settled her weight onto Sara's back the way a rider settles into a saddle she's owned for years — no hesitation, no adjustment, just the long press of her thighs against Sara's flanks and the quiet claim of it. Her knees tucked in tight behind Sara's shoulders. Her heelsLaila found the soft give of Sara's hips and rested there. Sara's palms were flat on the floor, her spine a long, held arch, her cropped hair bristling under Laila's fist where it had already closed.

"Walk," Laila said.

Sara walked. Her knees came up under her, one then the other, the floorboards creaking in a slow, uneven rhythm beneath the four-point weight of them. Her breath came out in a thin stream through her nose. She could feel every inch of Laila on her back — the heat of her cunt pressed to the small of Sara's spine, the damp weight of her hair falling forward over Sara's shoulder, the steady, maddening grip at the back of her skull.

The first slap landed on her left cheek. Open palm, flat, hard enough to make the muscle jump under the skin and send a hot bloom of sting spreading up into her lower back. Sara's arms buckled a half-inch and she caught herself. Her jaw clenched. She kept crawling.

"Slower," Laila said.

Sara slowed. The next slap came on the right cheek, exactly the same weight, exactly the same place, and Sara's breath broke on it — a short, involuntary sound she swallowed before it could become anything. Laila's fingers tightened in her hair, not pulling, just holding, the roots singing against her scalp.

They crossed the hallway one knee at a time. Sara's palms left faint damp prints on the wood. She could hear the shower already — Laila must have left it running, or the pipes in this old building had a mind of their own, because water was hissing somewhere ahead of them, steam curling out from under the bathroom door in a low gray tongue.

"You're trembling," Laila said. Her voice was low and even, the same register she used to order coffee. "Already."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good." The palm landed again, a little harder this time, and Sara's hips rolled forward on instinct, chasing the sting, and Laila laughed — that dark, quiet sound, brief as a match struck and blown out. "There it is."

The bathroom door was ajar. Laila steered her through it with a twist of her wrist in Sara's hair, and the tile hit Sara's palms like a shock — cool, smooth, a completely different country from the warm wood of the hallway. Her knees came down on it and the cold shot straight up through the bone. The room was all steam and white grout and the long silver line of the showerhead spraying into the stall. The mirror had gone blind. The air smelled of soap and the particular salt of two bodies.

"Under it," Laila said.

Sara crawled. The tile squeaked faintly under her wet palms. She crossed the bathroom floor on all fours with Laila still mounted, still heavy, still steering, and when she reached the lip of the shower stall she had to duck her head to fit them both under the spray. Laila leaned forward over her, one hand braced on the tile wall, the other still knotted in Sara's hair, and reached past Sara's shoulder to twist the handle.

The water hit Sara's back like a slap of its own. Cold — not lukewarm, not tepid, cold, the kind that steals the breath out of a body before it can be called back. Sara's whole spine seized. Her shoulders hunched and her chin dropped and a sound came out of her that she hadn't authorized, a high, thin gasp that the water swallowed.

Laila's palm landed again, right on the soaked skin of her ass, and the wet slap was louder than any of the ones before it. "Breathe," she said. "You're not drowning."

Sara breathed. The cold ran down the channel of her spine and pooled at the small of her back where Laila's cunt was pressed to her, and the contrast was obscene — the ice of the water on her skin, the furnace of Laila's body on top of her, and somewhere between the two, Sara's own blood running hot and stupid through her chest. Her nipples had gone hard against the tile when she'd crouched low. Her thighs were shaking. She could feel the shape of her own pulse in her cunt, a slow, heavy throb timed to nothing.

Laila shifted her weight. Her thighs tightened around Sara's ribs, hard enough to squeeze the breath up out of her, and she leaned down until her mouth was at Sara's ear, her hair falling in a wet curtain over both their faces.

"The ride ends at the shower door," she said. "But only after you've earned it. Do you understand what that means?"

"No, ma'am."

"It means you don't get to come until I say. It means you don't get to stop until I say. And right now—" she sat back up, settling her weight, and Sara felt the shift in her spine like a hand pressing down on the back of her neck— "it means you turn around and you put your mouth where I want it."

Sara turned. It took her a moment — Laila had to lift one knee, and the water was in her eyes, and the tile was slick under her hands — but she turned, and when she came up on her knees facing Laila, the shower spray caught her square in the face and she had to blink through it. Laila was standing now, one hand still fisted in Sara's hair, the other braced against the tile, water running down the long brown column of her throat and between her breasts and down the flat plane of her stomach. Her cunt was a dark, wet line in the steam, the hair there flattened by the water, the lips already parted and shining.

Sara's mouth went dry. The cold water was still drumming on her shoulders. Her knees ached against the tile. And she wanted — she wanted with an ache that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the way Laila was looking down at her, unhurried, expectant, like a woman reading a menu she already knew she'd like.

"You know what to do," Laila said.

Sara leaned in. She put her hands on Laila's hips first — she'd learned to do that, to anchor herself, because Laila didn't like to be caught off balance — and she pressed her mouth to the inside of Laila's thigh, just above the knee, where the skin was warm and dry despite the water. She kissed there. Then higher. Then higher still, dragging her lips up the wet slope of muscle, tasting soap and salt and the faint bitter tang of the water itself, until her nose was buried in the hair at the crease of Laila's leg and she could smell her — that dense, animal smell, musk and heat and something underneath it that was just Laila, the way she smelled when she woke up and hadn't showered yet.

Sara's tongue came out and found the seam of her.

Laila's hand tightened in her hair. Not a pull — a grip, a signal, a reminder of who was holding whom. Sara licked up the length of her, slow, flat-tongued, from the bottom of the slit to the top where the hood was already swollen and slick, and Laila's breath caught above her. Just once. Then it evened back out.

"Again," Laila said.

Sara did it again. Slower this time. She let her tongue flatten and drag, let it catch on the little ridge of flesh at the top and circle it once before sliding back down. The water was running into her eyes and down her cheeks and she couldn't tell anymore which wet was the shower and which was Laila. Her jaw worked. Her own cunt was throbbing in time with her heartbeat, empty and hot, and she pressed her thighs together against the tile to get some kind of friction and Laila noticed — of course she noticed — and laughed that low laugh again.

"You're dripping down your own legs," Laila said. "I can see it from here."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't stop."

Sara didn't. She put her whole mouth to it now, lips and tongue and the flat of her teeth just barely there, and Laila's hips rolled forward into her face and her grip in Sara's hair went from a hold to a pull, short and sharp, steering Sara's head where she wanted it. The taste was thick on Sara's tongue, salt and copper and something like the smell of rain on hot stone. She licked and sucked and pressed the flat of her tongue hard against the clit and Laila's thighs came up around her ears, clamping, and the water drummed on Sara's back and the steam filled her lungs and her own hips were grinding against nothing, against the air, against the tile, and she could feel the wet smear of herself on her own inner thighs.

"There," Laila said. Her voice had dropped. The evenness was gone, replaced by something lower and more honest. "Right there. Don't you dare move."

Sara didn't move. She held her tongue exactly where it was, flat and hard against the swollen ridge, and let Laila fuck herself against her face in short, tight strokes, her heels slipping on the wet tile, her free hand slapping flat against the wall for balance. The sound of it — wet skin and running water and Laila's breath coming faster and faster — filled the whole stall. Sara's jaw ached. Her knees had gone numb. She could feel her own pulse in her tongue, in her lips, in the roots of her hair where Laila was still holding on.

"Don't stop," Laila said again, and this time it wasn't an order, it was a plea dressed up as one, and Sara heard the difference and pressed harder, faster, her tongue working in tight circles now, her nose buried in the wet hair, her whole face slick with the shower and with Laila.

Laila came with her mouth open and her eyes closed and her hand fisted so hard in Sara's hair that Sara felt the roots scream. She came in long, rolling waves, her cunt clenching against Sara's tongue, her thighs shaking around Sara's ears, a low sound coming out of her chest that Sara had never heard her make before and would think about for days. Sara kept her mouth exactly where it was and licked her through it, slow now, gentle, until Laila's hips stopped moving and her grip in Sara's hair went slack and her hand slid down the wall.

For a moment there was only the water. Then Laila stepped back, one foot then the other, out of the spray, and Sara stayed on her knees on the tile with her mouth open and her face wet and her own body screaming at her, untouched, unfinished, empty.

Laila looked down at her. Her chest was still moving fast. Her hair was plastered to her shoulders. She reached down and put two fingers under Sara's chin and tilted her face up into the light.

"Good girl," she said. "Now get up. We're not done."

Sara got up. Her legs shook under her. The cold water was still running, and the steam was still rising, and somewhere behind the noise of it all, the shower door stood open, and Laila was already turning toward it.