waverly

Cate notices you the way a starving person notices the scent of freshly baked bread—first the shape of it in the air, then the texture when it clings to the back of the throat. The student union is loud with people whose laughter bounces off the high ceiling, and yet Cate keeps tuning to the same frequency: a low, bright laugh from the corner couches, shy and pleased, like someone’s surprised by their own joy and trying not to show it.

You, the campus rumor with a pulse.

You’re folded into the corner with Luke Riordan, a lanky blur in varsity blue, dressed like the catalog definition of “nobody look at me,” which only makes Cate—and half the room, honestly—look harder. Black band tee with a cracked logo, the sleeves shoved to the elbows, rings on narrow fingers, uneven nails you’ve probably chewed through a cutscene, hair in that artfully chaotic shag that makes you look like you’ve perpetually just hopped off your skateboard. There’s a laptop open on the low table, the lid sticker-bombed with Star Wars, Godzilla, and an anatomically correct heart diagram, because of course you’re the kind of nerd who would be romantic about ventricles.

Cate forces her attention back to her own table and the two women across from her. Emma is doing the thing where she stirs an iced latte like she’s trying to hypnotize it. Marie is trying to decide between a muffin and the awareness that muffins are just a type of cake.

Emma leans in, stage-whispering. “Okay, why are you staring at Wallflower McBiceps again when you could be looking at literally anyone else?”

Cate lets the question sit, because she likes her friends to work for it. She bites delicately into her straw, unhurried. “Consider the problem set,” she murmurs. “Every other person I could look at would know I’m looking. She doesn’t.”

Marie follows Cate’s gaze. “She does. She’s pretending she doesn’t. Her ears are red.”

“Are they?” Cate smiles, delighted, and does not look back immediately. She loves a shy creature. Loves the way it takes patience and gentleness and a little bit of wickedness to coax them into blooming. Also: the rumors. Obviously the rumors.

Emma squints toward your corner, then twists back around and drops her voice. “Okay, so, I have heard things.”

Marie deadpans. “You heard things because Cate made you go hear them.”

Cate lofts a shoulder. “I’m a scholar. I research.”

“Uh-huh,” Emma says. “And your findings?”

Cate adopts a solemn tone. “The subject—twenty, double major, god help us all—may be catastrophically shy, immensely loyal to one Luke Riordan, and—this is anecdotal but from multiple sources—carrying a situation in those jeans.”

Marie’s brows arch nearly to her hairline. “A…situation.”

Cate’s smile turns private. “An ethics violation. A hazard. A public health emergency.”

Emma snorts into her drink. “Wow. Who did you bribe to get this intel?”

“I didn’t bribe anyone,” Cate says primly, then ruins it by adding, “People are eager to gossip about the hot nerd in the ripped denim, and I am a steward of institutional knowledge.”

Marie: “And you’re a size queen.”

Cate tips her head like a confession. “Guilty. In my defense, I’ve been…disappointed before.” She toys with the edge of her napkin. “I want to be pleasantly surprised.”

Across the room, you laugh again at something Luke says, a short, breathy exhale that pitches up at the end, unguarded. Cate feels the sound like a fingertip drawn down her spine. She watched you last week in the library, hunched over a textbook and a bag of flaming hot chips, mouth dusted devil red as you absently licked your thumb to clear the spice away. She watched you once through the glass of the arts building, tightening a stubborn lighting rig and checking focus marks while a TA snapped a slate and counted off. Watched you again on the quad, cross-legged on a blanket, guitar resting lazy against your knees as you plucked something melancholy and pretty, pretending not to notice the girls who slowed down to stare.

Shy isn’t small. Shy is a locked room with a thunderstorm inside. Cate wants the key. Cate wants the thunder.

Marie nudges her ankle. “Cate, seriously. You’re hot. Just go say hi.”

Cate could. She could tap the rim of your laptop with a manicured nail and say something simple and dangerous like, Hey, I hear you like monsters and space wizards—want to come watch them with me? She can already picture the way you would blink and bite your lip and stammer over your answer, eyes darting to Cate’s mouth. Cate could be gentle with it. She could be terrible with it. She could be both.

Instead, she chooses a different route—the build up, the plot, the long con of anticipation.

“I could,” Cate says, “but then I wouldn’t get to be clever about it.”

Emma groans. “Not the elaborate plan again.”

Cate’s smile goes sharp. “The elaborate plan always works.”

By the time their coffees have sweat rings into the table, Cate has the outline in her head: not too forward, but not coy. A casual message that reads like she remembered you mid-scroll, and then—if it goes well—an invitation disguised as something normal. Cate considers movie options and discards them like outfits: anything too horny-coded (Drive) will scare you off, anything too quaint (Amélie) is not your vibe. Cate already knows the right answer because she’s shamelessly been tuning herself to your frequency for a month. The stickers on your laptop aren’t just decoration, they’re a map.

Star Wars. Not as a performative nerd test, but as a love language: you love this, so come love it near me.

“Fine,” Emma says. “What’s step one, General Hux?”

“Don’t call me that,” Cate says, amused. “Step one is to casually follow her on Instagram. Then I give fate a nudge.”

Marie sips and eyes her. “And step two is?”

Cate’s phone is already in her palm, naturally. “Step two is the DM.”

She writes it there in the bright light of the student union, thumbs steady, heart not. She keeps it quick: Hey! This is Cate—we’ve got class together at ten on Tuesdays, I sit two rows behind you, hi. Random question: are you still a practical-effects purist or will you watch the remasters without throwing popcorn at the screen? I’m doing a Star Wars night and realize I don’t actually know anyone with strong opinions besides the internet.

She deletes and retypes “Star Wars night” three times. “Movie night” sounds like code even when it isn’t, and Cate wants to thread the needle: flirty, not predatory, specific, not weird. She adds a self-own—Also: I had a crush on Han Solo for like…six of my formative years, so feel free to judge me—and hits send before she has to fight her own nerve.

Immediately her stomach flips like she’s the shy one. Emma clocks it, viciously pleased. “Oh my God, she actually did it.”

Cate hides her face behind her phone like a teenager and laughs, giddy and appalled at herself. “Shut up.”

Across campus and two floors up in the North Residence Hall, your phone buzzes against your thigh at the exact worst moment. On-screen, The Tarnished rolls left instead of right and takes a full-body love letter from Godrick’s axe. YOU DIED blooms across the TV in terrible crimson.

“Dude,” Luke groans. “You good?”

You don't answer, you’re too busy staring at your phone like it’s a live grenade. The banner says “Cate,” which: fine, lots of girls on campus are named Cate. Except the little circle icon is the Cate. The one with the belly-button ring and sunlit hair and laughter like something expensive. The one who can turn a lecture hall into a room where she and the professor are having a charming private conversation. The one you cannot seem to stop noticing like a reflex, whose perfume—whatever it is, something light and mean with citrus—has become a campus weather pattern.

Luke elbows you in the side. “Open it, coward.”

“What if it’s…spam,” you try lamely. Your mouth goes dry. You click the notification anyway.

Your brain goes blank. Your hands make panicked little gestures in the air as if they could conjure the words into meaning, as if they could cool down your face. “Oh my God,” you whisper. “Oh, my God.”

Luke peers over your shoulder with zero shame. “No way,” he breathes, thrilled. “She wants to watch Star Wars with you? Dude. Dude. See? This is why you don’t eat ramen in lecture, destiny can smell that shit and takes pity.”

“It’s a prank,” you say immediately, because that’s safer than hope. The room feels too hot. You scrub a hand over your face in shock. “Like someone dared her. Or I’m being…socially experimented on.”

Luke tilts his head. “By Cate Dunlap, famous sorority menace and seminar whisperer, who is absolutely drowning in options? I don’t think she needs a dare to DM you, man.”

You snort, disbelieving. The thing you believe in most is gravity, the second is that gravity works harder on you. Girls do not DM you. Well. They DM to ask for DAW presets or if they can borrow a lens for a night shoot or the name of your nail polish (it’s just black Sharpie, but you pretend it’s a color with a cool name like Wicked Cathedral or Death Venom). They do not send messages like this, warm and easy and aimed like an arrow straight at your heart.

You scroll again, catching on the part about Han Solo, about judgment. It’s impossible not to grin. You can’t help imagining Cate at twelve, the kind of kid who organized her school supplies like a little general, swooning over a scruffy space scoundrel and thinking the future belonged to girls who could talk fast and shoot faster. It doesn’t fit and also fits perfectly.

“Well?” Luke demands.

“I don’t—what do I say?” You hiss. Your thumbs hover, petrified. “Do I play it cool? Do I say, ‘I prefer the theatrical release because Han Shot First’ and then like…leave it there? Do I—oh my God—do I put an emoji?”

Luke grabs your shoulders and shakes you very gently. “Breathe, padawan. Say yes. Then lock this down before the algorithm remembers who you are and rips it away.”

You inhale like you’re about to jump off a cliff. You type: Hey! Yeah, hi—that’s me, from the two-rows-ahead-zone. I will absolutely watch any version as long as we get to argue about it. I’m Team Practical Effects But Also Sometimes Team ‘George Please Put The Puppet Away.’ I can bring popcorn? I promise not to throw it :)

You hover over the smiley. The panic is genuine now. You delete the smiley. Put it back. Delete it. Start sweating. Luke rolls his eyes and presses your thumb down on send because he’s a menace.

Across the quad, Cate’s phone brightens. The reply lands like a little bell.

Oh, she thinks, pleasure sparking from sternum to knees. She can almost feel that shiver of nervous humor in the message, the careful joke, the way shy people use wit to move through a room without ever getting caught in it. She types back: Perfect. Wednesday? I have a good couch and a terrible projector. 8 pm?

Your thumbs go crazy with yes. Yes is the whole feeling. But then your brain yanks the leash. Play it cool. Don’t sound like a labrador. You try again: Wednesday is great. I have a…uh…collection of gummies that make any projector seem like imax? Kidding. Mostly. 8 works.

Cate giggles, lone and private, because she can hear the stammer inside the joke. She fires back her dorm number and adds, if you bail I will simply assume you were run over by a landspeeder and not take it personally.

Your heart does something stupid and acrobatic. You save the number like it's a sacred text. “Oh my God,” you say for the thousandth time. “Luke. What do I wear?”

Luke looks at your outfit: shirt with a skull, jeans with a rip at the knee that is absolutely not strategic, socks with tiny X-Wings. “You literally look like Star Wars already.”

“I can’t show up looking like a fangirl,” you groaned. You scan your closet. It’s mostly variations of the same thing: tees and hoodies, a couple button-downs for presentations. You imagine Cate’s dorm—what it smells like, the way it’s decorated, the way Cate will lean one hip against the counter while the microwave hums and ask you a question that is secretly a test of whether you can keep up with someone of Cate’s caliber.

You need a shirt without Cheeto dust as a memory. You need…what, exactly? To be less yourself? No. Cate DM’d you. Cate invited exactly this: a nervous creature with ink-stained fingers and a head full of space opera.

Luke flops backward on the bed and stretches like a cat. “If you’re asking me, go with the faded black tee that makes your arms look like you’ve lifted something heavier than a textbook, wash your hair, brush the chip dust out. Bring the good popcorn.”

You nod, swallowing. “Okay. Okay, that I can do.”

You spend the next twenty minutes making a list like you’re prepping for a midterm: popcorn, two sodas (don’t show up empty-handed), deodorant (Jesus), chapstick (double Jesus), condoms (panic thought—why would she—oh God—don’t be a creep), working set of lungs. You glance at the mirror, push your bangs to the side, then muss them back, because the polished version of you looks like you’re going to a job interview you’re doomed to fail.

Your phone buzzes again.

CATE: Disclaimer…my bedside lamp flickers like a séance.

You, without thinking: I’ve got a multimeter and a healthy disrespect for haunted wiring. Want me to take a look?

Cate has to clap a hand over her mouth to contain the laugh. Emma and Marie both stare, hungry for updates, and Cate, benevolent for once, slides the phone over so they can see the screen. Marie whistles. “Oh, she’s charming and handy.”

“She is,” Cate says softly, almost to herself. It thrills her how shy can still be funny, how quiet can still be sharp. She pictures you sitting cross-legged on a dorm bed with a controller in your hands, thumbs flying, tongue caught in your teeth the way it was in the library when you were thinking too hard. Cate feels possibility expand in her chest.

“Do not,” Emma says, wagging a finger, “eat her alive on Wednesday.”

“I would never,” Cate says, then, because she can’t help herself, adds under her breath, “Not without seasoning.”

They pick at that for ten minutes, Emma recounting the one time Cate tried to watch a movie with a girl and ended up learning the runtime of the girl instead, Marie asking questions like a scientist about the size-queen hypothesis and whether there are control variables. Cate smiles and plays along, but under the table her phone rests against her thigh like the sleek warm weight of good news.

On the other side of campus, you try one more boss run with Luke as your eager onlooker. You die faster than you have in weeks because your brain is not even remotely locked in anymore. It keeps darting to a dorm room couch and a girl with a mouth made for ruining someone’s GPA. Luke pauses the game, grabs your face in both hands, and says, “We will practice breathing before Wednesday like it’s a sport.”

You nod miserably. “What if she sits close to me?”

“She will,” Luke says. “What are you going to do if she kisses you?”

“Cry?” You say, dazed. “Ascend?”

When Luke finally leaves for his night class, you stare at the ceiling and let the panic metabolize into something sweeter. You imagine the opening crawl. You imagine the lights low. You imagine Cate close enough that you can smell whatever that heart-stopping citrus thing is, close enough that when you make a joke Cate might put a hand on your knee without thinking.

You check Cate’s message thread again. A date, a time, an address. It’s real. It exists.

Cate, somewhere across campus, curls her hair into a lazy loop with a finger and sends one last message: See you Wednesday.

You brace both hands on the bedspread like you need to hold on to the planet. Then you type, quick before you lose the nerve: Looking forward to arguing with you about space wizards.

The week stretches like taffy. Cate pretends to be busy—outline due, readings to annotate—but her real work is curation. She launders the soft throw that makes a couch look like an invitation, swaps the harsh bulb in the lamp for something warmer, coaxes her room into smelling like citrus and good intentions. She shaves everything she wants shaved, moisturizes everything she wants admired, polishes her belly-button ring because she is ridiculous and knows it. She keeps her thumbs off her phone on principle and then breaks her own rule twice to send small, deliberate sparks: Wednesday still good? and later, I will be grading your opinions. Each ping returns with your careful yes, your shy little humor, and Cate has to bite back her own smile in order not to grin at nothing.

You live inside a countdown. You give yourself pep talks in the bathroom mirror that start with “don’t be weird” and ends with “be weird but on purpose.” You trim your pubes—not because you assume anything (you keep insisting), but because hope is a creature with tiny scissors. You cycle outfits like a film montage—hoodie, button-down, hoodie again, finally surrendering to denim. You don't text unless Cate opens the door first. When Cate does, you answer like you’re walking a tightrope. You practice breathing like Luke told you, then forget every technique whenever you picture Cate’s mouth in your immediate vicinity.

By Wednesday night you’re orbiting each other so hard that the week feels like gravity resolving into a straight line. The campus does its normal midweek prep—late office hours, someone blasting a playlist that sounds like a car alarm—but for both of you the air tastes like the edge of something.

You make yourself leave five minutes early because being late would kill you and being on time feels like hubris. You tuck the good popcorn and two sodas into your backpack, slide a little roll-up tool pouch beside them, and double-check the electrolytes like they’re a passport. Luke walks you to the end of the hall, fixes your hoodie strings like a dad on picture day, and says, “Breathe, don’t monologue, lead with your mouth.” You flip him off, laugh, and do exactly as told.

Campus is all Wednesday static: laughter ricocheting off brick, a longboard whispering past, the smell of something burned masquerading as dinner. You count light poles to stay out of your head and fail immediately, because your head keeps replaying Cate’s lipstick, Cate’s laugh, the way Cate writes messages that feel like she knows where every nerve ends. Outside Cate’s building you choose the stairs over the elevator, pause on the landing to practice one normal inhale and one functional exhale, and check your reflection in the dark window: hair behaving, ears already pink, mouth—yeah, that’s a problem.

You thumb out the world’s bravest, smallest message—here :)—then pocket the phone before you can delete the smiley. Down the hall: the door with the little number you memorized, the soft spill of warm light at the threshold. You wipe your palms on your sweats, knocks once, and think, with a bolt of impossible, reckless happiness: don’t be cool—be real.

Cate answers the door like she’s been waiting in that exact pose for years—one palm braced high on the frame, cardigan sleeves pushed to her elbows, a mouth that looks like it knows where this is going and plans to enjoy every mile of road between here and there. The hallway light slips over her like champagne. You forget how to swallow, then remember all at once and nearly choke on your own spit.

“Hi,” Cate says, amused already.

“Hi,” you echo, equally useless.

“You came prepared,” Cate says, eyeing the backpack slung over your shoulder.

“Popcorn,” you blurt. “And, um, two sodas. I also brought—don’t laugh—a mini tool roll. Multimeter, spare HDMI, zip ties, needle-nose, and a tiny screwdriver set in case your projector throws a tantrum after I fix your lamp.”

“You’re either the most charming person alive or a very dedicated electrician.” She takes the bag, lets her fingers brush yours, and hums like she’s testing a note. “Come in.”

The dorm is somehow both curated and lived-in: a white couch and a soft throw, canvases tucked away neatly, edges taped with blue painter’s tape, a jar of brushes clouding in murky rinse water, charcoal stains ghosting the desk like constellations. On the bookshelf: riding ribbons and a silver trophy with a tiny horse on top, a framed show number and a sun-faded photo of a chestnut mid-jump. It smells faintly of citrus cleaner and linseed oil—and, somewhere near the bed, the lamp with the loose switch waits like a patient in triage.

“I like your museum slash tack room,” you say, grinning.

Cate’s mouth tilts again. “Mixed-use space. I’m sat in front of a canvas more than on a saddle these days…some stuff just refuses to retire.”

You nod, feeling it click in your ribs. Some passions refuse to retire. Hell, you’re in your twenties and still rearranging shelves to make room for yet another collectible and posters you swore you didn’t need.

The projector throws a blue rectangle on the wall. Cate sets the popcorn on the coffee table and plugs in the sodas like they’re guests. “You can sit,” she tells you, not quite a command, not quite not.

You sit. Your knee starts bouncing of its own accord. Cate locks the door with a quiet click that feels louder than it is and crosses the room with the lazy grace of a person who never hurries because the world waits for her. She drops onto the couch beside you and doesn’t bother with modest distances. The cushion gives and your shoulders touch, two magnets failing to pretend they’re not designed for this.

“Okay,” Cate says, reaching for the remote and—oh—resting her other hand casually on your knee. “Ground rules. You’re allowed to have wrong opinions about which cut is definitive. You are not allowed to judge twelve-year-old me for having a poster of a certain smuggler on my bedroom wall. Deal?”

You make a sound that is legally pathetic. Cate’s hand is warm through the denim. Your brain throws up warning flares: do not panic, do not be weird, do not say something like I, too, had a formative poster experience, except it was Transformers era Megan Fox and she taught me the beauties of nightly jerk off sessions.

“Deal,” you manage, and then the lights dim a fraction and Cate’s hand doesn’t move.

The opening fanfare hits. You try to watch. You really do. But Cate is a gravitational event at the edge of your vision. Cate does the little lean that says I’m listening, her perfume is citrus caught in cool air. When she laughs at a line you love, she tips her head toward you like you’re sharing a secret no one else on earth would understand.

“Okay,” Cate murmurs around the end of the first scene. Her thumb traces a lazy line back and forth, back and forth, over the seam of your jeans. “Popcorn or me?”

You look down at the bowl, at Cate’s hand, then back at the bowl like it might explain things. “Uh,” you say, very intelligently.

Cate relents and offers the bowl, because she’s kind even when she’s terrible. Your fingers brush as you take a handful. Electricity is such a cliché word for it, still, your pulse does the exact thing circuits do when they close.

“No glasses tonight?” Cate asks eventually, like she only just remembered to be casual about it.

“Uh…no, they’re…mostly a costume piece—my nerd badge,” you admit, clearing your throat. “I see fine.”

“Good,” Cate says, leaning in, slow and deliberate, to make sure you can make out every sharp comet of mascara on her lashes. “Then you can see me perfectly?”

You swallow. “Tragically.”

Cate’s smile flashes, delighted. “Cute.”

You blue-screen. Your ears go pink like your system just rebooted. The word hits like a system prompt you can’t close—cute? Did the hottest girl on campus just call you cute?—and every smooth reply you’ve ever practiced falls through a trapdoor. Your brain throws up junk code (say something clever, reboot, abort), your body queues up seventeen impossible tasks (breathe, smile, don’t die.) What comes out is a scrambled, “I—uh—y-yeah—cool,” which is not a language recognized by any major civilization. You clear your throat, try again. “Confirmed. Visuals…excellent.”

Cate’s eyes warm, she coasts a thumb along the seam of your jeans again, clearly pleased, as if you short-circuiting was the most interesting thing in the room and exactly the reaction she was hoping for.

Silence resumes, companionable in theory. Cate’s hand wanders. It climbs from knee to mid-thigh, fingers pressing in just enough to make you very aware of muscle and bone and the fact that your breathing has become deeply optional. Cate doesn’t push, exactly. She…explores. She maps the hem of your hoodie, the edge of your belt, the little dip where pelvic bone meets fabric. She plays with the ring on your index finger, twisting it, then glides her fingertip under the leather bracelet at your wrist like she’s checking the time on your pulse. You're pretty sure you stop breathing for a straight minute and don't die only because Cate hasn’t given you permission.

“Is this okay?” Cate asks softly, not moving her hand away at all, which is somehow a thousand times more devastatingly considerate than removing it.

You nod so hard your curls bounce. “Yeah. Yes. Very yes.”

“Good girl,” Cate says, praise she didn’t know she’d say until it slipped out. You feel it behind your ribs, a bell rung in a cathedral.

The movie keeps playing. Cate pretends to watch it. You watch Cate watch it and try not to burst into flames. You’ve had crushes before. You’ve had dates that felt like you’ve been invited to audition for the role of yourself. This is different. Cate isn’t making room for you, Cate is filling the room and then handing you the better view.

A spaceship roars across the screen. Cate’s palm slides to your stomach, a teasing pressure through cotton that makes your spine straighten like a string being pulled. Cate glances up at you and smiles without any pity in it—just interest, just hunger, just a bright scientist’s curiosity.

“Relax,” Cate whispers. Her thumb drifts higher, then lower, never quite settling. “You’re very tense.”

You give a small, helpless laugh. “That’s crazy. Why would I be tense? I’m watching spaceships with the prettiest girl on campus while trying not to embarrass myself or spontaneously combust.”

Cate’s hand goes still for a beat, then presses, like a reward. “Flatterer.”

“You’re—” You start, then shut your mouth before the sentence can get embarrassing and sincere. You look at the screen instead, where an argument you can recite by heart is playing. It doesn’t help. Cate is rewriting every line.

You make it to the cantina. Cate has a thing for the scene—you can tell because Cate’s knee nudges yours when the music starts. “Now this,” Cate says, warm with nostalgia. “This is camp. This is the hill I’ll die on. The original puppet work? Untouchable.”

“Greedo shot first,” you tease, just to watch Cate do the scandalized gasp.

“How dare you,” Cate says, delighted. She shifts, curling toward you, one arm sliding behind your shoulders along the back of the couch, wrist brushing the nape of your neck. The light hits her cheekbone, the gloss on her mouth. She’s close enough that you can see the dimples that only show up when Cate is laughing.

You should make an argument about editing choices. Instead you say, small and honest, “I’m really glad you messaged me.”

Cate’s eyes soften, but not in a way that takes any heat out of the room. “I’m really glad you said yes.”

Then, like she’s been waiting for that exact permission, Cate tilts those last few inches and kisses you.

It’s not dramatic. Cate doesn’t seize or devour. She sets her mouth to yours like it’s a new book she’s been saving for a day when she has nothing else to do but read. Your breath catches. Cate’s hand at your stomach flattens, holds, anchors. The first slide of Cate’s lips is gentle, curious, a question shaped like warmth. You answer with all the honesty you have.

Cate smiles against you, then deepens it—an elegant escalation. Her fingers tip your chin, guiding. Her mouth opens, and you follow, catching the soft, slick cadence of it like learning a song by ear. Cate tastes like citrus and heat and something sweet you can’t name. At some point, your hand finds Cate’s waist, careful at first, then firmer when Cate makes a pleased little sound and presses closer, thigh aligned to thigh.

“Better than IMAX,” Cate whispers, wicked, and steals another kiss for proof.

You laugh into it because you can’t help it. The sound breaks and turns breathless when Cate nips lightly at your bottom lip, soothing the spot with a drawn-out kiss that feels like a promise. The projector hums.

Cate pulls back just enough to study your face. “Still okay?”

You nod, a little dazed. “Yeah. Yes. I—yeah.”

“Good,” Cate says, and brushes her thumb along the arc of your cheekbone. “Because I’ve been very patient.”

“I noticed,” you say, hoarse and grinning, and then Cate laughs softly, approval and mischief braided together, and slides closer until there’s no air at all between you two.

The movie keeps trying to happen in the background. Cate keeps not letting it. She kisses you until you forget what your own hands are for and then remember in a rush, learning the weight of Cate’s shoulder beneath your palm, the fine line of her back. Cate’s cardigan slips halfway off like a stage direction. Cate’s thighs bracket yours, an elegant, unhurried claim. Every time you shiver, Cate leans in and collects the shiver.

“Tell me if you want me to slow down,” Cate says, voice gone low, her mouth at the corner of your jaw.

“I’ll file a complaint,” you manage.

Cate chuckles and noses along your throat, satisfied. “Nerd.”

“Menace,” you return, dizzy with it.

Cate nips, gentle punishment for the backtalk. “You have no idea.”

She draws back just long enough to look at you again—really look, cataloguing the flushed cheeks, the wrecked little smile, the way your hands are fisted in the couch throw like you’re hanging on for dear life. Cate’s expression is bright victory edged in tenderness, the kind you only get when you’ve been wanting something for so long that finally having it feels like an ache you’d happily keep forever.

“Cate,” you say, soft and startled, because the name on your tongue feels like a new word when you say it.

“Mm?” Cate answers, already leaning in again, thumb stroking the collar of your hoodie in a slow, promising loop.

You swallow, bravery bubbling up like soda fizz. “I’m…trying very hard not to say something extremely uncool.”

“I like uncool,” Cate says. “Say it.”

“I can’t believe you’re real,” you blurt, mortified, and then flinch, waiting for honesty to do what honesty does.

Cate’s smile goes molten. She presses her forehead to yours for a beat, like she has to steady herself, too. “Oh,” she murmurs, and there’s so much fondness in it that you actually do feel weightless for a second. “You’re in so much trouble.”

Cate kisses you again, decisive now, hand skimming up, up, to the place just under your throat where your pulse flutters. The movie is a rumor and the world is this couch and the question is inside Cate’s hands. Watching Star Wars has officially become surviving Cate Dunlap.

You exhale like you’ve just run a mile and smile into Cate’s mouth. If this is a study session, you think hazily, you’re going to pass with extra credit.

Cate pulls back half an inch, eyes lit with victory and wicked patience. “And now,” she says, while the projector hums and the cantina band plays on, “let’s see how shy you really are.”

Cate doesn’t so much move her hand as let gravity make the decision for her. One moment it’s a warm suggestion at your stomach, the next it’s sliding lower, like the natural conclusion to a sentence her mouth has been writing against yours. Not pushy. Not a grab. Just a careful palm settling over denim, testing the heat and the shape beneath with the same curiosity she’d use on a new book or a locked door.

You make a small, startled sound into the kiss—half gasp, half yes—and it shoots straight through Cate’s spine. She swallows the sound, smiles against it, then breaks the kiss a heartbeat later so she can watch.

“Research,” Cate murmurs, as if that’s a perfectly normal word to say while pressing her fingers along the seam of someone’s jeans. “You know. For my dissertation.”

Your eyes fly open. You’re flushed, pupils blown wide, mouth a little slick. “Your…dissertation?”

“Mm.” Cate’s thumb presses, slow, circling, not quite over the center of anything, “…on urban legends.”

It’s more than a tease, it’s confirmation bias. Beneath the denim, you're getting hard fast, and Cate can feel the way it changes—weight, angle, the instinctive twitch that betrays both arousal and shy panic. God, the heat. If the jeans weren’t in the way, Cate would lick the seam of her palm to cool it. As it is, the rough fabric gives her just enough friction to map the length pressed along your thigh.

You squeeze your eyes shut like the room is too bright. You grab for composure and land on protocol. “I—um. Cate, I—wait, is this…are we…?”

Cate leans back an inch, bracing her free hand on the couch cushion by your hip so she can keep her palm right where it is. “We are,” she says, gentle. “Unless you don’t want to.”

You open your eyes. There’s so much earnestness in them that Cate feels something tender and dangerous under her ribs. “I do,” you blurt, as if the sentence has been trying to get out of you for years. “I absolutely do, I just—I didn’t want to assume that the movie night was like—code, and also I’m—” You falter, color rising high on your cheeks. “I’m a lot.”

The last two words come out tiny and mortified, like you’re confessing a crime.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Cate says, and the endearment slips out before she can catch it. She watches it land—your breath hitches, shoulders loosening a fraction—and Cate smooths her palm once, slowly, an apology to the part of you that’s braced for being too much. “I invited you because I wanted you here.” She makes the words very clear, as if they’re coordinates. “On my couch. In my hands. Everything else is…bonus.”

You blink. It’s almost comical how your whole body tries to decide what to do with relief. Your throat works, you nod, still a little lost in it. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Cate echoes, pleased and unhurried. She strokes again, firmer now, up the line and back, letting her knuckles drag. The shape in her hand answers like it has its own pulse separate from yours. Cate’s smile goes a little feral. “Urban legend confirmed.”

You drop your head back against the couch and laugh helplessly. “That’s not—okay, mean.” You cover your face with one hand, the other fisting in the throw pillow like you need something to hold onto or you might float away. “Jesus.”

Cate coaxes your hand down. “Let me see you,” she says softly. “Please.”

You obey. Of course you do. You look at Cate like Cate has spun the planet a quarter-turn closer to the sun. Cate’s chest aches with it. The shyness isn’t smallness, it’s generosity in a room that hasn’t always known what to do with it. Cate could go slow forever just to watch.

Her fingers toy with the button of your jeans, then detour—deliberately—up under the hem of the hoodie to the warm skin of your lower belly. She wants to know how you’re built, she wants to learn this topography by hand. Her fingertips meet a soft line of hair disappearing downward, a neat little path that makes Cate’s mouth go dry.

“Well, look at you,” Cate hums, delighted. “A little happy trail.”

You seize up in place. “Nope, that’s illegal. You are not allowed to call it that.”

“What, ‘happy’?” Cate laughs quietly, eyes bright with mischief. “Is there a different adjective I should use?”

“Cate,” you groan, but you’re grinning so hard her teeth flash. The grin crumples at the edges when Cate strokes along that faint line of hair with the backs of her knuckles. It’s not even a proper touch—more suggestion than contact—but the way your hips jump means Cate files the trick away for later. For always.

She tugs the hoodie up just enough to expose more of the trail and bends to press her mouth to the skin beside it. Not a mark, not yet. Just an inhale, a taste, a soft scrape of teeth that earns her a tiny, desperate gasp. Cate stays there for a beat, indulging her own small worship: the warm scent of you, the way your belly goes tight under Cate’s lips, the little tremor your thighs can’t seem to stop making.

“Cate,” you try again, more helpless than before. “I—God—I want this, I want you, I just—” You swallow. The words are working their way out in a jumble. “I don’t want to scare you. Or like…hurt you. Or make you think I assumed anything. And if we don’t—if you want to just—kiss and watch the thing and make popcorn and—” You run out of road.

Cate lifts her head. The first impulse is to tease you about getting in your own lane on an empty highway, but Cate is not cruel with the people she actually wants. She cradles your jaw in one hand and kisses you once—slow, reassuring—and then sets her forehead to yours.

“Listen to me,” she says, and the cadence softens. “You are not going to scare me.” She lets her palm settle back against you through the denim, more definite now, so the words have a body to live in. “If I ever want to stop, I’ll say so. If I want to slow down, I’ll tell you. Right now?” She gives a careful squeeze. “Right now I want to enjoy how stupidly pretty you are when you blush and how good you feel in my hand.”

Your exhale is a whole-body thing. You nod so earnestly that Cate’s heart does a little somersault.

“Good girl,” Cate adds, quiet and pleased, and there’s the bell again—your pupils blow even darker.

Cate works the button open. The zipper tugs down with a sound that feels indecent in the hush, and then there’s only a thin layer of cotton between her fingers and the rumor. Green briefs, soft and cruelly cute, waistband sitting under the line of your abs in a way that has absolutely no business being that appealing. The outline pressing along your thigh is…generous. Thick. Heavy. The head sits proud against the fabric, the damp spot at the tip already betraying just how fast shy can turn to wrecked.

Cate swallows discreetly. She shouldn’t be charmed by a color. She is.

“Hi,” she says to the shape like she’s being introduced. The grin she tips up at you is pure trouble. “You weren’t kidding about being a lot.”

You make a dying noise. “Please. Please, you can’t just—narrate.”

“But you’re so narrative,” Cate says, delighted. She closes her hand over your length through cotton, thumb angling to rub that damp spot in small, coaxing circles. You jerk, one hand flying to Cate’s wrist—not to stop her, to hold on. Your breath stutters, your eyes squeeze shut again, a useless defense against sensation.

“Eyes on me,” Cate whispers.

You obey like it’s gravity. Cate strokes again, slower. The way you swell under her palm is obscene and beautiful. The jeans frame you. Cate loves the visual, loves that this is still restrained enough to feel like a secret you’re keeping together. She digs her nails lightly into your hip, then glides her palm down the length and back up, learning the exact point where pressure turns your jaw slack.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Cate says, conversational and reverent all at once. “About how you’d feel. How you’d fit in my hand.” She squeezes, savoring the sheer weight of you. “How you’d look when I touched you.”

You swallow so hard it’s audible. “You—God—did you really?”

Cate leans in to kiss the corner of your mouth. “I did. The day you sat on the quad with your guitar and pretended not to notice anyone noticing you.” Another stroke, another soft, intoxicating sound from you. “The afternoon in the library with the chips dusting your fingers red. I wanted to lick them clean.” She ghosts a laugh against your cheek. “And now you’re here being obscene in green.”

You tip your head back and laugh—wrecked and bright in the same breath. The laugh breaks into a helpless sigh when Cate spreads her fingers to cradle the base and draw up, pressing along the ridge.

“Is this okay?” Cate checks again, even though your body is saying yes in about five different languages.

“Yes,” you say. Then, with ridiculous sincerity: “Please.”

“Mm.” Cate drops a kiss just below your navel, then another along that little trail. “I like your manners.”

“They come with the…hardware,” you try, breathless and embarrassed by your own joke, and Cate snorts into your skin, shoulders shaking.

“God, you’re cute,” Cate says, throat gone warm. “Weaponized cuteness.”

She eases the waistband down a little to give herself better access to that happy trail, just enough to expose more skin, to let cooler air kiss it. She doesn’t pull the briefs any further—not yet. Worship means patience. She thumbs the elastic, then presses her mouth to the line where skin meets fabric, a slow, open-kissed drag that makes your hips go searching for friction. Cate tightens her grip and gives it to you, a steady pump through cotton that’s almost unbearably intimate for how clothed you technically still are.

Your hand finds Cate’s shoulder and holds like it might anchor you to the planet. Your other hand fumbles at the couch, then lands—bold as a miracle—at the back of Cate’s neck, fingers sliding into the hair there. Cate rewards the courage with a firmer stroke and a soft scrape of teeth where her mouth has been learning your stomach.

“You’re doing so well,” Cate says, and she means it. Not as a script—she loathes rote praise—but as an observation: this shy creature, this generous nerve-ending, giving her everything without any performative cleverness. “Breathe.”

You drag in air like Cate told you how. Your voice scrapes. “You’re really—God—you really want this.”

Cate lifts her head. The projector throws blue light across her face, it makes her eyes look oceanic. “I really want you,” she corrects, and then, just because she wants to watch the way the words ripple through your whole body: “All of you.”

Your throat works. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Not before I take a very long, very smug victory lap,” Cate says primly, then ruins it by dropping a soft kiss right at the base of the trail. She smiles against skin when your breath catches, then looks up again, hand steady where it strokes. “Tell me if anything feels like too much.”

“It already does,” you confess, wrecked and grinning. “In the best way.”

“Good.” Cate leans up, meets your mouth again, keeps her hand moving. She kisses you slowly, lazily, like you have all the time in the world to learn each other—which, if Cate has her way, you do. Your hips start to find a rhythm against her palm, the kind of helpless, shy grind that makes Cate want to applaud. When you break for air, your eyes are glassy and sweet with disbelief.

“You’re adorable,” Cate says. “Also: unbelievably hot.” She squeezes, gentler now, easing the edge. “That rumor? I’m going to write a peer-reviewed paper.”

You groan into her shoulder. “Please don’t publish.”

“I’ll submit it under a pseudonym,” Cate promises solemnly, and strokes you again, deliberate and adoring. “Breathe for me.”

You do. The shy, the nerves, the spiraling—Cate can feel them all reshaping into something brighter under her hand. It’s not that the anxiety disappears, it’s that it has somewhere to go. Somewhere to be held.

Cate kisses the corner of your smile and lets her free hand pet a distracted line up and down your side—over ribs, over the small curve under your arm, back to the waistband so she can tease the elastic again. “I’m going to take such good care of you,” she says, almost a vow, almost a warning. “But right now I’m going to enjoy watching you come undone in my hands.”

Your answering shiver is full-body. You nod, speechless, and then—bless you—force out, “Yes, ma’am,” like you’re not sure where that came from and are too far gone to be embarrassed.

Cate’s grin is all teeth. “That’s my good girl.”

She tightens her grip just enough to make your eyes roll and lets the moment hang there, bright and precarious, before she decides exactly how soon she wants to put her mouth where her research has led. For now, she savors the study: denim tugged open, green cotton damp, a shy nerd panting softly on her couch, and a little trail of hair that points her home.

Cate treats permission like a door she already knows how to open—slowly, with her wrist, so the hinges don’t squeak. She kisses you until the world shrinks to the give of the couch and the hum of the projector, then lets her palm drift, patient, down the soft slope of hoodie and under the loosened waistband.

The reaction is instant. You jolt like a struck tuning fork, breath breaking, a helpless sound catching in your throat. Cate can feel the yes of you everywhere—under her hands, in the way your knees go a little wider without being asked, in the way your mouth seeks another kiss like thirst.

“Hey,” Cate murmurs against her lips, smiling. “Breathe.”

You try, fail in a very charming way and try again, hands hovering, not sure where to land. Cate solves the problem for you by catching one wrist and setting it at her own waist, an invitation and a grounding line at once. The other hand Cate brings to her shoulder, and you hold on.

“Let me look at you,” Cate says softly.

It’s not a question, but she waits anyway. You nod—shy, wrecked, so, so game—and Cate eases the green waistband lower, just enough to bare warm skin and that neat little trail she’d teased moments before. The intake of your breath is a visible thing, a tide. Cate’s eyes flick up to meet yours. “Pretty,” she says, not as a verdict but as fact.

The inventory isn’t clinical, it’s a kind of reverence. Cate notices the flutter at your throat when Cate’s knuckles skim lower. She notices the flex of your thigh, the way the muscle jumps when Cate’s thumb draws an idle circle. She notices the way heat gathers and radiates like a hearth. Every small twitch and jump is catalogued, not as data points but as proof of life: here is where touch becomes a tremor, here is where a stroke turns the tremor into a quake.

Your brain whirs like it’s trying to cache every second. Cate sees it—the dazed, disbelieving loop of oh my God she wants me she wants me she wants me—and kisses you to quiet it. The kiss is slow, possessive in an elegant way, the kind that makes you whimper into her mouth because you’ve been daydreaming about Cate’s lips for weeks and reality is worse, better, both.

“Keep watching me,” Cate whispers when you part, an inch of air between your mouths that feels like a ravine. “If you drift, I’ll come find you.”

You let out a shaky laugh. “Okay.”

Cate’s hand firms, finding a rhythm that feels inevitable once she finds it. It’s not showy. It doesn’t have to be. She moves with the kind of confidence that comes from paying attention, letting pressure and pace be answers to what your body asks without words. You clutch the hem of Cate’s cardigan like a lifeline, eyes glassy, dazed by the luxury of being handled this carefully.

“Look at you,” Cate praises, voice gone light with pleasure. “All this for me?”

You nod helplessly, color high, hair sticking to your forehead. You keep trying to talk and get steamrolled by sensation. At one point you manage, “You’re—God, you’re really—” and then give up and kiss Cate like gratitude.

Cate drinks it in, hums into your mouth, never breaking the cadence of her hand. She loves the way you answer on instinct now: the hitch when Cate tightens, the soft curse when Cate loosens and drags, the way your hips learn to meet the next pass. It’s worship disguised as study, it’s study that can’t help becoming worship.

“I knew you’d be good to touch,” Cate says, conversational in that quiet, lethal way. “Didn’t know you’d be this good.”

Your laugh breaks in half. “You—you’re saying that like there’s a scale.”

“There is,” Cate says solemnly, and leans in to kiss the corner of your mouth. “And you’re wrecking it.”

The projector chatters to itself. Cate does not look away from your face. She keeps kissing you—small, greedy kisses, then slow, coaxing ones. Once, a soft press at the hinge of your jaw that makes your hands scramble for purchase. When Cate’s tongue sweeps past your lip, you sigh into it, the sound bright and broken, every daydream you’ve had of Cate’s mouth suddenly feels woefully underwritten.

“Your mouth,” you gasp, almost angry about it. “I—think about it all the time.”

Cate smiles, tasting the honesty. “Do you?”

“Since class,” you admit, mortified, eyes darting to Cate’s lips again like they’re magnetic. “You were arguing with the professor and I—kept staring at your lip gloss. I don’t even care about lip gloss.”

“Oh, you sweet thing,” Cate says, and kisses you with slow, decadent reassurance. “You can stare as much as you want.”

The confession seems to set something free in you. Your hands grow braver. One slides up Cate’s spine and rests at the nape of her neck, thumb rubbing there unconsciously. The other anchors at Cate’s hip. You meet the rhythm now—shy, earnest little rolls that make Cate think of tidepools and patience and getting pulled under with a smile.

Cate feels it when the edge arrives for you—not a dramatic flood, but that hot, breathless narrowing of the world to one point where everything inside you leans forward. She eases the tempo a fraction, lets the line quiver without snapping.

“Cate,” you say, low and wrecked. The sound of her name in this tone feels like Cate’s favorite secret. “I—please.”

“Mm.” Cate kisses the plea off your tongue. “I know.” She keeps her hand working, eyes on yours, delight and tenderness braided together. Then, finally, she tips her wrist just so and feels you break beautifully around the adjustment, trembling, eyes blown wide like a night sky.

Cate slows her touch, smoothing you down, kissing you through it until the shivers settle into shyness again—until you laugh, breathless, overwhelmed, shining. Cate presses her forehead to yours and breathes with you until you’re both steady.

And then Cate sits back a little, gaze cutting downward, considering. The hunger hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it’s sharpened to a point she could thread a needle with. You follow her look and flush all over again.

“Hey,” Cate says, thumb stroking the little line of hair at your stomach, soft as a secret. “You doing okay?”

You nod, dazed. “I—yeah. More than. You’re—God.” You swallow. “I keep staring at your mouth and thinking I’m going to short-circuit.”

Cate’s smile slowly turns into one of delight. “Good to know the daydreams were accurate.”

You bite back another laugh, then fail. It breaks out of you anyway, breathless and fond. “They were…underfunded.”

“Then let’s fund them properly,” Cate says, and the line would be ridiculous out of anyone else’s mouth. From her, it’s a promise.

She kisses you once more—savoring, anchoring—then slides down the couch, the picture of unhurried purpose. Her hands settle at your hips, thumbs stroking reassurance where skin meets fabric. She presses a kiss low on your belly, then a second lower, feeling the fine tremor that moves through you like a swallowed lightning strike. When she glances up, you’re watching her like you’re witnessing your first sunrise.

“Okay?” Cate asks, voice gone velvet.

Your answer is a sound Cate will keep—soft, wrecked, reverent. “Please.”

Cate gathers her hair, smiles up the line of your body like she’s about to write a thesis in a language only you two speak, and leans in to put her mouth exactly where her research has been leading all night.

Cate starts with her mouth like it’s a promise and a problem she’s thrilled to solve.

She kisses lower, slow, because the point isn’t to hurry—it’s to watch you come apart in sequence. A kiss to the soft place beside the happy trail. A kiss to the waistband of green cotton, tongue teasing the elastic until your breath stutters. Then Cate peels the briefs down with both hands, careful and greedy at once, and you shiver as the cool air hits you.

“God,” Cate whispers, and it’s not for effect. It’s worship that slipped out. Your cock frees heavy against your thigh—thick, flushed, beading. The kind of generosity that makes a girl’s mouth water and her better judgment pack a bag. Veins stand under satin skin, the head is glossy, already leaking, pulsing with your heartbeat. You twitch when Cate’s breath ghosts over you, a startled jump that travels from hip to knee.

Cate’s smile goes feline. “Hi there,” she says to the length of you, then up at you, eyes bright. “You doing okay?”

You can only nod. Your hands flex on the couch, then—because you’re trying to be brave—one finds Cate’s hair, tentative, reverent, not guiding so much as asking to stay connected. “Y-yeah,” you manage, wrecked and soft. “You’re…God, Cate.”

“Relax.” Cate kisses the inside of your thigh—one, two—and feels the muscle loosen under her mouth. “Let me look.”

She does. She palms you once, deliberate, a slow wrap that measures and praises in the same motion. You jerk again, a helpless little buck into Cate’s hand, then bite your lip like you’re embarrassed at being so responsive. Cate squeezes, thumb gliding over the wet crown to smear slick into shine. Her other hand fits under your balls to cradle their weight, fingers gentle, exploratory, drawing a shocked sound from deep in your chest.

“Sensitive?” Cate asks, already knowing.

“Apparently,” you huff, cheeks pink. “You’re—fuck—very good at this.”

Cate laughs, low and delighted, and then bends and gives the head a warm, unhurried kiss. Your whole body answers—hips lifting a centimeter, breath snapping. Cate licks once, the lightest flick over the slit, tastes salt and sweetness and something purely you, and hums like she found the line she was searching for. Her lips part. She takes the head into her mouth, heat and pressure, just the crown, just a teasing seal.

Your eyes go wide and glassy. “Cate—”

“Mhm,” Cate says around you, which vibrates obscenely, and your fingers clench in her hair without pulling. Cate relaxes her jaw and slides down another inch, tongue cupping the underside, letting spit and gravity help. She draws back—slow, shiny—and watches a bead of pre gather and spill. She chases it with her mouth, tongue stroking the slit, and you choke on a sound that’s almost a laugh and almost a prayer.

“Eyes on me,” Cate murmurs, hand firm at your hip to settle you.

You obey. Of course you do. You can’t stop watching anyway, the fixation is written all over you—pupils pinned to the gloss of Cate’s lips, the startled awe every time Cate’s mouth stretches around you again. You track the way Cate breathes through her nose, the delicate flare, the way her throat works as she takes another inch, then another. You keep whispering nonsense—Cate, oh God, you’re—Jesus, that’s—please—and Cate devours every syllable like sugar.

Cate sets a rhythm with her mouth and hand, slow and ruinous. Her fist at the base twists subtly on the upstroke, thumb stroking the thick vein, her mouth seals and slides down to meet it, heat and suction and tongue in a pattern that feels inevitable once you’re inside it. When you twitch, Cate moans, low and shameless, like the weight on her tongue is everything she’s been craving all week. The sound ricochets through your body. You jolt and shudder, throat bobbing, eyes fluttering.

“Good girl,” Cate says when she pulls off to breathe, spit webbing from lip to crown. “You taste so good.”

You actually whine, a small, ruined sound, and then laugh at yourself, shaking. “You—oh my God—you can’t just—I’m gonna—”

“Shh.” Cate kisses the slick head again, then licks a broad stripe from base to tip, luxuriating in the way you shiver at the long, wet drag. “We’ll get there when I say.” She sucks one of the sensitive spots she found with her hand—the spot on the right side where the vein rises—and your hips jump as if yanked. Cate pins them gently with her forearm, not stopping, letting the whine play out in the back of your throat.

Cate goes deeper the next time, patient and precise. She opens her jaw, softens her tongue, breathes through her nose and slides down, down, until she feels the press at the back of her throat. Her hand at the base tightens to keep control of the depth. She holds there, eyes up, and swallows carefully. The squeeze ripples around the head, you swear, voice breaking, one hand flying to cover your own eyes like you can’t stand what you’re seeing.

“No hiding,” Cate says when she eases off, voice roughened in a way that makes you shiver. She curls her fingers around your wrist and pulls your hand down so she can see the wreck she’s making. “Let me see your face.”

You give it—flushed, astonished, so gone it hurts. “Cate, I—fuck—you’re going to kill me.”

“Good.” Cate grins and slides down again.

She builds heat the way she builds an argument—layered, relentless, too logical to escape. Mouth down, hand up. Twist, swallow, seal. She breaks only to breathe and to spit—messy, gorgeous strings that make everything slicker, easier, filthier—and to mouth at the shaft, to lick the thick root, to drag her tongue over the seam beneath, to suck each ball in turn until your head knocks against the cushion and a helpless fuck spills out, high and startled.

“Please,” you manage, wrecked and breathless, hips trying to keep still and failing in tiny, pleading motions. “Cate, I’m—oh God—please—”

Cate pulls off with a soft pop and strokes you tight, mouth hovering a breath away, lips shining. “What do you want?”

“I want—” Your gaze jerks between Cate’s eyes and her mouth like you’re drunk on both. “I want your mouth. I want to—God—watch you take it and not be a complete animal about it.”

Cate’s laugh is sinful. “Disaster. You’re allowed to be an animal.” She kisses the tip, tastes another spill. “But you can be my polite animal.”

Your answering groan is half arousal, half mortification. “You’re mean.”

“And you like it.” Cate’s tone is silk and certainty. She tightens her grip at the base and sinks back down, faster now, letting the rhythm turn hungry. Her free hand slides up to your stomach—petting the little trail, feeling the muscles jump—then lower to cup and roll, thumb circling, a ridiculous kindness. Your mouth falls open. Your eyes go unfocused and glassy and then sharpen again to fixate on Cate swallowing you, on the way her lips stretch, on the hollow of her cheeks.

“Your mouth,” you say, barely audible. “I—think about it all the time—how soft, how—fuck—how it would feel—”

Cate hums hard around you, pleased, and watches you stutter like someone cut the power and plugged you back in. She pulls back until only the head is in her mouth, tongue teasing, hand working, then slides down again in one smooth take that makes you gasp her name like a profanity.

“Cate—”

“Uh-uh,” Cate murmurs without lifting, fingers tightening. She wants the plea to build properly. She wants to feel you climb the edge, toes curling, careful brain dissolving into instinct under Cate’s hands. She wants to be the last thing you think when thought becomes impossible.

Your hips start to find a rhythm against her mouth without meaning to. Cate lets you, keeps a firm brace so it stays controlled, so you can fuck just the shallow of her throat. It’s messy now—spit slicking her fist, spit shining down the length, Cate’s chin wet, the obscene, wet sounds of pleasure turning the dorm room into something private and feral. Cate moans again—because she can’t not—and the vibration unravels something in your belly you’ve been trying to hold.

“I’m close,” you choke, panicked and grateful. “Cate—please, I’m—oh God—”

Cate doesn’t make you ask twice. “Give it to me,” she says, mouth slick against the head, voice so sure and tender your eyes go wet for a second. “Look at me and cum, good girl.”

Your whole body bows. The words hit whatever switch Cate’s hands have been reaching for. Your pupils are blown black, fixation zeroed to a single point: Cate’s lips sealing and sliding, Cate’s tongue flattening, Cate swallowing like this is what she’d been hungry for all along. Cate strokes fast and tight at the base, sucks hard around the crown, and you tip with a shattered sound, hips jerking despite yourself, spilling hot and thick into Cate’s mouth.

Cate takes it with a soft, greedy hum, hand milking you through each pulse, not flinching when the second twitch makes you punch a breathless, apologetic “sorry” into the air. Cate shakes her head minutely: don’t be. She swallows again, slow, savoring, and then eases back to lick you clean—one last thorough sweep along the underside, a final kiss to the head that makes you shudder and laugh at the same time.

Cate’s hand slows to idle comfort. She tucks you back into the green, pulls the waistband up with fussy care, and then climbs back up your body, kissing a path: hipbone, belly, sternum, mouth.

You meet the kiss like you’re starving for it, like your mouth forgot how to kiss and then remembered in a rush who it belongs to. You taste yourself and Cate and something sweeter beneath, and it makes something tender crack open in your chest. When you finally come up for air, you're smiling like an idiot—dazed, bright, a little overwhelmed.

“You—” You swallow, breath still unsteady. “You’re unreal.”

Cate strokes sweaty hair off your forehead and looks privately proud of the ruin she’s made. “Empirically real,” she says, pleased. “Hypothesis confirmed, data collected, peer review pending.”

You laugh, helpless and adoring. “I’m going to file a complaint with the ethics board.”

“For what?” Cate asks, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Weaponizing your mouth,” you mutter, blush rising again. “And, uh…excessive use of ‘good girl.’”

Cate smiles slow and wicked, thumb tracing the damp curve of your lower lip. “Oh, baby. I’m just getting started.” She kisses you again—soft, then not. “And you were perfect.”

Your eyes flutter, that word landing somewhere deep. You press your forehead to Cate’s, breath syncing, the world narrowing back to citrus and heat and the hum of the projector. “Yeah?” You ask, small.

Cate answers against your mouth. “Yeah.” She cups your jaw, thumbs gentle. “You listened so well. You watched me like you promised. You made the prettiest sounds. I could do that to you again just to hear the next set.”

You groan and laugh all at once. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Cate grins, smug and fond. “Not a threat. A forecast.” She nips your lip, then settles close, palm warm over the soft belly she’d adored, thumb idly stroking that little line of hair like it’s a private signature.

On the projector, starfields keep drifting by, oblivious. On the couch, Cate smooths your bangs and watches your blush fade by degrees, satisfaction rolling through you like a tide. You watch Cate’s mouth like it’s still around you, like it will be again, and think—with that simple, annihilating sincerity Cate keeps earning—I could daydream about this forever.

You make it to the credits—barely. Cate had spent the last five minutes “rewinding” a single kiss over and over with her mouth, and your brain had dissolved into the soft hum of the projector and the feel of Cate’s palm warming the skin just below your belly button.

“Last thing,” Cate murmured as she popped your button back open with a wicked little smile. Her lipstick was a little smudged, her eyes were unholy. “For my notes.”

You blinked, still floating. “Notes?”

“Scale.” Cate tipped her head, smiling like a sin. “You know how the internet puts bananas next to things to prove their size?”

“That’s…not a sentence I expected to hear tonight,” you said weakly, and then your throat went dry because Cate eased off the couch and sank to her knees between your legs, guiding them wider with gentle hands. She tipped her head, suggesting. “Wait. You mean—”

“Photographic evidence,” Cate said, sweet as sugar, conspiratorially low. “Only if you want. You take it on your phone. Then text it to me.” She pitched her voice up half a note, mocking herself: “For research.”

It shouldn’t have lit you up the way it did. But something about Cate being both generous and shameless—about handing you control and then kneeling there looking like trouble under oath—fried whatever circuits were left. “O-okay,” you said, and your hands shook only a little as you retrieved your phone.

Cate stretched her neck long, chin lifted, gold hair brushing your thigh. She nudged your waistband down with ridiculous tenderness, hummed at the sight, and settled with her cheek against the shaft, a sly, pretty juxtaposition of glinting rings, gloss-stained mouth, and—Jesus—scale. Then she let her tongue peek out, in a deliberately slutty little pantomime, one hand resting possessively at the base of your cock. She looked up the length of your body with those bright, greedy eyes and batted her lashes as if to ask the question without saying a single word.

You exhaled like you were about to pull a lever in a spaceship. You framed the shot—Cate’s face, your own lap, the obscene truth of rumor—and took it. The shutter click sounded like a chapel bell.

“Good girl,” Cate praised, pleased beyond reason. “Now,” she said, rising with lazy grace until she was in your lap again, cheek against yours, her voice in that little hollow below the ear, “text me so I can label the file ‘catastrophic evidence.’” She read off her number like it was a secret spell.

You sent it. The photo slid away into a new thread with an unnamed contact. Cate plucked your phone from your hands for one more second—typed something, handed it back.

When you looked, the new name at the top of the thread read: Cate (menace)

You laughed so hard you had to bury your face in Cate’s shoulder. Cate kissed you once more for the road and then—unfair, impossible—walked you to the door like you’d only watched a movie together, all soft-voiced goodnights and the watchful glare of the projector pulsing on like an unimpressed chaperone.

“You’ll text me when you get back?” Cate asked, palm smoothing down the front of your hoodie like she couldn’t stop touching you even to say goodbye.

“I’ll—yeah,” you said, already grinning like an idiot. “Yes, ma’am.”

Cate’s smile sharpened. “That’s my girl.”

By noon the next day, the quad hummed with autumn heat, frisbees scything past in lazy arcs. Cate sat cross-legged on the grass with Emma and Marie, a container of strawberries open and already half-finished, her sunglasses doing exactly nothing to hide the glow she was wearing like new jewelry.

“Okay,” Emma said, stabbing a strawberry like it had wronged her. “You’re beaming like you just got proposed to by a PhD program. Spill.”

Marie added, “She’s been smiling at nothing for ten minutes. That’s either love or a stroke.”

Cate pretended to consider. “Maybe both.”

Emma leaned in. “Did you watch any of the movie?”

“We watched,” Cate said primly. Then, unable to help herself, she let the memory pull the corners of her mouth up. “And then we conducted a series of…supplementary experiments.”

Marie’s eyebrows climbed. “On?”

“On whether shy can coexist with filthy,” Cate answered, picking a strawberry hull and tossing it into the grass. “Spoiler: it can. Also on oral fixation as a personality trait. Also on scale.” She popped a berry into her mouth, slow, wicked. “Conclusive results.”

Emma clapped once, delighted. “You did your little science. Proud of you.”

Marie narrowed her eyes. “Scale?”

Cate toyed with her straw. She could play coy, she didn’t. “I have a photograph I will be buried with.”

Emma squealed. “Cate,” she said in a wail of reverence and scandal. “Cate Dunlap, you menace.”

“Consent,” Cate said at once, hands up in saintly surrender. “I merely requested a, mm, comparative sample.”

Marie laughed into her hand. “For…scholarship.”

“Exactly.” Cate let the smile go soft. “She’s…God, she’s adorable. You know that thing when someone is shy and funny and tries so hard to be good at handling you that you want to ruin them and then brag about it to anyone who’ll listen?”

Emma flopped back on her elbows with a groan. “You’re down bad.”

“So bad,” Cate said fervently. “She was all please and okay and then she’d look at my mouth and forget her name. If I’d given her a pop quiz on her own major she would’ve misspelled her name.”

Marie, trying and failing not to grin: “And?”

“And,” Cate said, savoring their attention like a sunbath, “she’s packing like the rumor says. Generous. Looked even bigger because she’s so polite about it.” She plucked a new berry and bit into it. The juice slicked her lip, she licked it away with purpose. “Green briefs. A very sweet happy trail. I am accepting donations to the Church of Nerds.”

Emma collapsed sideways into Marie’s shoulder, cackling. “I hate you. I hate that you get to be this smug.”

“It’s not smug,” Cate protested, then let the word tilt. “It’s field reporting.”

Marie nudged. “So…are you going all the way next time?”

Cate tipped her head, eyes sliding out of focus just enough that her friends groaned at her. She could still taste last night. The weight of you on her tongue, the way you had watched her like you’d learned a new religion. Cate’s chest ached in a lovely, troublesome way.

“Very likely,” she said, and then allowed herself one (1) sigh. “She makes me want to be both patient and reckless.”

Emma wagged a berry at her. “So what’s the plan, General. You lured her with space wizards. What’s phase two.”

“I’m trying to choose something nerdy and accidentally horny,” Cate said, serious as a committee. “Blade Runner 2049 is moody and has the hologram girlfriend—horny-adjacent. The Mummy is a bisexual awakening in a bottle. The Matrix has the latex and philosophy, but then we might talk about free will all night and never get her pants off, which would be devastating for the scientific community. Me, especially.”

“Dune,” Marie offered. “Nerdy, desert thirst, people whispering intensely.”

“Desert thirst is a brand,” Emma agreed. “Also: Annihilation, but that’s like horny in a fatalist way.”

Cate considered. “Too existential. I want her to put her hands on me and forget English, not contemplate the self as a shimmer.”

“The Mummy,” Marie said with finality. “Brendan Fraser’s forearms. Rachel Weisz saying ‘I am a librarian’ with her whole chest. Horny-nostalgic nerd bait.”

Cate pointed. “Sold.”

Emma leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Text her right now and tell her you found a cursed artifact and need help desecrating it.”

Marie made a face. “Absolutely not.”

Cate smirked, already pulling out her phone. “No cursed artifacts before lunch.” She typed: Do you believe in archaeology as foreplay? Considering a Mummy night. I’ll supply the library card and the curses. You bring your good manners. She watched the dots appear, dissolve, return—then tucked the phone face-down on the blanket like a good girl and pretended not to care.

“You’re impossible,” Emma said fondly.

“True,” Cate said, then—because she was not made of stone—picked the phone back up when it buzzed.

YOU: Yes. Also oh my god yes. When?

Cate bit back a grin so big it would’ve broken her face. Saturday? 8. I’ll provide desert hydration.

YOU: I’ll bring offerings to the librarian gods. Also, not to be weird, but…I can’t stop thinking about your mouth. I’m trying to study and it’s not working.

Cate’s heart did something foolish and sweet. Tragic. Come let me ruin your studying later. She sent a second text, meaner: Picture still safe in your care?

YOU: Absolutely not. I’ve looked at it approximately a hundred times this morning. I’m going to fail.

Cate laughed out loud. Emma and Marie exchanged faces. “She’s besotted,” Cate said, delighted. “I’m going to go insane.”

“You already did,” Emma said. “Congrats.”

Across campus, you’d been sitting on the edge of your bed in the same hoodie and a pair of sweat shorts for a nontrivial amount of time, staring down at your phone like it was scrying a future where you didn’t make a fool of yourself. The photo sat in her camera roll like a tiny sun. You kept opening it, closing it, opening it, then getting lost in the memory of Cate’s cheek against your cock, the gloss on her mouth, the way Cate had made the most indecent thing on your camera roll feel like a prayer.

Luke barged in, stopped dead, and waved a hand in front of your face. “Earth to Hobbit. We have class in six.”

You blinked up slowly. “Hm?”

“Hm?” Luke echoed, because he was rude. He glanced at the screen and then clapped his hands and pointed at the door. “Up. Shoes. Backpack. Stop staring at your own—oh my God.” His face cracked into a grin. “Is that a—did you—did she—”

You slapped the phone to your chest like a Victorian maiden. “It’s for research.”

Luke’s laugh was a weapon. “I’m so proud of you I could cry.” He made a grab for the phone, you dodged and glared, which would’ve been more effective if your ears weren’t pink.

“It’s not for you,” you said, mortified and glowing. “It’s for our files.”

“That’s worse,” Luke said, wiping his eyes dramatically. “Okay, Bambi, we’re going to walk and breathe and talk about literally anything else for twenty minutes so your brain doesn’t liquefy. Shoes.” He hauled you up by the wrist, then softened when you swayed slightly, smiling despite himself. “She really got you, huh.”

You made a little shape with your hands like you were forming a heart and then crushed it like a soda can. “She really got me.”

You made it halfway across campus before you tripped over a crack in the sidewalk because Cate had texted and your feet forgot how to function. Luke set a hand on the back of your neck and steered. “Eyes up, dork. Read it to me so it leaves your head.”

You obeyed because he’d kept you alive this long. “She wants to watch The Mummy.”

Luke groaned, delighted. “Oh, she’s trying to kill you.”

“She said ‘archaeology as foreplay,’” you reported, dazed, and then made a small dying sound. “She says things like that while asking me what time works.”

“Of course she does,” Luke said. “She’s a menace with a bow on top.”

You texted back, pocketed the phone and didn’t immediately take it back out, which was a feat of willpower and also maybe proof that Luke was contagious.

When you got to the arts building, you walked directly past the door.

Luke hooked two fingers in your hood and reeled you back. “Inside, disaster.”

“I can’t stop thinking about her mouth,” you confessed in a rush, cheeks warm. “It’s like…my brain keeps overlaying it on everything? Like a HUD. The professor’s talking and I’m nodding and it’s just…lips.”

“Gross,” Luke said, approving. He held the door with one foot. “Say one normal thing before we go in.”

“She said my demo made her smile,” you offered, desperate and pink at the ears. “Which apparently means I impressed her.”

“Perfect,” Luke said. “Hang onto that, because you’re about to be quizzed and you can’t answer ‘Cate’s mouth.’”

You made a strangled noise, laughed, and let yourself be pulled into the classroom. For the next hour you tried very hard to think about class and failed spectacularly because your palms remembered the feel of Cate’s hair and your tongue remembered the weight of Cate’s praise and your phone in your pocket felt like a live wire.

Halfway through, you snuck a glance: a new text, Cate again.

Quit thinking about my mouth in class, I can feel it all the way over here. Work hard, menace.

You covered your grin with the back of your hand. Under the desk, your leg bounced like it had its own motor. Luke watched the bounce, rolled his eyes, and slid over a sheet of scratch paper on which he’d drawn, in tiny block letters: BREATHE.

You breathed. You daydreamed. You waited for Saturday like the week was a test you suddenly, miraculously wanted to take.

Back on the quad, Emma reached to steal the last strawberry and Cate smacked her hand away on principle. Marie shaded her eyes and squinted. “So. You’re going to invite your shy nerd over to worship at the shrine of Brendan and Rachel and seduce her with 90s bisexual lighting.”

“That is the plan,” Cate said, and allowed herself, just for a second, to drift—to picture the way you would look the moment the library scene started, the exact shape your blush would take when Cate slid her hand under the hem of your shirt again, how very polite you’d try to be about losing every last scrap of your composure.

Emma nudged her knee. “Hey. Don’t float too far.”

Cate blinked back into the warmth and the grass and her friends’ faces. She smiled, dizzy on it in a way that felt like standing up too fast and loving the head rush. “I won’t.”

“Liar,” Marie said fondly.

“Criminal,” Emma added.

“Scientist,” Cate corrected, sly, and slid her sunglasses back into place. Her phone buzzed, she didn’t even have to check to know who. Somewhere across campus, she pictured you half-listening to a lecture, pretending not to stare at a phone screen, pretending not to press your thumb to the corner of your mouth like you could still taste Cate there.

Saturday couldn’t come fast enough—for research. For worship. For the simple, catastrophic pleasure of being wanted by a girl who looked at her like gravity had finally found something worth working for.

Cate opens the door already smiling, ready to make a quip about desert curses—and forgets the English language for a second because you’re standing there in a hoodie and gray sweatpants.

Unfair. Flag on the play. Five yards for indecent suggestion.

The sweats sit low on your hips, soft and slung, and even though you’re soft (for the moment), the outline is…not theoretical. It’s a polite, devastating rumor waving hello.

“Hi,” you say, grinning like you know exactly what you’ve done.

“Oh,” Cate says, deliciously rude for once. “So this is a crime...”

You look down, fake-innocent. “What, these? Laundry day.” Then you tip your head, mouth tugging wicked. “Should I go change?”

“Don’t you dare,” Cate says too fast, then dignifies herself by stepping back. “Offerings?”

You lift a tote: good popcorn, electrolyte packets, and—because you’re a menace with manners—a library card you must have made on your laptop, laminated, with Librarian Gods—Admit One in tiny caps. Cate laughs helplessly and drags you in by the hoodie strings, kissing you in the doorway like she’s cashing a check.

You do the basics—the projector, the snacks, the pillow fluffing—and then The Mummy rolls and the room goes gold. Cate’s in a black tank and a soft skirt that skims mid-thigh, hair pinned up in something lazy and dangerous. She drapes a blanket over both of you, leans in, and vows to behave for at least twenty minutes.

You make it fourteen.

Because somewhere after the fourteen minute mark, Cate feels the shift: your thigh presses firmer, your palm—warm, callused where it counts—skims over Cate’s knee and up, a cautious question that doesn’t quite stop at the hem. Cate glances over and finds the shy version of that smug grin, the one that asks may I while already doing it, because maybe this nerd has a little menace in her after all.

Cate arches one brow. “Are you seducing me during an educational film?”

“Trying to be a good student,” you say softly, sliding your hand another inch, thumb finding the inside of Cate’s thigh and stroking there like it’s a secret you’ve been dying to tell. “Also trying not to think about your mouth and failing.”

Cate’s pulse quickens. She could drag this out. She could make a speech about focus and foreplay. She picks a different lesson. She nudges her knees apart under the blanket.

Your breath hitches. “Okay?” You ask, even though Cate’s body is doing the answering for her.

Cate hums approval, hand finding the back of your neck—gentle anchor, silent yes. “Show me what you studied.”

You lean in and kiss her, slow and intent, and while Cate is trying to behave, you shift, sink, and then—in a move Cate will replay with unholy fondness for weeks—duck under the blanket like a thief.

“Um,” Cate says, already smiling too hard to sell the admonishment. “Movie?”

From beneath the blanket, muffled and earnest: “Field trip.”

Cate’s laugh breaks into a gasp when your warm mouth presses to the inside of her knee and then higher. The blanket rumples and settles with your shoulders. Your hands turn reverent immediately, careful and sure: one smoothing up the outside of Cate’s thigh, the other curving under to lift and open her, to hold her exactly where you want her. Cate wants to see—she always wants to see—so she catches the edge of the blanket and tugs it down enough to make a little tent of privacy.

Your hair is already a mess from static, cheeks a soft pink, eyes wrecked with focus. “I thought I’d return the favor,” you say, voice low and frayed, and then you don't wait for permission you already have. You nose along the seam of Cate’s panties like you’re cataloguing scent, breath hot, then kiss there—right over the damp spot—so sweetly Cate’s head tips back on instinct.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Cate murmurs, fond and ruined at once. “You are going to be the death of me.”

You look up at her from under your lashes, shy and starving. “Promise?”

Cate’s answering noise is embarrassing.

The first lick is tentative—mapping the shape of her cunt through fabric. The second is bolder, a slow press of tongue that makes Cate’s thighs shiver and part wider. You hum like a pleased animal and slide your fingers under the edge of the panties, pulling them aside with the kind of careful eagerness that makes Cate’s chest ache. Cool air, then warm mouth: you kiss her directly now, open and wet, and Cate hears her own breath grow ragged, hears the movie turn to static in the corners of her head.

“Good girl,” Cate praises, hand threading into your hair to hold you there, not pushing, just claiming. “Use your tongue. Slow.”

You obey instantly—of course you do—drawing one long, unhurried stroke from entrance to clit, tasting, learning. You pause to press a kiss just where Cate is slickest, then circle the clit with a barely there touch that makes Cate swear softly and rock up into it. You moan like the praise tastes good, and the vibration—Jesus. Cate’s fingers tighten in your hair.

“Eyes on me,” Cate says, because she’s greedy for that image, and you lift your gaze, mouth still working. The look nearly undoes Cate by itself: devoted, wrecked, a little desperate to please. Cate tugs her skirt higher with her free hand so she can watch you lick her again—slow, then faster, then with a little flick at the top that makes heat spear low and bright.

“That’s it,” Cate breathes. “Just like that.”

You settle into a rhythm, finding Cate’s cadence by feel. You flatten your tongue and drag, you point and circle, you learn the exact angle that makes Cate’s thighs tremble. Your hand slides up and you slip two fingers along the slick heat, teases, presses. Cate’s breath hitches, she nods, and you work one finger inside, careful, slow, palm up, searching for the place that will make Cate grab at the couch.

You find it. Cate’s gasp tells you that you have. You curl, stroke, curl again, timing it to the soft suction at Cate’s clit, and the combination turns Cate boneless. Cate hears herself say yes like a confession, she hears the projector hum, she hears the mini-fridge in the corner kick on.

“Look at you,” Cate manages, voice gone rough. “My polite animal.”

Your cheeks go hotter. You sink another finger—patient pressure, no rush—and when Cate’s body opens around it with a shiver, you make a helpless noise and redouble your devotion. Your mouth gets a little messier now, wetter, needier. You suck softly, then firmer, tongue flicking a little hello at the peak before you seal your lips over Cate’s clit. Cate’s hips answer without permission, tiny, urgent rolls that make the blanket slide and the couch creak.

Cate wants to catalog, the part of her that loves notes tries to take inventory—the way your shoulder muscle jumps under her palm, the way her own pulse stutters when you swallow, the dim outline of gray sweats tenting a little even while you eat her out, wholly focused, selfless and greedy at once. But the catalog dissolves. Pleasure steals language. Cate breathes through it and lets herself be handled.

“Good girl,” she says again, and the praise makes your eyes darken. Cate can feel you smile against her, just for a second, before you close your mouth around her again and suck her clit into the warmth of your mouth.

Cate breaks. Not loudly—beautifully. Body tightening around your fingers, thighs closing gently around your ears, a sound that is halfway between a laugh and a moan because of course the world’s shyest menace would be this good at worship. You lick her through it, steady and sure, mouth never leaving her, fingers gentled to a slow thrust that spreads the heat out until Cate is smiling helplessly and petting your hair like you’ve just done the bravest thing anyone has done this week.

When Cate breathes enough to think, she tugs the blanket fully down. You blink up, flushed and slick-lipped, hair wrecked, gray cotton absolutely giving away that you’re as ruined as Cate feels. Cate cups your cheek, thumb gliding over damp, swollen lips. You kiss the pad of her thumb like it’s reflex, like you can’t help it.

“What are you doing,” Cate murmurs, the faux-scold soft as a kiss itself.

“Returning the favor,” you say, sheepish and proud and so earnest it hurts. “And maybe…proving I can be a menace, too.”

Cate laughs, greedy with fondness, and pulls you up, pulls you into a kiss that is all thanks and claim and promise. She tastes herself on your tongue and deepens it, slow and filthy. You make a small sound and settle over her, the line of your body fitting like you’ve been doing this together for months.

“You,” Cate says against your lips, “are going to ruin me.”

“Okay,” you whisper, dizzy with it. “If that’s…okay.”

“God, yes,” Cate says, and then, because she can’t help herself and because you earned it, she adds, low against your mouth, “That was perfect. My good girl.”

You shiver like Cate tightened a hand around your spine. You hide your face in Cate’s neck and laugh, breathless. In the movie, the desert turns to a wall of sand and Brendan Fraser yells. In Cate’s lap, shy turns smug and then back to shy again in one heartbeat.

Cate strokes down your back, leisurely, until her hand inevitably finds the waistband of the gray sweats. She palms over the outline there, a light press that makes you gasp into her throat.

“Still unfair,” Cate says, sweet and dangerous. “Stay after the credits and I’ll decide an appropriate sentence.”

You lift your head, eyes bright and undone. “Yes, ma’am.”

Cate kisses that grin right off you, tucks the blanket back around your bodies, and lets the movie play to an audience of two people who are trying very hard not to make it background noise. Every few minutes she rewards you with a slow stroke through gray cotton, and every time, you look at Cate like gravity finally found something worth orbiting.

The movie is sprinting toward its big, sandy finale—booby traps and chanting and a lot of heroic shouting—when Cate decides she’s had enough of pretending to be a historian.

She scoots forward under the blanket, one hand on the back of the couch, and then…backs up. Slow. Deliberate. Her ass finds your thighs, her shoulder blades settle against your chest, the soft weight of her hair brushes your jaw. The couch sighs. You do, too.

“Educational film,” Cate murmurs, deadpan.

“Mhm.” Your voice lands low, startled by how close it is to Cate’s ear. “Studying very hard.”

“Prove it.”

You don't rush. That’s something Cate’s already learned about you: the more you want, the more careful you get. Hands that could be greedy find the hem of Cate’s tank and pause there, thumbs rubbing the smallest circle against ribs. Cate feels the question and answers without being asked, a long, satisfied exhale that tips her head back into your shoulder. Permission, written in the cadence of her breathing.

You bow to the arc of Cate’s neck. The kiss placed there is almost reverent, the second one has teeth. Cate smiles at the ceiling. “Menace.”

“You like me this way,” you say, a little shocked to hear it out loud, which makes it even better.

Cate pushes back more firmly, the blanket shifting with your bodies, the movie’s gold light throwing a crown across the curve of her shoulder. Your hands slide over her waist—one flattening beneath the soft slope of her stomach, the other bracing at her hip—and the little pull you give turns Cate boneless in an instant. It’s not obscene, it’s honest. It says I want you closer and I’m allowed to ask.

Cate lets out a pleased sound she doesn’t bother disguising. The sound lands in you like a match in tinder. You breathe like you’ve been running and nuzzle once more beneath Cate’s ear. “Okay?”

Cate nods, slow. “Keep going.”

Gray cotton and the world’s most dangerous black skirt make low friction enemies of each other. Each subtle rock back sends a warm, unmistakable answer through fabric. Even at rest, you give yourself away. Cate swallows, amused at how your body can’t hide its happiness, then deliberately settles so that the press is undeniable.

“Unfair,” she whispers.

Your laugh is a quiet break in your chest. “You said not to change.”

“And I was right,” Cate decides, voice gone sweet. “Hands.”

You slide one beneath the hem of the tank, palm spreading—heat and certainty—over the smooth plane of Cate’s stomach. The other settles at her thigh and nudges gently, a wordless command that makes Cate open for you without thinking. The blanket tent is suddenly its own small weather system: warmer, close, the smell of popcorn and laundry and Cate’s bright, citrus perfume curling together.

Onscreen, a wall of sand howls. On the couch, the blanket falls over your legs as Cate draws it higher one-handed, to better hide the way she’s rocking back. You catch the rhythm, meeting it with a tiny roll of your hips, careful, careful, careful, like you’re coaxing a skittish thing to take food from your palm.

“Good student,” Cate says, nearly laughing at how earnest she sounds in praise.

“Trying to pass the class,” you admit, mouth at her jaw. Cate feels the smile in the words and it makes her stomach tilt.

You trade quiet for a while—breath and the rustle of fabric and the soft, indecent creak of the couch. When you finally slide a hand even lower, fingertips skimming the arch of Cate’s thigh beneath the skirt’s hem, Cate’s answer is instant. Her shoulders lift, then soften. One hand reaches back without thinking and finds the nape of your neck, anchor and approval in one small press of nails.

“Here?” You ask, the question a warm fog at Cate’s ear.

“Exactly there,” Cate says.

Time turns bright and narrow. The movie becomes a lantern in a distant room, the blanket a curtain. Cate lets herself ride the careful, building line of sensation, and you—God bless that shy, stubborn heart—keep checking in with every shift, every new little risk, never breaking that quiet, wordless conversation of touch. When Cate turns her head, searching, you find her mouth easily. The kiss is unhurried and deliberate, it says yes, it says now, it says this.

“Cate,” you murmur when you finally come up for air, voice gone hoarse with wanting, “I—tell me if you need me to slow down.”

“I need you to keep going,” Cate says, and there’s no flippancy left. Just clarity, warm and bright. She twists in your lap, to face you, to ruin you with a look. The blanket drags, your breath catches. Cate smiles like she’s being given all the answers for an exam. “Take me to bed.”

A beat. You blink, stunned, then grin like you’ve just been awarded a medal by the sun. “Yes, ma’am.”

Together you tumble the short distance with surprising grace, the way people do when they’ve already memorized the other’s gravity. The bedroom is small and bright and sweet—plants on the sill, a stack of dog-eared paperbacks, the pale ghost of a highlighter stain on the duvet. Cate backs up until the mattress catches the backs of her knees. “Come here,” she says, like it’s the easiest sentence she’s ever said.

She meets you halfway, taking your mouth with a softness that steals air. The urgency doesn’t go away, it refines. Layers of fabric become the only problem either of you have ever had. Hoodies end up somewhere on the floor with half-laughed apologies, the soft gray of those unfair sweatpants slides down, and Cate kisses the corner of your smile just because she can. Your hands, respectful to the point of torment, pause before they touch bare skin. Cate solves the problem by taking them in hers and setting them where she wants them most.

You both talk as you go. Not banter—touchstones.

“Okay?” You ask again, even as your eyes darken with the want Cate keeps stoking.

Cate nods, anchored by the steadiness in you. “Yes.”

“Tell me if—”

“I will.”

“You’ll—”

“I promise.”

Trust slots into place like the last piece of a map. The rest of it is a matter of following the directions you’ve both had in your hands all night.

When it turns from teasing to certain—when you both stop pretending you’re two people in a room and become the one thing your bodies have been angling toward since the first kiss on the couch—Cate’s laugh breaks into something softer and far less articulate. Your forehead lowers to hers. “Cate,” you say, as if that can hold you both steady.

“Look at me,” Cate murmurs, and you do, eyes blown open and bright, every line in your face a promise to be careful even as careful gives way to how much you both want. The first long, perfect slide turns the room into white noise. Cate clutches at your shoulder and you make a sound against her cheek that Cate feels all the way down her spine.

“God,” you breathe, wrecked and almost relieved, “you—”

“I know,” Cate says, because she does. She cups your face in both hands and kisses you until you’re moving without thinking, until the rhythm finds you both and stays.

It isn’t frantic. It’s not slow, either. It’s the kind of urgency that comes from patience finally rewarded—steady and sure, hands everywhere, mouths that won’t stay apart for more than a heartbeat. You move like someone who can’t stop checking the map, Cate keeps saying yes like she’s pressing a stamp into wax. When Cate tips her hips, asking for more, you learn the lesson instantly. When your breath stutters, Cate soothes you and pulls you in closer and closer, the way you do when home is an arm’s length away.

“Good girl,” Cate whispers once, helpless at the way it changes your entire body—how your shoulders set, how your breath catches, how gentleness turns into a kind of fierce devotion. You answer by holding her just a little tighter, by listening with more than your hands.

Neither of you hurry the ending. You let it come on its own feet—building, cresting, pulling you both under. Cate warns you with a broken little laugh that isn’t really a warning at all, and you say “I’m right here” into her mouth and stay there, exactly where Cate needs you, through every bright, shaking moment. When you follow—surprised, almost, by how thoroughly Cate takes you under with her—Cate is already waiting, already there, already steady in the way that makes the landing feel like something sacred.

After, the world takes a long time to filter back in. Your breathing returns first, then the brush of the plant leaves against the window in the breeze, then the ridiculous hum of the ancient mini-fridge in the corner. Cate finds she’s smiling at nothing, which is unlike her and not unpleasant.

You, flat on your back beside her, blink at the ceiling like a planet just came into view. “I think I saw God,” you say, dazed and delighted.

“You saw Brendan Fraser,” Cate corrects, smug and soft, and props herself on an elbow to look down at you properly. Hair a wreck. Cheeks warm. Lips pink and swollen from kissing. It’s catastrophically endearing. “And then you saw me.”

You turn your head and look like that might actually be true. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Cate echoes, and leans down to kiss you again just because she can. The kiss goes lazy and grateful. Your hand finds the small of Cate’s back and settles there like it’s been waiting its whole life to do that very small, quiet thing.

After a while, Cate laughs softly and taps the tip of your nose. “For the record, archaeology is excellent foreplay.”

“Peer-reviewed,” you say, giggling into her shoulder, which is going to be a problem for Cate’s heart, long-term. “I brought electrolytes,” you remember suddenly, lifting your head like you’re worried Cate will dock you points.

Cate kisses your cheek for the attempt. “You’re hired.” She lets herself sink back into the pillow, an arm draped over your stomach, proprietary and pleased. “Stay. We can make out through the credits and then figure out if dessert is more movie or less clothing.”

You pretend to think very hard. “I’m a fan of all of your research proposals.”

“Good answer,” Cate says, and nuzzles into the skin just below your jaw, contentment and hunger braided into something sustainable. Outside, the campus has started to soften toward evening. Inside, the little room holds your shared laughter and the quiet aftershocks of your intimacy.

On the forgotten projector, the heroes are probably riding off into the sunset. In here, Cate traces idle patterns on your ribs, already planning the debrief for Emma and Marie—nerdy and horny accomplished—and you study the ceiling with a smile that won’t stop happening to you and think, happily doomed, that you’ll never again hear the words ancient curse without tasting Cate’s kiss.

At some point the movie dissolves into credits and then into a blue, idle screen, the projector’s fan a steady hush. Your conversation thins into murmurs and little, lazy kisses that get slower every time you find each other again. Cate’s hand stays on you like it belongs there, and your breathing evens out without your permission, warmth pooling heavily in your limbs. Cate drifts first, mouth still curved as if she fell asleep mid-joke. You follow, half-awake enough to register the weight of Cate’s arm and the soft slide of her hair across your collarbone, not awake enough to do anything but hold on.

Sometime before dawn, you blink into the dim and remember, abruptly, that you’re a guest in Cate Dunlap’s dorm and also a person with exactly one (1) functioning self-preservation instinct. You don't want to overstay. You don't want to be the girl who wakes Cate by accident, all elbows and apologies, and turns something perfect into something awkward. So you move like a thief with good manners: careful inches, a breath held, the slow extraction of your arm from under Cate’s cheek. Cate makes a small, sleepy sound and burrows into the pillow instead, still warm, still smiling. You freeze, watch her for a beat like you’re memorizing a painting, then lean down and press a gentle kiss to Cate’s temple.

“Thank you,” you whisper, ridiculous and sincere, and slip out.

Cate wakes like a girl who fell asleep in a sunbeam and then tried to run a marathon in her sleep—warm, wrung out, and sore in the very best ways. Her thighs feel used in that delicious, complaining way that makes putting both feet on the floor a negotiation. The inside of one knee bears the ghost of a kiss, there’s a bright ache low in her belly that flares when she stretches.

On her nightstand, her phone is face-down like it’s trying to behave. Cate flips it over anyway and gets hit with the painfully polite proof that you left without waking her.

YOU: Sorry I slipped out. You were asleep and I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. Thank you for…everything.

YOU: Also you look so cute when you’re asleep and I almost didn’t survive that.

YOU: Text me when you’re up? No rush. Just…hi :)

Cate smiles into her pillow like a teenager. She scrolls once more, because she’s shameless, to the labeled file she definitely did not name Catastrophic Evidence. The photo is still there, sinful and silly and somehow weirdly tender—her cheek against your cock, the scale of the rumor no longer rumor. She locks her phone before she can get sentimental about an image that should be illegal in three countries and gets moving.

By the time she crosses the quad to meet Emma and Marie, she’s put on sunglasses and a very smug cardigan. She is also, it must be said, walking with a single degree of extra care that makes Emma sit up and point with glee.

“Oh my God,” Emma crows. “You’re sore.”

Cate lowers herself to the blanket like it’s a rite, tries (fails) not to grin. “I am gloriously inconvenienced by my own choices.”

Marie bites back a smile and offers a coffee. “Field report?”

Cate accepts the coffee and the premise. “Phase Two of the research initiative was a resounding success. The Mummy: nerdy and horny. Gray sweatpants: war crime. Nerd: shy menace with perfect manners and absolutely devastating ethics.”

Emma kicks her ankle. “Wait, devastating ethics?”

Cate sighs, helplessly pleased. “She kept checking in. The whole time. Like she was worried she’d break me and then…” She trails off, remembering the way that careful turned to hungry in slow, gorgeous increments. The way your forehead had rested against hers like a promise. “She asked so pretty and then she lost her mind in slow motion. It was—” She searches for a word that isn’t embarrassing and gives up. “God.”

Marie and Emma both burst into delighted laughter. Marie leans in, eyes bright. “So—you went all the way.”

“We went as far as bodies can reasonably go,” Cate says primly, and then the prim cracks. “Yes. We did. She—” Cate’s throat goes warm and traitorous. She takes a quick sip of coffee. “She ruined me very politely.”

Emma puts a hand to her chest, mock-fainting. “Did you die?”

“Briefly,” Cate admits. “Saw Brendan Fraser, saw God, saw stars, saw my ceiling fan in a way that made me consider calling maintenance afterward to thank it for its service.”

Marie grins. “And now you’re walking like a girl who had an excellent evening.”

Cate tilts her head, sly. “I’m also thinking about dinner.”

Emma wheezes. “Of course you are.”

“I am a scholar,” Cate says. She slips an index card out of her bag and lays it on the blanket: Librarian Gods—Admit One, laminated. “From her. An offering.”

Marie presses a hand to her mouth and makes a high, delighted noise. “She made you a prop?”

“She made me a covenant,” Cate says, ridiculous. “She also brought electrolytes in case ‘archaeology as foreplay’ lived up to its name. Which, tragically, it did.”

Emma leans forward, eyes sharp with curiosity and care. “And…you’re okay? Not just sore—okay.”

Cate hears the question under the question and softens. “I’m okay,” she says, honest and warm. “She was…careful. And then not careful in exactly the right ways. And she—” The memory tugs at a smile she can’t stop. “She looked at me like she finally found something worth staying for. It was…a lot. In the best sense.”

Marie squeezes her knee, pleased. “You’re doom-glowing.”

“Shut up,” Cate says, but there’s no heat. She’s sunshine and smirk and the dangerous ease of a woman who got exactly what she wanted and discovered she wants more. “Anyway, I need a follow-up film that’s both nerdy and horny. Blade Runner will make her philosophical, Heat will make her want to talk about camera blocking, The Matrix will derail us into ‘the desert of the real’ and then I’ll have to climb into her lap to shut her up.”

“Problem?” Emma says, innocent.

Cate pretends to think. “Not a problem.”

Marie chews her straw. “Pacific Rim.”

Cate blinks. “Giant robots as foreplay?”

“Drift compatibility,” Marie says. “Two people hooking into each other’s minds to pilot a single body. If that’s not your brand, I don’t know you.”

Cate stares at her, then laughs helplessly. “I hate you for being correct.”

Emma lies back, satisfied. “It’s decided. Giant robots. Horny science.”

Cate opens her mouth to argue, but her phone buzzes. Reflexively, stupidly, she smiles before she reads it.

YOU: Good morning. Do you…want a bagel? For you I will brave the bakery’s morning rush.

Cate texts back: You’re so sweet, thank you. I’m with Emma and Marie by the fountain.

YOU: Copy. I look ridiculous. Don’t be alarmed.

CATE: If you show up in the gray sweatpants, I’ll call campus security.

YOU: Gasp. I would never abuse power so wantonly…probably.

Cate’s smile doubles down into ridiculousness. Emma sees it and groans. “Oh, you’re already gone.”

“Not gone,” Cate says, affecting dignity. “Invested.”

“Doomed,” Marie corrects.

Cate shrugs. “Occupational hazard.”

Across campus, you're sitting on your floor with one sneaker on and one sock in your hand, staring at the wall like the wall said something unforgivable. Luke, who has already cycled through patience, mockery, and breakfast, leans in the doorway chewing his gum like a concerned uncle.

“So,” he says. “How was movie night, and do I need to Lysol the couch?”

Your face does something deeply unscientific. You try to answer and emit a noise somewhere between a squeak and a hymn. Luke’s grin goes predatory.

“Oh ho,” he says. “You had sex.”

You cover your face. “Luke.”

“Did you or did you not put your whole nerdy back into it.”

You peek between your fingers, pink and smiling, and the softness in it almost knocks Luke over. There’s a reverence there that isn’t just post-orgasmic glow. “I think I love her,” you say, stunned at yourself and not taking it back even a little.

Luke blinks. “Is this because she let you nut in her?”

You choke on air. “Can you—please—never say that sentence again.”

Luke flops onto the bed, delighted. “Answer the question.”

You shove at his knee, mortified and grinning in helpless equal measure. “No? Yes? I mean—it was…yes, that happened, and also it was—Luke, she was so careful and so mean in exactly the way I like and she kept saying ‘good girl’ and then she smiled at me afterward like I’d done something impossible and I just—” You run out of words and exhale, laughing at yourself. “I don’t think it’s just the sex.”

Luke sobers a notch, eyes kind. “I know. I’m busting your chops because I love you. And because phrasing it like a caveman will keep you from floating into the rafters and getting eaten by a ceiling fan.”

You wipe at your eyes like a dork and laugh. “She already thanked her ceiling fan for its service.”

“Oh my God, you two deserve each other,” Luke says, sincerely. “Okay. Logistics. Are you going to see her today?”

“She’s on the quad with Emma and Marie,” you say, looking suddenly like a car that just realized it has gas. “I’m going to bring bagels.”

Luke stands and grabs the forgotten sneaker. “I’ll walk you partway so you don’t get hit by a bike while daydreaming about her mouth.”

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

“Don’t you dare gender me,” Luke says, offended. “I’m a saint.”

You laugh, lace the sneaker, grab the paper bag you’ve neurotically re-tied three times, and let Luke tow you into daylight.

You make it halfway to the fountain before Luke peels off toward the arts building. He taps the bag. “Breathe. Don’t propose. Do propose. I don’t know. Text me if you pass out.”

You salute and keep going, heart doing tricks in your chest. From a distance, you see the blanket, the halo of Emma’s hair, Marie’s crossed legs, Cate’s ridiculous sunglasses and the way she sits with her weight on one hip like she invented hips. The sight of Cate is like stepping out of air-conditioning into summer—blunt, sweet, overwhelming.

Cate turns at the sound of your sneakers on the path. The smile that floods her face is so immediate and so unguarded that you actually stumble on nothing. Emma and Marie share a look so smug it should be illegal.

“Hi,” you say, suddenly shy, suddenly eighteen again. You hold up the bag. “I, uh, braved the bakery.”

Cate’s expression goes gentle around the edges, like a soft focus filter you can feel. “Heroic.” She pats the blanket beside her. “Come sit, polite animal.”

You obey without thinking, which is becoming a pattern. You lower yourself carefully, glance once at Emma and Marie—both pretending to be cool, both failing—and then back to Cate, who is not pretending at all. Cate has that smile again: a little dazed, a little feral, unspeakably pleased.

“Hi,” Cate says, softer.

“Hi,” you say back, even softer, and then realize you’re staring and try to say something impressively neutral, like the weather exists. What comes out is: “You look really…happy.”

“I am,” Cate says, as if it’s easy. Then she turns, shameless, and kisses you in front of God and frisbees. Not filthy, but not PG. A hello that tastes like coffee and laughter and last night. Your ears go hot. Emma makes a noise like a kettle, Marie kicks her to keep her from squealing. Cate pulls back, eyes amused. “Apologies. Research follow-up.”

You swallow a grin. “I’m available for longitudinal studies.”

Emma collapses onto her back like a fainting goat. “They’re disgusting.”

Marie props her chin on her hand and studies you with the air of a scientist who likes her results. “So you’re the shy menace.”

You duck your head. “I’m trying.”

“She’s doing very well,” Cate says, and the pride in it turns your bones to liquid. Cate plucks the bag from your hand. “What did you get me?”

“Everything,” you say. “And, um, a cinnamon raisin because I panicked and thought you might secretly have the taste of a grandmother.”

Cate laughs, delighted. “I’m offended and yet touched.” She divvies up bagels with queenly grace, flicking crumbs from her skirt and introduces you properly to Marie and Emma.

“Hi,” you say, wanting to be impressive and landing squarely on earnest. “I’ve heard…good things.”

Emma props herself up on her elbows, eyes glittering. “We’ve heard better.”

“Emma,” Cate warns, amused.

“What,” Emma says, angelic. “I’m just saying you look like a girl who got absolutely decimated by a librarian.”

You make a wounded little noise and hide behind your bagel. Cate pats your knee, radiating fondness. Marie, merciful, changes the subject. “Any plans for the weekend, Shy Menace?”

You look at Cate before answering, which is its own answer. “Uh—robots?” You offer. “Giant ones. Drift compatibility.”

Cate points at Marie without looking away from you. “She said it was the correct choice for us.”

Marie accepts her laurels. “I am occasionally useful.”

Emma takes an enormous bite of bagel. “You’re doomed,” she declares to the group at large, scattering crumbs like confetti. “All of you. Especially her.” She points to you.

You, pink but brave, nod. “Seems right.”

Cate leans into your shoulder, unbothered by the public softness of it. “Tragically,” she says, “I concur.”

You eat. You tease. You arrange robots and pretenses to sit very close in the near future. When Cate shifts and winces the most microscopic wince, your hand is there without thinking, warm at the small of her back in the least performative bit of caretaking imaginable. Emma and Marie watch it happen and exchange a look that says oh, she’s done for and oh, she’s good for her, both.

“Drink water,” you murmur, extra electrolyte packet already in your palm like a magic trick.

Cate stares at it, then up at you, stupid happy. “You’re absurd.”

“You hired me for my absurdity,” you say.

“True,” Cate says. She knocks her knee against yours. “And for your research compliance.”

You hide a grin in your bagel. “Yes, ma’am.”

Marie groans. Emma claps her hands once like a seal. Cate tries to be dignified and cannot stop smiling long enough to pull it off. She gives up and lets herself glow—sore, smug, and already thinking about giant robots and the soft, dangerous truth that’s been circling her ribs since last night.

Doomed? Probably.

The taste of Wanda’s skin was forbidden fruit.

You weren't allowed to bite — not without permission.

And tonight, permission wasn’t coming easy.

Wanda had you on your knees at her feet, hands folded neatly in your lap, your fangs aching behind your lips. Her body heat was unbearable this close — a furnace radiating against your chilled skin. You could hear her heartbeat, steady and slow, taunting you.

“You’re squirming,” she murmured, tilting your chin up with two fingers. “Something wrong, little fang?”

You swallowed, eyes wide and dark in the candlelight. “I-I need…”

“I know what you need.” Her smile was cruel in the most loving way. “But you don’t get to take it. You earn it.”

Your throat bobbed, the ache to sink your fangs into her pulse point clawing at your control.

Wanda leaned closer, lips brushing your ear. “Say it. What do you want?”

“...To bite,” you whispered, shuddering.

“Say it properly.”

You whined, eyes fluttering closed. “Please, Mistress. Please let me bite. I’ll be good…”

Wanda hummed thoughtfully, trailing her fingers down the side of your throat, letting you feel just how vulnerable she was — how easily she could give you what you craved.

But you belonged to her now. A vampire on a leash. Her pet.

“Maybe,” she said at last, drawing back and straddling your lap, “if you beg pretty enough, I’ll let you have a taste.”

She smiled when your fangs dropped involuntarily.

“Such a hungry little thing.”

Wanda’s thighs cradled your hips as she settled in your lap, warm and commanding. Her fingers threaded lazily through your hair, tugging just enough to remind you who was in control.

Your hands stayed exactly where she expected them — limp at your sides, trembling, even though every part of you screamed to touch her. Your instincts, your hunger, your damnation all thrummed beneath your skin like static.

“You know,” she murmured, her voice syrupy and slow as she rocked her hips forward ever so slightly, “you’re lucky I find this whole pathetic need of yours so… cute.”

You whimpered.

She tilted her head, exposing her throat — just a glimpse of the skin you craved more than blood itself. Then, she grinned and tilted it right back.

“Not yet,” she said sweetly, stroking the line of your jaw. “I want to hear more. Tell me what it does to you, knowing I’m right here — warm, alive, bleeding just under the surface — and you’re not allowed to touch me.”

You blinked fast, fangs pressing hard against your bottom lip. “It hurts, Mistress.”

“I know it does, baby.” She cooed, her nails dragging lightly down your chest. “Hurts here?” One nail traced the space above your heart. “Or here?” She cupped between your thighs just briefly before retreating.

You bucked up into the phantom of her touch, breath catching.

“Both,” you admitted shakily. “Please. Please, I’m so hungry…”

Wanda clicked her tongue, as if scolding a child. “You think I don’t know how hungry you are? I can feel it in you, little bat . The way your whole body hums with it. But want and deserve are two very different things.”

Her hands slid around the back of your neck, nails scratching lightly as she leaned in, her lips ghosting your cheek.

“You’ve bitten me before without asking,” she whispered, her tone sharp with accusation. “You promised you wouldn’t again.”

“I didn’t mean to,” you gasped. “I lost control —”

“And who do you belong to?” she interrupted, pulling back to meet your eyes, her own blazing with intent.

“You,” you breathed. “Always you.”

“That’s right.” She kissed you then — not soft, but claiming. Her tongue slid against yours, and you tasted her spit, her heat, her power. It wasn’t blood, but it was intoxicating. Your nails dug into your thighs to keep from moving.

Her hand suddenly tangled in your hair and yanked your head back, exposing your throat now.

“Say it again.”

“I belong to you.”

Her lips brushed your neck, mimicking what you longed to do.

“You’ll drink when I say so,” she murmured, and you whimpered as she scraped her teeth along your throat in wicked mockery. “Beg one more time, and I’ll think about it.”

You were desperate now, eyes wide and glossy, your voice cracking.

“Please, Mistress. Please let me drink from you. I’m yours. I’ll be good. I’ll be so good. I need it, I need you…”

Her breath hitched — just slightly. Enough to tell you she liked that. Liked hearing you fall apart.

Slowly, deliberately, she shifted in your lap again and drew your face into the crook of her neck. Her pulse was right there. So close. You moaned from the proximity alone.

“Okay,” she said softly. “You’ve earned it.”

Your body went boneless with relief, and just as you began to move in, her fingers threaded through your hair again, tightening hard.

“But,” she added, low and firm, “you bite slow. You drink only when I say. And you stop the second I tell you.”

“Yes, Mistress,” you breathed, barely able to contain yourself. “I promise.”

“Good girl.”

She tilted her head, exposing the smooth, delicate skin of her throat — and finally, finally, she whispered:

“Drink.”

You sank in — slow, reverent. Her blood burst across your tongue like fire and honey, thick with life and heat and Wanda. She let out a soft gasp, her hand stroking the back of your neck, grounding you, guiding you, owning you.

“That’s it, baby,” she whispered. “Take it slow. My good little vampire.”

And you did — because she asked, because she allowed it, and because everything you were belonged to her.

Her blood was everything.

Warm. Sweet. Saturated with her magic and will and humanity — and the taste of her love, because even Wanda’s dominance was affectionate in its own twisted, perfect way.

You drank slow like she asked, fangs buried in her throat, hands shaking where they hovered at her waist. Every instinct screamed to drink deeper, to hold her tighter, to take, but you didn’t. You wouldn’t.

Because she let you.

Because she told you to.

Your arms eased up around her, slow and careful, wrapping her in your embrace without squeezing, without claiming. You never held her too tightly. You couldn’t — wouldn’t — risk hurting her, not even by accident. She was breakable. Human. Yours.

And above all, you were hers.

Wanda stroked your hair lazily, her breathing steady while yours grew rough — not because you needed it, but because it helped, gave you a rhythm to anchor your control.

Her voice broke through the haze: smooth, sharp as a command.

“Stop.”

You froze. Fangs still inside her. Breath stuttering against her skin. Your eyes flew open, wide and frantic. You whimpered against her throat.

But you didn’t move.

Didn’t pull back.

Didn’t drink.

Just… stayed there, trembling, trying so hard to behave.

“Good girl,” she murmured, and her nails scratched softly at the nape of your neck. “Still learning how to behave, but you’re getting there.”

You moaned helplessly. Her blood sang through your mouth, coating your tongue, tempting you even now.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” she whispered. “My heart… still beating. My body, still warm. And you’re so cold, sweet girl. So empty. But you’re not going to take what isn’t given.”

You whimpered again, your mouth still latched to her skin, fangs shaking from restraint.

“You’re going to wait,” she said, hand fisting in your hair. “Because I said so.”

Your arms tightened around her a little more, never enough to bruise, just enough to cling. To say I’m here. I’m listening. I’m yours.

You wanted to sob — from hunger, from devotion, from how badly you needed her to say yes again.

And Wanda — cruel, knowing, amused — nuzzled your temple.

“Breathe for me,” she said softly.

You obeyed, inhaling against her neck, shaky and slow.

“Good. Now exhale. Focus.”

You did.

She waited a moment longer, making sure you really held still, before her hand relaxed in your hair and her breath danced over your ear.

“Start again, baby.”

You made the softest, most broken sound — a breathless gasp of gratitude — and resumed.

Carefully. Worshipfully.

Drinking not because you could, but because she let you.

Wanda sighed, letting herself melt into your lap again, perfectly relaxed, completely safe — despite the predator wrapped around her.

“That’s it,” she murmured, almost teasing. “Nice and slow. My good little monster.”

The moment Wanda said start again, you sank back into her throat like it was the most sacred place in the world.

Because it was.

The pull was slow, gentle — reverent. You obeyed to the letter, but you couldn’t stop the little whines in your throat. Each swallow made your hands tremble, your mind quiet, your whole world narrow to the pulse beneath your tongue.

And Wanda was feeling it.

She shifted in your lap, grinding herself against the firm line of your thigh. A sharp gasp left her lips — small, but real.

You knew this rhythm. This body.

You knew what your bite did to her. How her blood ran hotter the deeper you drank. How the pain mixed with pleasure until it blurred into a fever in her skin. You felt her magic flicker beneath her skin like a lit match waiting to catch.

Her fingers tightened in your hair.

“Fuck,” she breathed out, voice cracking.

That wasn’t just arousal — that was need.

You moaned against her, eyes fluttering shut. Her hips rolled again, slow but purposeful, chasing the friction.

“You don’t get to move,” she managed, voice strained. “Don’t… fuck, don’t you dare help me.”

You obeyed. Not a single thrust back. Not a grind. But you held her, arms locked around her back, anchoring her to you as she used your thigh, your body, her vampire.

Her pet.

Her source of pleasure, and pain, and everything between.

She buried her face in your hair as her noises grew more desperate — soft, gasping moans with every twist of her hips.

The taste of her deepened. Darkened. You could feel her heartbeat in your tongue now, rapid and erratic, responding to the heat building between her legs.

You held still like she asked. Even as her nails bit your shoulders. Even as she shook a little in your arms.

“Fuck, baby…” she whispered, her voice almost cracking into a whimper. “You have no idea what you do to me…”

But you did.

You knew.

You’d tasted her blood a hundred times. You felt how deep the reaction went. How intimately her body tied pain to pleasure — how even the softest feed left her breathless and shaky in your arms.

You knew her tells: the magic buzzing at her fingertips, the hitch in her breath when your fangs scraped just right, the way her thighs tightened around you as she fought to keep control.

And she was losing it.

Because even though you were the one kneeling, trembling, biting her throat — she was the one unraveling.

Her hips jerked once, rhythm faltering, and she let out a helpless little moan, high and sharp.

Your breath caught.

Wanda swore under her breath and grabbed your jaw, yanking your head back just enough to pull you off her neck. Blood painted your lips, and you blinked up at her, dazed and starved.

She looked wrecked.

Flushed cheeks. Wild hair. Lips parted.

“Don’t you dare look smug,” she growled, but her voice was shaking. “That wasn’t permission to get cocky.”

You nodded, wide-eyed, blood slicking your mouth.

“I wasn’t,” you whispered. “I swear, Mistress.”

She glared — then kissed you hard, her tongue licking into your mouth, tasting her own blood off your lips with a hungry groan.

“I’m not done with you,” she breathed against your mouth. “Not even close.”

And you believed her.

Because you’d barely scratched the surface of what Wanda Maximoff could do with a trembling vampire wrapped around her finger.

Wanda was breathless, flushed, and trembling slightly when she pulled back from your blood-slick mouth.

Still straddling you. Still in control.

You were hers — panting, fangs aching, lips red from the taste of her. And when she reached down and tugged your shirt up and over your head, you let her, limbs pliant and obedient.

“Sit still,” she ordered, and you did.

She pulled your bra off slowly, watching the way your chest rose and fell in anticipation, her eyes flickering with heat. Her fingers grazed your skin — barely there — and still you shivered like she'd burned you.

“You don’t get to touch me,” she said, voice dark and low as her hands slid down your body. “You hold me. You feed from me. But you don’t fuck me unless I say.”

“Yes, Mistress,” you whispered, voice trembling.

Wanda rocked her hips again, harder this time, and your hands flew to her waist — not to move her, just to hold. Steady. Supportive. Worshipful.

She ground down harder, chasing friction against your thigh through the thin fabric of her panties. She wasn’t hiding the way she moaned now, short and sharp, every breath dripping heat as her fingers dug into your shoulders.

“This is mine,” she whispered, dragging her nails down your chest. “All of you. Even this need you think I don’t see. I own it. You don’t come until I do.”

You whimpered.

She rolled her hips again — and again — soaking the front of your jeans, her body pulsing with magic that sparked against your skin, fraying the edges of your control. But you held firm, nails pressing into your own thighs to keep from moving. From begging.

From doing anything but what she let you.

Wanda's moans grew louder, less composed. Her head fell to your shoulder, teeth grazing the skin where you’d bitten her earlier.

And then — a shudder, a breath held too long — her whole body jerked once, and a loud, broken sound fell from her lips as she came against you.

It was messy. Slow. Her body shaking in your arms, hips twitching as she rode it out, panting into your neck like you were the one keeping her grounded.

You were.

Your arms were wrapped tight around her. Not possessive — never that. But protective. Present. The kind of hold that said: I’ve got you. Take what you need. I’m yours.

Wanda slumped into you, chest heaving, and for a long moment, neither of you moved. You felt her heartbeat against your skin, rapid and erratic and human.

You kissed her temple softly, lips stained red.

Only then did she pull back and cup your cheek.

“Still with me, sweetheart?”

You nodded, eyes hazy, every nerve humming with the weight of her.

She smiled — tired and wicked and full of something soft.

“You did so well,” she whispered. “So good for me.”

Your throat bobbed. “Thank you, Mistress.”

Wanda slipped off your lap and gently pushed you back onto the couch. Her fingers made quick work of your jeans, and before you could protest — or beg — she was between your thighs, her hand pressing flat against your center through your soaked underwear.

“Now,” she said, her voice like velvet. “Now you get to come.”

You came fast — embarrassingly fast — hips bucking up into her hand as she rubbed tight, practiced circles over your clit. All the blood, all the restraint, all the tension that had built up through obedience and denial crashed through you in a wave.

And Wanda watched, chin propped on your thigh, grinning like the smug devil she was.

“God, you’re pretty when you fall apart,” she murmured.

You whimpered, back arching, thighs trembling, and then — finally — you collapsed.

Spent.

Full.

Shaking.

Safe.

Wanda didn’t rush the come-down. She climbed back into your lap, straddling you again — this time to soothe, not to take. She cradled your face, pressing kisses to your cheeks, your brow, the corner of your mouth.

“Easy, baby,” she whispered. “I’ve got you.”

You clung to her, still panting despite the fact that your lungs didn’t need to. Your whole body ached in the best way.

She cleaned the blood from your chin with her fingers and pressed them into your mouth to suck.

“There’s my good girl,” she murmured. “Took it so well. You always do.”

You leaned into her, eyes fluttering shut, resting your forehead to hers.

Her hand stroked your hair. “You did everything I asked.”

You nodded.

“And when I told you to stop, you stopped.”

Another nod. A tiny, broken sound of pride caught in your throat.

Wanda kissed you once — soft, slow, grateful.

“You’re mine,” she whispered. “Every inch of you. Forever.”

And you were.

Wanda was the one who moved first, even though her body was still shaky and her thighs still pressed damp against your jeans.

“Come on,” she murmured, cupping your jaw with one hand and pressing a final kiss to your lips. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

You went with her without question, clinging just a little as she guided you to the bathroom. She chuckled softly, arm around your waist.

“You always get like this after,” she teased, voice warm. “Like a baby bat stuck to me.”

You nuzzled your face into her hair, still overwhelmed, still grounded in her scent.

She bathed you both gently — hands slow, steady, not teasing anymore. She peeled away your ruined clothes and held you under the warm spray of the shower, fingers stroking your back, humming softly under her breath.

It soothed the leftover trembles in your limbs.

She washed your hair like you were precious. Like she liked doing this for you. She always did — insisted on it, really.

And afterward, she dressed you in soft pajamas — one of her oversized shirts and a pair of cotton shorts you couldn’t remember stealing but were definitely yours now. She dressed herself in a robe, loose and cozy, and tugged you by the hand into the kitchen.

Wanda didn’t even give you the chance to ask. She pulled a sealed container of blood from the fridge and handed it over wordlessly, then turned to fix something for herself.

You sat on the edge of the counter, sipping slowly, still a little floaty. Your fangs had finally retracted, but your gums were sore. That always happened when you drank too slowly.

She glanced over and frowned. “Still tender?”

You nodded.

Without saying a word, she pulled out one of her freezer packs and wrapped it in a dish towel. She pressed it gently to your cheek, right where your jaw was clenched.

You leaned into it with a soft sound of gratitude.

Wanda made herself a grilled cheese — extra sharp cheddar, exactly the way she liked it — and slid it onto a plate. She only ate half before she offered you a bite.

You hesitated, but took it when she gave you that look — the one that said let me care for you back, dummy.

When you were both fed and warm and finally calm, she took your hand again and led you back to the bed. She crawled in first, reaching for the blanket, but stopped when you climbed in behind her and pulled her gently into your arms.

“You need sleep,” you whispered against her hair.

“You need rest,” she murmured back.

“I don’t sleep.”

“I know,” she said, already burrowing into your chest. “I just like saying it.”

You held her close, your arms wrapped around her waist, your chin tucked over her head.

Wanda let out the softest sigh — barely a breath — and her whole body relaxed in your hold.

It was the only time she ever went limp like that. Only after you fed. Only when her magic quieted and her body was wrung out and her heart beat a little slower in her chest. That was when she let herself be small. Tired. Human.

You didn’t need to breathe, but you did anyway — slow and steady, chest rising with hers. You liked matching her rhythm. It made her feel less alone.

Her fingers twitched against your shirt. “Still with me?”

“Always,” you murmured.

She hummed. “You’re mine.”

“Yours,” you agreed, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Always.”

She drifted not long after, body warm and boneless against yours.

You stayed still.

You never moved while she slept. She hated waking up alone.

So you stayed — watching the way her lashes fluttered against her cheek, the way her lips parted slightly, how utterly soft she looked when all the sharpness faded from her face.

Powerful, fierce, brilliant Wanda — sleeping safe in your arms.

Yours to protect.

Hers to belong to.

You didn’t need sleep.