without directing. Her tongue moved and she heard every sound you made in response.

Then her hands slid under your thighs and pushed them wide.

She was strong, and the experience of her using that strength to hold your thighs open and simply keep them there—while your body tried instinctively to close them against the overwhelm and found that it couldn't, that she was simply holding you where she wanted you without apparent effort—registered in a category entirely its own. She held you wide and lowered her mouth to your clit and the sound you made was loud enough that she was briefly aware of Liho somewhere in the apartment making a mildly concerned noise, and she didn't slow down at all.

She worked your clit with focused attention, in tight circles that varied just enough to keep your whole body chasing, pressure building and redirecting, her arms locked around your thighs. Then she sealed her lips around it and sucked once, brief and precise, and the sound you made filled the room completely.

She pressed the flat of her tongue against you and held. She didn't move and your hand in her hair was not gentle anymore and she didn’t care. She held your thighs wide and stayed exactly where she was, your back coming fully off the mattress again. The orgasm arrived enormous and deep, rolling through you in long waves that started in your chest and moved outward, and she stayed through every second of it—licking you through each wave, easing gradually as the oversensitivity built—until you were trembling and making sounds that were nearly the word stop.

She lifted her head, looking at you. You were flushed, your chest heaving, barely coherent—exactly what she loved seeing. She crawled up your body again, strong biceps supporting her weight over you. She cocked her head to the side, an idea visibly forming on her face.

"Say ahh," she said, her voice very close to a coo.

Your brain processed that slowly and opened your mouth.

She grinned in satisfaction, leaning over you and letting the spit gather and fall from her lips to your tongue in one slow, warm drip. You felt it land on your tongue, the weight of your taste left in her mouth and the thought of what had just happened at the same time, and then she kissed you—deep and slow, her tongue moving against yours. You barely kept up, your body still reacting to the act in ways you didn’t know how to explain. She pulled back and looked at you for a long moment with that open expression, the one that only surfaced in rooms like this one, and then she reached for the nightstand.

She got the harness on with practiced efficiency, no ceremony, the way she approached everything she'd already decided. She checked the reservoir carefully, ran her thumb along it, and came back between your thighs and looked down at you in the lamplight.

"Still with me?" she asked.

You made a sound that was approximately yes.

"Good." She settled her weight, lining the strap up against your entrance, and she pressed forward slowly, watching your face the entire time. She felt you stretch around the strap as she pushed inside, the ridging catching at your entrance and dragging along your inner walls on the way in, each ridge distinct and registering clearly in your oversensitized body. 

Once she bottomed out inside of you, she held there for a long moment—both of you breathing, the strap fully seated, the base of the harness against her clit—and she let you feel the fullness of it, the warmth of what was already inside you, before she started to move.

The rhythm she built was deep and deliberate, long strokes that gave you everything on every push forward, the ridging dragging back along your inner walls on every pull. She felt the base grinding against her clit on each stroke and the accumulation of it was something she had to focus through, the pleasure building steadily alongside yours. At the deepest point the strap filled you completely and she held there on each stroke for a half-beat longer than necessary just to feel it, just to hear the sound you made at the fullness of it.

"You feel incredible," she said in a low tone, and she meant it completely. "So perfect. Taking me so well." She moved deeper and you made a sound that went straight through her. "Mine. You understand that? All of this is mine."

"Yes—" Not really a word.

"Good—fuck—good girl." She kept the rhythm steady and deep, her breathing going less even with each stroke, the base working against her. The sounds you were making were just sounds, incoherent and unmanaged, filling the quiet apartment. She groaned softly on a particularly deep stroke, the sensation of the base against her clit sharp and exact, and she felt your nails in her back at the sound.

Natasha was shaking slightly with the effort of maintaining herself through it, the base relentless, and she pressed the mechanism at the bottom of each deep stroke, small measured releases, and felt more fake cum filling you each time. Every time she bottomed out she could feel it, the increasing warmth and fullness of you around the strap. 

She pulled out and grabbed your hips and flipped you, and before you'd finished registering the position change she pushed back inside from behind. The angle was entirely different—deeper, more direct—and you dropped onto your forearms with a sound that filled the room. She grabbed a handful of your hair, gentle enough not to hurt, tilting your head back slightly, and she felt you push back toward her, your body asking for more before you could have formed the words.

She gave it to you. Of course she did.

She moved fast from here, the rhythm she'd been managing coming loose, her hips striking yours with a sound she felt in her sternum. She was groaning on the deep strokes—the base against her clit, the feeling of being inside you, the sounds you were making below her all layering into something she was losing the edges of.

Her hand came down on your ass—clean and sharp—and she felt you clench hard around the strap at the impact and she hissed through her teeth and smoothed her palm over the heat before doing it again, lower. You made a sound that was not a word and she groaned at it and reached around to find your clit with her fingers.

"Come on," she breathed. "Give it to me. You're so—god—" Her rhythm stuttered slightly and it took her longer than either of you expected to steady it. "So perfect. Mine. Say it."

"Yours—" Not quite a word. "Yours—please—"

She felt you clenching toward another orgasm and moved harder and you came apart. She groaned through it with you and then pulled you upright—her arm hauling you back against her chest, the strap still buried inside you, your back against her front. She held you there with one arm across your chest and her hand splayed across your stomach, and you grabbed her forearm with both hands and held on.

She rolled her hips slow and deep and from this angle the strap hit somewhere new and the sound you made against her throat was broken and helpless. You both loved it.

"I've always protected you," she said, into your ear. Low and certain, nothing performed in it, just true—the way the truest things came out of her, plainly, like stating something decided long ago. "I'll always protect you. You know that."

It was said in desperation, like she needed you to know. She needed you to understand it. You were hers, and she would never let anyone harm you. She’d slam every man who annoyed you into a bar, and she would break any law she needed to, if it meant you were safe and happy.

"You're mine," she said. "So fucking mine." Her hips thrusted deeper and you sobbed. "And you're going to feel that. Right now. You're going to feel exactly who you belong to."

You came completely apart.

She held you through every wave and then eased you down—one hand gentle between your shoulder blades, pressing you forward until your face was in the pillow and your hips were up—and she moved with everything she had left. Her arms were trembling on either side of you with the sustained effort of it, the base of the harness grinding against her clit on every stroke, and her groans were real and uncontrolled as she approached her own orgasm. Each thrust brought her close, and it was the way you arched into her even in your current fucked-out state that allowed her to fall over the edge.

She pushed deep and held there, pressing the mechanism for the last time, giving you the full release. Her whole body was shuddering, her breaths uneven through her parted lips, beads of sweat forming on her brow.

Natasha’s forehead dropped to the back of your shoulder, both of you breathing in the quiet apartment. When she could move without falling on top of you, she pulled out slowly, shushing you softly when you whined.

She reached between your thighs after removing the strap—gentle now, entirely gentle, the shift from one thing to this happening without a gap or an announcement, just a change in temperature—and felt where the fake cum had begun to slip out. She pressed it back in slowly, two fingers careful and deliberate. You made a small sound, and she kept going, until she was satisfied.

"There," she said softly. Maybe it was to you. Maybe to herself. Maybe just to the room.

She cleaned you up with a warm cloth from the bathroom—careful with every mark, her lips pressing briefly and without comment to the ones at your hips—and got you into the sheets with the efficient tenderness she brought to this part every time. She lay down beside you, and you turned into her immediately. She let you, her arm coming around your back, her chin at the top of your head. Her fingers began their slow arcs along your spine.

You lay there in the warmth of her and felt your heart rate making its slow return to something resembling normal. The city outside did whatever cities did, and in here there was just the lamplight and both of you breathing.

The mattress dipped, and Natasha smiled into your skin.

Liho landed with the authority of a cat executing a decision that didn't require anyone's input. She walked the full length of the bed, assessed the situation with hazel eyes that missed nothing, turned in a precise circle, and settled against Natasha's side. Her small warm weight pressed against you both. 

One small black paw extended and came to rest on your neck, and you didn't move it.

Natasha's hand migrated from your back to Liho's fur and then back, the same slow rhythm for both without any apparent awareness that she was doing it, and you felt that somewhere in your chest in a way that didn't need explaining. The tenderness of being included in the same motion as something else she loved and would never fully admit to loving.

A long quiet settled. Liho purred. Your eyes were closed.

"She’s beautiful, isn’t she?" Natasha mused quietly to Liho, the way she talked to Liho when she thought you were asleep. 

Liho purred once, an agreement.

"There was a man," Natasha said, with the serenity of someone reporting mild weather. "He had his hand on her hip." The hand in your hair stilled briefly. Then resumed. "He made a miscalculation."

Liho made a small sound, and Natasha interpreted it as a knowing laugh.

"She's mine," Natasha said, the way she said things she had decided were simply true and required no further support. "And I’m glad she trusts me with that.”

Liho flexed her small paw against your neck.

"Think I’ve been softened up," Natasha laughed, sighing at the end as she stared at the ceiling for a few moments before her eyes came back down to Liho. “Did you ever expect that?”

Liho purred again. Natasha could’ve sworn the cat said “yes, I did”.

Natasha laughed once again, closing her eyes and burying her face in your neck. You smelled like yourself, but you had her scent as well, and that comforted her in a way nothing else could.

Liho was the last to fall asleep, settled against both of you like she knew it was right where she belonged. 

And somewhere, probably at home with his golden doodle named “Gracie”, the man from the bar held a bag of frozen peas to his crotch and whimpered with every breath he took.

He still probably didn’t take the hint.

The black rope was Wanda's work, and she was proud of it.

She ran her fingers along the knot at your wrists first. Pressed her thumb along the inside of each loop, checking the tension, making sure the rope held without cutting. It was good rope—thick and smooth, expensive, the kind that kept its shape. Several loops over your crossed wrists. A knot placed exactly where you couldn't reach it. You'd tested that twice. She'd watched you test it both times with the same expression: patient, faintly amused, entirely unsurprised.

She moved to your ankles.

You were on your knees on the bed with your face turned into the pillow. Your ankles were tied to your thighs—folded up and held there, the black rope looped several times over each ankle and up around each thigh. No way to extend your legs. No way to straighten. No way to do anything with your lower body except stay exactly as she'd arranged you.

She checked the ankle knots the same way she'd checked your wrists. Thumb along the inside. A small adjustment to the right one. Then she ran both palms up the backs of your thighs, feeling the tension of the rope, feeling the warmth of your skin under her hands. She took her time with this part. She always took her time with this part.

"Good," she said to herself, satisfied.

She moved up the bed. Her fingers found the rope at your wrists again and she checked it one more time—not because she doubted her work, but because she liked doing it. Liked the feel of it. Liked knowing it was right. Her rings grazed your forearms as she moved and the metal was cool against your skin. She pressed her thumb once more along the inside of the loop.

Perfect.

The gag came last. A clean fold of rope between your teeth, tied at the back of your head with careful hands. Not tight enough to hurt. Just enough to take your words away completely. You'd made a sound when she put it in place—something between protest and not-protest—and she'd smoothed your hair back from your face and looked at you for one long moment. Dark eyes. The smear of her lipstick already at the corner of her mouth from earlier.

She hadn't said anything. She'd just looked, and she’d been satisfied by what she saw.

Now all you had were sounds.

Wanda sat back on her heels and looked at what she'd made.

She was in her black bra and panties, her dark hair loose in waves around her face. The room was warm and she'd worked up a heat with the ropes—the patient effort of it—and some of her hair was sticking to her cheeks, pressed against her skin. Her eyeliner was sharp at the outer corners. Her dark lipstick was smeared at the corners of her mouth and transferred in dark streaks across your back and shoulders from every time she'd pressed her lips to your skin before the ropes went on. The marks ran from your shoulder blades down toward your spine. She'd made them deliberately. She hadn't been careful and she wasn't sorry.

The pink wand vibrator was tied to your inner thigh.

She'd angled it up and held it in place with the black rope, the head pressed directly against your clit. Your thighs were bound apart by the configuration. No way to press them together, no way to shift the wand's angle or ease its contact. It was tied there. Running. And there was nothing inside your cunt—nothing at all—and Wanda had been watching the way you kept clenching around nothing with an attention that had not wavered once.

She looked at you for a long moment. Taking inventory of everything she'd made. The rope. The wand. The lipstick on your back. Your hands grasping at nothing behind you.

Then she pressed her lips to the center of your back.

Her dark lipstick dragged as she moved down—she wasn't being careful, she'd decided hours ago not to be careful—and she kissed slowly down your spine. Warm mouth against warm skin, deliberate pressure at each vertebra, leaving dark marks in her wake. You shivered. She felt it against her lips and kept going. She kissed to the small of your back and stayed there for a moment, her mouth resting against your skin, feeling the tension held in the muscles beneath.

She moved lower.

She kissed the top of your right asscheek—pale and unmarked, untouched yet—and she did it gently. Barely any pressure at all. The softest possible contact.

You jerked.

A full-body flinch, your hips driving forward with nowhere to go, a muffled cry through the gag that had real shock in it. She lifted her mouth and looked at the dark smear of lipstick she'd left. She looked at it for a moment.

She smiled.

"Oh," she said softly. "Interesting."

She did it again. Same spot. Same gentle press of her lips.

You jerked harder—your hands pulling at the ropes, your back arching off the pillow—and the muffled sound through the gag was higher this time, more desperate, the sound of someone whose body was making decisions without consulting them. The wand shifted fractionally with the movement and you made another sound entirely.

Wanda sat back and looked at you with dark, delighted eyes.

"You are very sensitive," she said pleasantly. "We have barely started and you are already—" She tilted her head, watching your hips make their small involuntary movements. "Like this."

She moved her lips to your other cheek. The same barely-there pressure.

You flinched hard. She felt it and she felt the clench of your cunt around nothing and she watched both happen with the focused attention of someone cataloguing something for future use.

"I am going to enjoy tonight very much," she said. To herself, mainly, as a simple statement of fact.

She sat back and brought her palm down on your left asscheek.

The crack of it filled the room. You cried out through the gag—the sound going up and up—and your hips snapped forward, the wand catching at the new angle, and you produced a second sound that was entirely different from the first. She pressed her palm flat over the heat she'd made. Held it there, feeling the warmth bloom under her hand.

"You clenched," she said. She sounded like she'd confirmed something she'd been wondering about. Her palm rubbed a slow circle. "Every time I do that. Did you know?" Her rings left cool impressions against the heat. "Probably not. You are a little occupied."

She pressed her lips to the spot she'd just struck. She was gentle, tender and loving, and she adored how she could feel you jerk violently at the contrast. The hum she let out was entirely satisfaction.

"Good," she said against your skin. Then she sat back up and brought her palm down on the right side.

Your back arched hard. The rope at your wrists pulled taut. Your fingers spread wide grasping at nothing behind your back and found nothing and kept grasping anyway. She rubbed slow circles over the right cheek, her palm warm and thorough, and then she kissed that spot too—her lips soft against the heat—and felt you try to pull away from the gentleness of it with the same desperation you'd tried to pull away from the impact.

She laughed.

A real laugh, brief and bright, surprised out of her. 

"You cannot decide," she said, delighted. "The hit or the kiss—you do not know which is worse." She ran her palm over both cheeks, feeling the warmth. "I find that very funny. And very useful."

She kept going.

She was methodical, returning to spots that made you make the sounds she liked best. She'd bring her palm down and then immediately follow it with her lips, soft against the heat, and watch you jerk and strain at the contrast. The crease where your thigh met your ass. The tenderest part of your left cheek. She catalogued everything. She was completely unhurried about all of it, stopping occasionally to run her palms over the heat she'd made, occasionally pressing her mouth to your spine above your ass where you were unmarked and feeling you shudder.

"You are turning such a pretty color," she observed at one point, looking at both cheeks with genuine appreciation. "Both sides." She ran her thumb lightly across the left one and felt you clench. "I like this very much. I want to remember this."

She brought her palm down harder—harder than any of the ones before, right at the tenderest spot—and you screamed through the gag, muffled and wrecked. She smoothed her palm over the heat immediately, pressing it in, and felt you tremble under her hand.

"There," she said, satisfied. "There it is."

She placed both hands at your hips.

Both palms, firm, fingers wrapping around the curves of your hipbones. She held you completely still.

You immediately tried to move.

She felt your whole body strain against her grip—your hips pushing forward and back, trying to find any angle with the wand, some relief or more or anything at all—and she held on without giving you any of it. Immovable, without mercy. Her thumbs pressed into the muscle of your hips and she felt every futile push your body made against her hands.

"Oh," she said, like she'd discovered something wonderful.

She could feel everything from here. Every tiny movement against her grip. The strain of your thighs against the ropes. The way your hips kept pushing and finding nothing and pushing again. Her thumbs moved slowly, pressing in, feeling the effort underneath them—the continuous, futile effort of a body that could not stop trying even when trying got it nowhere.

"You cannot stop," she said softly. "Even when you want to." Your hips drove against her grip and she held steady. "Your body has stopped listening to you." Her thumbs pressed in deeper. "It is just asking. Over and over." She watched you clench around nothing again. She felt it from outside your body through the tension of your thighs. "And there is nothing there." A pause. "There will not be anything there until I decide."

She held you there for a long time.

She held you against the wand and felt your body fight her grip, and she talked to you in that low warm voice. She told you what she was watching. She told you that she could feel the clench of you from outside your body and that she found it beautiful. She told you that you were being very good.

She meant all of it.

You started crying and didn’t even realize it.

Your eyes filled, spilling over and soaking into the pillow. A sob came through the gag that was completely real and completely unmanaged, and you didn't have anything left to stop it with.

Wanda felt the change move through you under her hands. The sob moving through your body. The shudder of it.

She released your hips, moving off the bed. You heard her cross the room. You heard her pause. Then she came back and the mattress shifted and she settled somewhere behind you at the foot of the bed.

You knew the sound of her bra coming off. You knew it well by now. The soft snap of the clasp. The shifting as it caught on her pierced nipples. You knew those sounds. And you knew the sound of her panties being pulled down her thighs slowly, teasing you even though you couldn’t even see.

You heard an exhale—long and slow—and the quality of it was different from anything she'd made all evening. Something turned inward. Something that was for herself.

"I want you to hear this," Wanda said. Her voice had dropped a register. Warm in a different way now—the warmth of something she'd stopped managing. "I want you to hear exactly what you have done to me tonight."

You sobbed into the pillow again, the relentless buzzing of the vibrator on your clit driving you close to orgasm but not letting you get it. You realized that the only thing you could do was listen, and that must’ve been her plan all along.

Her hands moved over her own skin. You heard the sound of her palms against herself, the quiet friction, and then the small catch in her breath when she found what she was looking for. Her breasts first. Her hands moving over them, her rings against her own warmth, and then the sharp small sound she made when she found her right nipple—the silver barbell—and rolled it between her fingers.

She made that sound twice. Let you hear it both times.

"So sensitive," she murmured. "They have been like this since before the ropes." Her breathing was already slightly unsteady. "I kept thinking about this while I was tying you. About exactly this." Her thumb moved over the piercing again and she moaned, biting her lip. "Having you here. Like this."

One hand moved lower.

The slick sound of it reached you. Unmistakable. A soft sound as her fingers found her clit and she inhaled sharply.

"Bože," she breathed. God. Low and unbidden.

She held there for a moment. Then her fingers began to move.

"I am so wet," she said. The words came out slightly uneven now—the effort of talking while her fingers worked. "I have been wet since I put the gag in. Since I heard the sound you made." Her fingers worked slow circles and the sound she made had you crying again, your body desperate for anything. "That sound."

She touched her piercing again with her free hand. The sharp inhale. A curse in Sokovian, soft and fervent.

“Fuck,” she breathed out, building her rhythm.

"I keep looking at your back," she said, between shorter breaths. "All my lipstick on you. I did that." Her fingers moved and she made another sound, less managed. "And your ass—" A breath. "Both sides. So red." The slick sound of her hand reaching you clearly from the foot of the bed. "You will feel it tomorrow. Every time you sit. And you will think of tonight. You will think of me. You will—fuck—”

She stopped talking because she didn't have breath for words anymore.

What came through was just sound. The sound of her fingers and her breathing losing their shape together. Small sounds that were entirely hers and entirely unperformed. The rhythm of her hand getting faster. A curse in Sokovian, followed by English, and then everything ragged.

"Ah—"

She shuddered through it quietly. You knew she had cum, could hear her start to settle. 

The room held her silence, just the sound of your cries and the vibrator. 

She came around the side of the bed, phone in hand, and she looked at you—at your face, still turned into the pillow, tear tracks drying on your cheeks, rope gag at your mouth, eyes red—and something warm and deeply satisfied moved across her face.

"I need to remember this," she said.

She crouched beside the bed and brought the phone to your face. She looked at you through the screen and then at you directly and then at the screen again.

"Look at me," she said.

Somehow, you managed to lift your head and look at her. How you did this despite the constant stimulation on your clit and the desperation your body was barely handling, you didn’t have the capacity to question.

The shutter clicked. Of course she had the sound turned up. Just another way for her to let you know she was in control.

She took several of your face—close, the tear tracks and the gag and the wrecked expression—then pulled back for a wider shot. She moved behind you and documented your back: the lipstick marks down your spine, the shape of them, how far they went. She took a close-up of your reddened ass that made her make a quiet sound of satisfaction when she looked at it on the screen. Then she crouched at the foot of the bed.

She took her time here.

She photographed the wand tied against your thigh, the head of it against your clit, the way your thighs were bound apart by the black rope. She photographed the slick that had gathered on your inner thighs. She photographed the way your cunt kept clenching around nothing while the wand ran.

"Beautiful," she said quietly, looking at the screen. "Absolutely beautiful."

She stood and came back to your face.

"Smile," she said, her voice lilted like a song.

A sound came through the gag that was not a smile.

"I know," she said, conversationally. "You are very busy.” She patted your cheek affectionately. “Smile anyway."

She took the picture, looking at it for a long moment. Then she set the phone aside and reached up and untied the gag, drawing the rope carefully from your mouth. She worked the knots at your ankles next, easing your legs flat, running her palms up and down your calves with steady pressure. Your wrists last, the knot releasing, and she brought your arms slowly around to your front and rubbed warmth back into them.

She turned you over.

One hand at your shoulder, one at your hip, and you were on your back looking up at her. She was kneeling over you—fully bare now, her dark hair falling around her face, rings on every finger, the smeared lipstick—and she looked down at your face with an expression that was open in a way she didn't often allow herself to be open.

She reached out and touched your cheek.

Her thumb moved under your eye, along the track a tear had made. She looked at what was on her thumb. Then she leaned down and put her tongue to your cheek and licked—slow, the flat of her tongue dragging from your jaw to the corner of your eye—and when she pulled back the sound she made was low and quiet.

She looked at your face. At what she'd reduced you to.

"Perfect," she breathed.

She sat with that for a moment. Then her hand moved to your inner thigh, adjusting the vibrator.

Your whole body went rigid.

"Wanda—" Your voice was barely a sound. Raw. "Please—I'm done—I can't—"

She looked at you, tilting her head.

"Are you?" She asked softly. She made a cooing noise, something sympathetic, but she pressed her palm flat against your cunt without any care for how you cried again.

The full warm weight of her hand. You were soaked and swollen, impossibly sensitive. She held her palm there and felt you against it—felt the heat of you, felt how wet you were, felt you clench against nothing under her hand.

She leaned down, her lips finding your ear. Her hair fell cool against your jaw. Her voice, when she spoke, was a whisper.

"We are just getting started, darling."

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.

The thing about Avengers meetings was that they were almost always unnecessary.

Natasha had sat through approximately seven hundred of these things over the years—that was a conservative estimate, but probably accurate—and maybe ten percent of them had actually required everyone to be physically present. The rest could have been emails. Or texts. Or literally anything that didn't involve gathering Earth's Mightiest Heroes in a conference room for two hours to discuss things like "protocol updates" and "equipment inventory" and "quarterly budget reviews."

Today's meeting was shaping up to be a particularly egregious waste of time.

They were forty-three minutes in, and Tony and Steve had already derailed the agenda four times to argue about... something. Natasha had honestly stopped paying attention around minute fifteen. Something about shield storage protocols? Or was it the new quinjet maintenance schedule? She'd lost the thread entirely when Tony had made a sarcastic comment about "Captain America's thoughts on proper hangar organization," and Steve had taken the bait like he always did, that stubborn set to his jaw that meant he was digging in for a long argument.

Now they were going in circles while everyone else looked progressively more dead inside.

Sam was scrolling through his phone under the table, not even pretending to pay attention anymore. Bruce was doodling something in his notebook—looked like molecular diagrams, because of course Bruce would use boring meetings to work through actual science problems. Clint had that thousand-yard stare that meant he was mentally somewhere else entirely, probably thinking about his farm or his kids or literally anything more interesting than hangar organization protocols.

Natasha was sitting in her usual seat at the conference table—the one with a clear view of both exits and her back to a wall, because old habits died hard—directly across from Wanda. Her wife looked about as thrilled as Natasha felt, slouched slightly in her chair with her chin propped on one hand, watching Tony and Steve go back and forth with the glazed expression of someone who'd mentally checked out thirty minutes ago.

At least they were suffering together. Small mercies.

Natasha pulled out her phone under the table, intending to at least get some work done while trapped in this purgatory. Maybe she could respond to those SHIELD emails that had been piling up, or review the mission report from last week that was due tomorrow, or literally anything productive—

She felt it immediately.

A gentle pressure between her legs. Subtle, barely there, but unmistakable. Like phantom fingers tracing along the seam of her jeans, a whisper of sensation that made her breath catch and her spine straighten involuntarily.

Natasha's eyes snapped up to Wanda.

Her wife wasn't looking at her. She was still watching Tony and Steve argue, her expression unchanged—bored and slightly annoyed, like everyone else at the table. But as Natasha stared at her, the afternoon light from the window shifted slightly, and for just a moment Natasha caught the faint red glow in Wanda's eyes. That telltale sign of magic at work.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Wanda's lips curved into the tiniest smile, barely perceptible to anyone who wasn't looking for it. And the pressure between Natasha's legs increased slightly—still subtle, still just a tease, but definitely, unmistakably intentional.

Natasha focused her thoughts the way she'd been trained to over years of practice, directing them clearly and deliberately at Wanda. 

“Wanda. We're in a meeting.”

A moment later, Wanda's voice filled her head—warm, amused, with that particular playful tone that meant Natasha was in serious trouble. “I know. A very boring meeting. I'm entertaining myself.”

“By torturing me?”

“By entertaining both of us.” The pressure shifted, became more focused, tracing a deliberate line up the inside of Natasha's thigh. “You're bored too. Don't pretend you're not.”

Natasha was bored. Had been actively dying of boredom for the last forty-three minutes while Tony and Steve argued about absolutely nothing of consequence. But there was a significant difference between being bored and having your wife use magic to tease you under the table in front of the entire team.

“Someone's going to notice,” Natasha thought at her, trying desperately to keep her expression neutral even as Wanda's magic traced another slow, deliberate line up her inner thigh.

“No one ever notices.” Wanda finally looked at her directly, and the heat in her eyes made Natasha's stomach flip. “They're all too busy arguing about absolutely nothing. We could probably fuck on this table and Steve wouldn't notice until we knocked over his water glass.”

“Wanda—”

“Relax, Nat.” The pressure increased again, and Natasha had to physically fight the urge to shift in her seat. “I'll be gentle. Mostly.”

That "mostly" was not even remotely reassuring.

Natasha tried to focus on the meeting, on whatever Tony was currently saying with increasingly dramatic hand gestures. Something about equipment requisitions? Budget allocations? She genuinely couldn't tell anymore, and the phantom pressure between her legs was making it functionally impossible to concentrate on anything else.

“This is insane,” Natasha directed at Wanda, gripping her pen hard enough that her knuckles went white.

“This is fun,” Wanda corrected, and Natasha caught another flash of red in her eyes as the magic moved with more deliberate purpose. “And you're already responding. I can feel it.”

“Of course I'm responding. You're using magic on me. What did you expect?”

“I expect you to sit there and take it like the professional spy you are.” Wanda's mental voice had taken on a teasing quality that made Natasha's pulse quicken and her thighs clench involuntarily. “You're so good at keeping your composure under pressure. Let's see just how good.”

The magic increased in intensity significantly—no longer just a tease but actual, deliberate pressure. Still subtle enough that no one would notice from looking at her, but intense enough that Natasha had to actively concentrate on keeping her breathing even and her expression bored.

“You're evil,” Natasha thought at her with feeling.

“You love me,” Wanda countered, and the smug satisfaction in her mental voice was both infuriating and devastatingly attractive.

“I'm going to get you back for this.”

“I'm counting on it.” And then Wanda's magic pushed past the barrier of Natasha's jeans—which should not have been physically possible, but apparently magic didn't care about things like fabric and physics—and touched her directly, skin to skin, through her underwear.

Natasha's hand clenched on her pen hard enough that she heard the plastic crack slightly. She forced herself to relax her grip before she snapped it completely, forced herself to keep her expression neutral and vaguely bored, even as Wanda's magic traced maddening patterns directly against her most sensitive areas through the thin cotton of her underwear.

This was a problem. This was a serious, ongoing problem that was only going to get worse, and Natasha had absolutely no idea how she was going to survive the next hour and fifteen minutes.

"—which is exactly why I'm saying we need to completely restructure the storage system," Tony was saying, gesturing emphatically at something on the projected screen behind him. "The current setup is inefficient and frankly dangerous to anyone who needs to access level-three equipment in under two minutes—"

"It's been working perfectly fine for three years," Steve interrupted, his jaw set in that stubborn way that meant he was prepared to die on this hill. "If it's not broken, we don't need to fix it."

"'Fine' isn't good enough when we're talking about response time in crisis situations—"

Natasha stopped listening entirely because Wanda had just increased the intensity significantly, her magic stroking firmly and deliberately against Natasha's clit through the thin fabric barrier, and it was taking every ounce of her considerable training to keep her expression neutral and her breathing steady.

“I hate you,” Natasha directed at Wanda, even as her body betrayed her with a fresh rush of arousal that Wanda could definitely sense.

“No you don't.” Wanda's mental voice was unbearably smug. “You love this. You love that I can do this to you and no one else knows. You love that you have to sit there perfectly still while I take you apart piece by piece.”

Natasha couldn't even deny it. Because Wanda was absolutely right—there was something thrilling about this, something that made her pulse race and her skin flush with more than just arousal. The danger of it, the complete control Wanda had, the fact that they were surrounded by their teammates who had absolutely no idea what was happening three feet away from them.

“You're already so wet,” Wanda observed, her magic confirming what she was saying as it slid easily through gathering arousal. “God, Nat. You're soaked while we’re in a meeting.”

“Whose fault is that?” Natasha shot back, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity even as Wanda's magic circled her clit with absolutely maddening precision.

“Mine,” Wanda agreed, sounding extremely pleased with herself. “All mine. And I'm going to make it so much worse before I'm done with you.”

The magic shifted without warning, and suddenly Natasha felt what distinctly felt like fingers—phantom fingers, magical fingers, but fingers nonetheless—pushing aside her underwear and touching her directly with no barriers at all. No fabric, no protection, just Wanda's magic stroking through her wetness with increasing confidence and skill.

Natasha bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound, her free hand moving under the table to grip the edge of her chair hard enough that her knuckles went completely white. This was so much worse than she'd anticipated. The sensation was surreal and overwhelming—she could feel it so clearly, the pressure and movement and friction, the way it dragged through her wetness and circled her clit with perfect precision, but there was nothing physically there. Just Wanda's magic, invisible and intangible to everyone else in the room, but absolutely devastating to Natasha.

“This is insane,” Natasha repeated, because she genuinely couldn't think of anything else to articulate.

“You said that already.” Wanda's magic found her clit and circled it with perfect, maddening pressure that made Natasha's hips want to jerk up involuntarily. “Try to be more creative with your complaints.”

“I'm too busy trying not to cum to be creative,” Natasha thought desperately, her thighs clenching together under the table in a futile attempt to either increase or decrease the sensation—she honestly wasn't sure which.

“Then don't try so hard.” The magic increased its pace deliberately. “Let it happen. I want to feel you cum while Steve is pontificating about hangar organization.”

“We're not even talking about hangar organization anymore. I think they've moved on to... actually, I have no idea what they're talking about now.”

“See? No one's paying attention anyway.” Wanda's magic pushed inside her without warning—just one finger, testing, but enough to make Natasha's breath catch audibly in her throat. “Now stop overthinking and just feel.”

Natasha wanted to argue. Wanted to tell Wanda that this was inappropriate and dangerous and absolutely could not continue. But Wanda's magic pushed deeper, curling in that perfect way that made stars burst behind Natasha's eyelids, and all her protests died before they could fully form.

“That's better,” Wanda said approvingly in her mind. “Much better. Now let me work.”

And work she did.

The phantom sensation of Wanda's fingers inside her was surreal and overwhelming in equal measure. Natasha could feel everything—the stretch and fullness, the way Wanda's magic curled just right to hit that spot inside her that always made her see stars, the drag of withdrawal and the press of penetration. It felt impossibly real, and Natasha had to keep reminding herself that there was nothing actually there, that this was all Wanda's magic and her considerable skill at using it for deeply inappropriate purposes.

“You're doing so well,” Wanda praised, her mental voice dropping into that lower register that always made Natasha's stomach clench with want. “Sitting there so still, so quiet, so perfectly composed. No one has any idea that you're falling apart right now. That you're seconds away from cumming all over my magic while Tony explains quarterly budget allocations.”

Natasha's nails dug crescents into her palm as Wanda's magic increased its pace, fucking her with steady, deliberate, devastating movements while phantom pressure circled her clit with perfect rhythm. She was getting close—embarrassingly, terrifyingly fast—and she knew with absolute certainty that there was no way she was going to make it through this meeting without cumming at least once.

“Wanda,” she thought desperately, not even sure what she was asking for anymore. “Please—”

“Please what?” Wanda's mental voice was deliberately teasing. “Please stop? Please keep going? Please make you cum right here in front of everyone? You have to be specific, baby.”

“Please—” Natasha's thought cut off abruptly as Wanda's magic hit that perfect spot with devastating precision, and she had to physically transform her resulting gasp into a cough.

"You okay, Romanoff?" Clint asked from beside her, looking mildly concerned as he finally emerged from his mental absence.

"Fine," Natasha managed, her voice only slightly strained, remarkably steady considering. "Just—dry throat. Need water."

She reached for her water glass with a hand that was almost steady, taking a long drink to cover for the fact that she'd nearly lost complete control of her physical reactions. Across the table, Wanda was watching her with dark, knowing eyes, and her magic hadn't slowed down at all. If anything, it had increased its pace.

“Nice save,” Wanda said in her mind. “But I'm not going to make it easy on you.”

“You're going to get us caught,” Natasha thought at her, setting down her water glass with deliberate, careful precision.

“I'm not.” Wanda's magic curled inside her again, hitting that spot that made Natasha want to moan. “Because you're going to sit there quietly and cum for me without making a single sound. Aren't you?”

It wasn't really a question. It was a command, delivered in that tone that made Natasha's knees weak and her resolve crumble into dust. And because Natasha had apparently lost her mind entirely, she found herself nodding almost imperceptibly.

“Good girl,” Wanda said, deep satisfaction coloring her mental voice. “Now let go. Cum for me, Nat. Right now.”

And because Natasha's body had apparently decided to obey Wanda over her own sense of self-preservation and professional dignity, she did.

Her orgasm built with terrifying speed, pleasure coiling tighter and tighter in her belly as Wanda's magic worked her with relentless, perfect precision. The phantom fingers inside her hit that perfect spot with every thrust while pressure circled her clit in exactly the right pattern, and Natasha knew—absolutely knew with crystal clarity—that she was about to cum in the middle of a team meeting while Tony Stark argued with Steve Rogers about god knows what.

“That's it,” Wanda encouraged, her mental voice wrapping around Natasha like a physical caress.” I can feel how close you are. Can feel how hard you're fighting it. Stop fighting and just let it happen. Let me feel you fall apart.”

The magic increased its pace one final, devastating time, and Natasha's orgasm crashed over her like a tidal wave. She kept her expression carefully neutral through sheer force of will, kept her breathing even despite her racing heart, kept her body still and composed—the only outward signs were the white-knuckled grip she had on her water glass and the way her thighs clenched together involuntarily under the table. But inside her mind, behind her carefully constructed mask, she was completely falling apart. Pleasure rolled through her body in intense, overwhelming waves, and Wanda's magic worked her through every second of it with gentle, perfect movements, drawing it out until Natasha was trembling with the effort of staying still and silent.

“Beautiful,” Wanda said in her mind, and Natasha could hear the genuine affection and awe beneath the teasing satisfaction. “You're so beautiful when you cum. Even when you're trying to hide it from everyone.”

“I’m going to divorce you,” Natasha thought weakly, still trying to catch her breath without being obvious about it, still trying to look like she was just bored and shifting position.

“No you won’t.” Wanda's magic gentled considerably, became soothing instead of stimulating, helping Natasha come down slowly from the intensity. “You love me.”

“I'm going to kill you when we get home,” Natasha amended, finally releasing her death grip on her water glass before she actually shattered it.

“Looking forward to it.” And then, mercifully, Wanda withdrew her magic entirely.

Natasha slumped slightly in her chair, trying to make it look like she was just bored and adjusting her position rather than recovering from an intense orgasm. Across the table, Wanda had turned her attention back to the ongoing argument, looking for all the world like she was following the discussion with genuine interest rather than having just made Natasha cum at a team meeting using invisible magic.

Natasha took another long drink of water, using the moment to compose herself properly and slow her still-racing heart. She tried to focus on what Tony was saying—something about quarterly budget reviews now, apparently they'd moved completely away from hangar organization—but her brain felt pleasantly fuzzy and her body was still tingling with aftershocks.

She lasted approximately seven minutes before Wanda's magic returned with a vengeance.

“What are you doing?” Natasha demanded, feeling the familiar phantom pressure return between her legs with alarming intensity.

“The meeting's not over yet,” Wanda replied, and Natasha could hear the wicked grin in her mental voice. “And I said you were going to cum at least once. We're going for twice now. Maybe three times if you're really good for me.”

“Wanda, I just—I can't do this again—”

“You can.” The magic was gentle at first, teasing, building her back up slowly despite her recent orgasm. “And you will. Because you're perfect and I love watching you struggle to keep it together.”

“This is cruel,” Natasha thought, even as her body—traitorous thing that it was—responded immediately to the touch, still oversensitive from her first orgasm.

“This is fun,” Wanda corrected cheerfully. “There's a significant difference.”

“Not from where I'm sitting.”

“From where you're sitting, you're about to cum again.” The magic circled her clit lazily, building pleasure with patient, maddening, absolutely devastating precision. “So I'd say your perspective is about to get much more interesting.”

Natasha couldn't even argue with that deeply flawed logic. She just gripped the edge of the table with both hands now and tried to mentally prepare herself for round two.

This time, Wanda took her time with deliberate, almost cruel patience.

The magic moved slowly, teasingly, building Natasha up with maddening care and attention. She'd stroke firmly for several long moments, bringing Natasha right to the desperate edge of needing more, then pull back to barely-there pressure that left Natasha silently begging for anything substantial. It was torture of the absolute sweetest kind, and Natasha knew with certainty that Wanda was thoroughly enjoying every second of her struggle.

“You're fucking evil,” Natasha thought for what felt like the hundredth time.

“So you keep saying,” Wanda replied, utterly unbothered and clearly amused. “And yet you keep responding so beautifully to everything I do.”

The magic pushed inside her again without warning—two fingers this time, stretching her in that delicious way that made Natasha want to moan out loud. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek instead, maintaining her neutral, bored expression even as Wanda's magic started to move with clear, deliberate purpose.

And then Natasha felt something entirely new flooding her mind: vivid images with perfect clarity.

She saw herself through Wanda's eyes—a memory from last week, the two of them in their bed at home. Natasha was between Wanda's spread thighs, looking up at her with dark, intent, hungry eyes, and Wanda's hand was fisted tightly in her hair, guiding her movements. Natasha could hear Wanda's voice in the memory, breathy and desperate and absolutely wrecked: “God, yes, just like that, don't stop, Nat, please don't stop—”

The memory was so viscerally vivid that Natasha could almost taste Wanda on her tongue, could almost feel the weight of Wanda's thigh pressed against her shoulder, the way Wanda's hips had rolled up to meet her mouth. And underneath the overwhelming sensory details of the memory, Wanda's magic was still working steadily between her legs in the present, the dual sensation of memory and physical pleasure making her head spin dangerously.

“Stop,” Natasha thought desperately, though whether she meant the memories or the magic she honestly couldn't say anymore. “That's not fair—”

“All's fair in love and boring meetings,” Wanda replied smugly, and she sent another memory crashing into Natasha's consciousness—this one from the shower two days ago. Natasha was pressed hard against the cold tile wall, hot water streaming over both their bodies, and Wanda's fingers were buried inside her, moving with devastating purpose and skill. “You feel so good, Nat. So perfect for me. So tight and wet. Come on, baby, let me feel it. Cum for me just like this—”

“You're going to make me cum again,” Natasha thought, somewhere between rising panic and overwhelming arousal.

“That's the entire idea,” Wanda confirmed with satisfaction, sending yet another memory. This one was from last month—Natasha wearing their strap-on harness, Wanda riding her with complete abandon, her head thrown back in pure ecstasy, hands braced on Natasha's shoulders for balance. “Fuck, Nat, you're so deep like this. So perfect. So good. Don't stop, don't you dare fucking stop—”

The combination of intensely erotic memories and the very real physical sensation of Wanda's magic working inside her was absolutely overwhelming. Natasha's second orgasm was building significantly faster than the first, pleasure coiling tight and hot and insistent in her belly, and she knew she wasn't going to last much longer at all.

"—don't you think, Romanoff?"

The sound of her name cut sharply through the haze of pleasure and memory, and Natasha's attention snapped back to the meeting with something very close to pure panic. Tony was looking directly at her with clear expectation, and she realized with growing horror that he'd just asked her a direct question. A question she definitely, absolutely hadn't heard because she'd been too busy drowning in erotic memories while Wanda finger-fucked her with invisible magic under the conference table.

“Oh god,” Natasha thought at Wanda in genuine panic. “What did he ask? I wasn't listening—”

“Something about security protocols,” Wanda supplied helpfully, her magic not slowing down even slightly. “For the armory specifically. You reviewed them last week, remember?”

"Could you repeat the question?" Natasha asked Tony, remarkably proud of how steady and professional her voice sounded despite the fact that Wanda's magic had just hit that perfect spot inside her with devastating accuracy.

"The new security protocols for the armory," Tony said, looking mildly annoyed that she apparently hadn't been paying proper attention. He gestured impatiently at the complex diagram displayed on the screen behind him. "You reviewed them last week, right? What's your professional assessment? Are they actually going to improve our response time in crisis situations, or are they just more bureaucratic nonsense that'll slow us down?"

Natasha had reviewed them. Three days ago, in fact, sitting at her desk with coffee and her tablet. She could absolutely provide her thorough, professional assessment. The only problem—the significant, glaring problem—was that Wanda had just increased the intensity of her magic dramatically, and Natasha was approximately thirty seconds away from her second orgasm.

“Wanda, stop,” Natasha thought desperately, trying to focus. “I have to answer him properly—”

“So answer him,” Wanda replied, her mental voice maddeningly calm and collected. “You can multitask. You're Natasha Romanoff.”

“I'm about to cum—”

“Then you better talk fast.”

Natasha took a careful, measured breath, forcing her brain to focus on security protocols instead of the magic currently destroying her from the inside out. 

"They're solid," she said, and she was professionally, almost absurdly proud of how completely normal her voice sounded despite everything. "The biometric scanning updates are comprehensive and address the previous vulnerabilities. The redundancy protocols make tactical sense—if one system fails catastrophically, we've got two independent backups. I'd recommend adding a secondary verification step specifically for the level-four weapons storage, but overall it's a significant improvement over the current system. Should cut our emergency access time by approximately forty percent while actually increasing overall security measures."

"See?" Tony said triumphantly, turning to Steve with vindication written all over his face. "Romanoff gets it. Secondary verification for specific cases, not a complete systematic overhaul of everything that's currently working—"

Natasha stopped listening entirely because Wanda had just sent her another intensely vivid memory—this one of Natasha pressed urgently against their bedroom door, Wanda's hand shoved down the front of her pants, kissing her desperately while Natasha gasped and moaned helplessly into her mouth. And simultaneously, the magic inside her curled with absolute perfection, hitting that spot that made her see actual stars behind her closed eyelids, and Natasha knew with crystal clarity that she was completely done for.

“Cum,” Wanda commanded, her mental voice firm and absolute and impossible to resist. “Right now.” 

Natasha's second orgasm hit her like an actual freight train.

She kept her expression carefully, meticulously neutral through what felt like superhuman effort, kept her breathing even despite her heart threatening to beat out of her chest, kept her body still and professionally composed—but inside, behind her careful mask, she was absolutely shattering into a million pieces. Pleasure rolled through her in waves that seemed to go on forever, and Wanda's magic worked her through every single second with perfect, devastating, utterly merciless precision.

“Good girl,” Wanda praised warmly. “So good for me. Staying so quiet and still while you fall completely apart inside.”

When it finally subsided enough for Natasha to think again, she was sweating slightly and both her hands were shaking where they gripped the table edge. She reached for her water glass yet again, taking another long drink to cover for the fact that she'd just had her second orgasm in an hour while her teammates continued arguing about bureaucracy and protocol updates.

“Two,” Wanda said with unmistakable smugness. “That's two orgasms. We're doing great.”

“Are you done now?” Natasha asked, not even remotely hoping for a yes.

“Not even close,” Wanda confirmed cheerfully. “We've still got at least forty minutes left in this meeting. I'm thinking we can definitely go for three. Maybe even four if you're really, really good for me.”

“I'm going to die,” Natasha thought with absolute certainty. “You're actually going to kill me right here in this conference room.”

“You're not going to die.” Wanda's mental voice was affectionate despite the relentless teasing. “You're going to cum a few more times and then we're going to go home and I'm going to do all of this properly in our bed where you can actually make noise.”

“A few more times?”

“I'm thinking four total is a nice round number.” Wanda sounded delighted with her plan. “Very satisfying and complete.”

“Four orgasms. At a team meeting.”

“Exactly!” Wanda's enthusiasm was almost endearing. “Isn't this so much better than just being bored?”

Natasha couldn't even formulate an answer to that absolutely insane question. She just slumped in her chair and tried desperately to recover while Wanda's magic withdrew temporarily, giving her a brief, blessed reprieve to pull herself back together.

The meeting continued with absolutely no awareness of what had just transpired. Tony and Steve had apparently finished their argument about armory protocols and moved on to discussing the upcoming training schedule revisions. Natasha tried genuinely hard to pay attention, tried to actually follow and contribute to the conversation, but her brain was still pleasantly fuzzy from two intense orgasms and she was already dreading the inevitable moment when Wanda decided to go for number three.

She lasted fifteen whole minutes.

Fifteen blessed, magic-free minutes where Natasha actually managed to contribute meaningfully to the discussion about updating the hand-to-hand combat training schedule. She'd even pulled up her digital calendar on her phone and checked her availability for the advanced tactics sessions Steve wanted to implement next month.

And then Wanda's magic returned with absolutely no warning or mercy, and this time there was no gentle buildup whatsoever. This time, Wanda went straight for absolutely devastating, her magic pushing inside Natasha with clear purpose while phantom pressure circled her oversensitive clit with firm, deliberate, unrelenting movements.

“Wanda—” Natasha's thought was barely coherent anymore.

“One more,” Wanda said, her mental voice leaving no room for argument. “Give me one more and then I'll let you rest for a bit. I promise, my love.”

“I can't—it's too much—I'm too sensitive—”

“You can.” Wanda's magic increased its pace mercilessly, and Natasha felt herself responding despite her desperate protests, her body apparently fully on board with this plan even if her brain was having serious reservations. “And you will. Because I want you to. Because I love watching you try so hard to keep it together while I systematically take you apart.”

The magic worked her relentlessly, and Wanda started sending more images—but this time they weren't just memories of things that had actually happened. This time they were fantasies, vivid imaginings of things Wanda was planning, things she wanted to do the absolute moment they got home.

Natasha saw herself bent over their kitchen counter, still fully clothed in her meeting outfit, while Wanda's hands worked expertly between her legs from behind. Saw herself tied securely to their bed with soft rope, wrists bound to the headboard while Wanda took her sweet time exploring every single inch of her body with hands and mouth. Saw herself on her knees on their bedroom floor, looking up at Wanda with desperate, pleading eyes while Wanda's hand guided her head exactly where she wanted it.

“Stop,” Natasha begged weakly, even though she absolutely didn't mean it, even though her body was responding to every single image with fresh waves of arousal. “Please—”

“You don't really want me to stop,” Wanda observed with absolute certainty, her mental voice knowing and confident. “You're already so close again. I can feel it building. Your body knows exactly what it wants, even if your brain is still trying to protest.”

She was absolutely, infuriatingly right.

Natasha was close—desperately, embarrassingly close—oversensitive from two previous orgasms and completely overwhelmed by the constant flood of erotic images Wanda kept sending. The phantom sensation of Wanda's magic inside her was relentless and perfect, hitting that spot with every single thrust while pressure circled her clit with increasing, maddening intensity.

“Almost there,” Wanda encouraged warmly. “Just a little bit more, baby. Let go for me one more time. Let me feel you cum.”

Natasha's third orgasm built with agonizing, torturous slowness, pleasure coiling tighter and tighter in her belly until she thought she might actually scream from the unbearable tension. Every single muscle in her body was taut and trembling, and she was gripping the table hard enough that her knuckles had gone completely white and bloodless.

And then Wanda sent her one final image—the two of them in bed that very morning, before they'd gotten up for work and this godforsaken meeting. Natasha curled protectively around Wanda's back, her hand working slowly between Wanda's legs, bringing her gently to orgasm while Wanda was still half-asleep. The memory of Wanda's voice, drowsy and satisfied and full of love: “Love you so much, Nat. Love waking up like this with you every single day.”

The unexpected tenderness of the memory combined with the relentless physical sensation pushed Natasha over the edge one final, devastating time.

Her third orgasm crashed through her with absolutely brutal force, and she barely—just barely—managed to keep from crying out loud. She bit down on her tongue hard enough to taste copper, her whole body going completely rigid in her chair, and the only sounds she made were a sharp inhale through her nose that she somehow managed to disguise as a tired sigh.

“Perfect,” Wanda said in her mind, satisfaction and genuine affection coloring her mental voice beautifully. “You're so perfect for me, Nat. I love you so much.”

“Love you too,” Natasha managed weakly, slumping in her chair as the pleasure finally faded to manageable levels. “Even though you're genuinely the worst person I've ever met in my entire life.”

“Flattery will get you absolutely everywhere,” Wanda replied warmly, and her magic finally—finally—withdrew completely and didn't return.

Natasha sat there for a long moment, just trying to remember how to be a functional human being who could sit through meetings. Her body was still tingling pleasantly, oversensitive and thoroughly satisfied in a way that made her simultaneously want to sleep for twelve straight hours and drag Wanda out of this conference room immediately to continue this somewhere private.

"—so that wraps up today's agenda," Steve was saying, and Natasha could have genuinely wept with relief and gratitude. "Any other business we need to address before we adjourn?"

Silence. Beautiful, blessed, merciful silence. No one had anything else to add. Everyone just wanted to escape this godforsaken meeting and get on with their actual lives.

"Alright then. Thanks everyone for your time and input," Steve said, closing his notebook with finality. "Same time next week."

People immediately started gathering their things and heading for the door with barely concealed relief, conversations breaking out about lunch plans and afternoon training sessions and literally anything that wasn't this meeting. Natasha stood on legs that felt distinctly unsteady, trying desperately to look normal and professional even though she'd just had three intense orgasms in the last hour and forty-five minutes.

She made her way around the table toward Wanda with as much dignity as she could muster, which honestly wasn't much. Her wife was innocently checking her phone like she hadn't just committed several acts of magic-assisted indecency in front of the entire team.

"Hi," Wanda said brightly when Natasha reached her, looking up with perfectly innocent eyes. "How was the meeting for you?"

"You know exactly how the meeting was," Natasha said through gritted teeth, keeping her voice low enough that no one else would overhear.

"Do I?" Wanda's eyes were wide and innocent, but there was a wicked glint in them that made Natasha want to kiss her and strangle her in equal measure. "I thought it was pretty boring personally. Standard protocol updates. Were you bored?"

"You're the worst person I've ever met," Natasha repeated, but there was absolutely no heat behind the words.

"And yet you married me," Wanda pointed out reasonably, standing and gathering her things. She leaned in close, her lips brushing Natasha's ear so quietly that only Natasha could possibly hear. "Car. Now. We're going home."

"I can barely walk," Natasha hissed back.

"Then you'd better hold onto me," Wanda said cheerfully, looping her arm through Natasha's like they were just two colleagues leaving a meeting together.

They made it to the parking garage without running into anyone else, which was a minor miracle. The moment they were in Natasha's car with the doors closed and locked, Wanda was on her.

"You," Wanda said between desperate kisses, her hands already sliding under Natasha's shirt, "are so incredibly hot when you're trying not to cum."

"You," Natasha replied, kissing her back just as desperately, already pulling Wanda closer, "are completely insane."

"Maybe." Wanda kissed down her neck, teeth grazing her pulse point. "But you loved every second of it."

"I can't believe you made me cum three times at a team meeting," Natasha said, even as she tilted her head to give Wanda better access to her throat.

"I can't believe you didn't make a single sound," Wanda said admiringly, pulling back to look at Natasha properly. "Your control is genuinely incredible. I was honestly trying my hardest to break it."

"I'm a highly trained spy," Natasha pointed out, slightly breathless. "It's literally my job to not react to things."

"Well, you're excellent at it." Wanda settled back in the passenger seat with a deeply satisfied smile. "Now take me home so I can make you cum a few more times without having to worry about Tony Stark interrupting to ask you about armory protocols."

"A few more times?" Natasha looked at her incredulously, even though her body was already responding enthusiastically to the promise in Wanda's voice. "You broke me. I might actually be done for the day."

"You're not done," Wanda said with absolute confidence. "You're never done. And besides, I've been thinking about what I want to do to you since I started this whole thing in the meeting."

"You're genuinely insatiable," Natasha muttered, but she was already starting the car, already pulling out of the parking space, already heading for home.

"You love it," Wanda said, reaching over to take Natasha's hand and thread their fingers together on the center console. "And you love me."

"I really do," Natasha admitted, bringing Wanda's hand to her lips and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Even though you're absolutely terrible and just sexually tortured me in public for ninety minutes straight."

"It wasn't torture," Wanda corrected with a grin. "It was entertainment. For both of us."

"That's definitely a matter of perspective."

"Admit it was at least a little bit fun," Wanda challenged.

Natasha was silent for a moment, actually considering it as she navigated through afternoon traffic. "It was..." she said slowly, carefully, "terrifying and overwhelming and..."

"And?"

"And I think I might have discovered a new kink.”

The rule had been unfair and you wanted that on the record.

Not that anyone was keeping one. But if someone had been, the entry would read: unreasonable. Excessive. Fundamentally misaligned with the biological realities of being left alone for twenty-four hours by Wanda Maximoff.

She'd said it the way she said things she meant completely, which was warmly: both hands cupping your face, her eyes right on yours, that slow curve of her mouth that made your brain go quiet. She'd already kissed you three times: once when she'd told you she had to go, once when she'd packed her bag, once standing in the doorway with her coat on and her hair still a little mussed from earlier, looking like something out of a dream that was actively inconveniencing you by leaving.

"Eat dinner," she'd said. "I made the pasta you like. Or get something else if you want it. I left money on the counter."

"I know how to feed myself," you'd said.

"I know you do, baby." She'd smiled at that. Fond, not condescending, in the way she was fond of you doing the thing where you pretended you didn't need taking care of, which she found genuinely endearing and also not very convincing. "I'll be back tomorrow afternoon, probably. Call me if you need anything."

"I will."

"And—" She'd paused, and her hand had come to your jaw, tipping your face up just slightly. Her eyes had been soft and certain. "No touching yourself."

The air had done something.

"Wanda—"

"Mommy's baby can wait a day without touching her needy little pussy, can't she?" She'd tilted her head, just slightly, with that smile, soft and absolutely in charge of both of you, and you'd had the sensation of standing at the edge of an argument and looking down into it and deciding not to jump. "One day."

"That's—"

"Can't she," Wanda had said again, and it wasn't a question.

"...Yes," you'd said.

She'd kissed you once more. Slow and thorough, her thumb brushing your cheek like you were something she was very pleased with. Then she'd picked up her bag and gone, and you'd stood in the doorway feeling the absence of her before she'd even reached the elevator.

And that had been fine. That had been completely fine for most of the day, actually, because you'd had things to do—laundry, a show you'd been meaning to watch, the pasta which was, as always, perfect. You'd texted Wanda at seven that you'd eaten and she'd sent back a heart and a photo of herself looking tired but okay, and you'd felt warm all the way down.

The problem had been bedtime.

The problem had been the bed. Alone in it and it smelled like her—the pillow on her side, the apartment quiet without her in it, a Wanda-shaped absence you were apparently more aware of than you'd realized.

You'd tried to sleep. Genuinely tried; tired, full day, all conditions met.

But you kept thinking about the way she'd said it. Needy little pussy. With that smile. The thumb on your cheek. The way she'd looked at you like she already knew exactly how you were going to get through the next twenty-four hours and had decided it would happen her way.

It wasn't your fault.

It was basically her fault. She'd said it like that, with that voice and that mouth, and then left, and you were supposed to just—what? Lie in the bed that smelled like her and think about something else? About what, exactly? You'd been given nothing to work with except the echo of her voice in your head saying words that seemed, if you were being honest, almost deliberately designed to produce this exact outcome, and the rule was you weren't supposed to do anything about it.

That was a bad rule.

A poorly constructed rule. An unreasonable one. You'd turned it over for a long time, the argument assembling itself with satisfying solidity, every point holding up under examination. She'd know, probably—that had been in the against column, and it had stayed there a while. Then your hand had moved anyway.

Just your hand slipping under the waistband of your panties, just your fingers finding your clit the way hers did—two fingers, slow circles, just enough pressure. You'd imagined her voice. Good girl. The way her eyes went when she had you exactly where she wanted you. The weight of her hands on your hips. You'd been quiet about it, face turned into her pillow, hips rocking up against your own fingers while you thought about her mouth and her hands and the low even certainty in her voice when she told you what to do. It hadn't taken long. You'd been wound up from just thinking about it, already wet before you'd started, and when you came it was perfect and you went slack almost immediately after, pleasantly boneless, the sheets smelling like her, and you went straight to sleep.

In the morning you'd felt completely fine about the whole thing.

You still felt fine about it.

It hadn't crossed your mind once today.

You weren't even thinking about it.

(-)

The door opened at half past two.

You heard her before you saw her: her keys, her footsteps, the familiar push of the door with her shoulder. You were off the couch before you'd thought about it, crossing the room just as she appeared in the doorway, bright-eyed despite the travel, her coat still on, her hair a little windswept, and holding—somewhat improbably, delightfully—a bundle of yellow tulips wrapped in brown paper.

She saw you and her whole face did something. Lit up, just like that. All the compound tiredness gone in an instant, replaced with something so plainly glad that it hit you somewhere in the ribs.

"Hi, darling—"

She barely got it out before you were in her arms, and she dropped her bag, catching you with her free arm, pulling you in close and pressing her face into your hair and holding on. You could swear you felt the warmth of her right through the coat. The tulips brushed your shoulder. You didn't care. You pressed closer.

"Hi," you said, muffled in her shoulder. "Hi, hi, hi."

She laughed—a real one, surprised out of her, bright and warm. "I missed you so much." She pressed her lips to the side of your head. "So much. Were you good for me?"

"I was so good," you said, with complete conviction.

"Yeah?" She pulled back just enough to look at your face, cupping your cheek in her free hand, her thumb brushing across it. Checking on you, the way she always checked when she'd been away—making sure all of you was still there and accounted for. Her eyes were warm and fond. "Good girl."

She kissed you once, soft and sure, and then produced the tulips with a little flourish.

"I found them on the way out," she said. "The woman at the market had them. I thought of you immediately." She held them out, watching your face. "Yellow. I knew you'd want the yellow ones."

"Wanda." You took them, holding them with both hands. They were very yellow. Yellow like summer, your favorite color. "You didn't have to—"

"I wanted you to have something nice." She smiled, unwinding her scarf and dropping it on the couch. "Thank you for eating dinner last night. Did you sleep alright?"

"The pasta was good," you said, carrying the tulips toward the kitchen. "And yes, slept great, actually." You were already hunting for a vase under the sink, entirely unbothered. "Really well."

"Oh, I'm so glad." She followed you in, leaning against the doorway, watching you move around her kitchen with that soft expression that meant she was happy. "You do sometimes have trouble when I'm not there. What made the difference, do you think?"

She asked it lightly. Casually. Just a woman happy to be home asking after her girl.

But she was also watching you with those eyes. And Wanda's eyes, when she was curious about something, had a quality you might have clocked if you'd been paying attention.

You were not paying attention.

You ran water into the vase. "I don't know, I was pretty tired I guess—" You shrugged, trimming the stems with the kitchen scissors, perfectly comfortable. "Well." A small laugh. "You know how it is. An orgasm always makes me sleep better."

The kitchen was very quiet.

You set the scissors down.

The word orgasm hung in the air above the tulips and you watched it float there and something in the back of your brain, the part that had been quietly filing information all day, chose this exact moment to speak up.

Oh, that part said. You're fucked.

You turned around very slowly.

Wanda was leaning against the doorway with her arms folded and her head tilted at a small angle and the expression on her face was…not angry. That was what made it worse. It was warm. It was fond, even. It was the patient, settled look of a woman who had just received information she'd been fairly sure she was going to receive and was now deciding what to do with it in a very calm and organized way.

"Funny," she said. "I don't remember giving you permission for that. In fact, I seem to recall specifically telling you not to."

"I—" You opened your mouth. Closed it. The argument that had felt very solid at eleven-thirty last night was nowhere to be found. "It was just—it wasn't a big deal, I just—"

"Baby." Her voice was gentle. That was almost worse than if it hadn't been. "Come here."

Your feet moved before your brain weighed in on the matter. You crossed the kitchen and she opened her arms and you went into them, which was both deeply comforting and deeply incriminating.

Her chin rested on top of your head.

"Tell me what happened," she said.

"I couldn't sleep," you said, into her chest.

"Mm."

"And I was thinking about you."

"Of course you were."

"And it seemed like—I mean, it wasn't a big deal, it was just—" You could feel yourself listing, looking for the argument. "It seemed unreasonable, honestly, like how was I supposed to—"

"Unreasonable," Wanda said, with a quality in her voice that was not quite amusement but lived in the same neighborhood.

"I'm just saying—"

"You're saying that Mommy's rule was unreasonable."

The word hit you low and warm and scattered the rest of your sentence completely. "...I was trying to make a point."

"I know you were." She pressed her lips to your hair and held them there. "And the point is noted." A pause. "You still broke the rule."

You had nothing to say to that. It was true. You had, in fact, broken the rule, and you had done it with full knowledge that it was a rule, and the argument about reasonableness was falling apart on contact with Wanda's arms around you and her voice in your hair.

"I'm sorry," you said quietly.

"I know, sweetheart." She rubbed a slow circle on your back. "I'm going to take care of it."

She said it the way she said most things—warmly, simply, with the easy certainty of someone who had already decided and was just letting you know. Not a threat. Information.

Your stomach did something. You pressed your face a little more firmly into her chest.

"Okay," you said.

"Good girl." She kissed your hair once more and then stepped back, her hands on your shoulders, looking at you. Her eyes were soft and dark and certain. "Go to the bedroom. Take your clothes off and wait for me. I'll be right there."

(-)

She gave you enough time to do as she'd said and then a few minutes more, which had its own weight—being sent somewhere to wait, the room quiet around you, nothing to do but sit with the awareness of what was coming. You'd folded your clothes on the chair the way she liked, laid down, and stared at the ceiling. The afternoon light came through the curtains in long pale stripes. You'd listened to Wanda moving around in the other room, the kitchen tap, her quiet footsteps in the hall, and felt every second of the waiting.

She wasn't rushing. She never rushed. Wanda had a sense of time entirely her own, and she spent it exactly as she intended, and when she decided it was time to come to you she would come to you and not before. Knowing that, lying there, made the waiting feel very long.

You heard her steps in the hall. The door opened.

She'd taken her coat off. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and she looked completely at ease. She took in the sight of you on the bed, undressed and waiting and probably looking a little undone already from just the anticipation, and something in her expression settled with satisfaction. Not unkindly. Just pleased with what she found.

She sat on the edge of the bed beside you and looked at you in the pale afternoon light, taking her time about it. You looked back.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," you said, softer than you'd managed in the kitchen.

She reached out and pushed a piece of hair back from your face, two fingers gentle along your hairline, and then her hand trailed down your cheek, your jaw, the side of your throat. Light and deliberate. She rested her fingertips at your collarbone like she was taking a reading of something.

She was in no hurry at all.

"Tell me what you did," she said. "Exactly."

Your face went warm. "Wanda—"

"Mommy," she corrected, gentle as anything, her voice almost a song.

"...Mommy." The word settled something and disrupted something else simultaneously, the way it always did. "I just…touched myself. Before I went to sleep."

"Where?" Her fingers traced a slow line down your sternum.

"You know where."

She looked at you with patient, limitless calm.

"My clit," you said.

"Mm." Her hand moved lower, resting flat on your stomach. Warm and still. "Did you rub it? Slow circles?"

"Yes."

"And it felt good."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"You thought about me."

"Yes."

"Good." Something in her expression settled with quiet satisfaction. "You should always be thinking about me." She pressed her palm flat and firm against you through your underwear—one deliberate moment of pressure—and you exhaled all at once. Then she withdrew it entirely. "Roll over for me, baby."

"What—"

"On your stomach," she said, the same tone she'd used for everything: warm, even, not leaving room for negotiation.

You rolled over.

Her hand came to rest at the small of your back, warm and easy, and you felt her shift her weight on the bed. Her palm moved slowly down over the curve of your ass.

"Mommy—"

"How many times?" she asked. “How many times did you cum?”

"Once," you said into the pillow.

"Once." No urgency in her voice. Just consideration. "Fifteen, then. Count for me, sweetheart."

"Fifteen—"

The first landed before you'd finished the word. Clean and sharp, and you gasped into the pillow, gripping the sheets. Her palm followed immediately—warm, slow circles over the spot, easing it. Sting and then soothe, and the contrast alone made your breath stutter.

"One," she said for you, gently. "Good girl."

She went slow. The second came after a long pause, the same spot, and you pressed your face harder into the pillow. The third landed lower and you exhaled in a rush. Her palm came back each time, rubbing warmth into the sting—patient, rhythmic, never skipping that moment of softness between strikes.

"Good girl," she murmured. "Stay still for Mommy."

By five your breathing had changed, gone shallow and uneven, your whole body trying to process the alternating sharpness and soothe. By ten your hips were pressing down into the mattress, some confused animal instinct pushing you toward the bed, chasing and bracing at once. She noticed. She always noticed. The eleventh landed on the crease where your thigh met your ass and you cried out louder than you'd intended, hands fisting hard in the sheets.

"That's it," she said, warm and even. "You're doing so well, darling."

By twelve you were shaking. By fifteen your whole ass was flushed with heat and your face was wet and you felt scraped open and deeply, entirely hers.

Her palm settled there, just resting, warm over the heat of it.

"Good girl," she said, softer. "So good. Fifteen."

She gave you a moment. Just her hand on you, grounding.

Then she moved, not away from you but up the bed, settling beside you. Her hand found yours in the sheets and loosened your grip from the fabric, gently, and drew your fingers up. She held your hand between both of hers for a moment, rubbing warmth back into where you'd been clutching, and then she brought two of her own fingers to your lips.

"Open for me," she said. Easy. Like it was the most natural thing.

She pressed her fingers in past your lips, settling on your tongue, and the immediate impulse was to close around them, which you did. The weight of them there, warm and familiar, the faint salt of her skin, did something to the noise inside your head that nothing else had. You'd been clenched up through all of it, holding yourself together through each strike, and the simple act of having something to close around, something of hers to hold, loosened something at the center of you. Your shoulders dropped. Your jaw softened. You felt a long breath move through your whole body and out.

She didn't move her fingers. She just let them rest there on your tongue, watching your face with that quiet, focused attention she gave to things she was tending to carefully.

"There you are," she murmured. Her other hand moved to your hair, pushing it back from your face, and her thumb traced a slow line along your temple. "That's it, sweetheart. Just breathe."

You breathed around her fingers. In through your nose, slow and even, out again. The room settled around you by degrees—the pale afternoon light coming through the curtains, the familiar weight of the mattress beneath you, the warmth of her beside you. You could feel her watching you come back to yourself, feel the way she clocked each small shift: the unclenching of your hands, the easing of your jaw, the moment your eyes focused on her face properly instead of just the middle distance.

She curved her fingers slightly, just a gentle press against your tongue, and you closed tighter around them without thinking.

"Good girl," she said softly, to that. Like you'd done something right. Like that instinct was something she was glad to have confirmed.

Her thumb kept its slow arc along your temple. She wasn't in any hurry. She'd told you she had all afternoon and she'd clearly meant it, because she sat with you like this, her fingers on your tongue and her eyes on your face, until the last of the tension had moved out of your shoulders and you were just lying there, held open and quiet, looking up at her.

She read it when it happened—you could see it in the small shift of her expression, something clicking into place. She drew her fingers free slowly, dragging them gentle across your lower lip as they went, and her thumb swept your mouth once before her hand moved back to your shoulder.

"Good girl," she said again. "Up on your knees for me."

You got your knees under you, shaky, and she moved with you, keeping her hand at your back. She reached around and pulled your underwear down and off, and then her palm was there, bare skin against bare skin, cupped between your thighs, and the sound you made was something you'd be embarrassed by later.

"Ten more," she said. "Here."

You barely had time to process what here meant before she was repositioning herself behind you—one hand at your hip, tilting you, adjusting the angle with the same calm attention she gave everything. The understanding arrived a half-second later and sent heat flooding through you before anything had even happened. Like this. Open like this. The vulnerability of the position had your hands clenching again on instinct, your face dropping forward, and you made yourself breathe.

Then the first landed. It was a light, sharp smack directly against your clit, and you jolted forward. Her free hand steadied you at the hip immediately, firm and sure, keeping you right where she needed you. Her palm pressed flat against you in the same soothing motion, softer here, more careful, and the pressure of her whole hand cupped against you between smacks was…something you couldn’t put into words.

"One," she said. Still that same warm, even voice. "You're okay. I've got you."

These were different. Lighter than the ones before, precise in a way that made your breath go ragged, and between each one she pressed her palm flat against the heat of you, and the relief of that pressure made you want to press back into her hand, which you did, twice, and she let you. Just held you there for a beat, her palm against you, warm and still, before the next landed.

You were making sounds into the pillow. You couldn't stop.

"You're such a good girl," she murmured, working her way through them. "Taking your punishment so beautifully. Look at you."

By ten you were trembling, slick against her palm, and something between crying and desperate, your hips rocking back toward her hand between each smack because your body had completely stopped caring about the difference between punishment pain and pleasure pain.

Her palm pressed flat against your cunt and stayed there.

"Ten," she said. "All done, my love. All done."

She kept her hand there, warm and still, and rubbed slow circles with her thumb, and you breathed.

"Roll over for me, darling," she said.

You did—slowly, your whole body still humming—and she was there, leaning over you, one hand braced beside your head, her hair loose around her face. She looked down at you with those warm eyes. You felt undone in the best possible way, and you’d never complain.

She looked at you like you were something she was very pleased with. Took a moment just to do it.

Then she settled beside you and her hand moved between your thighs again.

"This is what you did?" Her fingers found your clit and pressed, just a slow circle, barely-there, and you arched immediately. "Rubbed right here?"

"Yes—"

"With one finger? Or—" she adjusted— "like this?"

"Like that, please—"

"Mm." The motion stayed light. Maddeningly light. "And you thought about me."

"Yes, Mommy."

"What did you think about?" The circles continued, slow and steady, just enough to feel but not enough to build. Keeping you right at the edge of something without letting it become anything.

"Your hands," you managed. "Your—the way you—"

"The way I touch you," she finished for you.

"Yes."

"Like this?"

"More than this—"

"I know." She didn't increase the pressure. "But you didn't have permission for this, and you did it anyway." A pause. "So right now you get what I decide to give you."

You made a sound that was not a word.

"Is that fair, baby?" she asked. "Or is it unreasonable?"

"It's fair, Mommy," you said, and meant it completely.

She kept the circles going—slow, steady, unwavering, the same pace and pressure and nothing more, no matter how your hips rolled up toward her or your thighs trembled trying to close around her hand. She let you move. She just didn't give you anything extra for it. Your body was chasing something she was deliberately withholding, and she watched you do it with that warm settled expression, completely at ease, like she had all afternoon and intended to spend it exactly like this.

"Mommy—"

"Not yet," she said. Warm. Immovable.

"Please—"

"Not yet, baby." The circles continued. Her eyes stayed on your face.

You could feel it building anyway, despite the lightness of it—your body wound up from the anticipation and the spanking and the long teasing press of her hand through your underwear before any of this had started. The heat gathered low, slow and inevitable, and your hands fisted in the sheets and your back arched and she was right there, right there—

"Mommy—"

"I know," she said, and she lifted her hand away.

Completely. Gone.

The sound you made was embarrassing and you were past caring.

"Wanda—"

"Mommy," she sang, just like before, like you'd mispronounced something minor.

"Mommy—" Your hips were still working against nothing, chasing the shape of something that wasn't there anymore. Your thighs were shaking. "Please, please, I need—"

"Shh, I know what you need." She moved her hand to your stomach, flat and warm, pressing down. Grounding you. "My sweet girl. You're going to get everything you need. I promise you." She smoothed her palm in a slow circle. "When Mommy says."

You tried to breathe normally. You failed.

"You're okay," she said, watching you. "You're doing so well."

You didn't feel like you were doing well. You felt strung out, desperate, and entirely at her mercy, which you were, and she was well aware of that fact. She kept her hand on your stomach until the worst of it passed and your hips had stilled and you were just lying there trembling faintly, looking up at her.

She looked back, patient and showing no signs of moving faster.

"Again?" you asked, your voice coming out very small.

"Again," she confirmed.

Her hand drifted back down.

The second time she took longer. The same light circles against your clit at first but she varied them now, the pressure shifting, the pace changing, sometimes a slow drag of her fingertip and sometimes a tight circle right where you needed it and then veering off at the last second. Your body was trying to chase it and she was always a half-step ahead. She watched your face the whole time with that focused, private expression she had when she was doing something she found deeply satisfying, and you were already so sensitive from the first round that every change of pressure registered twice as much.

You found her wrist with your hand. Not to stop her. Just to have something. She let you hold on.

"You're being so good right now," she murmured, low and close. The circles tightened fractionally. Your breath hitched. "Such a good girl for Mommy. Even after what you did." Her thumb moved and you arched. "You're taking it so beautifully, sweetheart."

"I'm sorry," you said again, and it was different from the kitchen apology and different even from the first one. Realer. Lower. "I should have waited."

"You should have," she agreed, gentle. "But you're making up for it now." She leaned down and pressed a slow kiss to your temple, and her hand kept moving, and you felt the warmth of her lips and the pressure of her fingers simultaneously and made a sound that came from somewhere deep. "That's my good girl."

The edge came back steep, the way it came back the second time when your body had already been there once and remembered the way. Your grip on her wrist tightened and your hips rolled and your back lifted and the heat was cresting, cresting—

She stopped.

"No—"

"Shh." Both her hands now, one flat on your stomach and one on your hip, holding you. Grounding you. "Breathe for me."

You breathed. Barely.

"Good," she said. "Good girl. I've got you."

Her hand on your stomach made slow circles. The same patient motion, but soothing now, just warmth. You came down by increments, shaking and frustrated, and she watched you do it with that steady warm expression.

"That's two," she said.

You were shaking. Your hands loose in the sheets now, not gripping, just resting there because you'd run out of the energy to hold on to anything. Your thighs were trembling and your whole body was strung out and wound so tight you felt fragile with it. All the while, she was right there looking at you with those eyes the color of moss and all the patience in the world.

"Wanda," you said, your voice was entirely wrecked. "Mommy. Please. I'll be so good, I promise, I should have waited, I know I should have waited, I'm sorry, please just—"

"Hey." Her hand came to your face, cupping your cheek. Her thumb swept across your cheekbone once, slow. "There she is."

You turned your face into her palm.

There was a pause. She looked at you—really looked, the way she did when she was deciding something—and her expression shifted, the patient amusement easing into something a little softer, a little more open. The part of her that was just Wanda, looking at you, glad you were hers. Her thumb moved again across your cheek, and she exhaled slowly, like something had settled.

"There's my good girl," she said, soft. "You've been so good."

"Please," you said, smaller. Just that.

"I know." She kissed your temple. Rested her lips there. "I've got you. Mommy's got you."

Her hand moved back between your thighs and this time she didn't tease. The same motion but with real intent behind it now, real pressure, and you cried out immediately from the sensitivity of it and she made a soothing sound and didn't let up. The buildup was fast. You were so far gone, wound up from two full rounds of edging, every nerve ending straining, and she worked you steadily and kept murmuring to you, low and close.

"That's it, darling," she murmured, right against your hair. "Good girl. Give it to Mommy."

"Mommy—"

"I know." Her voice was steady and warm and completely certain. "I've got you. You're safe. Come on, sweetheart—let go for me. Cum for Mommy, sweet girl.”

Your long-awaited orgasm broke over you in a long cresting wave, bigger than either of the edges had promised, and you cried out without anything left to moderate it, both hands locked around her wrist while everything rearranged. She kept the motion going through all of it, her fingers steady and unwavering, reading every tremor and staying with you through each one until you were pulling at her wrist from oversensitivity. Only then she slowed, gradual and careful, and finally stopped.

Her hand moved to your inner thigh. Just resting there, warm and still.

The room came back in pieces.

The pale stripes of light through the curtains. The familiar smell of the sheets, of her, of home. The sound of your own breathing, ragged and slow and trying to even itself out.

You were completely dissolved. Unmade. Every muscle had surrendered and you lay there loose and scattered and felt the afterglow move through you outward from the center, slow as a tide going out, warm all the way to your fingertips.

Wanda's hand moved. Long slow strokes up your side, hip to ribs and back, perfect and steady, just keeping contact, just letting you know she was there and wasn't going anywhere.

"There you are," she said, soft. "My darling girl."

The words landed somewhere they always landed. Deep, in a part of you that had always craved them.

"I know, baby." The strokes continued. Her other hand rested flat on your stomach. "You're alright. Just breathe. I've got you."

You breathed. The room continued to reassemble itself around you. You became gradually aware of more things: the texture of the sheets, the weight of the light, the warmth of Wanda's hands still moving on you, patient as she always was.

She gave you time like that—just her hands and her voice saying quiet things, holding you in place in the gentlest possible way while you came back to yourself. Then she shifted, settling back against the headboard, and drew you in close.

She arranged you against her with the ease of knowing you completely, one arm coming around your shoulders, your cheek coming to rest against her chest, and she held you there while your breathing slowed. You could hear her heartbeat under your ear. It was steady. It was the steadiest thing in the room.

"Hi," she said, softer than she'd said anything.

You made a small sound. Present. Accounted for.

She pressed a kiss to the top of your head and held her lips there. Her hand moved in slow strokes up your arm, shoulder to elbow and back, and for a while that was all—just her heartbeat, and her hand, and the amber light pressing in through the curtains, and the room settling around you like something that had been waiting to do it.

Then she shifted slightly, her free hand moving to the hem of her shirt. She drew it up and off in one easy motion, dropping it somewhere behind her, and then her hand came back to cradle the back of your head—palm warm, fingers curved—and she guided you, gently and without words, drawing you in closer, down against the soft warmth of her breast.

Your mouth found her nipple and closed around it, and something in your whole body simply exhaled.

It wasn't anything like what had been happening for the last hour. It was the opposite of that—the complete absence of striving, of chasing, of being held just at the edge of something. Here there was nothing to chase. Here there was just the soft weight of her against your lips, the give of her skin, the slow warmth of her hand at the back of your head keeping you exactly where she'd put you.

You stayed very still at first. Just rested. Just breathed through your nose, in and out, your whole body sinking deeper into the mattress with each exhale.

She made a small sound above you. Soft. The sound of someone settling into something, the same exhale you'd heard from her when she'd first gotten home and pressed her face into your hair. Like she'd been holding something through all of it too and had finally set it down.

"There she is," she murmured, her hand moving in your hair now, slow passes from your forehead back. "There's my sweet girl."

You pressed closer, and she let you, her arm tightening fractionally around your shoulders. Her nipple was soft against your tongue and you weren't doing anything particular with it—just holding her there, just present, just the warmth and the closeness and the steady rhythm of her breathing above you.

"You did so well," she said, low and close. "All of it. I know it was hard."

You made a small sound against her.

"I know," she said, like that had been a complete sentence, which maybe it had. Her fingers moved through your hair in that slow rhythm, the thing she did when she was tending to you, and each pass felt like it was drawing something down through your body and out, something tight and held that didn't have a name. "You took everything so beautifully."

The light coming through the curtains had shifted while you weren't paying attention, going from pale afternoon to the warmer amber of later afternoon, long and golden and slow. You were aware of it in a distant way. You were more aware of her—the soft weight of her breast against your mouth, the warmth of her hand moving in your hair, the sound of her voice talking to you quietly about nothing and everything, the particular quality of being held by someone who had nowhere else to be and no intention of being anywhere else.

"I missed you," she whispered, just for your ears. "Every minute I was gone. I kept thinking about you."

A small sound from you, believing her completely.

"The compound was fine," she said, easy. "But I wanted to be home. I wanted to be right here." Her arm drew you closer, her lips pressing again to the top of your head. "With my good girl."

You felt yourself getting heavier. The kind of heaviness that came from everything finally letting go at once. Your jaw had gone slack. Your hand rested against her ribs without any tension in it. The amber light moved slow across the ceiling.

"The tulips," you managed, from somewhere far down. The word barely made it out.

A smile moved through her, warm and private. You felt it more than heard it. "Mm. For you, my baby. Just for you. I knew you'd like the yellow ones."

A small approving sound from you, against her skin.

"I know," she said fondly. "I know you."

Her fingers moved in your hair—slow passes from your forehead back, the same even rhythm, the thing she did when you were drifting. You felt yourself going heavier with each one. Pleasantly, completely heavy.

"Sleep," she murmured. "You're exhausted, sweetheart. Let go."

You wanted to say something. Something about the tulips, or about the rule, or about how you understood now, how you really did—but it dissolved before you could find it, and anyway Wanda knew. She always knew the things you couldn't manage to say.

"I'm right here," she said. "I've got you. I'm not going anywhere."

Her lips in your hair. Her arm around you. Her hand moving slow, forehead to back, forehead to back. The soft warmth of her against your mouth. Her heartbeat steady under your ear.

"I’m home," she said, softer still. "And you're mine. We're here. And everything is exactly right."

She said those words—everything is exactly right—and you were done, all the way under, falling easy into the amber quiet with her voice somewhere above you saying soft things you were already too far down to catch the words of.

Just the sound. Just her hands. Just home.

You know the door is unlocked. Anyone could walk in. And anyone on the top level of the building next to Natasha’s could get a view of exactly what she’s doing to you.

Her hands are over yours on the glass—fingers laced through yours, pinning them exactly where she put them. Her blazer is still on. Her collar is still straight. Her phone is pressed between her ear and her shoulder, her voice flat and professional somewhere above your head, talking to someone who has no idea.

She hasn’t slowed down once.

She’s still at the pace she set when she walked you into the glass and it is relentless—hard, deep strokes that drive you into the window with every thrust, your palms squeaking against the glass, your breath fogging it in short sharp bursts that clear and fog and clear again. The strap bottoms out and you feel it in your stomach. The sound that leaves you is immediate, and she speaks another sentence into the phone without missing a beat.

Like you aren’t even there. Like she isn’t absolutely wrecking you against her own window in broad daylight.

“Fogging it all up,” she murmurs into the gap between sentences, dropping her voice low, lips brushing your ear. “Look at the mess you’re making.” She drives forward hard and your forehead hits the glass. “Can barely see the city.”

Then she’s back on the phone. 

The building across is level with the window. Anyone standing at those offices could look over right now and see the shape of you pressed against the glass, face flushed, hands pinned, getting absolutely railed by a woman who is simultaneously discussing quarterly projections. You become aware of this with vivid clarity every time she thrusts forward.

“Pretty little slut,” she says, between sentences, lips at your neck. “Taking it so well while I’m busy.” Her hips slam forward, making you choke on a sound, and she speaks into the phone again, unhurried and unbothered, her free hand coming up to grip your hip hard enough to bruise.

You are soaking. You’ve been that way since before she touched you, since her assistant called you up and you knew—you always know—that she needed you for something other than paperwork. The sounds your body is making around the strap are obscene in the quiet office, wet and audible with every thrust. She doesn’t try to cover them, speaking into the phone right over the top of them like they aren’t happening.

“Dripping down my thighs,” she murmurs between sentences, voice dropping again. “Soaking through the harness. Making a mess of my trousers while I’m trying to work.” A hard thrust. Your nails scratch at the glass.

“Pathetic,” she breathes against your neck, and it lands warm, lands like something she loves about you.

She drives into you harder and you bite down on your lip, pressing your forehead into the glass and breathing through your nose to try to stay quiet. You fail, a moan scraping out of you that she covers by speaking louder into the phone for exactly one sentence before dropping back down.

Her mouth finds your neck. A real kiss—her lips resting against your pulse point for a moment that has nothing to do with the power and everything to do with what lives underneath all of it. You feel her exhale against your skin.

“So good for me,” she murmurs there, soft and private. “Always so good.”

Then she’s back on the phone.

She keeps going. Relentless, switching between sentences into the phone and words against your skin without seam, her hips driving you into the glass over and over. 

Your thighs are shaking. Your whole body is shaking.

“Ms. Romanoff—” It comes out broken, barely a word. “Please—I can’t—”

She hangs up and tosses the phone onto her desk. Both hands slam flat over yours on the glass and she drives into you without restraint now—no call to manage, nothing to moderate around—and the sounds that fill the office are both of yours, her breath rough at your ear and your voice completely gone. She fucks you into the glass until your vision whites out at the edges and your whole body seizes.

“Come on,” she growls against your ear. “Give it to me. Now.”

You cum so hard your knees buckle. She holds you up with the grip of her hands over yours and keeps driving through every second of it, working you through every wave until you’re sobbing with oversensitivity and your hands are trying to pull away from the glass. She pins them there and keeps going for three more strokes just because she can.

Then she stills, and you feel the release. The warmth floods into you thick and sudden all at once. You feel every pulse of it. You feel it when she pulls back slowly—the slick drag, the sting of the stretch—and feel the warmth immediately begin slipping out of you, trailing down your inner thigh, warm against cool skin in the air conditioned office.

Natasha stays behind you, reaching down and pulling the back of your underwear open with two fingers, holding the waistband away from your skin, and she watches the last of the fake cum drip out of her strap and over the curve of your ass and down into the fabric. She says nothing. Her thumb traces your waistband, like she’s admiring her work.

“Mine,” she says quietly. 

She releases the waistband, and it snaps back. Her palm comes down on your ass just once and she smooths the fabric flat against you.

She steps back and straightens her cuffs, composed in approximately four seconds.

“I have a meeting in five minutes.” She’s already at her desk. “Go.”

You peel yourself off the glass on legs that are not reliable, making your way to the door. Your hand finds the handle, and her voice stops you.

“Leave the underwear on.”

You swallow, feeling the fabric stick to you because of the fake cum, a feeling that is close to uncomfortable but the overwhelming desire the thought of it brings to you is enough to offset that. You hear Natasha sit down at her desk, and you catch a glimpse of her smirk.

“And clear your evening.”

The sound of cicadas and the sheets rustling were what you heard as you roused from the light sleep that had come over you.

“There you are,” Natasha whispered, the smile evident in just the sound of her voice. Her finger was still tracing shapes on your bare back, which is what she’d been doing for an hour now.

Under the night sky of Norway, tucked away in the trailer that was now home to the both of you, you couldn’t help but smile as well, your eyes blinking closed again.

“M’sorry,” you said, shifting your forearms underneath your cheek. Natasha leaned over you again, lips brushing your shoulder blades.

“Don’t apologize,” she replied. Her hair, still slightly damp from the shower she’d taken after you shared a dinner of some cereal she’d found at a market, brushed over your skin and caused you to shiver slightly. Natasha chuckled softly. “I’ll take you falling asleep as a compliment. Now, get back to guessing.”

You smiled into the skin of your arm, rolling your eyes. Her finger resumed tracing a shape, and you tried to make out what she was drawing.

“A knife,” you guessed half-heartedly, sleep starting to pull at you again.

“Oh, come on,” Natasha scoffed without heat in it, pressing a little harder with her fingernail into your side. “You can do better than that. Focus.”

She traced the shape again, and it took a good amount of mental strength to not drift off.

“I don’t know, Natasha,” you said, voice slurring ever so slightly.

“Yes, you do.” Natasha grinned, taking in the sight of your sleepy self for a moment before tracing the shape again. This time, you recognized it as an “I”.

“Are you spelling somethin’?” You asked, lifting your heavy head.

“Maybe,” Natasha replied, pushing your head back down. She kissed the spot on your back where she’d drawn the letter, lips lingering for a moment. “Next one. Pay attention.”

You sighed, settling once again. The trailer was warm—Natasha had made it a priority to keep it as warm as possible after you shivered that first night. Sleep called to you, an invisible pull to a darkness you knew would be safe with Natasha there with you.

Natasha’s finger moved over your skin, and this time you were able to make the shape out easily: a heart.

"If you're writing 'I love your tits' again," you said, voice going sweet and musical, "I'm going to kick you out."

Natasha snorted, kissing your back again before nuzzling your spine with her nose.

“That was one time,” she said, “and it was a true statement.” Her lips curved against your skin. “But no. One more word.”

You didn’t quite believe her—this was Natasha, and you knew her well—but you didn’t argue and focused back into the shape tracing.

Her finger moved, slow and deliberate, like an artist painting a masterpiece.

When the last word became clear to you, you laughed, reaching back to pat her thigh as a signal to get off over you. She did, and you rolled over, looking up at her as she settled on her hands and knees over you.

Your eyes traced her face, just as they had done for months now. In the light provided by the string of twinkling fairy lights you insisted on putting up over the bed in the trailer, she looked…at ease. No longer paranoid. Not scared, which you knew she had been when she’d first dragged you to Norway and feared both for your safety and that you would no longer be happy with her. Her eyes, the color of sage, met yours and you both smiled.

“I love you too,” you whispered, reaching up to trace the line of her jaw with your thumb. She leaned into the touch, much like the black cat that often showed up at the trailer and Natasha always pretended to not care about before feeding it.

“I love you more,” she whispered back. She opened her eyes, which had closed, and leaned in to kiss you. Your lips met softly, unhurried and warm.

“I love you most,” you said when the kiss broke, her face just centimeters from yours. She smirked, pinching your side and tickling you slightly, just enough to hear that giggle of yours she always loved to hear.

“I love you more than that,” she said, rolling over onto her side and pulling you as close as possible. “And that’s the end of the conversation.”

You had half a mind to keep arguing, but you knew you’d never win. And, quite unfairly, she had started to run her finger down the bridge of your nose, and you felt sleep call once more. Your eyes immediately fluttered, a slow breath leaving you.

The trailer settled into quiet around you. Outside, the cicadas kept on. You were almost gone.

Just before you drifted off for the final time, you heard her voice in your ear.

"Пусть кровь студеет в жилах...” Let the blood run cold in my veins.

Her hand brushed through your hair.

"…но в сердце не скудеет нежность моя к тебе.” But let my tenderness to you not weaken in my heart.

She kissed your ear, a brush of her lips that was hardly there.

"Последняя любовь." My last love.

a/n: i love "Natasha's Lullaby" (Lorne Balfe). that's where the russian words come from, i hope they're translated correctly.

I'm sick. I want soft Natasha.