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The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus scowls with spiritual eminence, throws aside the sheet of flimsy with devout rage, and unleashes a torrent of totally pious swears. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck! That impudent, conniving, iniquitous fucking leech!”
The octogenarian nun who brought her the import inventory looks momentarily much closer to death’s doorstep. “I’m sorry, my lady?”
Harrow huffs. “Fetch me Gideon Nav, sister, please.” When the nun doesn’t move, she adds, “Now.”
The nun scurries off into the hallway, shutting the door to Harrow’s cell behind her, and Harrow sighs. What kind of game does Nav think she’s playing? Does she really think Harrow won’t notice the line item labeled Trentham’s Top Titties? Does she truly believe Harrow will let her waste the Ninth’s precious little cash on salacious magazines? And to think what Griddle is doing with those magazines!
Not that Harrow ever imagines it.
Last month, when she caught Nav trying to pilfer Seductive Secrets of the Second from the shipment, Harrow grew constructs to pin her to the wall, tore open the back of her shirt, and had a skeleton whip her until Nav was in tears. Surely that should have been a sufficient deterrent. Harrow has pictured that glorious penance many times since, Nav’s innumerable sins paid for with each crack of the whip: the way she struggled against the bones, the muscles of her back rippling, her noises as she panted and yielded and cried out—
Harrow pulls away from the desk. Fuck. She's begun, in her fury, to press herself against its hard corner, pulse pounding in her ears. She can’t allow herself to stoop to Griddle’s level. She can’t.
But then, if she leaves her clothes on, how bad could it be? She’s touched herself and regretted it before, repented for days afterward. But now she’s only taking satisfaction in Gideon’s just punishment. Gideon abused the Ninth, and Harrow protected its sacred name. What more righteous pleasure could there be?
Plus, Nav will probably put up a fight the entire way up the drillshaft to Harrow’s cell. She has time.
So Harrow opens her robes and positions her crotch against the corner of her desk, and begins to grind. She recalls the memory of Gideon in profile, forehead falling forward against the wall, gasping in pain. After a particularly fierce stroke, her whole body convulsed against the wall, and she groaned through her teeth. “Do you regret your sins?” Harrow asked.
Gideon laughed. “Of course not.”
So Harrow began to whip her harder.
It was the punishment Griddle deserved. Something in her seemed to know this, because after that exchange she went limp against the wall. Her agony ascended until it seemed to plateau, and her cries of pain became one low, constant wail. Eventually Harrow stilled the skeleton’s arm, and wiped bloodsweat from her forehead. Then she approached Gideon. Gideon didn’t open her scrunched-shut eyes.
Harrow stroked over one welt. She hadn’t broken skin, but it wasn’t far off. “How about now?” Gideon hissed and writhed under Harrow’s touch. “Have you suffered enough to regret it?”
When Harrow pulled away, one golden eye opened. “Never.”
Harrow pushes herself harder against the desk and conjures that glassy, unfocused look in Nav’s eye. The curves of her plush, slack mouth. The strain of her muscles against her bonds before falling limp—
“Hey, Nonagesimus, I heard you’ve got another bone to pick with my—” Gideon breaks off with a wheezing noise, and Harrow whirls around to find her standing there in the doorway. “H—” She gulps. “Harrow? Were you just—?”
Embarrassment and anger roar to life in Harrow’s stomach. “Shut it!” she seethes, yanking Nav away from the door and slamming it shut. “Shut! It!”
Gideon goes with her easily, eyes nearly bugging out. “But you—you were—”
Harrow isn’t sure why she shoves her up against the wall, pinning her there by her shoulders. Humiliation clouds her logic: she’s running on adrenaline and instinct alone. “You ingrate!” she howls. “You impetuous fool. You disgust me, you know that?” She digs her nails into Gideon’s clothed shoulders. “You are the loathsome scum that putrifies this house, and you expect me to sit back and allow it?”
It’s a genuine question, and she breaks off both to catch her breath and to let Gideon answer. But Gideon says nothing. She, too, is breathing rather quickly. Her cheeks are perhaps more flushed than normal, Harrow thinks, and her eyes are trained on Harrow’s mouth.
She intends it to mock, when she says it. “Oh, don’t tell me even this is arousing to you?”
But Gideon doesn’t swear and break away. She doesn’t deny it. She doesn’t do anything. She just stays where Harrow’s pinned her, and watches Harrow’s mouth.
Harrow splutters. “First the Ninth’s precious resources, and now my private quarters! How much more must you profane with your lust?!”
Gideon’s lips are parted, and she’s halfway to panting. There still isn’t the faintest glimmer of cerebral activity in her eyes.
Harrow tugs on her shirt. “Well?!”
Gideon makes the tiniest noise in the back of her throat.
Harrow gasps. This is unfathomable. “Why, you—” Words spill out of her without thinking: she still hasn’t quite gotten over Gideon walking in on her pleasuring herself. “You whoreish idiot—you petulant slut!”
The noise from Gideon’s mouth is small but unmistakable: a moan.
Harrow flushes crimson at the sound, and slaps one hand over Nav’s mouth. With one of her shoulders unpinned, she expects Gideon to push her off, but this just seems to make Griddle more compliant. She moans again, wide amber eyes flying up to meet Harrow’s.
Fuck.
This can’t be real. Any moment now, Gideon is going to come to her senses and break away. But she doesn’t, just stays there, looking at Harrow.
Harrow toes Gideon’s feet apart, trying to push her over the edge. But Gideon willingly buckles at the knee and spreads her legs.
Well, then. Whatever bizarre line they were toeing, they’re now firmly on the other side.
It’s almost funny how easy it is, to bring her free hand squarely between Gideon’s legs. She doesn’t press down very hard, but she can feel her, warm and soft through her pants. Gideon’s hips buck against her hand, and she swears into the hand on her mouth. Fuck. Harrow needs to get a grip on herself. She pulls away.
But then Gideon mumbles, “please,” soft against her hand and Harrow’s breath catches. Her eyes are entreating and earnest, brows drawn together. Nav can be a handful, but she’s not the type for tricks.
Suddenly this doesn't seem like a punishment for Gideon’s misdeeds anymore.
Despite that, Harrow finds it very hard to stop.
She still can’t think properly, so she doesn’t try. Instead she releases both of her hands so she can undo the fly of Nav’s pants and yank them down her legs, leaving her in just her boxers. “Fuck, fuck, Harrow, please, yes—”
“Quiet!”
This shouldn’t be so easy either. Some metaphysical law should prevent this—something should break. But instead the universe allows her to slide her hand right into Gideon’s underpants. There’s fatty tissue, soft skin covered with rough hair—Gideon hisses—and then—
Between her labia, she’s as hot as Dominicus and as wet as the sea before the tomb. That slick heat against her fingers wrenches a gasp of shock and pleasure from Harrow’s lips. She swipes upward, trying to orient herself, and finds the stiff ridge of Gideon’s clitoris.
Holy shit. Despite her prurience, surely Nav isn’t this wet and swollen all the time. So either she was just pleasuring herself, or she truly enjoys Harrow’s touch.
“Yeah, yes, please, right there,” Gideon moans above her, and Harrow snaps out of it.
“Disgusting," she snarls, and circles Gideon's clit with her finger. “You truly take satisfaction in such depravity?”
Gideon croaks, “You were—on the desk—fuck, Harrow,” bucking against her hand. Harrow says, "Stay still," and Gideon whimpers but stills herself.
For the first time in her life, Gideon is actually obeying her command. Harrow needs to move quickly, before the spell is broken.
She glances around, and only one obvious solution presents itself.
So she tugs Gideon over to the desk and presses up behind her, pushing Nav down and forward so that her crotch meets its corner. Gideon gasps and begins to grind against it. Harrow allows herself to press tightly against her so that she can feel the muscles of Gideon’s rear working. She digs her nails into the front of her still-clothed hips with each thrust and spits, "Is this what you wanted?"
Gideon gasps, “Yes—yes, Harrow, fuck.”
Harrow swears and pushes away from Nav. She removes the oldest and most fragile tomes, as well as her favorite pen, and then sweeps the rest of the desk’s contents indiscriminately to the floor. Then she presses her hips to Gideon’s ass once more. and uses one hand between her shoulder blades to shove her down against the desk.
Gideon's hips start to work double-time, and her noises grow louder and higher. That won’t do. Gideon needs to be punished, not pleasured.
“No,” Harrow orders, and pulls her away from the corner of the desk, leaving Gideon gasping, folded over the desk, pliant. “When you think you can control your urges, we'll resume.”
For some reason, this makes Gideon gurgle against the desk, but she stills herself, bringing her arms to lay limply above her head. For a long minute she just lies there and pants, torso rising and falling where Harrow’s hand is pressed between her shoulder blades. This is so much better than whipping. She can feel each delicious ripple of those godforsaken muscles.
Harrow can see her eyes shut, mouth open. Is this what she looks like when she touches herself? When she’s this close to bringing herself to climax?
Eventually Gideon says, still breathless, “I can control it.”
But Harrow doesn’t want this to be easy. “Can you really?”
Shoulders heaving, Gideon shakes her head. “Give—gimme a minute. I’ll do it, promise.” After several moments, she nods. “We can keep going. I’ll tell you when I’m—:
Harrow pushes her back against the desk, cutting her off. Gideon feverishly begins grinding again, delicious noises escaping her that Harrow totally won’t fantasize about later. After a minute, she whimpers, “Close—fuck.”
Harrow pulls her back. “Good.” Gideon whines at this, hips tensing, but staying there where Harrow’s holding her away from the table. It’s frankly kind of impressive. She had never known Gideon had such reverence in her.
With a strange kind of awe, Harrow cards through her hair, strokes down the back of her neck as Gideon works herself off the edge. Then she realizes what she’s doing, and digs her bitten nails into her shoulder. Gideon yelps. After a moment, she gasps, “I’m ready. I won’t come, promise, Harrow—” cut off with a moan as Harrow pushes her forward again.
Griddle makes it only about ten seconds before she cries out, “I'm close, I'm close, fuck!”
Harrow doesn’t have to pull back. No one’s making her pull back. She takes Gideon right to the edge, then pulls back right as Gideon starts to shudder.
“Did you seriously just come?”
Gideon wheezes, “I didn’t, I didn’t.”
Harrow tilts her head to the side. “You didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t, I swear—”
Harrow scoffs. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
“I was so fucking close, but it was like, the opposite of an orgasm, promise, cross my fucking heart.” Gideon’s forehead thuds back onto the desk. “Fuck.”
Now she’s got her right where she wants her: all hers to destroy. Harrow presses up behind her again. “I think I’d better make you climax again, just to be sure.”
“Fuck, Harrow,” Gideon whines.
“Do you want me to unhand you?” Harrow asks. “You can leave. We can forget it.”
“No,” Gideon cuts in. “God, I sound—I mean—no,” she insists. “I can do it.”
“Good,” Harrow says, and pushes her once more against the corner of the desk. “Ask before you come. Can you do that?” Gideon nods feverishly. Harrow pulls her hips back, pulls her underwear down to her ankles, and slaps her ass, hard, causing Gideon to jump. “I said, can you do that?”
Gideon moans, “Oh, fuck—fuck, do it again.”
Harrow gives her another experimental slap to the other side of her ass, and Gideon yelps. “No? You don't want that?”
“Yes,” Gideon bites out.
“Yes, my lady,” Harrow intones.
She can hear Gideon gulp. “Yes, my lady.”
“Good,” Harrow says with a sharp smile. Then she shoves her hips forward and slaps Gideon once more.
Gideon is shaking now, with her whole body. “Yes, yeah, fuck, again—”
“Again who?”
Gideon sounds so prettily broken around the words. “Again, my lady—fuck, can I come?"
“I don't know, can you?”
"May I come, fuck, Harrow—"
"May you come, who?"
Each hard shove of Harrow’s hips pulses through Gideon’s voice, high and tight. “May I come, my lady?”
Harrow gives her another hard swat, hips working Gideon against the desk all the while, and Gideon keens. "Say please."
"May I come, my lady, please!" Gideon grits out, all at once, voice trembling, hands twisting against each other.
Harrow redoubles her grinding and says, “Absolutely not.”
“I can’t—Harrow—fuck, I’m gonna—“
Harrow spanks her again. “Who, Griddle?”
Gideon’s voice breaks open. “My lady, fuck, I’m gonna come, please—” Gideon’s words cut off and her moans grow reedier, until she gives one ferocious shudder and comes, shaking out her pleasure between Harrow and the desk, the waves of it so forceful Harrow has to grip her hips so as not to be thrown off.
If her agony was delicious, her pleasure is divine. For a moment, Harrow is seized by the conviction that she needs to make this happen again and again and again. Spend the rest of her life in solemn study of how to make Gideon Nav come her brains out.
At last, Gideon goes limp against the desk, gasping into the wood. Harrow snaps out of it.
“You didn’t get permission to come, Griddle. That’s quite bad of you indeed.”
“Piss up a rope,” mutters Gideon.
Harrow pulls back to deliver a spate of swats to her backside, Gideon crying out as her hips jerk, probably pressing her poor oversensitive clit into the corner of the desk once more. “Fuck,” she gasps, “please, fuck, not on the desk.”
Harrow stills, but insists, “You came without permission. So how should I punish you? What do you want?”
Gideon curses, but eventually she mumbles, “My lady, please,” and she swallows. Her voice is raspy. With exhaustion or desire, Harrow can’t tell. “Sit on my face.”
Harrow gapes down at her. Gideon opens her eyes just enough to twist around and wink at her.
After a moment Harrow clears her throat. “Excuse me?”
Gideon—weak and shaky despite her strength, all from Harrow’s handiwork—pushes herself up off the desk and turns around. Harrow lets her. Gideon makes eye contact, but looks away. Her shirt is rumpled up her stomach from all the grinding, and her pants are pooled around her legs. That messy hair and those sweat-sheened, reddened cheeks are enough to do something funny to Harrow’s stomach. “Sit on my face,” Gideon repeats, looking at the floor, as though she can’t quite fathom saying it to Harrow. “Doesn’t that seem, I dunno, appropriate? Like, you get to come, and you get to—like—put me in my place.” Those last few words come out in a rush of air. Gideon flushes even more deeply red. “Or whatever.
When Harrow still doesn’t say anything, still seized by shock, Gideon gently pushes her away. “Here.” Harrow watches in disbelief as Gideon crosses the room, strips off her shirt, toes off her boots, and lays down on Harrow’s bed. “Come here.”
Harrow pulls it together enough to snap, “Don’t boss me around.”
“My lady,” Gideon breathes, voice tinged with desire. “Please. I want it.”
It turns out that Gideon breathing please is too much for Harrow to bear.
And the offer is too good. Despite all of their mutual venom, Harrow finds she wants it, to eke out her own pleasure against that sinful mouth, search for rapture on the heretic’s tongue.
She wants to pretend that Gideon Nav could actually want her.
As if in a dream, she shimmies her underwear and pants to the floor beneath her vestments. Then she hitches up her robes above her hips and clambers awkwardly onto the bed, trying her best to ignore the rapt attention of Gideon’s gaze. It takes some gymnastics to get one leg on either side of her shoulders, but then she’s there, and Gideon’s eyes are trained between her legs. Her face is only a few inches from Harrow’s crotch, and she can feel Gideon’s breath against her wetness. Maybe Gideon can see how aroused she’s gotten. Maybe she can smell it. The thought is overwhelming.
Harrow takes a deep breath in and says, trying to maintain some semblance of control, “Beg for it.”
This is it: the thing Nav will refuse to do. This is the crossroads at which this hazy unreality will crumple, and Gideon will push her off, and they’ll go back to the way things were before, only terribly awkward. Harrow is sure of it.
That isn’t how it happens.
“Please,” Gideon murmurs. “Please, please, my lady, please, can I taste you?” Her cheeks flush an even deeper red, and her eyes are trained between Harrow’s legs. Harrow threads her fingers into her hair and yanks her head back, forcing her to lock eyes. Once she realizes who she’s talking to, surely Nav will think better of it.
But Gideon looks up at her and says, “Please, will you sit on my face?” with a reverence veering dangerously close to awe. She licks her lips. “Please, my lady—please—please, Harrow—mmf!”
Gideon’s eyes go wide before sliding shut. There’s a moment where Harrow is frozen there, finally realizing what she’s done. But then Gideon’s lips part easily against her, and Harrow’s world narrows to wet heat.
For all of Nav’s sharp words, her mouth is shockingly soft. Plush lips move over her—that’s a new feeling, outdone only by the syrupy curl and flick of her tongue. Each stroke is different, running over her folds and then between them, teasing against her entrance, lapping at her clit. After a moment, Harrow finds herself pressing down into the motions instinctively.
Gideon moans into her, sweet and deep and low, and fucking hell, Harrow can feel it.
Broad hands wrap around her thighs ever so gently, and Harrow grinds down harder. Once she starts moving against Gideon’s face, she can’t seem to stop. Gideon’s tongue flicks against her clit, insistent despite the twitching of her hips, until the pressure is too much to bear, and Harrow jerks hard against her face, crying out.
Gideon’s hands tighten on her thighs and pull her up her face. For a moment, Harrow is confused—why stray from that gorgeous hell on her clit?—but then Gideon brushes her tongue over her cunt with teasing little licks. When she dips it just barely in, Harrow gasps, bucking against her despite herself, hands flying to tangle in red hair. Something hard meets her clit, and she presses into it on instinct—fuck, that’s Gideon’s nose.
“Fuck,” she gasps, “sorry, sorry.” But Gideon grasps her hips and pulls her back down, and moans at the press of her full weight. She moans even harder when Harrow tugs at her hair. That noise is too good to resist, so Harrow does it again, and again, and each time the sound grows throatier, rumbles deeper into her core right alongside that blasted tongue. The two together light up every nerve in her cunt.
Then Gideon is shifting her once more, back down her face so that Harrow’s entrance hits her chin, so that her tongue can slide up the full length of her to her clit. She strokes around, over, between her folds, and Harrow gasps for air; Gideon sucks her inner labia into her mouth, and she keens.
Through the blur of feeling and adrenaline, Harrow hears something behind her moving. She turns to look: Gideon’s hips are rocking against the mattress, thighs clenching and releasing in time with each horrid, wonderful thrust of her tongue. At the sight, her heart leaps into her throat. Fuck. Gideon is getting off on this. She turns back to find those golden eyes locked on her, lids lowered in unmistakable arousal.
Perhaps this was never much of a punishment after all.
The revelation sets Harrow’s whole body ablaze. Balancing herself with one hand in Gideon's hair, trying her best to maintain eye contact, she slips her fingers into Gideon's underwear. If she'd thought Gideon was wet before, she had no idea. Gideon's eyes shut and she whimpers, pressing up into her touch. Harrow yanks harder on her hair to steady herself, and Gideon groans.
This is the most physical exertion Harrow has ever undertaken, and yet she doesn't think she can stop. Not when Gideon makes such gorgeous noises as her fingers find her clit, not when her whole body rocks in waves beneath her. Gideon's hands hold her tighter to her face, and her noises escalate until Harrow isn't sure how she can breathe, tongue moving all the while against her.
Trying not to get thrown off, Harrow tangles her fingers further into her hair. She can feel it in her whole body when Gideon shudders. That tongue changes—flattens—stills. Harrow is confused for a moment, before Gideon's hands pull her up, then back down. In a dizzying rush, she realizes Gideon means for her to grind down harder: to ride her face.
Fuck.
It's Gideon's noises that do it, in the end. Gideon's noises, the way she shudders under her, the way she looks up at her, brows furrowed, as though she can't quite believe what she's seeing. Gideon is close—Harrow can hear it, she can feel it, the tension ratcheting up and up in her body, the high, strained urgency of her moans. But she holds off. She shakes against Harrow's fingers, and pulls Harrow's hips against her face over and over, like she's drowning and only Harrow's cunt will save her.
She sounds so desperate. Harrow can't help but give her what she needs.
Rapt, Harrow watches, feels, listens, until her climax hits her like lightning, an electric shock to every inch of her. Her legs lock around Gideon's head, and her hips move across her mouth of their own accord. She heaves against Gideon again, and again, and every noise from beneath her is better than the last. She isn't able to aim her hand precisely against Gideon’s clit anymore, but whatever she's doing must be working, because Gideon gives one more forceful shudder underneath her and falls apart, golden eyes rolling back in her head. The force of it would throw Harrow clean across the room, if Gideon wasn't clutching her so tightly.
When it's done—when Gideon's hands weaken, allowing her to rise off her face—Harrow is still breathing hard. Gideon gasps for air. The lower two-thirds of her face is glossy with Harrow's wetness. If the evidence wasn't right there, Harrow wouldn't be able to believe this had happened.
But Gideon is real, and she’s looking up at Harrow, like—like that. Harrow’s almost afraid to move. When she does, she knows this fragile lie will break. Gideon will go right back to hating her. Harrow will go right back to hating herself.
Eventually Harrow starts to feel awkward. So she sucks in a tremulous breath, and dares to whisper, “Gideon?”
Surely now Nav will regret her sins.
Gideon doesn’t push her off or call her names. Instead she just says, “Hey,” chest still heaving. Then she grins up at Harrow, shaky, wild-eyed, gleeful. “My lady.”
There isn't regret in her eyes at all.