I was standing here fucking blushing. We eventually spread cartons across the counter, made our plates, and curled up on the couch, eating in silence. It wasn’t heavy, not like the silence I endured during therapy. This one felt easy, like she was permitting me to just be.
Eventually, she set her chopsticks down and tilted her head at me. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said softly. “But… the heaviness is all over you, wanna talk about it?”
I stared at my wine glass, then sighed. “Caleb Sr. was and still is a monster, everything he did to Mama, to us, looms over us like a weighted blanket of despair.”
The words came rough, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. “He was verbally and emotionally abusive, sometimes physically, too. He was awful to my mother throughout their whole marriage. The first time I saw joy on my mother’s face was when she finally left his ass. The second time? When Dro swept her off her feet. I’ll never forget him taking Caleb with him to visit his mistress at the time, and when Caleb told my mother and finally stood up to him. He treated him like he wasn’t even his son. Tried to break him down the way he broke Mama, and then it trickled down to me and Calil.”
I swallowed hard. “My mom was there, but she didn’t say anything. She thought she was protecting us, but she wasn’t; Sr. treated her silence like agreement. We’re working through that now, and each session, more forgiveness takes up space where resentment and hurt once lived.”
Amiyah’s eyes were glossy, her hand warm over mine. “Calla…” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Her thumb stroked my knuckles, steadying me. Then she drew a shaky breath. “I know what it’s like to feel incomplete and lost at times. I lost my parents when I was ten to a tragic car accident. It changed my life. My grandparents raised me, and they loved me like I was their own. Poured into me, gave me the best, but it never replaced having my parents. When I was twenty-two, I lost them too; my grandfather passed first, and I believe my grandmother’s broken heart carried her to him soon after. So it’s just been me and Lena, she’s my only family now.”
Her voice cracked, but she held my gaze. My chest ached, recognition slicing through me. We were two women stitched together with grief and survival, carrying ghosts we never asked for.
I squeezed her hand back, my voice softer than I meant it to be. “We’re both walking around with holes in us.”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “But at least we found each other.”
The words lodged in my chest, hot and dangerous, found. Nobody had ever said that to me, because nobody has ever cared enough to look for me; I was always searching to be seen.
I forced a smile, and we had the same idea, apparently, as she tried to lighten the air. “You know what my favorite thing is when I need to shut my brain off?” She tugged at the hoodie draped over the arm of the couch. “This is my Naruto hoodie. I love anime, short for Japanese animation. It got me through some of the hardest nights of my life.”
Her eyes lit up more, and she sat up straighter. “Naruto is my favorite anime. I’ve been watching it since I was a kid.”
I blinked, then laughed. “Of course it is. Of course, you’re secretly a nerd too.”
She grinned, dimples deepening. “Not so secret. I’ve been to every midnight release. I was even thinking about hitting the Comic-Con in San Diego next year, you should come.”
I tilted my head, studying her, lips curving slow. “That sounds an awful lot like a date.”
Her smile widened, wicked and sweet at once. “Maybe it is. You scared?”
For once, I wasn’t. Not of her, and not of this.
I leaned in and kissed her, soft at first, just a brush of my lips against hers. She sighed against my mouth, then melted, her hand sliding up my thigh as if it belonged there.
The kiss deepened fast, turning hot, hungry. My fingers tangled in her curls, tugging her closer. She swung one leg over, straddling me, pressing her warmth down against me. The food on the table sat forgotten, the anime playing in the background, but I couldn’t hear a thing over the thundering of my own heart.
Her mouth was sweet with wine, her body eager against mine, and I realized with a kind of dizzy terror that I was smitten. Completely.
And when her lips broke from mine, leaving me breathless, I knew I didn’t want to run from it anymore.
Her weight settled onto my lap, thighs pressing firm against mine. Her tank top was creeping up her stomach from the roaming of my hands, leaving me exposed to the heat of her body. I slid my hand down, my palm meeting the smooth stretch of her leggings. The fabric was soft but unyielding, hugging her curves as if it were made for my hands.
The material clung so tight I could trace every line of her hips, every dip where she shifted against me. My fingers dragged slowly, deliberately, over the slick heat that was drenching through the material. She let out a soft gasp, her breath trembling as she buried her face against my neck.
“Mistress…” she whispered, the word catching in her throat. Not shy, but reverent, like she wanted to hand me the key to her surrender.
A shiver ripped through me.
“I see you in my dreams,” she whispered breathily. “Your touch, your taste, the way you claim my surrender beyond the physical, I…I need you, please,” she begged.
I caught a fistful of her curls, tugging her head back just enough to see her eyes, eyes that snapped shut in pleasure as she relished in our connection. “You’re trembling for me already,” I said, letting the smugness lace my voice. “All I’ve done is touch you.”
She laughed, but it melted into a moan as I pulled her closer. “I can’t help it. You make me feel everything, and I don’t have to hide it.”
My chest ached. No man had ever made me feel safe enough to unravel. And yet here she was, in my arms, telling me she wanted to be undone.
