Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On a crystalline world somewhere past Arcturus. Even this far out I can hear, at the back of my mind, voices all over the universe crying for help. But there are some things only I can do.

“Down here,” Diana calls out, and I see her, up on the point of a mile-long shard of pink diamond, hair flowing resplendent in the local atmosphere. I swoop towards her. She has some box full of unexplained technology in her hard. “Are you feeling anything?”

“No. Should I be?” Truthfully I just feel slightly surplus. She said she needed me specifically, but not exactly why.

“From these readings it seems to be a material that’s a lot like – come on,” she frowns, smacking the box. “This can’t be right. Are you down here?” She bends over another laser-straight outcrop, and her skirt rides up, showing off another inch of thigh.

It’s awkward being around her. Even now, with nobody else around. Sometimes, I want to say something – but if she touches me with that red rope of hers I’m liable to blurt out all kinds of things. How there’s no other woman like her. How deep down I want her to shove me to the ground and ride me like a beast. But this is hardly the time for that.

I put a hand down on the crystal, about to clamber over it into the next valley – and my fingers turn cold. I look to see what I’m holding onto, and the rock burns from within with unnatural purple light. And I recognise the shine of the rock, usually it’s green.

A phantom hammerblow between my hips sends me to the ground, all strength gone from my limbs. Cold sweat, it’s hard to breathe, this is what I’d get from the green stuff, but this feels different. All the blood drains from the rest of my body, it’s impossible to think, every little part of me is all flowing into the erection straining inside my red briefs. It’s painfully hard, the fabric stretching over it feeling like a wire brush, and with my arms chained down by those waves from the rock I can’t even do anything about it.

Diana turns back, I must have made a noise when I fell. “Found it,” I try to say, but there’s no sound, just a croak. She gasps – a look of shock on her face, those perfect, flawless, blood-red lips move – and my suit tears, incomparable relief, as my erection springs out into the open frigid air of that crystal planet.

She turns pale, her eyes widen, I don’t know if she’ll ever have even seen one before, and then she cries out “Oh my God!”, a delighted laugh and a puff of visible air. She swoops down on me and asks “Are you alright?” with a real concern that’s eclipsed by the way her breasts are creeping past the gold hem of her neckline. I can practically feel them, feel her warmth, her heartbeat, her soft perfect skin, and it makes me want to grab hold of them and pull her in close and kiss her.

“Gnk,” I manage, “nngh.”

“Oh, wow, look at those veins,” she says, “where did this come from?” – and out of nowhere she grabs it, the touch alone is like water in the desert.

“God, you’re perfect,” I hear myself say, and then I see how the red rope at her waist is touching me. Even that makes me tingle, and it jerks in her hand, she’s really shocked now, not sure whether to look down at it or look anywhere else.

“You never normally do this,” she says, her hand idling in place, it shifts but it doesn’t move, a beautiful agony, and then she sees the rock in my palm. “Is it the specimen? Is that what’s doing it?”

“Don’t – don’t put yourself down,” I cannot possibly stop myself confessing, “it’s the way you smile, too.” As my eyes roam over her body it throbs, violently, angrily, another blazing pulse each time she moves and her breasts shift subtly.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” she says, and grins away, more fascinated than she ever could have been by that stone – and then, finally, mercifully, starts to work it up and down.

“Please,” I’m saying, “please, Diana, please, it hurts…”

“Oh! Sorry!” She brings her hands away and I spasm with desperation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.”

“No, it’s, that was nice, it’s the stone, it’s making me like this.”

“But me touching you, that was okay?” And her fingers are around me again, I breathe relief, and she looks somehow satisfied too. “It feels – it’s weird, it feels natural.”

She grips me hard, harder than I might ask, than I might admit to liking, then her finger grazes the tip and every muscle between my stomach and my knees tenses at once. She meets my eyes, then looks away with a little smile.

It feels too good, the slightest touch setting my skin on fire, I can feel the orgasm rising – but somehow it doesn’t come. She’s still tugging away, the colour tinting her cheeks, and in a tentative little voice she asks “Am I doing it wrong?” The sound of her words makes me grunt and spasm with selfish pleasure, yet still I do not reach my climax.

“It’s – something’s stopping me,” I grind out through my teeth, yes, the rope is still trailing over my body. She redoubles her efforts, the cords standing out in her arms, a look of desperation on her face as she tries to wring it out of me. Half pleasure, half pain, I cannot think straight. As if there’s some barrier deep inside me, that stops it from coming out…

“Oh,” says Diana, one little word that rings in my ears. Then she plucks the rock out of my hand, and even before she’s thrown it aside the dam bursts. My whole body turns to liquid gold as the orgasm finally comes erupting out. The first dart hits her in the chest and she yelps, covering her face. The rest goes flying off into empty space as my brain shuts down and all the tension falls away in an instant.

It is bliss, one perfect moment – then I see her in front of me, the expression of shock on her face as my semen keeps bursting out all over her hands. Every diminishing jolt makes me want to kiss her and beg her forgiveness and declare eternal love all at once.

* 

We fly back, practically silent. Back on Earth, in some deserted alley, I cover myself with my cape. Diana hands me the box and can’t quite meet my eye.

“I’m sorry,” I begin finally.

“No! No, I didn’t know it would do that to you. I never thought – well, I’m sorry.”

“We don’t,” tripping over my words, “have to talk about it, or anything...”

“Well, it happened, didn’t it.” I’ve always wondered whether, back in the domain of the Amazons, only knowing women, she had been romantic with women. Thinking about it now, though, it feels wrong, wrong to imagine her like that – nude with another lovely woman, kissing and fondling each other – as if I’m somehow disrespecting her to think it.

What really makes me feel sexually nervous, though, is to think back on what she’s just done to me, and how I begged for it.

“Honestly, I just feel lucky I don’t have any weaknesses like this,” she adds, tapping the box, touching my hand when she does.

“I always wondered – do you have weaknesses?”

She opens her mouth to answer, looking shyly away, then laughs. “That all depends what you’d consider a weakness.” Normally she never seems this flustered. God, I feel guilty. “If you’d like we could meet up tomorrow, and talk this through – you know, some other time, when we’re not – you know.”

“Yes. Not now.”

“Yes.”

I turn my back as we change, and feel guilty again, this time for breaking off so fast. She’s been so achingly, agonisingly nice about this. Do I dare broach that? No, if I keep bringing it up I’ll just say the wrong thing.

“Well, uh, see you soon.” For a long moment I am hesitant to turn away again. She can’t quite look away from me either. And then I am going, and it makes me think, what if I turned back, and took her in my arms, and said she was the most wonderful woman in all the world? But no – too late. She’s gone.

I take the stone, safe in its box, down to the research institute, barely conscious of where I’m walking. All I can think of is Diana. The way her eyes look when she smiles. The way she’s been so impossibly nice about this.

When they test out this specimen – well, how will they do that? The chemical properties, that can be ascertained, but its actual visceral effects on me, they will actually need me there as a guinea pig, won’t they? Would they let Diana – no, as comforting as it might be the last thing I want is her being there again as it takes effect. Definitely if it would be in front of an audience. I couldn’t do that to her.

Usually I might fly far above the world, all these people here on the street. I’m still taller than most of them. It all seems so natural, a reflection of my position – above. Outside. Me, alone.

Here is the research institute. My hand is on the big front door when someone catches my arm. Normally I would have felt them move the air as they approach, heard their heartbeat, but my mind is elsewhere. I see a spray of bright, copper-red hair, then their lips are on mine. The air in my mouth is suddenly something other than oxygen and I fall out of all consciousness.

* 

Now I am walking, but I do not really feel it. My legs, my body, belong to someone else. It looks as if I am somewhere on the edge of the city, but then I find myself wondering if this is even reality, because no tower block in town is half-consumed by foliage and undergrowth. The walls are encrusted with creeping leaves, and thick roots tangle their way in and out of windows which were broken years ago.

“Welcome to Tenochitlan,” a voice far, far away says in my ear.

Maybe once this stairwell was not an atrium, but now a tree grows up through the shattered floors, and I can see daylight coming in from above. In here the air is thick and muggy, like a rainforest.

“They drained a pond, to build this place. Quillwort used to grow here. Sometimes there were ducks. Then they built condos over it.” The grass grows beneath my feet, and lifts me, twenty stories up. A gentle hand touches my back and steers me into a room that is full of roses. All around me the air is full of sweet smells, smells that tug on my mind and sap my willpower and make me feel as if I could drift off to sleep and stay in here forever.

Before me I see a beautiful woman with round hips and round breasts and an impossibly curly mass of red hair streaming down over her shoulders, and as my stomach gives a pleasurable lurch towards her I can only think how has she done this to me? But then she answers my question when her skin ripples and takes on a green tone, not one of nausea but of life and fertility, the same sort of chlorophyll green as the plants all around her, and my fogged-up brain finally recognises the woman who grins at me.

“Isley,” I say.

“No need to be formal,” she says, shrugging off her overcoat, and when it falls to the floor it reveals a one-piece made of ivy leaves that shows off her thighs and her bare arms and other places my gaze lingers over. “You can call me – to be honest, you probably won’t be talking much.” I blink, and she stands face to face with me. For a moment, I am filled with lust, desire, and shame, then I feel cold metal snap around my neck – and all my powers slip away. In the mirror I can see a green stone on the steel collar, and so I stand before her vulnerable and mortal. “Sorry about this. A safety precaution, you understand. Did you ever read ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’?”

“No.” Her trance makes me say the word, makes me admit it, as if I’ve got Diana’s red rope brushing my skin again.

“Yeah, pretty tawdry stuff, really. Alright, how’s your Nietzsche?” Isley asks, and I just look at her. “Oh, come on, don’t play coy with me – the name? The setting yourself up as a godlike figure who’s inherently above other men? You cannot think you came up with those.”

Did I? My mind’s full of fog. There’s definitely something I should know, but every time I think I’ve got it, it flits out of reach. I feel fuzzy enough anyway and the stone around my neck is holding me down, holding me back. I keep on expecting to hear her heartbeat, to be able to fly. All my reflexes tell me to pull the collar apart like paper.

“I mean, fair enough, a superior alien being is an obvious candidate for that, but don’t you think it raises some unfortunate implications? What, bluntly, is the difference between you enforcing your morality on our world, and a bunch of Dutchmen enforcing their morality on South Africa?”

Did she really say Dutchmen, then? My head feels like soup. Maybe it’s that cloying, nectary smell coming off her body, but she seems so terribly impressive.

“Well, at least you’re not burning the forests down. Is this thing” - she taps the stone with a fingernail - “really making you this dopey?”

“It is my one weakness.”

Isley smirks. “Yeah, okay. Not the time for a long conversation about your personal philosophy, huh. Here, here’s an easier question – what’s this thing?” She walks away, nearly out of the room, then takes out the lead box. It’s open, the purple stone inside shimmers at me, and it makes my blood run cold. “Obviously I know what the green kind does, everyone knows that. Is this the same, or is this something else?”

Again her insidious hypnosis tries to make me answer, but I bite down on the words. The mental effort feels like it’s going to send my brain out through my ears. Isley cocks her head.

“Are you resisting?” she asks. “That’s genuinely quite impressive.” She daintily sets the box down on a table beside a bed whose covers are speckled with pink petals, then walks up to me. “Of course, you know I can just turn this up,” and she smacks her lips, “oh, but perhaps that’s what you want.” Her eyes are drawing me in deeper. Two big, beautiful grass-green mazes…

“Wait.” And she stops drawing closer, raising her head in anticipation. “The purple variety causes a physiological reaction.”

“Go on.” Her face is open, curious, genuinely interested, and the emeralds in her eyes twinkle like stars. Even now it’s hard to believe I’m looking at the maniac who blew up an office block last month.

“I-” It is not quite me saying it. She has roots in my brain. “It gives me an erection while also making me unable to climax.”

Isley gasps. “It doesn’t! My God, really? Did one of your nemeses come up with that as the latest secret weapon? Did everyone think they were mad? Are they going to show them all?”

“No.” Part of me wants to insist that this isn’t funny, in the face of all the evidence.

“Is it naturally occurring, then? Did the universe make you your own weird sex toy? I’m sorry, this has turned intensely personal. God, that explains the lead casing, then.” She plucks it out of the box and turns it over in her hands. “It looks like cut glass. Can you even tell what it is, before it takes effect?”

“No.”

“Must have been a shock.”

Open-ended. Does not need an answer. She cannot force that out of me, cannot make me admit what it did to me, and what it made me do to Diana. And then, smiling, as if only to tease rather than carrying any of the weight, she waves it out towards me.

With the green stone on my collar already sapping my strength, it is not the hammerblow it was in space. Still, up comes my penis, and Isley’s eyes practically burst out of their sockets, she jumps back and flops down on the bed in the middle of the room.

“Oh,” she says, trying to sound detached and not managing it at all. “My goodness.”

“I did explain.”

She shrugs with one shoulder, and smiles up at me. “Seeing is believing.” Yes, thank God, now she puts the stone away, safe back inside the lead box – at least we’re finished with that. “Come on, come sit with me, come on.” Bent to her will already, I do, with my erection bobbing about in front of me until I actually sit down. With nothing to lean back against I hunch forward, which conceals it for a second until Isley touches my shoulder and lies me down next to her, and then it is poking up at the roof. “I don’t know how you keep that hidden in your outfit.”

I try not to feel too complimented. Her arm – the colour of trees, full of life and beautiful – wraps around my chest. Then I feel her kisses again, on my cheek, drawing too close to my mouth, too close to sending me completely into her private oblivion.

“I do have some plans for you. Nothing bad. Nothing you wouldn’t like...probably not.” Dear God, what does she want to use me for? “But maybe, while it’s just us, maybe we could have a little fun.”

I cannot say no.

“Because that’s the funny thing, I don’t even need that little thing to get you hard. Men want me, that’s my curse.” Her breasts push up against me, soft and embracing. Isn’t her shtick supposed to be plants? Yes, in spite of myself I do want her, the same way I want Diana. Is it the trance doing this? Dear God, she’s gorgeous. “Normally I get cynical about it. They want me, I don’t want them. Usually.”

Her hair seems to coil around me, exactly the kind of trick she would play. Then her lips touch mine, and I utter a soft “Oh” as all my worries fade away. Suddenly she seems to come into focus, not the insane plant creature in my mind, only a woman, with arms and legs and eyes that are pretty when they are closed. When she breaks away I breathe out, and with the breath goes the discomfort, the fear, the want to escape, and she pushes me down on the bed.

“There we go.” Even through this rosy fog there’s electricity up my spine when she touches my penis – legs splayed as she goes to straddle me. Then she slips down, onto me, my God she’s wet – and soft – and she sighs and looks happy. Initially it seems so gentle, so welcoming, and before I know it, without any conscious change, she is driving her hips against me with what could be a fury. Everything is hot and slick.

Is this it? To find someone who will not or cannot resist, and – the most sensitive part of me is buried inside her as she starts to bounce up and down. Part of me worries, just for a second, that I will come immediately, but seeing her on top of me drives all other thoughts from my mind. Her mouth opens with those little sounds of pleasure, and her hair bounces with her, and when I look at her breasts I go completely blank, consumed by her body, dear God this trance has captured me.

Then she lunges forward, over me, in a motion that threatens to make me lose my mind completely. With hunger she takes me by the wrists, and snarls “Tell me you want it!”

“I want it.” And when she makes me say it, when I hear it come out of my mouth my head starts to thrash about like I’m looking for an exit. But she pins me down, on top of me, her breasts smacking at my chest.

Lying here, poking up, into her, I feel utterly displaced. Halfway absent, mind and soul somewhere else – until I see her hawklike grin looming over me, and go soft inside. No way of knowing if it’s me that wants to please her, or if it’s the trance, or both, or maybe even neither. I want to see her happy and don’t know why.

But she feels good. Slick, no resistance as she goes back and forth over my hips – and I’m holding hers now, as if to keep her under control but more like I’m hanging on for dear life. One moment it is as if she is crushing me, the next I feel as if I’m knocking a hole straight through her. Now, when she looks at me, her smile doesn’t fill me with fear, it makes me, my God, it makes me want her, I said it out loud. Before long she flops down over me and moans out her satisfaction, but her hips keep going, as if they have a compulsion of their own. Finally, mercifully, they begin to slow down.

“Oh,” she mumbles, pushing herself up on one knee to let me out. I am still hard, and smeared with her desire. From the inside, I tremble. “Good boy.” She tumbles off me – and then she makes a little gesture, a move of her head, barely perceptible, and in a moment I am on top of her, plunging back inside, not able to stop myself.

As her breasts squash and squeeze under me, I feel my breath rising. Oh God, she feels good, and that sweet flowery smell is creeping into every part of my head. Her vagina’s touching my cock, but when she opens her eyes that touches my soul. I throw myself into her, all the desperate instincts taking over my body.

Part of me – part of the trance – wants me to hold back. She’s so soft, what if I hurt her? The noises and little yelps coming from her heart are somewhere between pleasure and pain. No way of knowing.

Her legs fasten behind my back and I start to panic. She clings to me, clutches me, breathing long kinky moans into my ear all the while. “God,” I croak. Pressed up against me she makes another cute little noise and I feel the drop past the point of no return and hammer my hips against her. It makes the bed squeak, and makes her swear.

When the climax strikes, I don’t know whether this powerlessness dulls the feeling or enhances it. I don’t know if she is in pleasure or pain. I barely even know where I am and that I exist. For a moment there is no me, there is only the orgasm, the earth shaking...and her.

“Just what I wanted.” She nuzzles in next to me, in the crater of the bedclothes. “Was it good for you too?”

“Yes.” There’s the trance again, making me blurt out the obvious answer to a complicated question. It did feel good. In a way, I wanted to do it.

“I never really thought…” She’s looking at me, nose against my cheek, showing her teeth. “It all seems like a bit of a fantasy, doesn’t it?”

“Like a hallucination, I guess.” And she chuckles at that. Yes, wouldn’t it be good if I could wake up from all this.

“Now, I’m going to need you for something later. Don’t look at me like that, you’re just going to help me out.” A sea of tendrils and shoots wind their way around my arms, and lift me into the air as if I’m nothing. “But for now I’m going to put you away for a bit.” They carry me backward, out of the room itself and into a closet, and hang me up. She swaggers after me, and the curl of her hips, the bloom of the trance in my head, all makes me think for an insane second that this isn’t too bad. “I think you’ve earned a break.”

Then her lips are wet and everything goes dark.

* 

The noise of a door opening rouses me. My arms feel dead, my shoulders like they wouldn’t move even if they could. “...course you can stay,” Isley’s voice drifts through the slats, I make out her figure in bits and pieces. “Good thing I ran into you.”

“Lucky for me,” says the other woman, a delicate little blonde, hair in bunches, big round glasses. She looks like some innocent college kid, and seeing someone like that within a mile of Isley makes me want to leap into action – but I’m tied up, and besides Isley has a protective arm around her waist, looking fondly down at her. Is she actually in danger? “I was at a, kinda loose end, and – anyway, thank you.”

“Give me a minute, I’ll change the sheets.”

“Oh jeez, this is your bed?” Her eyes flash over the bedclothes, and she shifts nervously from one foot to the other. “No, no, ya don’t have to do that, I can sleep on a couch, it’s fine, really.”

“I think I have a hammock somewhere.”

“I’ve never slept in a hammock before. Ya really don’t have do, I’d be fine if you just, ya know, stick me in a corner.” She gives a little nervous laugh, like she’s trying to take the curse off. She’s a slim girl anyway, and looks even smaller in the shadow of a full-figured woman like Isley. Does she know, does she have the slightest idea what she’s walked into?

“Or,” says Isley patiently, “you can sleep in a hammock like the Queen of Sheba.” The girl’s chewing her lip like she’s worried it’s all a trick. “Come on, I’m offering.”

“I don’t even know how I’m gonna pay ya back for all this.”

“Don’t be silly,” Isley waves away the idea. “Look, if you insist, maybe you could help me out on a little job.”

“Oh yeah?” asks the blonde, perking up out of her slump. “Whaddaya got?”

“Jewellery store. Nothing special, nothing major. Just quick cash, really.”

Excited now, she whispers “Let me slip into something more comfortable.” Isley touches her arm and then she’s out the door, moving at the speed of someone who wants to be back quickly.

Isley watches her go, with a dazed little smile – then snaps into business mode and marches over to me. Is this the plan, now? I smash open the jeweller’s and they pick the bones? “You taking all this in, are you?” she asks, rattling the closet door. I grunt through the gag. “Right, it breaks down like this. You can either resist, or go with the flow, and things can be much nicer for everyone. That poor girl in there has been through a lot, you can at least be nice for her.”

“How do you mean?” I ask, but it doesn’t come out as real words.

“Look, just do what we say. Who knows, you might even like it.” There’s the thrill again, my hair standing on end. “Agreed?” I grunt again, maybe it sounds like a yes. It must be enough, because she gives a curt nod, like we’ve shaken on it.

The bathroom door opens again. The blonde who seemed innocent is gone. She’s wearing motley now, red and black diamonds that cling all the way up her legs and over her torso. On her head is a huge, ridiculous, horned apparatus that jingles as she moves, her face is smeared with white makeup and as her eyes flash under a domino mask that does nothing to obscure her girlish features I finally recognise her. Strange to think I was worried about her only moments ago. Isley and Quinn together, the only people in danger are anyone else within arm’s reach – which, right now, means me.

“Now, see, this is how I always think of you, it must be because it’s what you were wearing when we met at VillCon that time.”

“Jingle bell rock,” smiles Quinn, wiggling on the spot as she tries not to look shy. “I remember. Ya made a tree come through the floor and then ya talked about the Lithuanian tinted poppy for, like, three quarters of an hour.”

“Oh yeah? Did you learn anything good about the LTP?”

“I just thought ya looked so cool.” And now she does look shy, but Isley beams at her and takes her hand. Am I feeling a pang of envy? More likely to be the strain in my arms – seeping down into my chest. “Okay, let’s go steal us some fucking jewellery.”

* 

It’s barely half an hour that they leave me in the closet with my thoughts. Without warning, they’re back, laughing their heads off, holding a lot of large bags with dollar signs on them. But it can’t just be cash in there, because Isley has a handful of gemstones, and lets them slip seductively through her fingers before Quinn’s eyes.

“That was awesome,” declares Quinn, and throws her baseball bat aside. “Best robbery I’ve done in a while – oh, shit! Huh.” She has noticed a discoloured patch on her arm, where a bullet wound has torn her clothes and split the skin.

“Poor thing,” says Isley, and starts dabbing at the blood, very primly and properly and poised, with a handful of fifty-dollar bills. It makes Quinn lose it completely, and collapse, still cackling, onto the bed. “Hold on, I’ll clean it properly, I should probably – there’s a lot of dirt in here.” Quinn sits up expectantly, and without Isley having to move the vines come snaking through from the bathroom, holding a little medical kit as if on a silver tray. When Isley does move it’s to reach round Quinn’s back to the zipper of her costume, but, before undoing it, begins “I probably need to…”

“Oh! But, um, I don’t have my bra on.” Isley immediately withdraws her hand, holding it up in surrender.

“I probably should have guessed.”

“I, I don’t mind, I just wouldn’t want ya ta think less of me.”

“Think less of you? Come on.”

“It’d be rude. I’d feel weird getting them out.”

Isley takes hold of the impressive cups of her own costume, and pulls them down – just for a second, just a flash, but it makes Quinn squeal with delight. “I’m not going to make you do anything, it would just be easier to take care of you if you did.”

“Well, when ya put it that way,” says Quinn, all cheerful now, and undoes the zip to strip down to her waist. It all seems so formal, as if she has hardly got her breasts out at all. Isley dabs some antiseptic on cotton wool and touches it to that little wound on her arm, which makes her wriggle. “It stings,” she explains with unexpected enthusiasm, and claps a hand on top of Isley’s, keeping the cotton in place.

“Oh, you’ll live,” says Isley, almost wrongfooted. “Call it aftercare.”

“This is how it oughta be,” Quinn muses once she’s calmed down and dressed again, letting a dozen hideously expensive necklaces spill out of the bags and trickle down the front of her costume. “This is what it always used ta be like, ya know? With – him.” Yes, the man who made her what she is, I know who she means and I have no doubt Isley does too. “It was fun, at first. Did ya – you didn’t think I screwed up when I hucked that cuckoo clock at the back wall, right?”

“Are you kidding? That was the best part, when it smashed and then the bird popped out, the looks on their...” Then, gently, maybe not wanting to probe too deep, she asks “How are you and he doing, these days?”

Quinn is evasive now. “I, I shouldn’t need to stay – not for too long. It’s just that, sometimes, I need some time, you know? Sometimes I get tired.”

Isley nods sympathetically, then hits her with “Do you think it would be good, to go back to him?”

“If I didn’t go back, he’d be – and, and, without him, I keep making all these stupid-” She’s falling over her words, all of a sudden on the verge of tears, coming up to Isley, begging her. “Don’t tell him we did a job together, please.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Look, let’s talk about something else. I still have to find you that hammock.”

Quinn wipes her nose and sniffles. “Thank you.” The tiniest little voice, like a woman who didn’t hold up a jewellery store only minutes ago.

“When was the last time you had a girly night, anyway?”

“Um...” By the look on her face the idea is baffling.

“Obviously you’re the expert, but I get the feeling it might be therapeutic. It’s where we dress in comfortable clothes and drink big fruity drinks and watch bad films and chat about whatever the hell pops into our heads.”

“Oh!” says Quinn. “Sort of like, like a date night?”

Isley is thrown for a moment. Then she is all warmth as she concedes “Yes, if you like.”

“C-could I have a Bellini?”

“I don’t even know what goes into that – yeah, sure you can.” She starts fishing bottles out of cupboards that are half-hidden under the plants creeping over every surface. “Since I’ve got you here, I was hoping I could run something psychological past you.”

“Oh yeah?” Quinn perks up, switching gears mentally.

“I have this friend,” says Isley, quite casually as she rummages about in the cupboards, “the sweetest thing ever – and she wound up together with this awful man who wasn’t even very good-looking. Skinny, abusive little prick who dressed like a clown. Eventually, after years, she got out of that, but even afterwards she was still so worried. About everything. Worried she hadn’t done this right, or that right. Constantly cracking jokes, constantly trying to make herself smaller, and – well, you’re the professional, what do you think?”

“She’s too eager ta please,” shrugs Quinn, offhand, hardly thinking about it. “Maybe pathologically so.”

“Right.” And then Isley is there, looking into her eyes. “Well, I’m talking about you, you dimwit. Do one thing, one thing for yourself.”

Suddenly on the spot, blushing, Quinn’s eyes go darting around the room, looking for a way out. She’s shrinking away, like she’s being backed into a corner, even though the other woman hasn’t moved – then she plops a hand down on Isley’s breast. Nervously, eyes massive, she mouths voicelessly for a moment before whispering, breathing, the words “Honk honk.”

“So,” says Isley, arching an eyebrow, doing nothing to stop Quinn fondling her, “when you said a date night, you meant it?”

“Ah, don’t act like ya weren’t thinking it. Jesus God, your tits are glorious.”

Isley chuckles, and she lifts her hand, going to touch Quinn’s face – and then the girl flinches, violently, unhealthily. “I’m sorry,” she says immediately. “I thought...” For a second she trembles, then grabs Isley’s hand and claps her face to it, as if it is the only thing she can grip onto.

“You never, ever, have to be sorry for that. See, this is exactly what I mean, what you need to do is cut loose for once. To just blank it all out, just for a little while.”

“I’d like that,” admits Quinn. “Maybe, we could do something like that.”

“Are you ticklish, at all?”

“Kinda, why?” – and then Isley’s hands are on her, under her ribs and around her middle, and she’s shrieking but it’s with wild helpless laughter. She writhes as Isley’s fingers dance over that thin bodysuit, but is unable to move away, unable or unwilling. “Oh fuck – oh fuck – oh fuck,” she’s gasping as Isley lets up.

“Where else are you ticklish?”

Shyly, nervous like it’s her wedding night, she lifts her arms over her head. “I, um, I haven’t showered.”

“This is exactly what I mean, you’re still too concerned with what I think.” The second Isley touches her she is in her power again, helpless to resist the spasms wracking her little body.In a flash, she is flat on her back, and Isley straddles her, still tormenting her with an evil grin. Through all of her cries and yelps she manages to get out the words “Please – please stop”.

Isley’s hands fall away, and the room is suddenly silent.

Quinn’s smile gives way to a look of sheer wonder, and she says “Ya did stop.”

“You asked me to. You can trust me.”

“If, um, if ya kiss me, like, on the lips, would – would that send me under?”

Isley shakes her head. “No. Not if you don’t want me to.”

Quinn takes her hands and squeezes them. “But I do want ya to.” So Isley leans in close, she pauses, teasing, tantalising, and then plants the sweetest, tiniest little peck on her mouth. The effect is immediate, Quinn’s eyes glaze over, her shoulders droop, and she wears a vacant, blissed-out smile.

“Can you hear me in there?” asks Isley, still holding her by the hands. “How do you feel?”

Quinn breathes one hazy word: “Good.”

“And what would you like to do now?”

She tugs weakly at her costume, in some half-hearted attempt to tear it, and whimpers in protest. Isley’s steadier hands go to her neck, and in one long buzz-saw motion unzips her, revealing first her bare back, then her arms, chest, and stomach as the material falls away. For a moment I see Isley stop, reduced to the same hypnotised state by the sight in front of her. This time it’s not just undressing, it’s nudity. Without her suit Quinn is small and slim, a delicate little creature practically crying out to be taken care of – but somehow there is nothing girlish about her, it is a woman who stands there topless.

The spell is finally broken when Quinn falls like a log, on her back again, and she slowly writhes around rubbing the bedclothes, humming gently. She’s trying to kick off her leggings and it simply isn’t working, now she whimpers again.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you,” Isley soothes her, and peels the suit off her legs, slowly, taking care, enjoying it.

“Red, Red,” Quinn complains as her knees are exposed, “I’m horny for ya.”

“I can tell,” says Isley, tugging at Quinn’s polka-dotted underwear and the telltale darker patch between the tops of her thighs. How might I feel if I was across that bed in a trance, being undressed? Nervous, excited, yes, I think I know how where her mind’s going. Against my will I start to dream of what they’re about to do – then Isley’s up on her feet, snapping her fingers, the noise cuts through everything else, and Quinn sits up, confused.

“Aw, why’d ya stop?” she protests, she stands up as well, drawn into Isley’s orbit. “That felt incredible.”

“I know. But you were hypnotised. I didn’t want to, you know, do anything to you.”

Quinn touches Isley’s arm, and her eyes are speaking desperate gratitude – then her mouth says “Who do ya think you’re fooling? I could feel your hand reaching onto my butt when we were on the fire escape.” But that’s where her hands are going now, roving down Isley’s body onto the big, healthy swell of her hips. Quinn’s jigging about, not quite dancing, and sings “Whatcha gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?”

“You’re ridiculous, you know that? Absolutely absurd,” says Isley, stony-faced until the moment she pulls Quinn’s head back and puts her tongue down her throat. Quinn’s fingers sink into that green fabric as she clings on for dear life.

When they break apart, her eyes are still closed, her lips still moving – then she immediately snaps back to “-so much junk inside your trunk! Big fat junk, big fat junk, big fat junk and big fat trunk-”

“Now you’re just being hurtful.”

“Nooo!” she wails, and it’s this that makes Isley smirk. “No, I, I love your junk – and, and, I love the trunk as well. Oh God, it feels so good, I don’t even know what to do with it. Let me, let me bury my face in it, please?”

Isley steps daintily in a little circle. Quinn drops to her knees, and confronted with that big, round swell of green that she’s had her hands all over, practically dives into it headfirst. Her face has disappeared, all I can see is her hair as Isley’s bottom swallows her up. When she finally has to come out for air her makeup’s smeared.

“How is it your ass smells so good?” she’s saying, voice full of thirst.

“First I’m fat, now I smell, it’s like you’ve come here just to insult me.” Quinn’s on her feet in a second, burbling out little apologies, but Isley laughs and turns to hold her. “Don’t worry. I know you don’t think that. I’m only teasing.”

“I know – I’m sorry – but, with my ex, sometimes it was just teasing, and sometimes it was – it was worse.”

“You don’t need to worry about that any more,” says Isley, bringing her in closer, stroking her hair. “I’ll keep you safe.” And Quinn shakes, burying her face again, pressing it into Isley’s hair to shut out the rest of the world.

“I’m sorry,” her tiny voice floats out of their embrace. “I shouldn’t go on about it. I, I don’t even know why you’re being so nice to me.”

“Oh, sweetie...” Isley’s fingers linger on Quinn’s cheek as they part. Gently, with complete sincerity, she explains “It’s because I want to rail you.”

Quinn giggles, a second ago she was downcast but now her whole face lights up. “I’ve never really – ya know – been with a girl before.”

“You poor thing. Not even in med school?”

“Uh-uh,” she shakes her head. “I, I guess this makes me a, a spaghetti girl, ya know? I’m straight, until I’m wet.”

“That’s dreadful.” Isley grins as she says it. “How wet are you?” She’s edging her way down Quinn’s naked body, kissing at her chest.

“Like, real wet.”

Before Isley reaches Quinn’s stomach, she looks up. “Would you like your pussy eaten?”

“By you?”

“Yes.”

Quinn wriggles in place. “Just like that?”

“I don’t know. It could be. Any time you like.”

Now Quinn wears a gentle, simpering smile, and with one hand softly guides Isley’s head downwards. “Oh fuck...” Quinn’s mouth hangs open, her fingers bury themselves in Isley’s hair, those tumbling red coils, and I cannot imagine how good it must feel to have a tongue in her vagina. To be wanted like that, by her. If Isley kisses her there, does she still fall into trance? “I, I never even had anyone do this before...”

When Isley comes up for air, as if lost Quinn reaches out and grasps her breasts, trying to cup them but finding her hands too small to manage it.

“How, um – how about, what do you like?”

“You,” says Isley. I cannot see her face but from the fire in her voice I can see why it makes Quinn give a little moan. Then she goes back into Quinn’s lap. It is not long before Quinn’s legs are shaking and she is thumping at the pillows simply to let off steam somewhere, and still Isley is down between her legs, relentless.

“I – I…” And immediately Isley lifts her head again, perfectly attentive, I should not be witnessing this. Quinn takes a moment to get her thoughts together, then says “I was worried I, I wouldn’t taste nice.”

Isley says nothing – but then she puts her hand to Quinn’s vagina, which makes Quinn squeak, then brings her glistening fingers up to her own lips. Quinn shivers with lust just seeing this, even before Isley reaches out to her. Quinn needs absolutely no prompting to open her mouth, stick out her tongue, and get Isley’s fingers wedged inside her cheek.

“Ochay,” Quinn garbles out, around Isley’s hand. “’o, ‘ou’re ‘ight.” With both her own hands she reaches up to Isley’s and draws it out of her mouth – slowly, almost reluctantly, her lips closed around it. “Come on, lemme do you.”

All too clearly an old hand at this, Isley rolls onto her back, points her legs at the ceiling, and like that whips off her underwear in one quick motion. Then she sits up again, feet apart, totally confident.

Quinn walks forward on her hands, swaying over Isley’s green vagina, hypnotised - then she swoops right in and makes noises like she’s going crazy at a feast. Isley just tips her head back and takes it. Quinn has wedged her face deep enough in there I wonder how she can still breathe, then she surfaces with one great inhalation and says “Ya taste pretty.” She looks down, for a moment she cannot hold Isley’s gaze, then she does. “Please tell me this is good for you.”

“It’s just lovely for me,” Isley smiles back at her. “I can tell you’re a beginner, but the enthusiasm more than makes up for it.”

“D-do you think?” asks Quinn. Isley touches her cheek, only with her fingertips, this time there is no flinch. “Can we try something else? There’s this – I heard that gals do this, but I don’t know if they really do.” Isley dips her head, open to whatever it might be. “So, um, if ya put this leg over here, and I skootch up a little bit and put my legs here…” And with very little effort, suddenly they are intertwined at the hips.

“Yes, this is certainly something women do to each other,” Isley says fondly, drawing Quinn ever closer, so their bellies touch. “It is properly called tribadism.”

“Oh cool! Only, I’d heard it was called clam jousting.”

Isley laughs in disbelief – and then cries out as Quinn takes the initiative and rushes forward, throwing her down on the bed, writhing her hips and grinding against her with frantic, implacable need.

I can’t get my eyes off them, that wild tangle of legs, the desperate faces they make. With the gag in I can’t even bite my tongue, even when I close my eyes I can hear all their hot-breathed moans and sighs. Isley’s leg twitches dramatically, she clutches at herself simply for something to hold on to, she curses and pleads to God. Quinn makes little desperate sounds as if she’s about to sneeze, before finally out comes a guttural sound of completion – and another, a few weaker follow-ups.

They lie practically steaming in the distressed sheets. Then my erection pokes out between the closet doors. At the sound of the creak, Quinn jumps and says “What’s that?”

“I got you something,” grins Isley. “A present, just for you.” Quinn lifts herself off the bed – which must be reluctant, snatched rudely from Isley’s bosom – and crosses nervously over to the closet. Can she see me through the slats? Can she hear me breathing? She looks down at what’s poking out between the doors, blinking with confusion, and throws them open.

Our eyes meet and she screams. Still holding the doorhandles, she slams the closet shut again, and when the doors snap together directly on the tip I scream too. If I wasn’t bound up it would have sent me to my knees.

She’s practically leapt into Isley’s arms, and Isley’s holding her in reassuring fashion and cooing “Don’t worry, he can’t hurt you. Look.” Isley twitches open the door again, and taps the green stone around my neck. “This means he’s completely under our control. And he’s all tied up, see?”

Through Quinn’s face I see all sorts of things. Relief, lingering fear, confusion, and a glance towards Isley that probably betrays her real interest. “But, but he got a boner, he was watching us.”

“He was, wasn’t he? Let’s teach him a lesson.” And for a moment, I think she mouths the word “sorry” before she slaps my penis. There’s more shock than pain, it beats the doors closing on it. But Quinn’s eyes have gone big and yearning, and I see her pupils follow it as it bounces.

“Oh,” she mumbles, and presses herself what little way closer to Isley she possibly can. “Alright, that’s – maybe you oughta do that again.”

Isley turns a faintly quizzical expression toward her, then hits me again, without looking. It makes Quinn tremble with delight.

“Funny kinda present, though. I mean-” Quinn squeezes Isley around her waist. “-last thing I need is another fucking man.” But still she looks, she very definitely looks, with only her eyes she makes me want to tell her to get off me.

“Well, that was what I’d wondered, what exactly you’d be interested in…” It does seem a silly concern now, doesn’t it. “And in this case, given your history, I thought it might be therapeutic for you to be in a position of power over a man.” So that’s what I am here, a stressball.

Quinn opens her mouth, but the words don’t come. She looks between me and Isley. “I – I don’t know if that’s approved therapeutic practice. Then again, it wouldn’t be, would it. Maybe-” She gazes only at Isley now. “Maybe there’s some valid experimentation to be done.”

“Exactly. And, he’ll do anything you want. Cook for you, clean for you...rub you down when you’re sore...” My penis twitches. Quinn misses it but Isley smirks. Do I object? But what good will that possibly do?

“He is in real good shape,” Quinn muses, touching my chest, her little fingertips somehow soothing. “And...” She brushes the green stone, and her eyes widen with great dawning realisation. “I didn’t even put that together! Aw, this is a great present. A, a, a super present.” She’s handling my erection now, looking at it like an explorer might look at their first shrunken head. “So – so, how’d you get him? Here, I mean?”

“In a way, the same way I got you back here, I used the old wiles.” Isley says it with a surgeon’s disinterest, but Quinn is excited now.

“Did ya, um, sneak up on him? Surprise him right when he least suspected it?” She drapes her arms around Isley’s shoulders, hanging off the taller woman. “When he got back to his secret base and flipped the light on, were ya waiting for him?”

“No, I grabbed him off the street,” says Isley, and then clocks the way Quinn gazes up at her all full of lust and wonder, those shallow breaths coming faster and faster, and concludes “and blew his mind.”

Quinn crows out a terrible, high-pitched sound. “Let’s use him!”

With a flick of Isley’s head the plantlife releases my arms, and I come stumbling forward out of the cupboard, nearly falling over my own feet. I try to catch my balance, try to ask them to wait, but Quinn grabs hold of me and pulls me into the middle of the room, then catches me in the chest with the heel of her hand and knocks the wind out of me, casting me back onto the bed. Before I can get up she is sitting astride my face, blocking out the world – so down at the other end of my body, that must be Isley who takes hold of my cock.

“You not going on this end?” I hear her say.

“That end? C’mon, I’m only little,” Quinn replies, still all nerves. Then, as I feel Isley sticking it in, she changes tone completely and says “Oh my God” with such conviction I can hear her eyes popping.

“It – nngh – it’s easy to handle men when you know how.”

“But – but – it’s so -” Between her thighs, I can feel all the weird tension she’s going through.

“This is just a bit of fun. Not like you. I don’t care how much he likes it, but you...lick,” Isley commands far above, smacking at my chest again. Blindly, I probe out with my tongue, and Quinn giggles.

“He doesn’t do it like you do,” she complains amiably, “but I do like looking ya in the face.”

“If we folded him up,” Isley muses, “we could get a little closer,” and then begins the soft smacks of them kissing. By now I just have my tongue stuck out, letting Quinn ride playfully over it. Blindly, I can feel them move, trying to bridge what little gap there is left between them. Then Quinn shudders, and I taste the wetness of her climax.

She goes tumbling off me, laughing, and Isley goes with her, which leaves me jutting out like some mute flagpole. For a second, peace – then they pop back up over the side of the bed. “Is there some way I can fit both of ya down there?” she muses.

“We could go on either side, or something,” says Isley quite casually, although it makes Quinn squirm and cover her mouth at the mere thought. “Are you sure you don’t want a turn on this end? I think he can go another round.” When Isley looks at me, her teeth glitter in the soft light. “He’d better, anyway.”

“Oh! Um…” She casts me a scared, excited look that makes my hair stand on end. “I – I do kind of...I don’t even know what to do with it.” Then she looks at Isley with complete unspoken longing. “I bet it felt so good for him, there. When you were on it. I don’t know how it doesn’t make ya just…” Her words have failed her, but she is touching Isley’s arms now, she moves her hands fascinated over Isley’s bare skin.

“Don’t you like him?” asks Isley, like she’s given her a sweater.

Quinn shoots me another glance, a leer, showing her teeth. “I do get it, I get this whole scene, but – alright, I guess I thought, that you thought, that I was your gal now.”

“My girl. You know, you can of course be your own girl, it’s an idea that was quite popular in the 20^th century.”

Quinn tiptoes her fingers up Isley’s chest. “I wanna be your gal.”

“It’s early days, Harley, I don’t want to tie you down.” Quinn gives a mucky giggle, and then Isley goes on “And like I say, it’s fairly easy to keep them under control,” as she wraps one arm around Quinn, drawing her close, and with the other grabs my penis – and when I try to escape only to get nowhere Quinn cannot quite resist giving a soft little “oooh”. Then Isley starts to drag her hand lazily up and down, and it makes my head roll.

“Aw, see, but,” Quinn objects, too flustered to really form the words as she pulls Isley’s other arm tighter around her, and then down her belly, “this is just because it’s your hand, because I know they feel good…” I shoot a look at Isley where she stands, and she – with one hand messing with each of us – at least has the dignity to look sheepish for a moment. Then she squeezes, a tiny motion that makes the room shake, and when I gasp so does Quinn. “See, that’s gotta feel awesome,” she continues, leaning over me while pinned in place at the hips by Isley’s fingers. “Doesn’t it?”

Isley drags her fingernail on me, for only a second, but it makes me wheeze out “God” and then Quinn melts into a fit of giggles. Yes, this is what I’d expected. More personal than usual, but essentially familiar territory. Is it, perhaps, all in the service of some sociopathic master plan?

“Could I – okay, how about, if you go with him again? And I watch?”

“You saucy little beast,” says Isley, closing in on her, lips parting. Quinn trembles with anticipation, but it’s all a feint, Isley snaps her head sideways and catches me on the mouth, it’s the barest actual skin contact but all of a sudden my body is not my own, my muscles obey signals coming from somewhere else, and I take hold of Isley, lay her gently yet firmly on the bed, and penetrate her. “Fffuck!”

“Oh fuck,” agrees Quinn, and settles down beside us, chewing on her finger, her eyes big and wondering. “Oh God, this is the sexiest thing ever.”

As I plough into Isley’s vagina Quinn just lies there, observing us with the same vulnerable curiosity, although she makes it very obvious when she starts to masturbate. I plug Isley like a machine until she makes some signal – and I pull out and back off, standing to attention. She gasps for breath, slightly ragged and flustered, and Quinn kisses her on the cheek and beams at her.

“I don’t even know how ya took that,” she says, a hushed little admission.

“Well, you got me all warmed up,” says Isley, with her own self-effacing smile. “You sure you don’t want a go on him?” And as Quinn’s eyes rove over me, they’re full of deep smouldering lust, I’m worried she will – but when she looks over at Isley again, her face gives it all away, it’s like the sun coming up.

“Look, Red, this is, like, the best present you coulda given me. But, only, I don’t really care about – ya know, this sort of a present.” Quinn reaches across the rumpled bedclothes and grips Isley’s arm. “Right now, I want you.”

“Alright. That’s alright too,” says Isley, not really seeming neutral. “It’s completely – you actually make me so happy when you talk like this.” Even without her looking at me, the vines grab me again, I try limply to struggle as they carry me off back into the cupboard. But it’s something of a relief to be out from in the middle of them, away from all that white-hot lust, able to think straight.

Then Quinn stiffens up, she holds up a finger and declares “Hold on a second!” Suddenly she is back upon me, in my face, accusing, grabbing at me again and making me shrink away. Nothing but the dark band of her hood between the white of her face and the white of her breasts. “If you’re so goddamn invulnerable, how in the hell are ya circumcised?” I look back helplessly. For a moment, Isley looks as shocked as I feel – then she laughs aloud. Quinn yanks the gag out of my mouth and demands “Come on, how the fuck did that happen?”

“I don’t know!” I exclaim. “I don’t remember!”

Quinn considers this, then shoves me in the chest again and bundles me back into the closet. “Disappointing,” she notes. “Doesn’t even know. I mean, you’d wonder, wouldn’t ya?” But, with me now completely forgotten, she dances over to Isley and declares “Let’s do it.” And they throw themselves at each other, one languorous kiss follows the next. When they tumble down to the bed it seems even losing their balance cannot go wrong now.

Then suddenly they stop, because I have made the closet doors creak again.

“Wait...is he watching? Are ya watching, in there? Oh my God, I bet he loves this.” She flicks off the light, but I can still hear them. Harsh, heavy breaths, the slap of skin on skin, and her voice rising to tell Isley “Now put me under again…”

And that’s how the rest of the night goes. Nothing that I can see, but still an intense awareness that they’re having sex – moans of unbridled pleasure suddenly muffled, and the scent of women exerting themselves.

“Red,” I hear Quinn’s little voice, breathy and weary. “Could I, could I still have a hammock?”

“Oh. Yes, if you like.”

“I’m trying to sleep, and- with my – with my ex, I would have ta be in bed, with-”

“It’s completely fine. I understand.” Movement in the dark, the sheets and then heavier cloth. Then Quinn yelps. By the tiny smear of light in the room, I see the undergrowth is dipping down from the ceiling to lift her up into the air. “How’s that for you?”

Dark blurs shifting as she tries it out, bounces and rocks from side to side.

“It’s not right.”

“What’s wrong?”

And then sudden movement, flesh on flesh, someone being physically grabbed – “You’re not in it!”

“Harley!” Isley protests, laughing, not really resisting. “I only made it for one…” But eventually, after a lot of confusion, her feet are off the ground too, and the dark shape of the hammock hangs heavy.

“You were right,” comes the sleepy conclusion, breath stopped slightly by the weight of another. “I do feel like the Queen of Sheba.”

“Maybe, and this is only a suggestion, you shouldn’t go back to your ex. Maybe you should stay here, with me.”

Quinn laughs mordantly. “Yeah, I know. Every time I leave, I say ta myself that that’s it, but then...Christ, what’s worst about this is that I still feel so fucking stupid. All that time wasted, when I could have been doing this instead.”

“Everyone makes mistakes. And you’re the one who’s been wronged. Maybe it would help, if I commanded you to stay here.”

“Maybe that would help, because it’s what I wanna do and also because if ya command me to do something I’ll totally do it.”

And then they shift again and it blocks out that one light spot in the darkness.

Chapter Text

“Wakey wakey!” Her voice does wake me, and then I wince in the sudden, blinding light as she throws open the closet doors. “Red had ta go out.” Her make-up is smeared halfway across her face. Is she just up too? But she is head to toe in her jester’s motley again, dressed for battle. “So ya got me all ta yourself.” But when she smiles it isn’t disorderly, not mental or murderous, because on some level she really is just what she’s being, a vulnerable woman not long out of a bad relationship. “Have we even been properly introduced? I don’t think so – hi, I’m Harley!”

“I know who you are, Quinn,” and it comes out of my mouth with such practised conviction that she shrinks back a bit. I have said it like I walked in on her with a suitcase full of anthrax. But then she realises I’m in no position to run her in, and smirks.

“Don’t talk ta me like that,” she says. “It scares me, and I’m sure ya don’t want that. Ya never know what I might do then, if I was frightened.”

“Yes, alright,” I concede. Probably best to steer away from anything that might make her start swinging a knife around in a panic.

“Can we not just talk like normal people? We don’t have ta be on the clock all the time.” She’s coming close, turning her face up to mine, tempting me. “Right now I don’t wanna do any bank robberies, or kidnappings, or putting toxic shit in the city’s water supply, I just wanna go back to bed and have someone to snuggle up with. Would ya do that, for me?”

I tug against the vines that hold my arms. “I seem to be a little tied-up.”

It’s not a good joke, but she has to lean against me to catch her breath. Then she reaches up and pulls at the vines, similarly uselessly. “Aw, come on. It’s me, come on.” She gives a little yelp and jumps away when they respond, unravelling from around my wrists. Finally, mercifully, my arms fall, although I can barely feel them, they’ve been throttled all night.

Quinn grabs my dead-weight hand and pulls me over to the bed. I should shove her aside and run. I’m bigger than her, stronger too, but after a night hanging up in a closet it doesn’t seem like it. And the bed – still warm, but I try not to dwell on that – is pulling at my gaze, it lies very heavy in my sluggish thoughts.

My eyes close for a second too long, and the next thing I know I’m under the covers and Quinn is arranging my arm around her waist. I try to move, but more vines creep out from all four corners of the bed and tie me down where I am.

“Do you, uh – do you ever sort of – wonder about what Red’s into?” she asks, plucking at my restraints with a finger.

“Not really. She had me tied up in the closet all night.”

“Oh yeah!” laughs Quinn, for her just a matter of putting those pieces together, not a constant ache from the collarbone outwards. I try to shoot her a withering look, but she doesn’t notice. Instead she stretches out, pointing her toes and making little satisfied groans, which sound too much like sexual pleasure for me not to notice. “God, I love this, it’s like being on holiday.” Now she lays her head on my chest and flips open an Archie comic. And pressed against me like this, she makes me so aroused I feel queasy, but I close my eyes and try to get back to sleep.

It doesn’t work. Quinn is not a quiet, contemplative reader. She vibrates on me when she giggles, and jabs an elbow in my ribs every time she spots and loudly reads out a double entendre. By the end of the issue she’s asking me “Ya ever notice how Betty and Veronica could do way better than any of these guys?”

“No,” I say, still keeping my eyes closed.

“Seriously, couldn’t they just go off with each other? Ya can’t tell me that’s a platonic rivalry they’ve got.”

“Just because you are now attracted to women doesn’t mean that literally everyone is.”

“Impossible! Insane!” She sends the comic whirling aside. “Fine, maybe not everyone, okay. But, when ya look like that...I never like ta generalise, but all of us in, ya know, the lycra club,” she tugs lasciviously at one of the black diamonds on her chest, “we tend to be good-looking people, don’t we?” She chews over the next point, and eventually asks “So, Supergirl, she’s...is she, like, your fan, or your fiancée, what’s going on there?”

“Cousin.”

“Oh!” Her eyes widen and she slaps herself on the wrist. “Naughty thought. Aw, I always thought she looked so pretty though, she’s got that all-in-white virgin look, and that boob window right on her chest...” Her nails dig into me as she begins to fantasise.

“That’s – that’s Power Girl, not Supergirl, you’re thinking of.”

“Always girls, aren’t they? Girl this an’ girl that. I expect I woulda been ‘clown girl’ if you had anything ta say about it.” She blows a little raspberry, then resumes her usual wicked grin. “Tell me it’s not that ya like them young, ya beast.”

“They’re not all girls.”

For a second she has to think, then she nods, realising who I mean. “Ohh, I see, she’s more your speed, is she? Yeah, no, I can totally see that, actually.” She gives me a very sly look. Gloating. “Of course, she’s no stranger to rope stuff, is she? Come on, it’s just us here – what do ya like?”

“All else being equal, which it’s not, you’re right, you and Isley are lovely-looking women.” I’m trying to placate her, trying not to give to much away. It’s not a lie.

“Me and Isley,” she smiles, then lays a hand down on my chest and I recoil as her nails point into my skin, deliberate now. “Call her by her name. Call her Doctor Isley.”

I look into her eyes. “Just her?”

Her mouth a little round o of shock, that I’ve answered her back, caught her out – then she slaps her hand down and bursts out laughing. “You dick! Don’t you dare try and therapise me, not you, you don’t get to. Ya probably think you’ve put your finger on my inferiority complex by pointing out I’m not demanding the same honorific, don’t ya?”

“The thought never crossed my mind.”

“It better not, Supesy. Soupy. Campbell’s Soup.” She says this with increasing, sing-song intensity, like she’s really sticking it to me. “Cream of mushroom.” She shifts closer, dangerously close, getting cosy, and I start to get hard, it’s irresistible. “But ya better respect Red, though. Can ya believe that people reduce her to a-” Her voice catches in her throat, and her eyes fog up with lust. “A pair of big jiggly titties. You know, she’s more than that. In this day and age nobody oughta be doing that to any woman.”

I solemnly reflect that despite all the circumstances, I did look.

“Especially when she’s going round with an ass like the Arc de Triomphe. God, I don’t even know how she fits it into that outfit of hers, that fucking dumptruck, even talking about it makes my clit tickle.”

Her hand goes down between her legs, she starts to stretch out and enjoy herself, and for a moment I have the blessed relief that she’ll be occupied enough with that. But just the sight of it, her doing that to herself, makes my testicles tingle. Normally I could resist this sensation, control myself, but now I find myself trying to tear my attention away. And I can’t even manage that, I plant my gaze at the wall and my eyes creep back around without trying, and I wish she would stop – then her other hand grips my erection.

“How about you, huh? Ya must look when she turns her back. I know I do. When she bends over, suddenly it’s just like whomp and there I am thinking about putting my tongue up there. I still can’t believe we actually kissed...” I glance at her helplessly while it strains in her hand and she giggles. “Aw, is this turning you on? Ha ha ha. Yeah, you get it.” She starts moving her hand, gently grazing it up and down. “She must make ya wanna do this. Oh no, but ya had your arms tied up, didn’t you?”

“You shouldn’t...we shouldn’t...” I say weakly, because after watching her and Isley prancing about in those tight costumes and tonguing each other for hours on end, this too comes as a blessed relief. “What if – if Doctor Isley walks in?”

Quinn gasps in mock-shock delight, but her hands don’t stop. “Oh my God, what if she did? And caught us in the act like this? She’d be so mad. Ya know what would be really hot, would be if she was all cross with us, and she was bending forward and we could see down her dress.” I try not to picture it, try to hold off. Her little hand already has me on the brink. “Cleavage is an interesting thing, isn’t it? Obviously there’s titties involved, but the actual cleavage is the space between, so in a way it’s the absence that’s the really horny thing there, don’t ya think?”

I try to speak, but when her fingers graze the tip I just make a noise.

“Wait, I get it, I get the appeal for you. You wanna stick your dick between them, don’t ya? Ya dirty pervert – God, I bet that would feel incredible. Know what, you’re right, next chance I get I’m jamming my face in her boobs and only coming up for air. Mm, that’s it, isn’t it, it’s a welcoming thing.” I know it’s her hand on my erection, but when I close my eyes I picture Isley there. “And she’s so big, I mean, you’re pretty big, but her tits would drown you. I’m not sure mine are even big enough to do it.”

I risk a glance to my side, and it nearly sends me over the edge. Her breasts are perky little things which probably wouldn’t wrap the whole way around but would still cause me enough trouble. And her nipples point out like they have something to prove, but that’s probably because she’s still masturbating. “They’re – perfectly fine.”

“Fine schmine. Just looking at Red I get so insecure.” Her hands start working faster. I struggle to keep control, so far as that means anything when I’m tied down. “But, but I think I love her, I know this makes me sound crazy but I love her so much, I don’t think she minds, and anyway she’s got enough titty for the both of us – oh God, I wanna grab them, I wanna taste them – ah! Unh!” Suddenly she’s squeezing the life out of me, writhing and crying out. But after a few moments she settles down, and blows out the exertion. “See what she does to me,” she purrs. “Oh, and what she does to you...” She pushes my erection down, then lets it bounce back up, and giggles.

“You have at least something to do with that.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” she says, and I clench my teeth as she starts stroking again. At once I want to get off and want her to stop. Then her other hand, still sticky, is squeezing my testicles and she’s cooing “How about this, how’s this feel?”

She grips harder and harder, the muscles rise in her arm, and I manage to get out the words “Please no.”

Immediately her hands are off me, and I jerk like I’ve been stabbed. Everything aches, everything screams for release, there’s sweat on my brow. “I’m sorry,” she pouts, the fluffy tone gone from her voice. “I thought this could just be fun for both of us. But I will stop, if ya like.”

I look up at her, my mouth is dry. She has me captive and I don’t want to let her win. But every thought I have comes back to wanting her to touch me again.

“Do ya want me to stop?” All innocence. I desperately want to come, it’s the only thing in my mind, the desperation, the desperate anticipation.

“No, keep going.”

She bounces with glee. “I thought ya might say that.” And she’s grabbing me again, hard, too tight. It feels like I might burst, but it also feels so incredibly good, her fingers working their magic. “Aw, are your balls all full? I bet they must be by now. Do ya wanna get it all outta there?” She squeezes as she says it, I can’t take it any more, can’t think of anything but ejaculating.

The door snaps open, and when I see Isley standing there, a vision in red and green, it knocks me over the edge. Quinn yelps and jumps up, leaving me tied down on the bed, but even without her hands there it all comes squirting out. Every flash of their eyes, every glance at their curves, all the arousal that’s been coiled up inside me spurts into the open air. Isley’s eyes are wide, and even before the fear of what she’ll do to me for this I feel utter burning embarrassment.

Each wave hits like lightning, I jerk uncontrollably against my bonds. The ache in my testicles is gone, mercifully hollowed out. After what feels like an eternity I begin to hear sounds again, and the first one is Isley laughing, barely able to stay on her feet, she leans on the doorframe and reels around the room. Finally, imperious and cruel and having regained a little bit of composure, she intones “You didn’t.” Quinn approaches her nervously, fumbling for something to say, but then Isley takes her in her arms. “Oh, my sweet baby. Did he seduce you? Did he tell you that blue balls is a dangerous medical condition? That’s disgusting.”

“Yes,” smiles Quinn, eyes full of relief. “Yeah, that, that all happened.”

“Poor thing. You’ve been so brave...” Isley caresses her face, and Quinn feathers her with a dozen kisses. “My sweet, special girl.” Hearing that, Quinn visibly wriggles with delight. Very softly, on the edge of hearing, Isley adds “You can do what you like to him. I want you to have the power.”

“I know, ya said, but when ya walked in – I mean, my heart stopped…”

“I got a little shock too,” Isley confesses. “You looked sexy. Taking control like that. And you made him come buckets.” Quinn trembles with glee at that. Then Isley rounds on me and raises her voice. “So. Seduce my girlfriend, will you? You know she’s in a vulnerable place, and you go and lead her astray with your big dick?” Lost for works, she smacks my penis with her open palm. It makes me jump, but that’s more a reflex – I barely feel the blow, there are still aftershocks coursing through it.

“And, and, and, he said he wanted to fuck your tits too,” adds Quinn. Isley gasps, covering her mouth. “He said he wanted to stick his dick between your tits and come all over your chest.” Quinn explains this while huddling behind Isley, arms around her and groping her breasts, grinning around the taller woman’s shoulder at me.

“Well, well,” hisses Isley, and then she bears down on me in one dramatic motion, seizing me roughly by the throat. Then, with a placid expression which does not match the way she swooped upon me, she whispers “I was watching through the keyhole, she seemed to really like this. Keep it up.” Then, when I begin to think this is just a weird game but ultimately harmless, she makes a gesture and I feel a tendril wrap around my testicles. I look into her eyes, silently begging for mercy, then it pulls hard and my eyes water. “What you must understand,” she says haughtily, drawing herself up to her full height, “is that these-” now she’s grabbing along with the tendril “-are now Harley’s personal property.”

“All for me?” mugs Quinn, face a mask of mock-surprise, an expression that starts to slip a moment before she kisses Isley all over the cheek.

“So you are to never, ever, ever come without her express permission, you dirty boy. In fact, even you getting a hard-on is kind of impudent. Have you apologised to her, yet?”

I open my mouth, but before I can speak Quinn presses forward, smirking, “Yeah, apologise to me, I’m very hurt an’ shaken.”

“I’m sorry I got an erection in front of you, Doctor Quinn,” I shrug out, and she squeals with delight. Even saying it, even obliged to, makes me feel embarrassed beyond the action itself.

Isley rolls her eyes. “At least sound like you mean it. Come on, play the game. There’s worse things I can do to you than the vines.” Then she turns to Quinn as if I’m not there, now all gentle sunny smiles. “So what do you want to do today? What would make you happiest?”

Quinn is confrontational all of a sudden, hesitantly standing up to her. “I know what you’re doing. Sweep me off my feet, shower me with affection, get me a pet. It’s a hallmark of manipulative relationships, it’s called love bombing.” She goes up on tip-toes to look Isley directly in the eye, and concludes “I’d be really pissed off if I wasn’t way into it” then kisses her on the mouth.

“You know I’ve got easier ways to manipulate you than that,” Isley says finally. “I mean, look at this one.” She gestures at me. Quinn glances over, but only for a moment. “If I wanted to manipulate you, I could just put you under and make you dance a jig.”

“That’s not really what I mean,” Quinn starts to explain, but then her face changes as something overtakes her point, and she continues “ta be honest, you could manipulate me by saying ‘do this and I’ll let you touch my boobs’.”

“That’s where psychology always gets tricky for me. Where’s the difference between love bombing and genuinely doing all that Hallmark-romance stuff? Is there one? I’m here thinking I want you to like me, I want you to trust me, but that’s what an abuser would want…” Her downcast expression gives way to a wicked grin, and she adds “Let me touch your boobs, and I’ll let you touch mine.”

Quinn bounces on the spot, declares “Okay!” and thrusts out her chest.

As they grope each other, Quinn glances fondly back at me. No smug grin of ‘see what you can’t have’, but a flashed sunny smile of ‘there you are, and look, isn’t everything wonderful’. Part of me wishes they were some of my usual nemeses. If they hated me, they might make mistakes. But what they feel is cold indifference – no, warm, uncomfortably warm indifference.

* 

This corner of the penthouse block has been torn out, letting the trees reach up higher than the building. Around their feet is a carpet of flowers, through which a path of flat stones leads to a little pond. From up here, the turf along the edges looks as if it leads directly onto the countryside in the middle distance.

A bird flutters out of one of the trees, into the sky, and is gone. Quinn reaches out after it and says “Tweet tweet tweet,” almost to herself.

“This could be just for you, if you like,” says Isley softly, as Quinn passes one hand along a branch of red petals and gasps with delight when a butterfly alights on her finger. “This could be your secret place.”

“Ya don’t need ta keep seducing me like this. I mean, you’ve already sealed the deal.”

“That’s the thing, I don’t want this to just be the sex, I don’t want it to just be that you’ve fallen under my spell-”

“I totally have.”

“I know that, but – it ought to be more than that. For you. For both of us. I want to – I want to be shy and have a burning secret crush on you, I want to take you on some unexpected adventure, I want to take you places and court you and date you.”

Quinn looks wrong-footed. “Ya mean, like, going ta dinner in a big fancy French restaurant?”

Before I know it we are at a table in Francoise’s and have all gotten dressed up. Not in our elaborate, colourful work clothes, but in real clothes, stuff we can wear in public without consequences. “My dining partner will have absolutely anything she’d like,” Isley tells the waiter in lordly tones. They order dishes that seem to go on forever, and then the soup for me. I wonder if I’m supposed to be chaperoning one of them.

“I’ve never been to a place like this before,” whispers Quinn.

“Really, never?”

“I, I’m actually nervous. I haven’t brought my opera-glasses.”

Isley laughs a little at that, and they join hands across the table. For a while I drift off and let them date each other before I hear her say “You remember the start of Pulp Fiction, where they have the idea to rob the diner?” and I freeze inside.

“Yeah, but the thing there was they robbed everyone else there too,” says Quinn. “We’re, like, the only ones here.”

My eyes swivel between them like a gunfighter. Not just any gunfighter, one who knows he’s already fired off all six. But after a cavernous second the mood passes, and Isley shrugs assent and goes back to her food.

Quinn doesn’t, not immediately, she’s taken aback, she laughs a little, then she picks up her fork and it’s only when she notices Isley looking at her that she explains “Normally, what I’m used to is – well, whatever I’d said not ta do happens anyway an’ I feel crappy about it.”

“You really have had a hell of a time, haven’t you.”

“Aw, don’t now get all pitying and sympathetic for me, I couldn’t stand that.”

“Alright.” Isley’s fork is poised, but then she completes the thought: “I mean, you may have to stop me.”

“Rolling over a diner doesn’t seem like your scene.” Quinn is looking about the place as she smiles. “They’re not serving anything endangered, are they?”

“All life is endangered,” Isley says, her tones suddenly ringing, her face a mask of factual neutrality – but then it changes. “Oh God – look, that wasn’t – alright, if I wanted to make some kind of veiled threat, that probably is exactly what I’d say. But that’s not how I meant it.”

“It did give me a chill,” confesses Quinn, though she cannot possibly hide her look of excitement.

“You have to know I wouldn’t want to make you scared.”

“I know, I know...but ya do, though. Not because of that. But, because, it’s like I was just wasting time and then you sprang right inta my life, and it’s all…” She waves a hand at the candlelight, at the napkin rings, at Isley. “And, and I don’t think you’d do this, but if ya sprang out again, if ya leave me like-” Quinn cuts herself off in midsentence. She visibly recomposes her thoughts, and instead says “I’m afraid of being alone.”

“I’ll be here for you. I won’t be around you around the clock, that really would be love bombing,” says Isley, and Quinn nods queasily at that. “But then, this is why I got you a pet.”

“Aw, he is great though,” says Quinn, and pats me on the head, or rather, mashes her hand into my face. “Go on, fetch. Fetch.” Now she’s flicking croutons into my soup.

“Well,” I say, with inexplicable levity, “this is at least stopping you two from rolling places over.”

Quinn nods thoughtfully, then drops her cutlery and stands up out of her seat.

“Now where’s she going?” says Isley, eyes following her, something more than curious.

“Hello! Hey, everyone, hi,” comes through the speakers. The two or three other diners in the place look round. Quinn is up in an elevated corner of the room, and has torn a microphone off the piano. “My name’s Harley, I’ve been hired by this place, and that’s true, and tonight I’m gonna tell ya all some brilliant jokes.”

“Alright. Come on, time to go,” a waiter’s saying, pulling me up by my shoulder – and he looks shocked when he manages it, I’m not used to having physical forces affect me like this, normally that should have been like trying to lift the planet.

Then his face changes again, because Isley has jammed a fork into his guts, not quite hard enough to break the skin but easily piercing his uniform, and she snarls “You take your fucking hand off him and enjoy the show.”

“What did Captain Kirk find in the toilet?” Then Quinn delicately clears her throat, and answers, in a piercing declaration that fills the whole room, “The captain’s log!”

* 

“This was such a fun night,” Quinn says now, as the sirens recede into the distance and I begin to see clearly out of my left eye again. She stumbles along, then whirls around like a ballerina, tells Isley “You were right about this,” and falls backwards over the hood of a taxicab where she bursts into peals of helpless laughter. The cabbie regards her with the amused tolerance of a man with absolutely no idea.

“Up you get,” Isley says, as she takes Quinn by the wrists and pulls the smaller woman back to her feet, up into her arms, and now they are both spinning on the sidewalk. “You still smell of smoke.”

“You smell gorgeous.”

“Normally I don’t like how that smells, but…” Isley tails off, and smiles.

“None of that was necessary,” I tell them.

“Nobody got hurt,” Quinn waves me away, “an’ the building wasn’t damaged in any serious way. Why can’t ya just enjoy the night?”

“Do you really want the answer?”

“Be careful,” says Isley. “It’s been a lovely evening. Let’s not spoil it.”

“Oh, I think I hurt my foot just now,” adds Quinn, and if she was sober maybe she’d be hopping and really sell the bit rather than just waving her leg at me. “I think supesy’s gonna have ta carry me home.” So, freshly threatened, I immediately kneel, get her around the waist, and sling her over my shoulder – she squeals, she thrashes about for a second, then relaxes completely and hangs on me like a sack.

I feel Isley’s shoe in my back, so I start walking. Then she adds “Keep her steady.” I feel Quinn twist her torso upward – and then I know they’re kissing back there while I take the weight.

“I, I actually got a li’l hot when he picked me up,” that squeaky little voice floats around from over my shoulder, like a jagged wire that’s somehow pitiable. “I, um, I don’t wanna make ya jealous or anything – I mean, it is you, ya know that…”

Isley whispers something I can’t make out.

“Supesey,” Quinn wheedles now, “is my skirt riding up? Ya better not be letting everyone see my undies.”

“You told me to carry you.” Why do I think picking apart the contradictions will do me even the slightest bit of good.

“I know, but, but, I don’t wanna be unseemly, and, show off the tops of my legs…” By now Isley has drifted around in front of me, to check out the view herself. “You gotta cover me up.” There’s begging in her voice, and Isley has given me a pointed glance. So, with no other option, I put a hand over her backside. Desperately uncomfortable, I try not to really touch, but nonetheless I feel. There, on my palm, is the hard line at the bottom of her skirt – and there beneath that is a little triangle of cotton sandwiched between her thighs. Somehow it feels more improper than actually squeezing her breasts.

When my skin touches hers, there’s the sound of lightning. In seconds it’s pouring with rain, which makes Quinn squeal and kick her legs, and Isley grabs the front of my shirt and says “Come on!” and she runs ahead of me through the streets, the raindrops leave dents in all her red hair while she laughs. Our feet splash on the asphalt and I can feel Quinn laughing as well.

We rush in through the front doors of Tenochitlan, where Quinn wriggles free, landing nimbly and making it quite obvious she did not hurt her foot. “I’m soaking,” she declares, as she clutches at her wet shirt – then shifts her arms downwards, so her bra shows through it. For a moment, with her hair hanging down, Isley looks halfway drowned – then she raises her arms, and a spiral of big flat leaves encrust themselves over the doors. It is immediately hot and humid inside, nowhere near drying anyone off but we’ll never catch a chill in here, and as she cocks her head, imperial and all-powerful, I have the awful feeling that she is become the destroyer of worlds. Quinn looks at her with all the same sudden warmth – but then she whines “Now I’m gonna be sticky as well.”

“How sticky?” asks Isley, and plucks at her shirt.

We step onto a lily-pad the size of a small car that lifts us up through the empty space where the elevator shaft used to be. Quinn jumps at Isley, and when they overbalance and vanish over the edge she screams – but she’s cut off halfway through, and then the vines are there, lifting them tumbling upward, and now she is laughing. They swoop back down onto the leaf and kiss again as I stand there like the attendant.

Upstairs, Isley walks into their apartment first, and Quinn follows. But then she reconsiders, and steps back, then pulls the door closed so she is only peeking around the edge. “Um, Red, do ya think I could come in for coffee?”

“The coffee trade has destroyed countless-” comes the reply, before Isley realises what she’s doing, and hangs from the doorframe, and shifts into a convinceable “Aw, Harley, I don’t know, I’ve got a board meeting tomorrow.”

“It could be quick!” suggests Quinn immediately, which makes Isley splutter and makes her deflate. Now she babbles “Okay, no, that wouldn’t – look, it’s a long time since I’ve done this.”

“Last night, wasn’t it?” says Isley, as if it’s a joke rather than the truth. “Alright, you’ve worn me down. Just a quick one.”

“A very quick one.”

“Incredibly quick.”

“Ya won’t hardly even notice.”

Isley grabs Quinn by the arms and says “You will” in low, lusty tones.

Then she opens wide the door. When I unthinkingly try to follow they shut it in my face. It gives me pause. Did I really want to be in that room, with them, now? I try to escape, but all the other doors are shut fast by undergrowth. For a second I consider trying to kick one open, maybe that would work, then I see the thorns – heavy and black, two inches long, the absolute last place I want them is in my foot.

Even if I’m still trapped, at least I can bed down in a bush rather than in the cupboard. The whole corridor is covered with plant life, there’s no blanket but it’s as good as any mattress, so I just curl up on one side. Perhaps, when Isley sleeps, the plants will too. Perhaps there will be enough give in them to get through the doors and escape.

Quinn’s moan is loud enough that it’s like the door isn’t there. None of the hesitation, the concern that everything will suddenly go wrong, that usually permeates her voice, and I am jealous of that. Then she gasps a string of tiny little breaths, and I have been around her enough over the past twenty-four hours I can practically see her mouth hang open and her limbs turn to jelly. And of course there is her physical pleasure, and then Isley, giving that pleasure to a woman she genuinely cares for.

I try to shut it out as Quinn starts pleading as if for mercy, saying “Red, Red, you’re making me feel too...it’s too much, I can’t…” and then she cries out again, making sounds that could rattle the windows, before one final, guttural “Fuck…”

Eventually, with the noises of lust still floating around me, I try to settle down and shut it all out, and not to meditate on this erection. It’s still there when I wake up, though, what seems like scarcely two minutes later. And then suddenly I have a bigger concern, because I’m wrapped up to my chin in vines and roots, and the thought of being subsumed completely and becoming part of this huge and terrible organism makes me cry “Jesus Christ!”

“Come on, it’s early,” says Isley, leaning in the door, and with a pass of her hand the undergrowth unravels from around me. I sigh with life-giving relief, I unwind completely, which is a mistake since she immediately looks at my penis. It’s a curious expression, I don’t know how curious she really is since she is so very much aware, but it’s curious nonetheless. “How’d you sleep?”

“Poorly.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry.” I rise to meet her, somehow even in my head it sounds dirty. She smiles as if none of it’s going on. “I’m going back to bed.” And she curls a finger under my chin. “You can come too – if you want.”

I should stand on principle here, I want to. But I’m barely standing as it is. The stone on my neck is destroying me, not by itself but by exposing me to those worldly aches and pains other people always talk about. So I walk by her, into the bedroom, as she grins.

But they do let me sleep again. When we get under the covers Quinn shifts, and then there is the muffled flurry of activity, but it’s only for Isley, they leave me out of it. It’s exactly what I want and some horrible part of me feels like I’ve got the booby prize.

I’m very nearly drifting off, when in a hushed voice Isley says “The plants need watering,” for a moment I despair but this isn’t to me, it’s to Quinn, and Isley adds “You keep sleeping. I could, ha ha, send you off if you want.”

“Oh!” Quinn shifts in the bed again, she does not give us the benefit of a hushed voice. “I mean, I could do that for ya.”

“No, it’s alright, I’ve got it.”

“No, come on, let me, I’ll be, like, your li’l gardening helper.”

“Yeah, alright, if you want.” Isley’s already lying flat again.

“I do want, I wanna show you that – I mean, they’re like part of you, an’ I can be helping you an’ making ya happy, an’ I could have a pail…” Somehow it’s the noise of her clattering about the apartment that lulls me back to sleep.

Chapter Text

There’s a line of young women wearing pink lycra, breasts bouncing as they run in place. At the end, a beautiful dark-haired girl slides neatly off the treadmill. She wipes her brow, throws back her head to drink from her bottle, and while I know I shouldn’t be staring my eyes are eating up her whole body. Perhaps she will head home now, perhaps she will change into a comfy sweater and pants which don’t emphasise every luscious inch of her legs…

“Spot me!” It takes me a moment to snap out of this unfocused reverie. Quinn’s skinny arms are trembling, and she’s saying “Spotmespotmespotme” - I take the barbell with ease and help her set it down on the rack. She gives a little gasp of relief, the relief following great exertion, which coming out from between her lips now sounds so familiar to me.

Conceivably, out in public like this, I could shout, I could run. Get the green stone off my neck somehow. But then there’s no telling what she might do. Right now she looks like any other woman in here. Actually, slightly less glamorous than most of them, where they have branded lycra she has a ratty old Miskatonic U shirt which is now dark with sweat. But it’s only me who knows the mark on her arm is from where she was winged by a .38 slug.

“What’s up with you?” she asks, sitting up now, twisted round to look at me. “One job ya got, and-” Then she follows my gaze, over toward the line of women on the treadmills, and I can actually feel her smirk. “Ahh. Well well. Mind’s elsewhere, huh? Ya know, I gotta say, I’m really enjoying this liking women stuff. There they go, jiggly wiggly. Who would you go for?”

I don’t answer. I know she’s only asking to tease.

“Come on,” she says, lying flat again and setting her shoulders, “I wanna do more.”

“Don’t strain yourself.”

“Fuck that. I wanna get strong for Red. One day I wanna carry her over the threshold.” With a grunt – that, too, all too familiar – the bar goes up again. “And pay attention this time!”

She dips the bar, the tendons in her elbows stand out like steel cable, and back up it goes. It’s not that much weight for me, but still, I feel it, it’s more than she should be lifting. But then, she is in love.

“It occurs to me, that with – hngh! - that krypto-whatever around your neck, that – rrgh! - that you’re now limited to the actual mechanical strength of yourrrrrah! - body.”

“Theoretically.” Very likely less than that. Having it so close makes me sluggish, half-asleep. Besides, whether my strength is normally mechanical or some kind of gestalt energy field seems to escape me.

“Wouldn’t it be way hot if – ggnh! - I got so big I could beat you at arm-wrestling?”

“You push me around enough anyway.”

She giggles, her arms shake, for a second I’m ready to take the weight, but no, she catches herself, manages to force it up again. “Ya know that’s nothing personal. I’d do that ta any guy in your position.” Another rep, and another, the sweat trickles over her neck. “Besides, you can take it.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“Well, maybe. But I know what does.”

And when she blows her next hard breath, it’s on the front of my shorts. Just enough to hint at my arousal. When she lets the weights clang down I jump.

“It’s nothing ta be ashamed of,” she explains as I grasp her legs, and with each crunch her face swings up perilously close to mine. “Lotsa people who are used ta being in positions of power get turned on from being submissive. The theory goes that ya don’t have the inhibitions other men might about going against the grain and getting kinky.” Up and down she goes off the mat, her shirt sticking to her abs. She’s saying all this stuff, her calves are warm in my hands, how much am I meant to take? “Come on, whadda you think? Ya can tell me. Let’s pretend we got doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“I’m not letting you psychoanalyse me.”

Her muscles give way halfway through a crunch, and she falls flat when she laughs. “Aw, that’s good. Right now I’m therapising you. I psychoanalysed ya days ago.”

I say nothing.

“There it is, there’s you being strong and silent. This is what I’m talking about. You being you, ya need have no fear of anyone thinking you’re weak and unmanly. I mean-” At the peak of her next crunch, she reaches out, and I choke when she hooks a finger around my collar and flashes me a sweet little smile. “Even now, I got ya with the safety on.”

She lets me go when she drops back again, thank goodness. For a second I thought she would drag me down with her. My eyes go darting around the gym. What would anyone else have thought, seeing that? “And what does your psychoanalytic mind make of Doctor Isley?” I try to deflect.

“Now ya know I got a pre-existing bias about her. Ah, shit, I don’t know. When I’m with her-” she grits her teeth, one more motion up, the cords standing out in her neck before she relaxes “-it’s like she keeps being nice ta me and it makes me feel good and I can’t get my head around it.”

“It might just be what it appears,” I say, now I dig my heels in as the heavy bag I’m holding suffers a flurry of blows. “Maybe she means what she says.”

“Maybe,” says Quinn, pausing, before she delivers the bag a loud straight left. “But ya know why I’d have my suspicions. Hell, everyone knows that.” It’s strange, from where I’m standing behind this tormented bag, to think that she could be abused. That she wasn’t more than capable of looking after herself. “Part of me doesn’t even wanna – ya know – let people know. For Red’s sake. People might think that she’s, like, second choice.”

“Isn’t she?”

“She was a choice,” Quinn says. “He wasn’t.” And she punctuates it with another heavy blow that jars my skull even through the bag. “No, fuck, he was. But that was a bad choice.”

* 

When we go through into the sauna, I dare to think it might actually be a warm-down, a break from all of this. Then Quinn undoes her robe, it falls to the floor and of course she’s naked underneath.

“Whoof! Aw, jeez, I’m all sore, that musta been a good one.” She flushes up in here, a healthy pink blooming on her unnaturally pale skin. Her body shines, she glows in the light, the patch of sweat between her breasts actually gleams at me. “Come on, soupy, help me warm down, grab that towel.” I pick it up and go to dry off her arms, but the second the towel touches her skin she gasps and recoils, covering herself with her hands. “Whoa! I never told you ta get all grabby!” She grins as she says it. “I’m gonna tell Red you tried to touch my titties, and then she’ll be so mad and get that sexy look on her face...”

“I’m sorry, I thought you meant you wanted me to-”

“I bet you did, you and your boner.” The shock hasn’t made it go away, and when she grabs at it through my robe then there’s no chance. The material chafes it when she pulls me closer. “Your punishment,” she breathes, her eyes alive and excited, “is ta hold your cock and balls over the fire.”

I turn to look at the pit of hot rocks, and actually feel the heat on my brow. “Please,” I say, and it doesn’t feel good having to beg her. “I really wasn’t trying to grope you.”

“Ha ha ha. It’s okay. If ya hadn’t tried to towel me off I’d have been all like ‘what the fuck, you expect me to do that myself’ and then I’d have punished ya for that too.” She whips open my robe, then grabs me again and purrs “Come on” as she leads me over there, towing me by my erection. The feel of her palm on it almost assuages the grim idea that this is now happening. Then she grabs me around the base and hauls on it, pulls it out over the coals.

At first the air is only dry – then I feel it searing. Suddenly my penis is in an oven and my hairs burn like wire. I pull back from that hellish pain and when I do it sends Quinn sprawling. She nearly keeps her balance, a look of shock on her face at that terrible angle, before she falls, and her head bounces against the tiled floor.

I should run. But she’s not moving. I kneel, not wanting to risk moving her I hover my fingers on her neck, trying to feel her pulse. Then her big blue eyes blink open. “Wh-what are ya doing?” she asks, and there’s a flicker of fear in there.

“You fell. I thought – you hit your head.”

She rubs her hand through her hair, and looks at her fingers, when there’s no blood I’m relieved too. “Ah, that’s nothing. Bonk on the head? That’s, like, a handshake in our trade.” Then she wags a finger at me. “You were concerned! So ya really do care.”

“I don’t know how to explain to you that most people would be concerned if they saw someone fall and hit their head.”

“Maybe,” she shrugs, shifting from side to side, no evidence of concussion. “But we’re not most people. You know that. Maybe I was being a li’l mean to ya...I just wanna be clear now, if that hadn’t been an accident I’d fuck you up.”

“Yes, fine.”

“No offence.”

“No, understood.”

There is something like guilt dancing on her face. “You wanna, uh, just lie down on the bench there? I’m not gonna do anything with the coals, don’t worry.”

When I stretch out on the warm wood I let out an involuntary groan. Against every instinct, all the nerve-endings screaming at me to not drop my guard, to never drop my guard, I relax a little. And she doesn’t immediately come in with another knife-jab while I’m undefended, either. I must enjoy this while it lasts, I think, and as if on cue here she is, climbing over to straddle me, shuffling her knees on the bench – then plops herself down to sit on my face.

“Oh, this seat is warm,” she says affectionately, and shifts herself back and forth again. I can breathe, for the most part, but she has taken out most of my senses. All I can see is her bottom and up her back, I can only smell her body, and it’s increasingly hard to think. “Can ya taste it, can ya taste my workout? You’re really very lucky, I wouldn’t do this with just anyone. Go on, tell me ya like it, say it.”

I try to speak, but she’s all over my mouth, all that comes out is noises.

“Oh, what’s that? What? Sweetie, I can’t hear ya. Don’t ya like the taste of sweat and pussy juice?” She rolls her hips, kneading my face with her behind, and somewhere out there my penis strains and waves about. Her laughter echoes in the room. “See, I knew ya liked it. So why won’t ya say it?” I bleat and splutter into her body, when I do all I can taste, all I can perceive is her. “I’m sure ya don’t wanna be ungrateful. If ya say ya like it, I’ll give your stiff dick a little kissie.”

My body writhes with the thought. I’m screaming it, protesting it into her behind and all that comes out is stupid-sounding caveman grunts.

“Aw, don’t ya want a kissie on your cock? I woulda thought you’d like having it kissed better, after that mean lady held it over the fire.” She’s growing wetter, I can feel her arousal as she frustrates me. “Well, ya know, while you’re down there, if ya wanna be polite, maybe you could gimme some kisses.”

With nowhere to go, I pucker up. She chirps with delight when she feels my lips touching her vulva and all the parts of her thighs I wouldn’t normally have my mouth anywhere near. If she enjoys this I’ll probably have to get used to it.

“Don’t be shy,” she says, and I can imagine the look of flushed glee on her face, the look she usually has when Isley holds her hand, “use some tongue.” I probe around, and when I find a little nub that makes her shiver I keep lapping at it.

Perhaps, I think, perhaps if I pleasure her she won’t hurt me. Then she touches my penis. Just a light pass of the hand, but enough to shortcircuit my brain, make me writhe, make me yearn for more.

“Your balls are so hot,” she says, leaning forward to take them in the palm of her hand and plastering more of her thighs over my face. “I mean it, they feel really warm. Aw God, I can tell ya like this, ya look like you’re gonna burst…”

Suddenly she grips my penis tight around the base, and gives it a stinging slap with her other hand. I’m trying to collect myself when she strikes again, and again, at least it’s knocked me painfully away from the point of embarrassment. Then she flips over to lie down on top of me, her head where her hips were only seconds ago, and she grins in my face.

“I hope this wasn’t too much for ya,” she says, speaking as if it had only been the gym. “I guess I’m using ya as, sort of, training wheels. Training wheels for my vagina.”

I actually wince at the phrase, and she frowns.

“Fine, be like that. I just wanna show Red I can be sexy for her. God, I need ta be better for her, she’s too fucking sweet ta me.” Now I can feel her wetness on my still-tingling penis, where she’s perched comfortably on top of it, and as she daydreams she starts to move her hips again. “And she acts like I’m such a catch, sometimes I don’t even know who she’s looking at.”

“When she says she cares about you, she means it.” Am I trying to placate her, or distract her so that she’ll keep dry-humping me and not hit me again?

“Ehh, I guess you’re ri- my God you’re hard.” For a horrible second it’s as if she’s read my thoughts, but I am of course poking her in a sensitive area. A wicked grin twists her mouth up and down. “Ya know, part of me wants ta just stick it in, just ‘cause it’s there. Get you off already so it’ll go away.”

I cannot imagine a response that will improve my situation.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you want it. Would ya...would ya just hold me, instead?” She’s smiling a little smile on top of me.

Guardedly, I put my arms around her, knowing that at any second this may all turn. But the worst that happens is she knocks the wind out of me as she falls onto my chest, rests her head on me, and hums with contentment.

“Ya know what’s best about this,” she muses, mostly to herself, but I still feel her lips vibrate, “is that with you I know it’s safe.” She has not even mentioned contraception once. “It’s so fucking sexy, not having to worry...I can do what I like, and you can take it, and because you can take it and because you’re you I know I’m not gonna get hurt.”

My penis is still stinging from where her hand caught it. But I cannot truly be angry with her if that, that low bar, that bare minimum is such a treat for her. Isley was probably right that she needed to work out her issues with men, even if they are both morally depraved in their methods.

“You have that with Isley as well,” I try to suggest.

“Oh, fuck no I do not, she scares me.” Her voice trembles with terrified lust. “With her, she might suddenly realise she doesn’t want me.” Almost without meaning to, I hold her tighter. There, there.

We walk out of the sauna, dressed and awkward. On the way in she had been laughing and tried to hold my hand. Now she’s subdued, staring forward into space, which at least should mean I’m not going to get any nasty surprises. As we leaving the gym I see a flash of red hair come around a corner, and instantly I am wary, thinking this is Isley come again to be the bad cop to Quinn’s other bad cop. But it is a young man, a man I know, and he knows me too, I see it on his face -

“Clark?” asks Olsen. Quinn’s mouth falls open involuntarily, and her eyes flash between he and I. “Is that – where have you been? You haven’t been in the office for weeks!”

“I’m sorry, do we know you?” Quinn steps in – suddenly officious, commanding, not her usual squeaky tentative proposal of something filthy.

“I – your friend,” Olsen stumbles, “I thought he was-”

“This is my husband,” Quinn lies quite casually, “John Donson. Do ya know this man, honey?” Not daring to open my mouth, I simply shrug.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You really do look exactly like Clark...do be careful if you ever come up to the Daily Planet offices, you might get an out-of-body experience. Ha!” I think I’m having one right now. Then Olsen just walks off, completely, ecstatically unaware of what he’s just done.

Quinn stands in the hallway, hands on her waist, head on one side. Maybe, I hope against hope, maybe, just maybe, she hasn’t pieced together the significance of this. “So why the hell do you need a day job?”

*

Isley descends on Quinn the moment she walks through the door, and puts a comforting blanket around her shoulders, and kisses her neck. “No,” protests Quinn in a way that sounds like it’s leading into ‘don’t stop’, “ya shouldn’t, I’m stinky.”

“Yes you are,” Isley panther-growls, and nuzzles deeper and longer into her.

“Lemme, lemme at least change these clothes-”

“Do you even begin to understand what this does to a red-blooded woman? Seeing you a little mussed-up and dishevelled like this?” says Isley, pulling her in closer and finding no trace of resistance as Quinn closes her eyes and lets the words soothe her soul. “Come on, come here. Special snuggle-up time for my favourite girl.”

Quinn blinks her eyelids back open. “Do ya ever think you’re treating me like a kid with special needs?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says Isley, and clears her throat. “Let’s go to bed and explore your sexuality in a mature and adult way.”

“Aw, no, keep doing it,” insists Quinn quickly, and spins round to face her. “I do have certain...special needs.” Her hand grazes up and down Isley’s stomach, and goes too low. “And I like ta be your favourite gal.”

“Yes, I thought you did.” Isley sits down on the bed, accepting Quinn quite naturally into her lap. “It occurs to me – you went straight into interning after your MD, didn’t you?”

“And then the supervillainy, yeah.”

“Yes, of course, and that’s a full-time job too. See, that’s just it, in all that time did you ever get the time to be young and wild? I think they call it a delayed-”

“Delayed adolescence,” Quinn concludes for her. “Ya been doing the reading?”

“I – wanted to impress you.” At this Quinn actually trills with glee, a primal sound from deep in her guts.

“Ya know ya don’t have to do anything to impress me,” purrs Quinn, cheek planted comfortably on Isley’s shoulder. “Just be here. Be you. Keep indulging all my stupid childish desires. Baby me.”

Isley cocks her head suspiciously. “You’re not about to ask me to put you in diapers, are you?”

“What? Eww, no! Eww!”

“Thank God for that.” A thought flashes across Isley’s face, and gives her a big, wicked smile. “Although...”

Delicately, she peels down one side of her dress, and lets one breast pop out. It makes Quinn’s pupils expand with desire, and she shifts around, letting Isley cradle her, so she can take that nipple in her mouth. Is it odd that it’s pink against grass-green skin? Not so odd that I don’t feel a pang of envy. Isley meets my gaze.

“What do you think you’re staring at? This is a perfectly natural thing for one woman to do with her conspicuously younger girlfriend.” She strokes Quinn’s hair. “Now go get us some milk.”

I’m as sober and composed as I’ve ever been, not under Isley’s spell for once, but the walk through to the kitchen and back feels like a waking dream, I still feel completely entranced. Isley takes the jug and pours it over herself. The milk trickles in creamy white rivulets down her breast, onto her nipple, and Quinn goes from gently sucking to a frantic, hungry, devouring gulp.

“Epic milky mommy titties,” she says, muffled. “Big squishy mommy honkers.”

Isley arches her eyebrows. “Tell me about your mozzer,” she says, in a bad Austrian accent. Quinn splutters with laughter and sends droplets of milk everywhere.

“My mommy always told me ta stay away from gals like you,” Quinn accuses, once she’s recovered a little bit. “No, that’s a lie, she was really a very nice woman and would probably have approved of you. Well, mostly.”

“I was going to say,” huffs Isley. “How many oil tankers do you have to send to the bottom to get any villainess cred, these days?”

“How many have ya sent ta the bottom?”

“Only one, but it was very big.”

“Oh,” says Quinn dreamily, “like these…” and returns to her place. My penis has been uncomfortably present in my gym shorts the whole time, now it’s starting to fight back against the material. With a cringe through my belly, I realise it’s even started to leak slightly. It’s not simply what they’re doing, it’s the blissful looks on their faces they have doing it.

Suddenly, Isley yelps and pulls back. “Did you just bite me?”

“Oopsie doopsie,” smirks Quinn, showing her teeth. “How about a nice spanking so’s this bad gal learns her lesson?”

Isley sits her up on her lap, any faux-rage gone now, all concern. “Are you sure?” she says gently. “We can if you want, but...I’m just concerned about you being hurt. By anyone.”

“Aw, don’t worry about that,” Quinn smiles, an honest genuine smile, “it’s always been a kinda fantasy, and I know you won’t go too far.”

“Alright. If you’re sure. I love you,” says Isley, nose-to-nose with Quinn before touching their lips together – then she roughly flips the smaller woman over to lie across her lap, and yanks down her gym shorts. “Right, are you ready to have your ass warmed up? I’m going to spank you until it’s cherry fucking red.”

“Oh fuck oh fuck,” whines Quinn as Isley’s hand plays over the curve of her bottom, stroking, squeezing, fingers digging into the flesh, “oh God, please do it Red, please, make it sting. I want ya to make it so I can’t sit down...”

Isley bends her wrist, and plops a hand down on Quinn’s cheeks with barely a sound. Quinn looks quizzically over her shoulder.

“You hit me harder than that,” I say. It’s distracted me, for a moment, from this troublesome erection.

“Hush, slave boy!” declares Isley, waving me away without looking.

“He’s actually right, that was like nothing, that was barely a love-tap,” says Quinn.

“But Harley, I don’t understand,” says Isley, coy and faux-dopey. “Surely you don’t want me to do it any harder?”

“Aw, go on, Pammy, please,” begs Quinn, and wiggles her behind, shakes it at Isley as if it’s an invitation. “Please? Ya know I’ll do anything ya want after.”

Isley gives her bottom another soft clap which, if repeated a few dozen times, might constitute gentle applause.

“Come on, do it properly!” Quinn kicks the bed in frustration. “Please, I want ya to do it, I want it, I want it-”

Isley swings her arm up, over her head – even I wince – and brings it down with all the speed and noise of thunder. Quinn’s eyes pop, her mouth snapped open in a shocked, silent, breathless gasp, there’s already a pink glow spreading across her bottom from the point of impact. Before she can recover Isley delivers her another bullwhip swipe that catches the tops of her thighs and actually makes her squeak.

“How was that for you?” Isley asks, in the same butter-wouldn’t-melt tone, as if she hadn’t moved.

“I think I mighta came a little,” the reply comes floating up from the area of her lap. Her palm roves tenderly around Quinn’s hips again.

“Do you want some more?” She says it so gently. I don’t know why this works, what it possibly does for them, but it’s so intimate I’m practically drooling watching them. Thankfully, mercifully, for once they have no interest in what I’m doing. “Have you had enough?”

“No,” Quinn brightens, “I was badder than that.” Isley gives her another stern lick, and another, hard enough to make her cry aloud, but no sooner is the second yelp out of her mouth than she’s purring “Aw, you’re the best, Red, this is so much – ow! You bitch!”

Isley gasps in response, and swats her back, again and again. Even as Quinn moans, Isley takes hold of her hair, pulling her head back, while continuing the assault on her behind unabated. Her cheeks are turning red now, it’s as if she’s blushing. “Tell me how you’ve been bad. Tell me why you deserve this.”

“Because I called ya a bitch. And, and because I robbed all those banks. And I did way too much Addy in med school. Oh God, see, I think this is what I always wanted, I wanted the rough stuff but not for real. With you this can just be fun.” Isley looks like she’s on the point of dropping this scenario and saying something heartfelt – but then she sees where Quinn’s hand has gone.

“You wicked girl, touching yourself in front of me.” Isley strikes her softer and faster now, trying to match the frenzied motions of Quinn’s arm as she works herself over. “Yes, you like this, don’t you, you’re just the sort of bad girl to like this-”

“I’m gonna come all over your fucking lap.”

“You’d better not!” By now Quinn’s whole body shifts with each blow, but it’s probably not even that which moves her, just the pre-orgasmic tension making her writhe from within. “If you do I’ll make you clean it all up, with your mouth-”

And that does it. Quinn offers a strangled cry as her body gives one great spasm and then crumples, hanging limp over Isley’s legs as Isley leans off, giving her only the softest little spanks as if to help the whole climax along.

All of a sudden, the game is over, Isley gathers Quinn up into her arms to hold her properly, not slung face-down. Quinn kisses at her playfully, before nuzzling into her neck, into that flyaway copper hair.

“How’s it feeling?”

“It stings,” Quinn says with sleepy delight. “You made me feel so, so, so – ahh, I don’t know - special. Like I’m the only thing that matters to ya.”

“Mm, you’re on the list.”

“Ha ha ha – no, really, it’s like -” She twines her fingers through Isley’s. “Like the touch of your hand, only I can still feel it, like I got that with me.”

“Bad girl,” intones Isley, and Quinn wriggles in her arms. “But good girl, too.” For a while, they simply sit there, satisfied with that.

“Are – are ya sure this is all okay? If ya don’t like it, I wouldn’t wanna make ya.”

“You speak as if this is my first time having kinky sex with a younger woman.” The smirk is inherent in the words, and it makes Quinn smile, too. Then Isley asks “How was the gym?” Oh no. This could be anything. This could turn incredibly bad incredibly quickly.

“Um, it was good. And I took soupy with me, and he helped me towel off afterwards.”

“Well, now I’m jealous.” That’s it? No accusations, no secrets?

“Oh, that was the other thing. It was busy, but that was cool, because there were a bunch of hot girls on the treadmills and we spent half the time just watching them.” At that she tips me a wink, and I have no idea whether she’s just being smutty or she’s teasing me with what she’s holding over my head.

“Now you’re trying to make me jealous. Go on, show me how much progress you’ve made, show me how strong you are.”

Immediately Quinn has her by her wrists, pins her down on the bed, and complains “You’re letting me do this,” as she lies on top of Isley, being conspicuously smaller and slighter, like she’s perched on an air mattress.

Isley shrugs, or, with her arms up over her head, tries to. “I figured it was my turn.”

“You’re too big,” whines Quinn, and makes a series of stupid, frustrated-sounding noises of protest that Isley absolutely relishes. “You’re too big for me, and, and, I just wanna show you I can be strong for you. I just wanna be good…”

“You are,” Isley reassures her, and all the fight goes out of her. “You have nothing to prove to me. Or to anyone. Fine, okay, you’re not perfect, neither am I. You don’t have to be. Just...just be you.”

Quinn clenches her hands around Isley’s arms, and thumps them down on the bed in a rage. “How is it,” she growls, “you know exactly what ta say ta me?”

“Because I’m a sex goddess who’s poisoned your mind.” Isley struggles, and for a moment she almost sits up before Quinn wrestles her back down. “See, you are strong, and you could probably just beat me into submission and have your way with me.” They grapple with each other, arms straining, but while Isley smiles through it Quinn is whimpering and protesting and complaining in a way she cannot translate into words. Then they slip and Isley holds Quinn at bay with one hand while jabbing playfully at her with the other, and, her eyes screwed shut, Quinn gives a great cry of frustration and one of her flailing hands catches Isley a hard smack in the mouth.

The blow splits Isley’s lip. Quinn freezes, suddenly pale, as if she had her makeup on. “Oh fuck,” she says eventually, as a ruby of blood tumbles into the corner of Isley’s mouth, “oh Red, I’m so sorry, I-”

Isley explodes upwards at her and plants a savage kiss on her unresisting face. They roll about the bed from it, and smear a darker red on the scarlet bedsheets.

“Oh fuck, you cut me,” says Isley in amazement when she finally pulls away and gets a look at the stains on Quinn’s face.

“I, I didn’t mean too,” says Quinn nervously. Yes, there’s what she’s felt before, what I feel whenever I have their attention, the terror that it might have crossed the line – even now, as Isley gazes at her with goo-goo eyes.

“I know,” Isley tells her, still teasing, poking at her and plucking at her clothes. “Now I see why you like this so much.”

“Sometimes, I...when it was, before, I, I did like it, but...ya need ta know I would never do that to ya for real.” Still the fear in her eyes, guarded, as if it might all be stripped away from her at any second.

“It’s okay. It was an accident.” Then Isley takes hold of the hem of Quinn’s greying t-shirt between finger and thumb and peels it off the smaller woman’s body, up over her flat belly and then looking her in the eyes for confirmation before it comes up over her bra as well. And then Quinn’s arms are up over her head, letting Isley pull the shirt off her torso and with a little trouble past her chin and off completely. “It’s different when it’s not for real.”

“That’s the thing, though, it is but it isn’t. When it was real I liked it because it was like this. And, and I didn’t even know it didn’t have ta be real, I wasted so much time with, with – with someone who wasn’t you.” Quinn has taken Isley’s hand, and her knuckles are turning white.

“You’re – a little too tight. It’s fine, it’s just, maybe you’re too strong for me.”

Immediately Quinn throws her arms around Isley, brave and terrified as she declares “I’ll keep you safe” and clutches the woman she loves as if to hang on for dear life. It is only me who can see Isley’s satisfied smirk. “I’m sorry I’m – ya know – all sticky. God, I can smell myself.”

“It’s alright. It’s hot.” Isley pulls at her neckline to let in some air. Of course Quinn peeks inside, and of course I do as well, not even out of any conscious desire to see what’s down there, I know what her breasts look like, but as if drawn in mothlike by her whole air of enchantment and my own brute animal desires.

“Time for a shower!” Quinn concludes, finger in the air, lightbulb above her head – then casually grabs me by the throat and drags me away.

*

“You being our, aha, guest, there’s certain conventions we gotta keep up, right? We gotta give you a kinda basic standard of living, if we didn’t do that it would be wrong. Geneva Convention wrong. And, look, I know we’re on opposite sides of the great divide, I know that, but I don’t wanna be nasty.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“So we gotta make sure you keep clean.” Quinn turns the dial, and from inside the mass of leaves around the showerhead comes freezing water that blasts me like a thousand knives. She giggles faintly as I cringe away from it.

“Now, let us know when it’s at all tolerable,” says Isley, and begins to rub some sweet-smelling gel into Quinn’s shoulders.

“Mmm, that feels good,” Quinn tells her, edging into the high notes as I breath sharp and shallow in the face of the icy blast. “I still – you’re gonna argue with me about this – I still don’t get why you’re being so nice to me. Okay, I know you’ve said why you’re being so nice to me, but I still don’t get why ya wanna bang me so bad. I’m sweaty and hairy and stupid. Look…” She raises her arm, revealing the faintest hint of hair so blonde it’s white.

Isley regards her a moment – then licks her, long and roughly, up the side of her chest and then along the inside of her arm, while she whimpers and moans in a way that threatens to leave human hearing. “I can taste the gym on you,” notes Isley, for a moment cold and academic until she spins Quinn around and plants a kiss on her mouth. Isley has a brief struggle to get her bottom lip back, and adds “And you’re not stupid, you silly girl.”

“You make me feel stupid, because you’re so...but it’s alright, I can be stupid with you, you’re not gonna...” She slips her arms around Isley’s neck, then turns to me. “I bet this is giving ya a hard-on, isn’t it, seeing us like this?”

“No.” Frigid water trickles down my stomach.

“Come on, it must be getting warm by now, we need to get you washed up,” Isley says, mainly to Quinn – and then in utterly sincere tones, so full of love and affection it even pulls on my heartstrings a little bit, she adds “smelly.”

“Alright, chubby,” Quinn throws back at her, poking her in the stomach, and she gasps, quite aghast. I groan. All this time spent trying not to antagonise or excite them, and now they’re doing it themselves.

“If I’m so chubby,” says Isley, in low, threatening tones, as if she’s about to deploy her ultimate weapon, “how is it I can do this?” And she seizes Quinn under the arms and hoists her into the air, before slamming her, wailing and protesting and laughing, against the tile wall. “Yeah, now call me chubby.”

“I’m stupid, and smelly, and you love me,” Quinn ripostes. “Ya love me, ya love me,” she sing-songs, like she’s trying to tease, but underneath there’s the tiniest waver of desperation, of hope it really is true.

“Yes,” admits Isley, “it’s strange. I’m here holding you up, but one word from you, one little flicker on your face, I would let you down and leave you be. I would let you live here in Tenochitlan, and find somewhere else.”

“But, but,” protests Quinn, nearly on the verge of tears, “I’d be lonely. What if, what if I let you live here as well?”

Isley smiles wistfully – and then says “What about him?”

When they turn to look at me I recoil, throwing my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m happy to leave any time.” At that, they grin like wolves.

“How’s the water?” Isley asks. Before I can answer she puts two fingers under the tepid stream and samples it for herself. Suddenly it is crowded, here under the shower, they are both completely inside my personal space.

“It’s still a li’l cold,” says Quinn as she experiences lukewarm water, unable to really make it a complaint with Isley pressed up against her. “Although, that means…” She tails off as she takes her fingers back and forth over Isley’s nipple, which is admittedly very prominent.

“Like water off a duck’s back with you, isn’t it?” says Isley, as Quinn goes all-in on her chest, with the same happy fascination as the very first time. Isley’s other breast is squashed against me, this doesn’t stop Quinn wriggling her fingers in there too, and I feel a certain gloom as my heart beats faster. There is easily room for all of us to have a bit more space than this.

“Oh!” Quinn squeaks, and my stomach sinks. My halfway erection has just touched her leg. I wince, maybe she’ll let it lie. But what am I saying, of course not, she backs off just enough to point Isley to what’s going on and then crow “He likes it!” I hang my head, not wanting to look them in the eye or see their cruel grins, as my penis sticks out probably even worse than Isley’s nipple has managed.

“It’s not his fault,” says Isley, reasonable as ever, I shut my eyes so it is just her voice, the darkness and the warming water. “You were encouraging him. You were playing with my tits.”

“He shouldn’t’a been looking,” comes Quinn’s reply, the smirk actually audible in the words. “Anyway, can ya blame me? They fit my hands just right.”

“No they don’t. You’re drowning.” And Quinn giggles at that, so close I feel her breath, there really is no escape. “Now, time to scrub out those dirty underarms,” gloats Isley, and makes some gesture of command at me.

Quinn lifts her arms and grabs the showerhead, so that we can both soap her, one of us on each side, and she mumbles out “Oh, both of you, oh God, I like this.” Isley uses both hands liberally and without scruple, she goes ranging up Quinn’s back around her shoulder, and then forward, over and under her breast, taking it in her grasp. I stay religiously on the softer patch of skin that is actually beneath her arm. “Ya really don’t mind, that I’m kinda hairy?”

She only is in the strictest sense of the word. “Fuck no,” replies Isley, now twirling suds around Quinn’s belly button, “although – well, truth be told, I’ve been shaving for you.”

“Aw!” Quinn reacts. “But – but you’d have, like, a red bush, I bet that looks so fucking hot.”

“How is it that you think a feature that’s shameful on you is the loveliest thing ever on me?”

“Huh,” acknowledges Quinn, as if she has finally noticed where she left a book, “I do think that, don’t I.”

“For you,” says Isley, and pecks Quinn on the forehead, “I’m going to grow it out.”

“Oooh,” Quinn shivers with anticipation. “God, though, speaking a’ growin’ it out…” She trails that off artfully, and they both look down. I sigh, and close my eyes, just for a moment. I’m not even fully erect, but that makes it worse, because it points straight out, directly toward her.

“Oh, you bad boy. Getting hard just from soaping up Harley’s sexy body. Have you no shame,” Isley smiles at me. Oh no, she’s making it worse.

“It’s inappropriate, is what it is,” agrees Quinn, she grabs me and the erection protests, violently, every beat of my heart seems to make it bigger and thicker. “Someone oughta teach you a lesson.” She reaches to the side for a fine horsehair scrubbing brush, then before I can react draws it lightly across the head of my penis. On my arm it would feel like nothing, just like a brush – but now it feels like steel wool, a thousand points of fire. It stabs into all the arousal, but does not puncture it.

I choke and recoil, and she giggles. When she smiles her face does genuinely light up, so it’s a shame it’s indelibly associated with incredible pain. Through this blaze of agony I hear her coo “Scrub-a-dub-dub,” as if she’s bathing a faithful hound. “And these dirty balls, too, we gotta get you clean,” she says as she holds me in place and rakes at my tender skin. “Aw, c’mon, don’t pout, I’m getting ya all washed and scrubbed up. Wouldn’t ya wanna be presentable when you bang two women? We’re helping you out, really, you oughta be more grateful.” She stands straight, looking into my eyes. “Thank me.”

I look back at her.

“Thank me,” she repeats, and gives a swish of the brush across the end of my penis. I double over with a huff and grunt of suppressed pain, and she completely loses it laughing.

“Christ,” I say, with tears in my eyes, “fine, thank you.”

“Was that so very difficult?”

When Isley moves around behind Quinn to massage suds into her back, she pushes me aside, and says “Get down and give her a licking, get her really clean.”

I’m on my knees without thinking. Quinn inches her legs apart and looks down at me with an expression of encouragement. “Are you certain you want me jamming soap suds inside you with my tongue?” I ask her.

“You just don’t want soap in your mouth,” she says dismissively. But then she accedes to my point and brings down the showerhead to wash herself off. When the streams of water hit her vagina she half-cries out, I see her legs nearly buckle. But then she presses it inbetween her legs with a groaning sigh, and lets her head tumble backwards, toward Isley behind her, to press their faces together and whisper declarations of love.

With Quinn’s sex organs occupied I take the chance to finally have a break, and sit down in the thin layer of water. They tower over me and I cannot help but look at them, wrapped up in each other, droplets rolling down their bodies.

“Now ya really are babying me. Nobody’s ever washed me since I was little, nobody ever wanted to…”

“They’re missing out,” replies Isley, cupping her breasts with a lascivious snarl and making her giggle.

“Well, well let me wash you, too, let me show you – I mean, your tits are so big I bet ya have trouble getting all the way under them.” Quinn frees herself from Isley’s clutches and turns to soap up the taller woman’s chest, taking so eagerly to her task that before long Isley is so covered in suds that at a glance she could be dressed quite modestly.

At a look of reluctance from Quinn, Isley asks “What is it?”

“It’s just...it’s stupid.” Isley touches her arm, one up-down motion, as if to squeeze the answer out. “Like, consciously I know it’s soap, I know it’d taste awful, but it’s all creamy and I want it in my mouth-”

And as Isley laughs aloud, Quinn bends down to somehow get her face involved in the washing process as well. With little more than a patch of blonde hair showing between her breasts, Isley wraps her arms around Quinn and beams down at her, an expression of utter contentment, before she sees me and sniffs “I don’t know what you think you’re looking at.”

“I know,” Quinn pops her head back out to say, not taking her eyes off Isley. “Two happy gals.”

Isley actively tries not to smile as she says “Yes, correct, well done.”

“Aw…” Quinn slips and slides her way down Isley’s stomach, on her knees now, and wraps her arms hungrily around Isley’s waist, cuddling up to her, she looks as if she could drift off to sleep there. “I love you, sex mommy.”

Only I see the blast of resignation on Isley’s face. “I guess I have only myself to blame for this. Please, please don’t start calling me that.”

Quinn looks up, and repeats – now with a tremulous quiver to her voice, as if she might burst into tears any moment – “I love you, sex mommy.”

“Well...well, maybe on special occasions.”

*

Not long after, Isley steps out of the shower, red strands plastered down to her waist, and of course I am already there to present her regally with a towel – but Quinn isn’t done yet, she’s still under the streams, hands rubbing through her hair, and she says “Could ya turn it up a little?”

Isley curls Medusa-like around the dial, all flashing evil eyes and knowing smirks, then teases it further into the red with a swish of her finger.

Quinn gasps, the heat hits her bare skin – but then in her tiny voice she goes on “An’ a little more?” Dropping the act, Isley ratchets it up again. “Keep going.” Now she becomes concerned, but still she turns it, hotter and hotter.

The bathroom gets thicker, cloudier, steam starts to rise from the fixtures. Every mirror is fogged and invisible. Isley strays a finger under the water, winces with a cry of “Jesus!” and immediately shuts it off. Quinn stands in a heat haze, and raises her arms as if to say ‘and there you have it’. She is pink, inflamed, practically boiled by the shower. If it was anyone else I’d say they looked somehow purified – but not her, not with the expression on her face.

“Harley,” says Isley, slightly vacant, unable to take her eyes away, “maybe this is a trite thing to say, but – you’re so hot.”

Quinn covers her mouth as she lets out a snorting, undignified laugh.

Now Isley powders her down, an excuse to touch up and down her body but of course Quinn isn’t about to complain. The first white splash lands between her breasts, so of course she lifts her arms to give better access, then Isley starts going up and down her torso, rolling her in her hands, before eagerly slipping further down. “See? Baby-soft,” says Isley, and smacks Quinn on the bottom. It makes her jump and trill and then land a look of complete adoration on Isley. “Give her a kiss, go on.”

I look at Quinn’s bottom, and then meet their gleeful gaze back at me, and shrug “Fine.” I pucker up and put my mouth on the round blushing cheek in front of me. The power covers my lips, but it is gentle and harmless, and I wish the rest of her was more like this.

“Yeah, like that. Make her feel loved.”

“I do feel loved,” Quinn chimes in. “Now, gimme the baby powder and let me do you.”

“Hold this-” and, still woozy from the heat, Quinn is confused a moment to be holding the corner of a towel as Isley winds it around her. For a second, she loses her balance, tangled in that great fluffy expanse, but the only place she falls is into Isley’s grasp.

Chapter Text

“Whew! What a day!” Quinn flops down on the bed, as I put down two big armfuls of shopping bags, and almost immediately she’s back up on her feet coming over to trawl through them. “Ya didn’t forget anything, right? This has ta be perfect.”

“No.” Going about town with her, buying all this stuff, I suspect every eyewitness got the wrong end of the stick. She whips out her new peephole bra and holds it up in front of herself, over her clothes.

“Do ya think I shoulda got one of these for Red as well? Ya know – hers and hers?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“No, I don’t know her size either. Goddamn double-d torpedo tit nuclear warhead, I don’t know.” With no warning she starts tearing off her clothes. I avert my eyes and still get hit in the face by her jeans. Then, naked in seconds, she starts to redress herself.

She snaps herself with a garter belt, swears loudly and then sucks her finger with the belt dangling limply off her leg. “Um, do ya know anything about how this stuff works?” No, of course not. But still, there I am attaching the thing to her underwear and then stepping curtly away. She appraises herself in the mirror, still desperately unsure despite looking like something straight out of a catalogue. I try not to look, but still, I see, she’s picked this lingerie out incredibly well, it both fits her form and emphasises it, she doesn’t look half so skinny as she usually does in skintight fabric.

She rubs herself all over with scented oil, then curses when she realises she’s done it over her new underwear. Then she takes hold of another bag, reaches in, and hurls fistfuls of rose petals over the bed, and the floor. I wonder just how much Isley’s going to appreciate that, but at least she won’t know we spent half an hour in the florist’s having them do it by hand. Now, scantily clad and dripping in oil, she sets out a hundred pink candles and goes merrily about lighting them while my eyes rove frantically about for a fire extinguisher.

Then from the last and biggest bag she draws, awkwardly, a bottle of champagne the size of her leg. This had been the tricky one. Any suggestion of it being for display purposes had seemed quite meaningless, especially when she broke that glass.

“Right. Okay,” she says, as she fails to lift it onto the coffee table, and adds “Fetch the ice bucket, supesy.” I go through the kitchen and shrug at her. “Yeah, I thought there might not...what if, okay, what if I lean it? Like this?” She tilts the bottle to rest against the foot of the bed. “Does that work?”

“If you shake the bed too much, that will fall over.”

“Ah fuck, you’re right. Alright, we can – we can worry about that later.” She starts to shuffle it off to one side, but it ends up out in the open, in the middle of the floor. In her pained expression it is all too clear that she had a grand design here, an image of exactly and precisely what she wanted to achieve, and reality has poured cold water on it.

She props herself up in bed, on a dozen scarlet heart-shaped cushions with the price tags still on them, and begins to arrange herself. Legs open? No, too gauche, clearly, immediately she crosses them at the ankles instead. But what to do with her arms? Clasped over her stomach? Back behind her head? It doesn’t matter too much, since it’s about now she realises she’s set all those candles out but has still left the lights on, and in one bound she’s on her feet again.

As the darker room fills with a vulgar smorgasbord of fruity smells she bounds back onto the bed, and tries to resume the poise she had adopted only moments ago. The bedclothes have mussed up in a way which somehow makes it look absurd. And, as she looks over her surroundings, she can tell, she throws her hands up and thumps the mattress in frustration.

“Why’s it so fucking hard ta look sexy?” she demands.

“Oh, you know – unrealistic body standards,” I lamely attempt, me standing here like a brick outhouse, her stretched out on the bed without an ounce of fat on her body. “I’m sure Doctor Isley will like all this very much.”

“Ya think? I think so, but, then again, what if it’s not?” She looks around the corners of the room in despondent contemplation, then sweeps her legs to one side and takes up another boudoir pose. “What about like this? Or like thi- aaaagh…” As she tries to tumble herself around on the bed, her free-flowing hair is caught in her garter belt and leaves her bent painfully like a half-shut knife.

I swoop down on her, take hold of her tresses firmly, above where they have caught, then with my other hand draw them loose with a sharp tug. She looks up at me with watering eyes, and I step back off to the periphery of the room, wondering why I was so quick to help. Perhaps it’s not seeing her in the jester’s clothes, armed to the teeth. Perhaps I only saw a human in pain.

She holds the split ends in front of her eyes, and twists her mouth. “Well,” she snarls, “it won’t be perfect, then.”

“You can’t expect this to be perfect.”

And I know I’ve said the wrong thing, because she is immediately on her feet. “You are literally indestructible. Ya do know that, right?”

“Not like this.” I gesture to my collar.

“In general, I mean. You’re so fucking great, why don’t you pose me?”

“I think Doctor Isley would appreciate the personal touch-” I attempt weakly, but she’s grabbed me by the wrists, despair turned to mad delight. For some reason I try to resist and she digs her heels in.

“Come on! Tell me what ta do!”

Of course I shy away from that. And as she puts her weight into another rough yank, I feel our mutual balance slipping out from under us. When this makes its way through my synapses I stop resisting at the exact worst moment possible. Will Quinn’s uncanny athletic form save us? No, she’s having too much fun – and we overbalance, topple completely over. The champagne bottle hurtles up towards us, for one glorious second I think we’ve missed it. But then my arm, still flailing about for balance, touches the cold glass and it starts ponderously to tip.

I am not used to falling. I manage to catch myself on my arms, not go completely to the floor to drop flat on her and crush her tiny frame. And I even hold myself up when the head of the bottle catches me a crack across the back of my skull. The pop of the cork echoes through my bones and then there is fizzy liquid pouring down the side of my face and all over Quinn’s, she winces her eyes shut and spits and splutters.

“Make it – bleh! Pfft! - make it stop!”

But I waver, with the bitter end of the bottle rolling about where my head meets my neck. I absolutely cannot let it fall off and smack her in the face, that would be the final insult to her elaborate plans of a romantic scene, and then she very well might kill us all. In the end I have to force myself forward and flop down onto her like I’d never wanted to do, finally I can bring my arm around and get the bottle off me. Then we hear Isley’s key in the door, and Quinn looks around the chaos of the room with champagne dripping from her hair and turns pale.

“Please-” as if she’s begging for her life, a white terror that does not fit her lingerie at all. “You gotta tell her you did this. Please?”

What else can they do to me, I think – and I have some idea of why this has scared her so much. “Yes, alright.”

Isley walks in. Quinn crushes herself into a corner, which also seems desperately strange to do in lingerie. “I’m sure the room didn’t look like this when I left,” she says, wryly.

I step forward, chest thrust out. “I did it,” I say. “It was me.”

Isley looks rather sourly at me, from disdain or scepticism I can’t say. And then her gaze slides over to Quinn’s terrified form, and for a second I am scared too, because what conclusion will she draw from this – but no, she can see that Quinn’s terror is toward her, not me.

“Well,” Isley looks back at me, her tone begins towering and arch, “that doesn’t matter too much. I assume it was an accident, anyway. I hope you didn’t think I’d be angry and hate you for it, I mean, stuff happens.” The little glance aside – she’s not talking to me, anyway. “Anyone who’d get out of shape over that wouldn’t be worth listening to. And by the looks of things you were trying to be nice by planning some sort of...Valentine’s day explosion.”

Isley has actually turned completely towards Quinn now. “It wasn’t really him,” Quinn confesses, “it was me.”

“Is that champagne, on your bra?”

Quinn nods, still not quite able to meet her eye. “I got, um, this special one that makes my boobs pointy.”

“Well, we should get you out of these wet clothes.”

Now Quinn turns her head up like the sun rising. Isley tips me a nod and I look frantically about for clothes, Quinn’s clothes, yes, the red diamonds in that pile, that’s definitely hers. I turn the suit over a couple of times, finding the right ends of it, and then set it down where Quinn can step inside.

Isley zips her up. “I actually quite like being in the suit for this,” Quinn rambles, stretching out into it, “when I’m out in it, it, I don’t know if either of you get this, it rides up an’ creates a weird kinda pressure, but now that’s quite good because, um,” she tails off smiling as Isley comes back round to face her.

“I’m free and easy, of course,” says Isley, swinging her hips and letting her leafy loincloth breeze from side to side.

“Yeah,” agrees Quinn wholeheartedly, this x definitely marking the spot. “You, uh – really prefer me like this?”

I see the cogs turn in Isley’s head – and she ripostes “I prefer you like this,” as she takes Quinn’s cowl by its floppy horns, then pulls it free with a sudden rush of hair and throws it aside, as Quinn blinks in the light.

“An’ what about...like this?” Quinn sells the delivery, but when she takes Isley’s hand and reaches it up her own back, she has an excruciating fumble for the zipper. Isley laughs softly and undoes it herself as Quinn flushes.

*

“I gotta pee,” says Quinn, scrambling up off the bed, out from the tangled mess of the sheets. “You’re, ha ha, you’re lucky I didn’t do it all over you just then.”

“Oh, don’t try giving me another fetish,” says Isley, propped up on the pillows like an empress. “You’ve already warped my mind with your silly clown suit. Stupid fucking jingly thing.” Quinn is quiet as she leaves the room. Isley looks over at me, draped with their flung-away clothing and with a target drawn in eyeshadow across my chest, to ask “Was that too much, do you think?”

“Sometimes you might have to explain when you’re teasing her. I get it, but it’s possible she doesn’t.” Holding their clothes is one thing, but now, saying this, I fear I’ve become her sex butler.

Isley purses her lips and nods. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s good having a second opinion on these things. If she’s ever asking about me – oh, God, I shouldn’t tell you what to say. But, but, be kind.”

“Now here, you mean be kind without the bias of you holding me prisoner, don’t you.”

“Exactly, you get it.” Probably not much use pushing that any further.

Quinn makes quite a performance of coming back in, she leans in the doorway, staggers, sways, and eventually flounces back down onto the bed. “You’re all over my face.” She touches her mouth, and a string of fluid clings to her fingers. “I’m all covered in, in, in lesidue.”

“That’s dreadful,” deadpans Isley. “Because of that one, I don’t like you any more. That’s a lie, I like you very much and I actually really like your crappy jokes.”

Quinn drops her head in Isley’s lap. “I like you too, even when you’re being acerbic.”

“You know saying your suit’s ridiculous is all in fun, don’t you? I mean-” she gestures slightly desperately around, at her own fake-leaf outfit, at all the plant life in the room, and at me of course, covered in their underwear “-it’s all ridiculous, we know that.”

“Course. Like you, ya, ya big stupid...rose. Because you’re red up here and green down – ah, fuck, that doesn’t work, that’s accidentally come out nice.”

“You’ll have one next time. And of course, your suit being ridiculous doesn’t mean it can’t also be very, very sexy.”

Quinn snuggles further into her embrace. “Ever since I’ve been here, with you, it’s like this whole new world where everything’s better. It’s like I’ve been...lesurrected.”

“You’re killing me. You’re giving me diabetes, I swear,” says Isley fondly, twirling a finger in Quinn’s hair.

“Ya big grump.” She picks up one of Isley’s stockings, stretches it back off her thumb, and fires it in my direction. It meanders in the air and settles down at my feet. “Did we say five points for a mulligan?”

“I’m still beating you by two hundred.”

“Aw, does that mean I have to do a forfeit?” Suddenly she’s up on her knees, bouncing on the mattress. “Go on, Red, you should totally make me do a forfeit.”

“My darling...” Isley comes forward and Quinn quivers with anticipation. Isley lays a hand upon her head, and then pulls off the little elastic tie that holds one of her bunches. Half her hairdo falls open, for a moment she looks completely crazy and then the next she looks totally in love. Then Isley pulls back the tie, barely taking a second to aim, and fires it off. It clips the head of my penis, as I recoil I feel it circling the end, but it does not land. When I open my watering eyes it has fallen completely to the floor. Isley curses with annoyance, but Quinn is falling about on the bed laughing. “If that had gone right it should have been another hundred, easily.”

“Hey,” says Quinn, wiping away a tear, “you’re five more points up.” Then I see her getting an idea, it’s written on her face and it gives me a chill. “It woulda been a hundred, ya said?” She takes off her other hair tie and shakes it all out. Then she flicks it at me and it sails between my legs.

Isley bites down on a snort of laughter, then calmly says “Five.”

In mad, impotent fury, Quinn leaps to her feet – then, before I can react, kicks me hard in the groin. Immediate, intense, all-consuming sexual pain. I nearly scream, but the sound doesn’t come. Through the fog I hear her say “There! A hundred ta me!”

“Jesus Christ!” Isley wheezes, covering her mouth. Dear God, Quinn’s still a hundred down, and now here’s her knee, her hair streams out when she commits to the blow. I feel the crunch through my guts.

“Two hundred!” Another one, my legs buckle, but the vines hold me up. “Three hundred!” By now Isley is absolutely paralysed with laughter. “Aw, I’m sorry, soupsey,” Quinn says, running a finger down my jaw. “I mighta got a bit carried away there. How about a little hurt-comfort?” And she grabs for me, I brace myself, but when she takes hold of my penis she’s not too rough with it, it doesn’t quite feel like she’s trying to pull it off. “And ya stayed hard through all that, that’s hot...” Yes, even through the pain there was the excitement of being touched so intimately. Now it’s just the intimacy, I feel on the point of melting in her hand. “Come on, gimme kisses, tell me there’s no hard feelings.”

I am completely in her power as she works her lips around mine. Her hands cup me now, engulfing me, she isn’t just squeezing my body but my whole sexuality.

When she breaks away Isley is standing next to her, and says “My God, I felt that last one,” while shaking my shoulder in a chummy, sympathetic way. “She’s a firecracker, huh?” Putting a hand on Quinn’s back turns into pulling her in close. They kiss, long and deep, lost in each other’s arms, and it makes my foggy brain feel a twinge of envy alongside the throb between my legs. To be pressed by Isley’s breasts, like Quinn is – but then to have Quinn’s tongue in my mouth again – my mind is in a spin.

“How sore do ya think he is?” Quinn pierces my reverie. I blink, my head lolls, there they are kneeing in front of me and I am completely defenceless. Quinn flicks at me, then adds “I know, I know, let’s bite him a li’l bit. Aw, come on, soup, don’t gimme that look. I bet ya secretly want to have our mouths here. Red’s, like, a really good kisser,” but it is she who concludes with a little peck to my shaft. When I respond, when it stiffens, she gives a little tee-hee that is the sound of my defeat.

With nothing more than a flirty, devilish little exchange of glances, she takes hold of one testicle, pulling on the desperately sensitive skin around it, and Isley grabs the other. Then, almost as one, they bite down on them, but the aching is still so intense that it is only another stab of sensation. I just groan, an idiotic gurgling sound that is half pain and half pleasure.

Isley’s lips smack when she releases me, and she asks “Isn’t this meant to be every man’s fantasy?”, stroking me roughly, wringing me out, and she punctuates it with a little lap of the tongue that makes every nerve in my body spasm. “Two women, two gorgeous women, giving you oral pleasure.” Quinn’s tongue is on me too, under me, bathing me. Even after the beating it feels so good, it’s filling me with dirty little desires, and there’s that tension, that desperation to orgasm.

“I think he’s being ungrateful,” says Quinn when she takes her mouth away and I jerk from the shock of empty air on my skin. “I’d be really happy if I had us going down on me.” Then she frowns, presumably as she tries to picture how that encounter might work.

“Oh, I’d be so grateful for that,” Isley confirms, and casually shoves me aside as she moves back into Quinn’s orbit. “I’d be grateful if it was just you.” It’s almost painful, having them break off from me, but I won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing. God, I want their mouths back there, my penis has their spit all over it. But their mouths are occupied, locked together, they meet and break apart and meet again.

Seeing them kissing like this, so in love, I make a little sound. I can’t help it. Then Quinn grabs and squeezes, and I make a different sound. “Say that ya like it! Say it!”

“Yes! I like it!”

Maybe I would have said anything, then, to get her to stop. When her touch turns gentle again my heart beats faster. With both hands she takes hold of the length of my penis, some little part of me is vainly proud she needs both hands, but it’s hard to focus on any specific thought. There is only the sensation and the look of savage glee on her face.

“I think it’s sexy how ya get all built up. Aw, but sometimes I feel like that too, sometimes when I haven’t-” she flushes, gives a sweet embarrassed smile, as if we’re not all naked, “-ya know, done anything in a while, I feel all worked up too, all like-” and here her words desert her, she just gives a strange mumble and wiggles from side to side. “I wanna get off so bad, it’s driving me crazy.” Does she mean now? “It makes me, when I get like that, makes me wanna go off, makes me wanna explode. Do you get like that?”

Do I lie? In the face of her questions, as she feels all over my straining penis, do I really try to lie? “Yes.” Then I try to recoil when she takes my balls in her hand.

“Oh, wow, these feel so full. Well, um,” she giggles, “I guess they are, aren’t they. Red, if a guy’s all backed up like this, is it – is it possible ta make him come just by squeezing it out of him?”

Isley’s eyes flash, she looks around at Quinn. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

“Alright. Come on, ya man-slut. I’m gonna wring the sperm out of your dick. Just call me Moby-Dick.”

I look her in the eye. I try to. But her hand makes me feel so weak. “You know perfectly well that that’s not remotely what the book’s about.” And she twists her lips into the most evil grin I’ve seen from her yet. Then she brings her hand free, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, and it’s as if my insides choke. I grind my teeth, I could – I could punch the wall, but no, I don’t dare. Not here, without my powers, when there’s there’s two of them.

“Oh, wow, it’s twitching!” Quinn has bent to examine it, genuinely fascinated. Oh God, I was nearly there, so desperately close to the moment of release.

“See, the thing about men is,” Isley explains, then tips me a glance and says “nothing personal – the thing about men is, when they get hard they almost invariably become dirty, dirty sluts.”

“Aw, that’s not fair. You’ve seen what happens when I get turned on, I end up trying to find new bits of ya to put my mouth on.”

“That’s because you’re sweet and loving and giving. He just wants to get off.”

And she’s right, I try my hardest not to hang my head in shame, she’s right, she knows, all the sensation that would normally be aware of all that is around me, all my higher consciousness has been reduced to a breathless desire to feel them touch me again.

“Fine.” Quinn shoves me in the chest, playfully, quite hard. “If it’ll stop ya sulking, if you’re really, really, really, really good, we’re gonna allow ya to finish.”

“Ah, you don’t have to,” says Isley. “You know – well, maybe you don’t – there’s a whole tendency where during sex men come and then women no longer really matter,” she goes back to Quinn, “and you do matter, to me, a hell of a lot more than him.”

“Aw, no, it’s cool, I was gonna see what we could make him do.” That makes it hit home in my gut. I know what they can make me do, they can make me beg, just like I begged Diana. She must be worried. No, we had arranged to meet up, maybe she’s out there now angry, thinking I stood her up, dear God that’s even worse.

“What do you want to make him do? Come on, snap question, don’t think about it, anything you want.”

“Oh!” She’s completely off-guard. “Um, um, um – oh, I know, I know what I wanna make him do, I wanna make him fuck you, I wanna see you happy…”

“If that’s what you want, we can cut out the middleman.”

“But, I mean – look at him.”

“I’ve tested those waters,” Isley sniffs dismissively. “You make me happy.” Quinn’s in her arms now. Maybe that’s it now, I’m relieved of duty, they’re not looking at me, they’re hardly aware I’m here. Then, sliding casually off her tongue, she says “I know what we could make him do.” And she whispers it in Quinn’s ear, and Quinn’s smile goes a mile wide in a way I’m sure I’m going to regret.

Isley hits me, quickly, with the purple stone, and I nearly fall to my knees. A bolt of lightning lumbers me with a rock-hard erection. There’s the old familiar pull, as if it is magnetised toward them. But they do nothing to me, Isley just sits back down and eyes me.

“Go on,” says Quinn, nodding down with a vulgar smirk. “Know ya wanna.” And, God help me, I do. But I look back defiantly, even as I have to force my hands to stay by my sides. “Am – am I not pretty enough for you to wanna jerk off?”

“You’re obviously pretty enough,” says Isley, stroking her fingers over Quinn’s chest. “He’s just being difficult.”

My penis craves a touch. A deep-rooted instinct is trying to move my hand. And, if I don’t, who knows what they might do? They see me, and laugh, and I burn with pleasure. For all the ways it feels it’s like handling meat, like I am nothing more than a body. But with them in front of me, even as they cackle, hateful and gorgeous, I can hardly even focus on the thought.

“What if – what if I was being difficult?” theorises Quinn. “What if you wanted to touch my tits, and I was like, no, you don’t get to?”

“They’re your tits, you can do with them as you wish,” says Isley. It seems anodyne apart from the way she smiles, she knows what she’s doing, and Quinn fumes and my penis twitches toward her frustrated little face.

“What if I…” Quinn gropes, the words not coming, her face turns angry again – and then she grabs a lock of Isley’s hair and gives it a little tug.

“Harley,” complains Isley, her eyes watery.

“I’m sorry!” squeaks Quinn immediately, and kisses the side of Isley’s head better. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but she calms down quickly when she hears the predatory growl of Isley’s laughter, and then she goes from kissing Isley’s hair to kissing her on her mouth. They’re both after each other’s breasts now, their bodies twine together, just the sight of it heats me up… “Ha!” Quinn’s seen me, touching myself, her laugh is like ice but it can’t stop me now. “Go, whore, go!”

“You just don’t expect it from him, do you?” muses Isley, I want to object but seeing the devilish look on her face is all fuel for my depraved machine, desires and lusts I never even knew I had. “You don’t imagine him with any sort of vice. Clean-living, all-American, track superstar or something. You know, like an astronaut or someone else annoyingly perfect.”

“Like you,” Quinn croons in response.

“I hate to disappoint you, but seriously, no.”

“He thinks so.” And she leers, not even at me, just at what I’m doing. It doesn’t last long, though, because then Isley comes in to kiss her neck and her face melts into the very picture of happiness and contentment, and that too is horribly, horribly arousing. “Look at him, he’s enjoying you.”

“You sweet, silly thing, he’s enjoying you just as much,” Isley tells her. For some reason I feel ugly, as if I’m the vulgar intruder watching them together. But that could not come close to stopping me pulling myself off, I can’t quite accept how much I am enjoying this. “He’s whacking off over your titties,” Isley leads her further, an arm up across her chest, “because he wants to touch them and squeeze them and probably come on them.” Oh God, my arm’s going in a frenzy. “Now stop!” The words come like a whip, and they register somewhere – but right now it feels too good to listen. “Stop, I said!”

For a second, Quinn looks aghast. Then Isley kicks me in the face and I do stop – God! Actual pain! Normally I wouldn’t have felt it. Normally I could resist all of this. All I do feel is the frustration, pleasure taken away. Isley takes a breath, and then charges “She told you to stop, and you didn’t.”

“That...that wasn’t…” Ugh, like being sent to the Principal.

“I mean, that’s sexual assault, legally. As the law is written, that’s what you’ve done.”

Quinn wells up. Or, at least, she raises her fists to her eyes, and tries to put on a downturned mouth, which is clearly battling to contain mirth.

“See, you’ve upset her now.”

“Ah huh huh hah,” adds Quinn.

“Say you’re sorry.”

I remind myself glumly that in an ordinary room, with ordinary people, it would have been an unpleasant thing to do, and I pretend that’s where I am when I say “I’m sorry, Dr. Quinn.”

“Now kiss and make up.”

Quinn thumps her with a pillow, and then gets all over her, crowing “You’re wicked.”

“I know. I think you like it when I’m like this.”

“No I don’t,” Quinn lies warmly.

“I bet you like it when I’m like this-” With that Isley turns to me, and Quinn gets all delighted, at the thought of what she’s about to do. “Come here, and put your balls in the palm of my hand.” No, there’s no way I’m actually doing that willingly – but then I don’t need to, because the vines start to shift under my feet, inching me over to them with uncanny speed. Her hand is out already and she only needs to bring it up under me. When she takes hold, it’s not as hard as Quinn gripped me, but it’s firm enough that she has my undivided attention. “I can feel your desire,” she burns, voice low and sultry and dear God sexy. “I can feel it. Not just through my fingers, either, I know it’s there.” Her eyes sparkle all the colours of leaves in the wind. Her hand, lightly cupping me, feels tighter and tighter. I cannot beg, I want to beg. “So tense, so frustrated...all you need to do is admit to it, admit to your own desire, and I’ll give you what you want.”

The words dance on my tongue, I’m about to bite my lip – then Quinn comes out with “I admit it, I want it, I want it so bad,” which makes Isley drop any trace of her seductress poise and burst out laughing.

“Not you!”

“But – but it all applies ta me, too, probably more than him anyway,” Quinn pleads, coming up from the side and desperately clutching at Isley – who, yes, thank God, drops me completely and turns to tend to the smaller woman. “Obviously he wants it, that’s a given, but it’s not as if he really cares…”

“So what is it you want?”

Quinn immediately flushes up and gets nervous, I can almost see her heart beating faster, the pink in her cheeks and the little tremors inside her body. She stammers without words, her eyes twitch around the room. “I want…”

But the speech failing her, she leans forward and kisses Isley, gently, afraid she’ll break something. And when they break apart Isley is still in front of her, seductive and eternal. Her gaze goes flitting about again, now it lands on me, now on Isley, now the door, and she struggles with some thought before, finally - “I wanna see how far he can squirt it!”

I’m on my knees, actually on my knees, and Quinn curls up around me, she grabs at my erection with both hands and works it up and down in a frenzy, or at least what would be a frenzy for any normal woman… “He’s holding back, and – alright, I kind of think that’s sexy, too, like a self-control thing.” She twists her hands as she strokes me, it might hurt if it didn’t feel so good.

Isley appears on my other side, the other devil on my other shoulder, and intones “Give her what she wants” – then she kisses me and it’s all her insidious powers come at once. My mind turns blank, my muscles all go slack, and the first spurt hollows me out. It feels as if it’s hitting the ceiling. Quinn is laughing, and it sounds like a taunt but I know it’s not, it’s her fascinated delight at what she’s done to me.

“Look what a big mess you made,” Quinn continues in the most patronising tone imaginable, as my breath catches in my chest. “Did that feel good for you?”

“Yes,” I say. She giggles and kisses me around my temple, which is where I imagine she would put the bullet. Holding me close, they fall with me back onto the bed, and their arms snake around me to reach out for each other.

“Since we got you off, you’d better get us off,” warns Isley. But with her trance twisting my mind, before she’s stopped speaking I’ve reached my hands around under their thighs to stimulate them. They squeal and laugh, and, yes, kiss me and each other. Ought I be pleased with myself? All I can feel, really, is a slightly empty concern about making sure they reach orgasm, which must be the trance at work.

Chapter Text

She is standing on her doorstep. We exchange fumbly, perfunctory kisses on the cheek and I blink at her through the fog. I do not know if it is Lois dressed in Diana’s armour, or Diana dressed in Lois’s pantsuit. Do I want her? Do I want to kiss her, and hold her? So many parts of me seem to indicate that I should.

She fills my silence. “This was a really nice night,” she tells me, “and – look, it’s not that I don’t want to, I do – I really do, but – I’d much rather take things slow.”

“It’s actually a relief to hear that,” I reply. But then there is a pressure on my chest. Her face vanishes in the light, replaced by a rounder, more girlish one, one with skin like a cheerleader and eyes like a butcher, the face that Isley has for whatever maniac reason fallen in love with, the face of my torment.

“Wakey wakey, medium-rare steaky!” Quinn crows, bouncing on top of me. “C’mon, wake up, it’s time for your sexual humiliation.”

“Must it be humiliating?” I ask her in a groan of waking despair.

“It doesn’t have ta be. But it probably will.” Then she shifts down my body and makes me groan in complaint before she gets off my morning erection and the sheets bulge up between her legs. “Hee-hee!”

“Would – would you want someone to wake you up with sexual humiliation?”

“Yeah!” How can anyone be expected to reason her out of this relentless perkiness? I resign myself to it as she whips off the bedsheets. “Look at that over-eager stiffy!” Quinn laughs. It’s not as if she’s never seen it before but it still stings, the way she says it, the way she guffaws. “Only bad, bad boys get hard-ons over innocent, unsuspecting girls.”

“Yes, I apologise.”

“Aw, come on, no they don’t – come on, come back at me with something, I bet you can think of a zinger. Come on, I’ll tee ya up, only bad, bad boys get hard-ons over innocent, unsuspecting girls.”

Quinn smiles expectantly, somehow there is no malice to it. It’s an easy feed-line, anyway: “Lucky there aren’t any of those around.”

“You rude prick!” she gasps, and laughs at the same time. “I oughta teach ya a lesson, with this.” She holds up a clothespin and snaps it in her fingers, and my blood runs cold. This is what I get for trying to meet her halfway. “So where do ya think this is going?”

“Does it matter what I think?”

“Oh, yeah, be defiant, I like that.” She grabs my penis and bends it back and forth, looking it over. “Where do ya think would really show ya who’s boss? How about that sensitive li’l spot under the head?” The touch of the wood there makes me shiver. “I bet that would really hurt, it’d be so intense. Or, or, how about just the skin over your balls?” She tweaks it, even just using her fingers it has my complete and undivided attention. Then she’s back on her feet, smiling in my face. “So many delicate spots ta play with. Aw, don’t look sad, I know it’s gonna hurt, but it’s gonna feel really good for ya too...” She’s trailing the clothespin up and down her body, and when she tails off, it’s because she’s curiously holding it open over her nipple. Then she looks me dead in the eye and commands “Put it on me.”

“If that’s what you want.”

I lift my hand and take it, gently, all too aware this could turn at any moment. Then I let it close softly onto her nipple, and she moans “Ah, ah, ah, oh” as if she’s easing into a too-hot bath. “Oh, yeeeah.” Then she moves, I flinch, but she has hold of me. I see a flash of another clothespin in her hand, in a second I feel it on my ear. It’s not painful so much as it is present, but she laughs like a maniac anyway. With the pin on her breast sticking out like an unnatural horn, she points at me and declares “You look stupid!”

There is no real response to that. I can only sigh inwardly. She reaches off to the side, and I see she has a big plastic tub full of clothespins, so I sigh again.

“This one time,” she says with two fistfuls of clothespins, on a roll now, “I saw this really kinky porno where they’d strung a bunch of these things together, so they could pull them all off in one go.” The absolute last thing this woman needs is to have her mind warped by fetishy pornography. “Imagine how that would feel – like, imagine this.” She flicks the pin off my ear, a split second’s discomfort. “Yeah, imagine that, but twenty of them and on your dick.”

“No.”

“Aw, come on. Live a little. Next you’ll be telling me ya wouldn’t want Red ta breastfeed you either.” She idly puts more clothespins onto her breasts, pinching the skin, as she speaks – apparently unconscious of whatever pain they inflict. “Okay, now, you grab on one of these, but don’t take it off, just...pull on it, a li’l bit.”

I bring a clothespin a fraction closer to me. She whimpers, her eyes flutter, her knees nearly give way and she pulls away far more than I did.

“It’s the sexiest fucking thing ever,” she expounds, gaze half-hooded. “That sensation, that pressure – ah!” She yelps like she’s been stabbed when the pin comes popping off her breast. For a moment, the mark lingers on her skin. Then she takes another and opens it with her teeth, and clumsily uses her mouth to put it on my nipple. To be honest, I don’t understand what she sees in it.

“Alright,” she husks, “now it’s time for my sexual humiliation.” And she looks at me with an expectant gleam.

“I really don’t understand what you’re expecting from me.”

“Aw, come on,” she joshes me with her elbow, “do the thing!”

“What thing?”

“The thing, ya know the thing, where ya crack the case or turn up in the nick of time, and ya got a one-liner. Do that.”

“Why would you want – those are borne of context -” I try to explain, but she’s gone past joshing and now she’s just grabbing, grabbing and laughing.

“Come on, do it! Do it do it do it. Pretend, like, I was all set to make the President slip on a banana peel and fall off Mount Rushmore, and, and you had ta fly all the way from the other side of the world.” I’m still hard, desperately hard, from the dreams and from what she has done to me, but when her curling fingers brush against it that’s when I catch her by the throat.

“Crime doesn’t pay, Quinn,” I tell her. I don’t hold her up, she doesn’t dangle in midair, but I have her on tiptoes and for a moment her eyes roll back in her head.

“Fuck yes,” she whispers, her breaths light and blood pumping. “Yeah, see, I knew ya knew what I meant.” It doesn’t feel right doing this, my hand’s nearly the whole way around her neck, I feel her gulp and she goes straight for her vagina and starts to masturbate. “Tell me I’m a bad gal.”

“I-” I stop, and frown. Nothing about this is the way it should be. She should be spitting feathers in impotent protest, not – well, not this.

“Aw, c’mon. I know you’re thinking it.”

“There’s an incredibly different valence to – I wouldn’t even use that phrase, it’s just infantilising.” Yes, I can reason out all the objections I like, I could be talking about the weather, it doesn’t seem to matter, it all makes her moan as if receiving some great sacred revelation. “And I don’t even – the only moral issue I have with this is that you’re holding me prisoner, I would have absolutely no problem with you doing this with a consenting-”

“Mmmnh,” she whines, not able to move towards me but she tries, the way she wobbles gives all the cues that she had just tried to go in for a kiss. Hugely frustrated, I set her back down and turn away. But there is no getting away now, not when she leaps on me, I overbalance and the only place to land softly is on the bed.

The clothespin on my chest comes free, it’s worse having to lie on it than it ever was tweaking my skin. Mercifully, Quinn pulls it out from underneath me, and though her laughter is cruel and mocking as she tries it in places up and down my arm I do not mind this in the slightest, I press my face into the bedclothes and let her play around.

“I bet,” she says, as she hovers over me, behind me, making me painfully aware of how vulnerable I am, “there’s somewhere on your body you’ll get what I mean. Ya seen Red’s body, that’s like all places crying out ta be touched an’ stuff, she’s all tender an’ sensitive an’ soft, but you’re different.” She sits on my legs, I feel her draw back, and then there’s the killer-bee jab of the clothespin on my scrotum. I grunt, she laughs, in all honestly I’m relieved it didn’t go straight into my anus. “Isn’t it intense?”

The bedclothes muffle my “Yes.” It’s not as bad as when she kicked me there, but still, this is what everyone’s always laughing about? Normal men, I suppose, have this vulnerability all the time. But granted they don’t have Quinn slavering for the opportunity.

She flips me over, the power in her twiggy arms still surprises me, and she looks down at me with the predatory glee a wolf would turn upon a hambone. What’s left of my erection flops down on my hip, I simply stare off into space. But then I see her get a look at my watering eyes, and – God, it hurts worse coming off! At least she’s not twisting the knife, she has just taken the clothespeg off and thrown it aside.

“I thought it’d be fun for you too,” she huffs, and I resign myself for whatever comes next, but when she does grow angry it’s not directed at me. She rebounds slightly with a “Your poor balls must hurt so bad.”

“You put a clothespeg on me.”

She hides her mouth when she giggles madly. “Well, sure, but, between you and me,” she lowers her voice conspiratorially, “I bet they hurt before.”

“No.” I know the sensation she’s talking about, the desperate, confused ache, which at once draws me to her and repulses me, makes me want to leap off the bed and run a mile if only I could, but it doesn’t strictly hurt.

“Aw, come on. If it was me, watching, I would definitely wanna get off. And we did all that stuff to ya and didn’t let ya come.” But then in an instant she goes from musing to accusing. “Unless ya jerked off when we weren’t looking! Oh, you better not have…” And then she grabs them, hard, cords standing out in her slim arm.

“God,” I hiss.

“Hee-hee! It’s okay, I’m not gonna squeeze them too much. Maybe, maybe just a little bit. Like, um, like a stress ball – oh, look at you squirm!”

Obviously there is no escape, even without her holding onto a sensitive area. Now she starts kissing me on the cheek, sweet, chaste little gestures, all while still causing this incredible pain. Then she hops up on top of me, curling her fingers around under my testicles to draw them up tight, oh God, there’s the hard iron points of her nails. But then, mercy, she lets me go to pluck inquisitively at the skin, she pulls it out and giggles - before her shoulders tense and it becomes a full, violent grab.

“I’m gonna squeeze them,” she breathes, mouth laying open with excitement, “until they pop. Aw, don’t look like that. It’ll all stop hurting then, probably. Just a lil’ pop and it’ll all be over. Then you’d be damaged, I’d have done that to ya, and…”

Somewhere beyond this zone of pain I’m locked inside, I see her turn sad for a moment.

“Maybe I could stop,” she whispers, “if ya do what I want.”

What, exactly, have I not done for them? Her fingers tighten and my eyes water and I grind out the word “Fine.”

“Aw, no, like ya mean it.” And for a second she grips even harder, she pulses her little hand, like a heartbeat…

“I will do what you want.” It slips out so easily. It’s what I might say if I was under Isley’s erotic trance. She frees me from her grasp and I involuntarily gasp at the feel of cool, soothing air where her fingers were.

“I think ya just said that ta make me stop,” she says suspiciously, and helplessly, wordlessly, I implore her – then she gives me a big smile and says “But that’s alright. Truth be told, it, um, it’s actually kind of a thrill.” Yes, that’s one word for the lurch in my guts every time she touches me, not sure whether it’ll be pleasant or painful. “Alright, so, I wanna use you for sex.” There’s a twinkle of excitement in her eyes, as though it’s some new world.

“Okay.”

“No, you have to say ya want it. So it’s consensual.” She shifts forward in her straddle, pressing her vulva up against the head of my penis.

“As in, without any sort of coercion or threat of violence.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, and bites her lip. Christ, this woman...a normal man in my position might well be really scared.

“Yes I want it,” I deadpan, and she dances side to side with glee.

“But ya gotta be gentle, okay? This is my first time. I don’t want it ta hurt.”

“I have literally been here while you and Isley have made a lot of love.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What about your ex?” I ask, and I don’t even know why I’m picking her story apart at this point.

“He only ever wanted to do...other things. I never enjoyed that. Please, do this for me? I want it to be special, for both of us.” She’s rolling her hips already, gliding up and down what seems like every sensitive area of my body. Then she’s up on top of it, and at the very tip I feel her embracing it as it probes in. But as she’s about to slip down onto it she freezes, and then she’s saying “But, but maybe we shouldn’t – what if Red got jealous? Oh, I wouldn’t want that, and I know you wouldn’t want that, that wouldn’t be good for you at all.” And she backs off and flops down on the bed. “But I am real horny, though. I just wanna ride ya, like a big ol’ warm dildo, and when I’m done I can throw ya aside and curl up – in that way you’re really the perfect man.”

I say nothing.

“You’re right, maybe we should,” and she’s up on her knees, vulva back on my penis, “aw, but I hope we can finish before Red’s back. That time she walked in, didn’t it make ya come? It would be so hot if that happens again, she walks in and she’s all like gasp, and then you fucking go off inside of me. I think the best part is the way ya lose all control.” Her grin turns evil. “Oh no, it feels too good in my stupid dick. Yeah, that’s what ya want, isn’t it?”

“Fine, yes. If you’re going to do it, do it.”

She gasps loudly, and claps her hands over her mouth. “So rude!” Then she sits on the edge of the bed in a mock sulk. “That’s all ya want from me, isn’t it? Ya just want me to make your weenie feel good, ya don’t care how I feel.”

“That’s not true, I” – how did I get here? - “I do care how you feel.”

She snaps her head around, eyes wide with put-on wonder. “Really? Do ya mean it?”

“Of course I do. The last thing I want to do is make you angry.”

The laugh bursts from her mouth. “Yeah, I bet. Look, come on, play the game. Court me.” She snaps her fingers, and the vines come loose from my wrists. “Seduce me. Make me wanna do it.”

I sit up. Even unbound, I can’t think of trying to run. With no powers, the plants will get me – or maybe not, Quinn’s poised next to me with that cruel grin ready to pounce. I am bigger than her, stronger than her, and yet I don’t like the look on her face. Resigned to my task, I slowly clear my throat, take her hand in mine, and say “You have beautiful eyes.”

Quinn gasps again, and actually fans herself a little. “Well well, so ya can turn it on if ya want.” She rolls back on the bed, pulling my arm across her body, not letting go, and looks up at me upside-down. Her smirk seems slightly less evil from this angle. “What do ya like best about me?”

“Your beautiful eyes.” She laughs, and pokes at me, which is fair enough. Have to think of a real one. “It is all relatable.”

“What is?”

“Your shtick. Being so madly in love you actually do go...unsettled, and start smashing stuff up. I mean, people do that all the time for love of one thing or another. I wouldn’t, but there again maybe I would if I was in love with the wrong thing. I don’t know.”

She’s lain there, drinking that in, no clue to how she’s taking it on her face. At least she didn’t snap when I nearly outright called her insane. Then she says “I, um, I always liked the big blue boy scout stuff. I mean, sure, ya got all the powers, you’re the man, but even so, with all that ya still do the whole truth, justice, and the American Way routine. Like, the actual ideals...” And as she speaks she turns over and rises, coming face to face with me. But she does not stop, leaning in perilously close, within kissing distance.

“Honey, I’m home!” Isley calls out through the door, clattering around in a way that seems like a bit.

“Oh no! The wife!” says Quinn, probably loud enough for Isley to hear in pure sitcom fashion. “Quick, ya need to hide! Um, um, oh! Vines, do your thing!”

“What-” I protest, before a teeming mess of vines swoop down from the ceiling and then haul me up there, pinning me up above the bed. There were clearly only seconds to spare, because it’s then that Isley walks in. She looks at Quinn, panting on the bed, naked, and says “For a second there, I thought I was about to walk in on you messing around with your little boyfriend. Imagine that.”

“What would ya do if ya had walked in on us?” Quinn teases.

“Oh, I’d have been so angry,” Isley says, and gently holds her. “Total white-hot rage. I wouldn’t have been able to control myself. First, I would tie you up.”

“Ah!” yelps Quinn, delighted, as the vines come alive and pull her back against the wall. It occurs to me now that even when she was ordering the vines around, it was Isley doing it. Where does their mad game begin and end?

“Yeah, I’d tie you tightly, good and hard, so you couldn’t possibly escape.”

“And, and then,” breathes Quinn, hungry, eager, struggling against her bonds trying to get closer, “would ya beat me? Would ya slap me right on my li’l face for being a slut?”

“Of course. I’d have to.” Isley gives her a little flick of the wrist. Quinn takes the blow across her cheek, which actually wipes a smile onto her face. “And then I’d hang you up, like I do to him.” The vines circle around Quinn’s body, under her arms and between her legs, and when her feet leave the ground she squeaks. She tries vainly to grab hold of Isley, but is already up too high. “And now I’ve got you up here, I can do whatever I like to you.”

“Oh no,” says Quinn, vibrating with excitement. “You’re gonna teach me a lesson.”

“All these soft, vulnerable parts,” muses Isley, in full villain mode now, stroking a finger up Quinn’s inner thigh and making her squirm and twist in midair. “But what to do to them?” Quinn shivers with arousal when Isley raises a hand – and then she rubs Quinn’s stomach, not roughly, but neither too gently. Quinn gasps and moans like Isley’s actually rubbing her clitoris. “Yeah, you get your tummy rubbed, you wanton whore.”

When Isley finally takes her hand away, Quinn can only dangle in the vines, looking completely spent – then she perks up again, and says “Now let me do you.” She reaches out, groping at empty air. Isley ducks in to plant a kiss on her well-rubbed stomach and then backs away before Quinn can get hold of her. “No, please, please,” she whines as the vines carry her sideways, and then dump her on the bed.

“I have another surprise for you,” says Isley, off in the corner fiddling with something. Then she turns around, with a bright green dildo wobbling between her legs, and Quinn’s eyes go as big as saucers.

“Oh, fuck, Red,” she breathes, already spreading her legs where she sits. “You’re making me nervous. It’s so big, I don’t even know if it’s gonna fit. I’m only little, and this is my first time.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Well, well, maybe we could pretend it is,” insists Quinn, pulling Isley close, curling those legs around her. “Ya know, for fun.” Isley chuckles, and takes hold of her shoulders. “And then, then, then it can be you who’s ruined me for other men, and I’ll have ta stay with you because nobody else will ever wanna go with me-”

“Stop,” says Isley, and twists out of her grip to sit beside her and hold her. “Come on, that stuff’s just - I’m not going to listen to you pour poison into your own head.” Quinn reaches plaintively for the neon toy in her lap, but Isley grabs her wrist. “No, none of that. You don’t get that until you say, out loud, that you are worthy of love and affection no matter your sexual history.”

In a tiny voice, looking at her feet, Quinn says “But I don’t feel that way.”

“Maybe not, but I do. I don’t care what happened to you in the past. All I care about is that you’re here, now.”

“You’re just saying that because ya like me.”

“Can’t argue with that – alright, try this,” and Isley snaps her fingers in my direction. “You’re an independent observer, what do you think? Do you think Harley can still be loved?”

“Not strictly independent,” I tell them. “If anything, I have a negative bias towards both of you-”

“Spare us your life story here, just answer the question.”

I roll my eyes. “Doctor Quinn, I’m no psychiatrist, but you must have observed this kind of self-hatred in other victims of abuse.” Quinn nods, sniffling a little bit.

“See? And you can be sure he’s not going to lie.” No, annoyingly, Isley’s completely right. Then she starts fumbling at her waist, behind her back. “Look, let’s try something, stand up for a second.” Quinn rises uncertainly to her feet. Then Isley has pulled off the neon appendage, and, quickly, confidently, straps it around Quinn’s hips. She actually jumps with delight when she feels the last buckle close and the last strap squeeze her thigh. “Now. If, to pick an example entirely at random, you use that on me, would you say that’s ruined me?”

“No,” says Quinn, leaning down over her. “Of course not. You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” says Isley, plucking at Quinn’s clothes, drawing her closer. “All you need is to be cared for properly.”

“Thank you for this. It’s good ta be snapped out of moments like that...truth be told though, I don’t give a fuck if I’m ruined for men. Not now I got you. I want this to be good for you, tell me it’ll be good for you, tell me it’ll make ya feel good-” But Isley does not, for she has pulled Quinn down into a hungry kiss, and as she does the toy vanishes between her labia. Through their thighs I can see the slightest flash of green.

Isley hums with delight. Quinn is trying to thrust, but is being far too gentle, like a woman dipping her toes in the sea to gauge the temperature. Even when Isley finally says “You can go a little harder,” it turns into short, jerky motions of the hips that only bend the dildo back and forth.

“Why isn’t this working?” Quinn asks, dismay creeping into her voice.

Isley sighs, snaps her fingers at me again, and says “Show her how it’s done.”

The vines lower me down, into position behind Quinn, which makes her react and squirm and unconsciously mumble out the words “Harley sandwich”. I put my hands on her hips, and thrust them for her, and Isley gasps when she feels it. “Is that right?” Quinn ponders, and this time she drags my hands with her when she moves, then crows “I’m doing it, I’m doing it!”

“That’s it – I’m really proud of you,” Isley’s telling her, practically holding her hand, “But don’t rush, don’t be too stiff, take your time about i-hi-hi-it…” Being taller, I can see over Quinn’s shoulder, see Isley splayed in front of me as she writhes. It’s as if it’s me actually doing it, inside her, numb to the world. But then Quinn wriggles and gets her hair in my face, which immediately kills that fantasy and drags me back into this depraved reality they’ve constructed.

“Aw, I wish I could feel it, though,” says Quinn as she swoops her hips, warming to her task now, getting into a rhythm. “I bet it would feel so fucking good. I know ya taste good…” Their bodies slap together. With her mouth half-open, for the first time Isley looks helpless, incapable of resisting. Quinn starts to groan with satisfaction, pressing in harder, so the base of their toy is forced back against her vagina, all those pink parts there inbetween her thighs, the parts I know feel so soft and make her cry out such sweet noises.

“I feel good,” Isley huffs out, legs askew, “you’re making me feel good, see, you can do that, you don’t need to worry. Yeah, like that, really do me, really, really – ah, good girl.”

At this Quinn loses all control and plunges down to grab hold of Isley, her hips going on their own now, growing faster, I can barely hold onto them. She strains herself, making little noises like “Mmh! Mmh! Hmph!” as if it’s a struggle.

“Oh, Harley,” croons Isley, letting the smaller woman flop all over her body. Then Quinn springs back up, she crashes into my chest and grabs Isley by the wrists and makes her go “Wow!”

“Yeah,” declares Quinn, she’s recovered a bit of the threat, “I’m gonna make ya take it,” and of course this is my cue and I push her hips forward again, a steady unstoppable motion, the way Isley inhales makes Quinn giggle. “I’m gonna split you open and twist you up and turn you out with my big dick.”

And that makes Isley giggle – though she cuts herself short with another sharp intake of breath, her eyes turn naked and vulnerable, every rush of air in and out of her mouth hangs heavy with pleasure. I am abruptly reminded of the pheromones that have surely surrounded us completely, though it doesn’t stop me from joining in. And Isley starts to make little noises of her own, she yearns and begs in tones of rising pleasure -

“Fucking let it happen, whore!”

I freeze to hear this, and Quinn must feel it because she stiffens up too – and beneath us Isley explodes with laughter, her limbs flop useless by her sides while the helpless cackles paralyse her completely. This has clearly tickled her in that special way, she does not stop quickly, she does not stop even after a little while, and in front of me Quinn starts to relax a bit. Isley’s mad peals of laughter die down, her eyes are still screwed shut, and she goes down to a guttural noise that is still a bit like a laugh but in a lot of ways is very different.

“I’m sorry I said that,” says Quinn, she whimpers it as much as she really can with an enormous sex toy still jutting off her and into Isley.

Isley laughs again, but it’s a different kind this time, it’s disarming, the kind not even Quinn could think was to mock. “You know,” Isley says sleepily, “there’s nothing wrong with ‘cutie-pie’.”

“Aw, come on, you’re more than that.” There’s nothing calculated about Isley’s laugh now, she has just found it funny.

“I, um, I have noticed ya pushing me to take the lead and be the aggressor. I know why you’re doing that, and I love ya for it. But, we know now that I can do it, right?”

“Of course,” says Isley, all hazy fondness, brushing her with a finger.

“So would it be alright if – if ya don’t mind – if ya totally dominated me an’ made me your sex slave and did stuff ta me?”

Quinn has already taken off the strap-on, and is busy fitting it back into place on Isley – who smiles, and chuckles softly, and sits up to kiss her on the forehead. “I thought I could sense this coming.”

“Thought I could sense you coming,” Quinn immediately shoots back. Then she softens and says “Thank you. I, I mean, it is kinda a thrill, being on top and stuff. I’m just nervous about – um – actually, actually being penetrated.”

“We don’t have to,” says Isley, rubbing her arm.

“No, no, I really wanna. It’s just, the last time I did that, I went crazy and it screwed up my whole life.”

Isley’s face falls when she realises she has been dancing around one of the most formative and damaging experiences of Quinn’s life, so she drops any trace of archness to cuddle her and gently reassure her, a technique only marred slightly by the dildo poking at Quinn’s stomach.

“I wanna,” Quinn says, so softly, “but, I’m scared.”

“Be brave for me.”

“Oh fuck, do it, do it now.” From trembling in Isley’s arms, suddenly she has thrown herself face-down across the bed, looking eagerly over her shoulder. “Maybe it would be safest if ya went really rough and hard.”

Isley bends over Quinn’s raised hindquarters and gives her a kiss on the back of her neck. She looks back, face pressed into the sheets, with a look of terrible yearning. Then Isley slides the silicone into her, not roughly the way it was requested, but it still produces a squeal that wavers through two octaves.

“How is that?” Isley asks, casually, merrily driving it in and out. “You like that?”

“Go h-harder,” Quinn gabbles out in short ragged breaths, “go rougher...please God, make it be too much…”

Isley wipes her brow, and hauls air into her lungs – then launches into Quinn with renewed energy, pushing herself now, the violence of her thrusts telling my less sophisticated hindbrain that somebody needs help. She grabs at Quinn’s hips, digging her fingers into the flesh, truly taking control now and exerting all her power. Quinn wails like she’s sat down on something sharp that turned out to win her a prize.

I try not to watch, not to let it affect me. They’re just two women, doing things, I hardly need to be involved. Quinn locks eyes with me, she gazes up at me with pure joy with Isley flat on top of her working her over, every thrust shows off a little more of the whites of her eyes. I try to dissociate, she stutters and cries out another expression of pure lust.

When Isley leans over her and blocks her view as she kisses her, it is a relief, it is almost cooling. And in this sudden quieter moment I have time to reflect that she was right, that I do have these desires, that in this moment I’m not even thinking about escaping.

For a moment, as Quinn gasps for breath amidst the wreckage of the bedsheets, and Isley curls in around her, I hope and pray that they have forgotten all about me. Then Quinn’s hooded eyes land on me as she looks straight up again from where she lays, maybe it’s nothing, no, her tiny voice requests “Now make him do it.”

“You want more already?” Isley asks her – no judgement, just the mild concern Quinn always manages to inspire in her.

“I wanna show the both of ya that this time it’s not gonna screw me up.”

Isley smiles, and nods to her, and rises from the bed, a wordless ‘gotcha, boss!’. I know she controls the plants with her mind, so it’s surely for show that she beckons me down. The vines let go of my legs and I swing in the ones around my shoulders, thank God I stop short of hitting her in the face. “We’d better make sure he’s...up to it, first.” And on that note Isley unrolls a tape measure with a snap.

“Is this really necessary?” I complain without even knowing why I’m doing it. She gets a good grip on the base of my penis to run the tape back along it.

“Mm-hm,” Isley hums to herself as she gets the length, and Quinn peers over her shoulder and scribbles it all down. “Mm-hm,” she repeats, now she wraps the tape around it for the girth – and just for a second, pulls it tight with both hands and garrottes me. The figures Quinn is taking down drift off in one long distracted stroke of the pen.

“But you’ve got a nice floppy one,” says Quinn, as she pats the underside of the toy that projects from Isley’s vagina, and then she tries the same thing on me. “His is like a rolling pin, I bet it’s gonna hurt, which ta be honest is the main appeal for me.”

“Oh, we could do that. I have my ways.”

“This is for me, though. I’m gonna prove, ta myself, that him and his big dick have absolutely no power over me.” I have no idea how to feel about that.

Isley chuckles as she weighs up my testicles, tosses them ever-so-slightly in her hand, and she asks me “Are you excited?”

“You don’t care one way or the other,” I say. But no, this is clearly the wrong thing to say, I know it before Quinn even starts to pout behind her.

“You wound me. And think how Harley feels about hearing that.” Isley looks over her shoulder, looks up at Quinn – yes, I look too. “Tell me, honestly, you’re not a little excited about doing her.”

Quinn makes her most fragile smile at me, encouraging me. I say “Yes, this is incredibly exciting.”

“Say it like you mean it.” She pulls her arm back, which draws me forward with a jab of pain. Just the taste of her lips sends my mind spiralling, but she gives me more, much more, I lunge forward like a beast and as my arms and legs are lashed and restrained Isley tumbles back into Quinn, they fall over each other’s feet and drop laughing onto the bed.

“Put me under too,” insists Quinn, eyeing me as I froth and struggle and my erection judges the closest straight line to her vagina. “Put me way, way under, and then make like you’re making me do it.”

“I wanted – I thought we were doing this on your terms,” says Isley, stroking her arm as if to confirm.

“We are.” And it is the evil grin Quinn has now, the malicious glee of unveiling the master plan, as Isley sighs in satisfaction and takes hold of her and gives her a film-cover kiss. When they break apart Quinn leaves the tip of her tongue out. “Whoa,” she mumbles, eyes glassy.

“It’s alright,” says Isley, arms still around her, “I’ve got you,” and she makes that sweet sentiment seem like the purest malice too, all the vicious promise of what they are about to do.

“Than’ you,” the words sycamore-seed down out of Quinn’s lolling mouth. “I really like you, Red, I’d do anything for ya.”

“Would you take a big dick for me?”

Quinn shakes her head, and bites her lip – but what she says is an enthusiastic “I don’t know.”

“I think you would,” says Isley, low and close, with her hand already going where every muscle in my body is trying to get, all just to make Quinn feel good and make her yelp. “I think you’d like it.”

“I’onna say I don’t want it,” insists Quinn, now clearly having some struggle to hold her head up, “but I totally do.”

And behind Quinn’s back, with the wickedest grin this side of the gates of hell, Isley beckons me closer with a finger. My bonds give a little, enough for me to take another avalanche step towards them.

“Ya oughta tell me that, if I really loved ya, I’d do this for ya.”

“Harley-” The spell breaks suddenly, Isley is speaking normally, and she cups Quinn’s cheek in her hand to say “You do really love me. That’s not up for debate, that’s obvious. It comes off you like steam.” Quinn’s eyes twinkle like stars when she says that, with a desire that transcends any kind of mean sex act. “So you’re going to do this for me because you really love me.”

“Mnuh,” squeaks Quinn, too het up and flushed-up for it to be real words, but needing to express the depth of her affection somehow. She would probably say more, but Isley has unleashed me, and like a wave I come crashing down upon them, I throw Isley aside, grab my penis, and stuff it inside Quinn. Her face lights up with joy.

Isley gets me in a playful chokehold from behind, and whispers “If you come before she does, I’ll give her the clothespegs back.” The words ‘performance anxiety’ flash in my mind, somewhere far away, while here and now the physical object of my body moves like a piston. There are four hands in front of me, all over Quinn, Isley’s doing the tactile stuff while mine merely hold her in place. I feel as if I’m hollowing her out as she writhes and yells and flashes her eyes at me, orders me in a fury to go harder and make it painful. Then that half-broken yelp, and then she looks up at me, joy flooding off her so I can almost taste it. For a moment I wonder if Isley will be jealous. But when Isley gives me the same look minutes later, as she jolts in the sheets while Quinn nuzzles happily alongside her, no, I don’t think she will.

*

Quinn has gone out to sit in on a lecture on cognitive behavioural therapy. It’s out of my hands, nothing I can do about whatever happens there. So I am left in with Isley. She looks up from a book about unnatural disasters, over a pair of glasses which I’m reasonably certain she doesn’t actually need but do frame her face in a very attractive way, and says “You okay over there? There’s cushions in the laundry room if you prefer.”

“Is this my life now, then?” I say. “In-house sex toy?”

“You make it sound tawdry. You’ve got some down-time, you can do what you want. Peruse my well-stocked film library, or the minibar.”

“I don’t drink.”

“No, I expect you’re one of those ones with an irritatingly good work ethic, aren’t you.”

“You should want me out there. I prevent plenty of ecological disasters. This year alone I’ve diverted lava flows away from seventeen different large areas of undeveloped woodland.”

“Irritatingly good,” she repeats. “You do realise how much of a compliment it is that I chose you for this, don’t you? I could have kidnapped any man in the world.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re expecting a thank you.”

“It’s a temporary affair, it always has been. Harley’s in a delicate state right now. It wouldn’t be good to deprive her of a source of familiarity and comfort. See, I can appeal to your moral code as well.”

“Yours is in tatters. The environmental terrorism, that’s one thing. But I didn’t think you were a sex criminal.”

She runs a finger along the hem of her neckline. “A sexy criminal,” she corrects me. “Look, be it an accident of birth, or an experiment gone wrong, we both must work with the hand we’ve been dealt. Mine happens to involve mild sexual assault – oh, don’t look at me like that, yours is property damage a-go-go.”

I do remember, all too well, all the furniture I broke as a young child. “Imagine if I were to go around super-kissing people. There’d be an outcry.”

“Yes, but that’s diff- you can do that?”

“I seem to recall a kissing booth at the fair, and a ticking clock, which must have been related.” How many powers have I wound up having, off on all those minor adventures? The bombs at county fairs tend to blur into one next to the asteroids, plagues, and returns of minor Egyptian gods.

“Yours surely doesn’t hypnotise the lucky recipient?”

“No, not like you.” I think back, how did it even work? In the moment it had all seemed so instinctual, the clarity of being at full power, not like this weakened vulnerable state. “Certainly made them need to sit down.”

“You old charmer.” She sets her book aside, and sits forward, seeming close to me from across the room. “And you never once, you know, thought to try this on me?”

“No I did not – you just said it was different.”

“Still, needs must, if it foils my evil schemes would it be so wrong? I bet there’s plenty of villainesses out there it would sort out once and for all.”

“It would work for you, would it?” She was smirking as she said it, I already know the answer. “One good smackeroonie and suddenly you’d be willing to give up the eco-terrorism and go straight? Take cheap domestic flights and eat factory-farmed meat like everyone else?”

Now her grin comes wider. “I’m not some dizzy girl playing in this shit.” And I look back at her, not even particularly pointed, just expectant. We both know the implications of what she’s just said. The realisation doesn’t come immediately, but when she breaks eye contact and turns her gaze away, yes, there we go.

“No, of course. You’re not the type to change your whole life path if someone kissed you just right.”

“No,” she says, contemplative, hardly seeming to hear me.

“That would be the behaviour of a dizzy girl, as you say.”

Isley’s on her feet now. “Fuck off,” she says, iron in the words, pointing violently at me with her first two fingers, the same ones that have ripped all kinds of orgasms from Quinn’s willing body. I hold my hands up in surrender. “She made a mistake. She made one bad choice. One. She just – she just needs a little help.” A little collapse inwards there, towards the end, as she hits the familiar quagmire of not knowing whether it is help she is able or qualified to give.

“Yes,” I say.

“Which of you lot, which of your fucking pantheon, has ever had the decency to offer that to the one person who clearly needs it the most?”

So much I could say to that. I know for a fact that Bruce has frequently offered them both all-expenses-paid medical treatment, and that’s beyond the long list of people who shamelessly need the help more. Many of those people are also victims of abuse, and plenty of them have also gone on to abuse others, and still, in the final analysis, have caused less harm and are more worthy of redemption... “It’s good you have chosen to help her, Doctor Isley. I believe that is a good thing.”

“Well alright then,” she says, wrongfooted and stumbling off the fury she has built up on Quinn’s behalf.

“It’s not exactly my methods, of course. But in your shoes, that is what I would do.”

She raises an eyebrow rich with all the suggestion of a hundred film noirs. “Including kidnapping you? You vain man.”

“Not in all the details,” I repeat, trying not to let that eyebrow distract me too much. “But – well, there was clearly a mutual attraction, and you do seem to get on, all else being equal good luck to you, I wish your relationship every success in the world.” With the unspoken hope it will stop you killing people.

“That’s – really very nice of you.” The eyebrow has actually dropped, I have defeated it. “I do hope it works too. I honestly thought it wouldn’t be anything this serious. Usually, younger women who work in medicine, it’s, maybe a weekend at most.” That one widens my eyes a bit.

“None of them were special in the same way?”

“The thing is, none of them were also in the life.” She thinks for a moment. “There was one lovely mortician who was selling off – still, it wasn’t the same.” No, of course not, there’s a bright line between petty criminality and full-on supervillainy.

“You’ve had, well, at least, encounters with B- you know who I mean.”

“Now what kind of a girl do you take me for?”

“The kind who would kidnap and repeatedly rape a man.”

“That’s right,” she says, and saunters over to sit in my lap. She’s a tall woman, she’s bigger than Quinn, but she slots in quite comfortably all the same. “I do know who you mean, by the way. I wasn’t going to sit on that stupid cowl.”

Both the shock, and the relief, Isley chuckles to feel me stiffen up under her. At least it wasn’t my slip that let her know. “You, but,” calm down, I think to myself, you’ll probably have to deal with this too the way this is going, “why haven’t you done anything with that? Any of your evil, criminal schemes? Blackmail, or something.”

Isley shrugs. “I always got the impression it was an open secret, really. And there’s no sense in flipping the board like that.” And then she leans forward, and whispers “Your dick’s much bigger than his.”

“I don’t want to hear this, Doctor Isley.”

“I’m not knocking the guy,” she says, in a brief foray back to speaking semi-seriously, before she returns to her temptations, “but yours feels so good. Probably the biggest I’ve ever had.”

“Look, come on,” I protest, but my heart isn’t in it, I’m distracted by the feel of her thighs planted right across my lap. I think may all be a lie anyway, something deeply personal she’s made up to try and get me confused, and aroused, and unfortunately it’s working.

“When you penetrate me,” Isley goes on, she doesn’t even come in close to nuzzle the words out, she looks me dead in the eye, “it’s on another level. It’s like I feel you right in my core. And of course, that’s why I got you for Harley, too, I wanted her to have a nice strong dick she could really depend on. I knew you wouldn’t mind too much, because I know you’re a good guy deep down, and you’d want to help her.”

Her favourite part of me unfolds, I give a brief groan but it’s no use. Even as I get tangled up in my trousers I feel it touch her, and I feel her feel it, now she’s the one to stiffen up and even jump a little bit.

“See,” she intones, totally confident, “it’s so fucking big it scares me.”

“It clearly doesn’t,” I insist, and she giggles, the way she does with Quinn, happy and carefree, loving every moment of this.

“No, of course it doesn’t, but I thought you might enjoy hearing…” She cuts herself off, when her lips touch my cheek. And I find I do not quite have the strength to cringe away, to resist, to push her aside and leave like I would normally.

“Doctor Isley-”

“Harley doesn’t have to know,” she purrs, her eyes glow dark with the knowledge we both share that Quinn would approve. After a few moments, she drops the other shoe “but I am going to tell her, every little detail.”

“Of course,” I concede, “I know how much you care for her.”

*

When I come to Isley is gone and Quinn is sitting up in bed next to me, excitedly watching Xena: Warrior Princess. Lucy Lawless takes a slight wound to the arm, and Quinn cries “Nooo!” and reaches out longingly for the screen as Lucy smacks two extras around the head. “Goddamn, imagine actually living in the ‘80s. I never knew they had soft porn right there on prime-time back then.”

I have no idea how to respond to any of that. At least she’s too absorbed by Lucy doing a million backflips to start re-enacting it all in real life on me.

“Aw, fuck, she’s got me horned up.” On hearing that I stiffen, although not where she would want it. Then she turns to me with a sleepy smile. “Do ya wanna…” Christ, what this time? What’s she going to make me do, and for how long? “Do ya wanna just lie around and masturbate while thinking about Red? I mean, I’m gonna.”

“No.” Maybe I’m not the only one in danger. Her deranged obsession with Isley – and this has to be more about the deranged obsession than anything to do with Isley – makes anything I’ve ever felt about Diana seem aloof and distant.

“Suit yourself.” Quinn hops up from beside me, gone for a moment – then looms over me again, holding an armful of Isley’s worn underwear, hugging them to herself. Even having declared I’m not involved this feels uncomfortably personal, and it only gets worse when pairs of panties start tumbling down onto the bedclothes like autumn leaves.

It must still be Isley’s pheromones, her weird, twisted version of the imperceptible scents in the air that send bees after pollinating flowers. It still clings to her unwashed clothes, and lights a burning, irrepressible flame of desire deep inside me, no matter how badly I want it not to be there.

“Hey. Hey, supesy,” says Quinn, and when I look up I actually laugh aloud, something she’s never managed with any of her jokes. She’s holding Isley’s bra up to her chest, or rather she’s holding the straps out well behind her back while the cups still cover her breasts and most of her shoulders. “See, you get it! My God she’s got a rack. This is burying me.”

“I don’t expect my clothes would suit you, either.”

She giggles at that. “Ya know what would be really hot, would be if she tried to wear my bra, it’d look like a tiny little bikini top or something. Aw, no, but it then would be too tight on her and it’d cut into her boobs – but, but then maybe I could kiss them better.” Her little reverie drags me in. The image flashes into my mind, the angry red lines in the skin of Isley’s admittedly lovely breasts – and then Quinn, probably throwing an absolute fit at the sight before lowering her head to slobber on them. “Wait, wait, I know what I’m gonna do.”

She skips from the room – then comes back, with one of Isley’s leafy one-pieces hanging off her body like a bedsheet and a red scarf wound around her head.

“Look at me,” she says, cavorting awkwardly, “I’m a confident sex goddess who doesn’t have night terrors or weird-looking knees. Deep down everyone’s curious about what it’d be like ta fall under my spell. You, man, obey my commands.”

“Don’t rub it in,” I say.

“And later on, we’re gonna do that thing again, where I help her take your big dick.”

She’s said it as if she’s wielding a knife, as if this gives her the upper hand. “I really don’t understand your obsession with making me have sex with your girlfriend.”

“It’s about her pleasure, not yours. It reduces you,” she pokes me, not roughly, “to the level of a warm sex toy.”

This is true. “Is that all of it?”

“Well, I-” And she stops, suddenly she has touched something she doesn’t like the feel of. The red and green hang limply on her body, now so obviously just accoutrements she’s wearing lightly. “I mean, she likes it with you.”

“She very obviously likes it with you.”

“I don’t know if I’m as good.” I suppose I was angling for some sort of conclusion, but it’s still a shock for her to come out and say that. “I mean, you’re all…” She waves her hands in a hazy approximation of my body type.

“I worry I’m not good at it.” And she snaps her head upwards with the same kind of stunned disbelief I’ve just had. I have no reason to want to comfort her. Perhaps I can aim her away from me and towards Isley.

“Aw, come on. No way do you.”

“I think it’s universal. You must know how – you’re a performer, from the inside you see all the ways it’s going wrong, but dwell on them all you want, nobody else really cares.”

“Yeah, but,” Quinn pauses here, not quite sure what her objection is.

Mercifully there’s a tap at the door. “Excuse me…” Isley is there, stuffed into Quinn’s jester getup. It’s tight as a drum across her body and holding her shoulders forward. “Um, I don’t know if I have the right place, but secretly I think I do.” Quinn laughs, and goes forward to embrace her. When they twirl I see all of Isley’s bare back, she hasn’t even managed to zip the suit up. Then Quinn steps back, to let her say her piece. “My name’s Harley, and I have deep-seated insecurities even though secretly I’m stronger than I think.”

“Come into my parlour, ha ha ha,” replies Quinn. It makes Isley break character and snort.

“Oh, but,” she recovers her composure in a few deep breaths, “maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should make the obviously wrong decision like I have so many times before and go back to my awful boyfriend who’s awful.”

A sudden silence. Isley’s face is frozen, if she’s not worried she’s gone too far I certainly am.

“No, fuck him, come kiss my breasts,” says Quinn finally. Isley sinks with grateful dignity to her knees, and stuffs her face into Quinn’s chest. “It doesn’t matter that ya made bad choices. You’re making the right one now.”

“I love you so fucking much.”

“I know, I know. Good gal.”

Then the sudden sharp sound when fabric tears, we all jolt a little – and Isley exclaims “Fuck! How is it you even manage to move around in this thing?”

“Because my tits aren’t fucking God-size,” says Quinn, pushing Isley back slightly to take a long, lascivious look. “Can’t you just squish them up?” she suggests, and reaches down to interfere with them.

“No, they – they have to go somewhere, they can’t just be squished down - oh, fuck,” says Isley again, but it’s not just incoherent lust this time, she lifts an arm and through the ripped fabric shows off a patch of bare skin. “I’m sorry, Harley, that’s definitely going to show.”

“Aw, I don’t mind,” says Quinn, as she strokes her way up to the tear – then slips a finger in and makes Isley jump.

“How are your hands that cold?”

“They’re not cold, you’re too hot, it’s your problem, not mine. And anyway, you’re just overly sensitive about me putting my finger in your hole.”

Isley snickers, her lips twist as she tries to suppress it.

“Does it feel good? When I stick my finger in your hole?” Quinn bats her eyes, perfectly conscious of what she’s saying.

“You’re only going to open it up more.”

“No way. Not unless, unless I put, like, three fingers in there.” But she has slim hands and it’s a big tear, so they fit quite comfortably. They worm around under the material, probably digging into Isley’s body. “Maybe I could even fit my whole hand in.”

“You’re disgusting. Let’s see.” The look of delighted curiosity on Quinn’s face makes me jealous, angry, remorseful, a sackful of vicious negative emotions. She tentatively slides all her fingers into the opening, past the knuckles, tiny, nervous little movements before – yes, there’s that sound of fabric tearing again.

“I hope I don’t feel too cold on ya.”

“You’re warming up nicely.” Maybe it’s only me who hears the edge to that, sees the predatory venus-fly-trap side to the way Isley smiles up at Quinn. Maybe Quinn wouldn’t, even after her traumatic history, even with her guard up. But then, she really isn’t in danger, for her it’s just the heat.

*

“How would you feel about killing some people?” Isley muses, later, from the tangle of bedclothes where she lies.

“Alright. Who?”

“Guys from Royal Dutch Shell. Or Shell, as they like to call it like that’s fooling anyone. Some of their board are in town. I figure we storm the hotel penthouse. Ride of the Valkyries stuff.” Dear God, she makes murder sound glamorous.

“Cool,” nods Quinn, and gets dazed to her feet. The shredded remnants of her jester’s onesie slide off her body. “I don’t know what I’m gonna wear.”

I need to act fast. It’s up to me to save the day. “Doctor Isley,” I say, and they both look round. “Can I ask you a question? It’s something Doctor Quinn was talking about earlier.”

Isley touches Quinn’s wrist, and mouths ‘what?’ - Quinn, in her postorgasmic haze, doesn’t even seem to remember.

“Do you ever worry that – you’re not good at sex?” Just about got the words out there.

Isley turns her palms out, to take in the whole scene, and sneers. “No.”

“Not the question of whether you’re good at it, I’m not trying to be so personal as that. But do you have that worry?”

“I mean, if we’re being- well, everyone has off-days, don’t they?”

Quinn plops back down on the bed, I breathe out again, she’s not on the path to killing people, she’s taking Isley’s hands in hers. “I kept thinking I wasn’t doing it right. That, I don’t know, I was just flailing around like an idiot and putting my tits in the wrong place.”

“Harley,” Isley says, soft and soothing, a cuddle in a word. “He hasn’t been filling your head with this stuff, has he?”

“No, he was nice about it, he said he felt that way sometimes too.”

Isley arches one copper eyebrow at me, yes, I know, I’m sure I’ll hear about this later. But instead of marching down to a top-class hotel to get blood on her hands, she gently fondles her girlfriend. “You have nothing to worry about,” she croons. “You fuck like a dervish, and – and if anything, I worry you’ll get bored of me.”

This may have been the wrong thing for her to say, because it makes Quinn collapse before my very eyes. She kisses Isley’s shoulder frantically as she holds back the tears and swears never, ever, ever.

*

I am cleaning up the remains of Quinn’s Icarusean attempt to build an automatic psychiatry machine when Isley staggers in, she drops her briefcase, shrugs out of her coat, and sends her hat frisbeeing across the room – and the vines catch them all before they hit the floor. Given that this whole building is more plant-life than concrete I wonder with a jolt whether I am technically inside her at this very moment.

“Where’s Harley?” she asks me.

“In the bathroom.” This answer seemingly satisfactory, Isley falls backwards, the vines catch her too and cradle her, lifting her off the ground, and with a little mewl of relaxation she settles down in midair with a book.

Then there is a sitcom toilet flush. “Oh my God,” Quinn is saying as she emerges, “I think I’m about five pounds lighter after that. That must be what a breech birth is like.”

“Right, well, I hope you know I’m going nowhere near your bottom until you’ve had a wash,” says Isley, and Quinn squeaks as she realises her lover is present. Again, it’s in pitch-perfect sitcom style – could they have rehearsed this, or is it simply her gift?

Immediately Quinn drops to her knees and shuffles over to where Isley hangs in her web. “Aw, please though – ya could just touch it, like, cup it in your hands.” Isley tries to stay aloof and absorbed in her book, but that grin tells me it’s not working. “It’d be over my pants, come on.”

“Alright. Okay,” says Isley, she rises like an empress, and draws Quinn back upright in her wake, and does reach down to cop a feel. “But now you owe me one.”

“I owe ya like ten thousand.”

Isley smiles, her patrician facade splinters at that. “Well, I, I trust you’ll get me back.”

Quinn wriggles in her grasp. “I wrote ya a mash note. While ya were out.”

“This isn’t the nineteen-fucking-fift-” Then Isley stops. Then she smiles. “You’re precious.” She crosses to the side, and reads the little scrap of paper Quinn agonised over. She laughs aloud, sweeps Quinn into her arms and kisses her, and in all this voluminous motion the paper flutters to the floor. As they twirl around the room I can see Quinn’s scrawly handwriting form the legend ‘I WANT TO TONGUE-BLAST YOUR MEATY CUNT’.

Eventually we retire to the rooftop garden, Quinn allows me to feed her grapes and chunks of cheese while she reclines in Isley’s lap, and this seems like we’ve achieved some kind of equilibrium, when suddenly Isley looks up from her book and asks “I have to ask – do you prefer him?”

A look of fright blooms on Quinn’s face, and she shoves me away, hard. “Fuck no! Jesus Christ, absolutely not – no offence – I mean, he’s very nice and all, ya know, there’s nothing wrong with him, but, but compared ta you, it’s like – no offence – well, it’s like asking me if I’d prefer a graham cracker or you.”

“You needn’t be so worried about offending him. You don’t mind, do you? He’s definitely heard worse.” Which is true, but never in quite this context, in this perverse intimacy. That graham cracker comment does sting slightly from someone I’ve had sex with.

“Do you prefer him?”

“Come on, Harley.”

“No, it’s – it’s a serious question. I mean, look at him.”

“I really do think you don’t understand just how sexy you are...alright, let’s try something.” Isley creeps over and takes Quinn’s hand in hers, prompting a soft little moan. “So, let’s take this, and put it here, on his dick.” Both of them touch me, but it’s Quinn’s hand doing the work. “And now, well – why don’t you see what you can do?” Isley’s other hand is on my back, keeping me in place. Quinn gives me a squeeze, and a kiss, immediately I feel the hormones flowing and the strain in my groin. No sense trying to resist, I start to get hard, and Quinn backs away with a look of amazement.

“See?” says Isley, as I wobble shamefully in front of them. “Those don’t grow on trees.”

“Talk about getting wood.”

Isley laughs in a way that sounds more like a raspberry. “And if he’s getting like that, imagine how puny human men would react.”

“Then you could, you could, um, you could pimp me out,” Quinn is saying now, a note of desperation in her voice, something more serious than the usual fantasies. “Ta girls, or ta guys, I don’t care. And, and you and supesy could just, like, use me, like a sexual toilet.”

Isley was growing concerned, but she laughs at that bit. Then she draws herself up to her full height, and Quinn seems to crunch down a little to complement this. “I’m going to do worse to you than that,” she says evenly. “I’m going to manipulate you and get inside your mind.” Quinn shudders, no, does what should be a shudder in any sane world but is clearly a tremble of excitement. “Come over here.” She lays her hands on Quinn’s shoulders and steers her indoors to the dressing-table. I follow, out of some insane sense of obligation. “Look in there. I’m going to make you watch me kissing with the girl in the mirror.”

“You could do better than – than the girl in the mirror.” Her voice cracks when Isley’s lips touch her cheek.

“I don’t know. I happen to think she’s very sexy. I can see she’s been crying, but that’s not her fault, that’s something that was done to her.”

“You’ve got bigger boobs than her. Hers are tiny.”

Isley’s hands immediately drift to them. “Hers are precious and fun-sized and the perfect little handful.”

“An’ you got a movie-star ass.”

“Yes, it’s strange how body standards have changed like that. It’s not too long ago that movie-star could only have meant slimmer women. Like this one, in the mirror, this incredibly lovely woman who I care for more every day she’s with me.”

“Lacan was full of-” Quinn begins, and then breaks down completely, she turns with a whirl and collapses into Isley. From the midst of her sobs and gurgles, she manages to articulate “I love you so fucking much.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“It just – it just gets too much. When you’re being nice like this. I don’t even know how ta…” Perhaps she does not even know what it is. “Ya don’t have ta let me play around with him,” Quinn changes tack, playful now, “ya can tell me no” and it is obvious she halfway hopes Isley will, not on the basis that she really wants it to stop but because she really wants Isley to tell her no.

Isley chuckles lightly. “No,” she whispers, since it is so clear to all of us that’s what is desired, and Quinn quivers violently in her arms as if something powerful is crashing around inside her. “I just think it’s fun, to share a man, I used to do that all the time in university. Heh, it was, that was actually how I’d pick up cute straight girls. All of a sudden I’d be touching her instead, and she’d never mind because I knew what I was doing...and he’d never mind, of course he didn’t, you should have heard those puppy-dog tones when he asked, um, uh, would you please play with her tits.”

Quinn is whimpering now, face flushed, one hand drifting towards her vagina, again and again she has a flash of consciousness and snatches it away only to reach back for it moments later. “And did ya, um, did ya ever,” unable to land on anything specific, she kisses Isley’s neck, too short to reach her lips. I’ve seen Quinn manage that, she had to go on tiptoes but she did it, this time she’s chosen not to. When Isley is wet from chin to collarbone Quinn finally manages “Please keep telling me about you fucking other gals.”

“There’s that puppy-dog tone.”

*

How or why Isley has a washing machine installed in here is completely beyond me, but I gather up the dirty clothes from the floor anyway – Quinn’s chequered leotard, Isley’s green stockings, and look, there’s the remains of my suit. I pick that up too, then, after a moment’s consideration, drop it in the wastebasket.

Then I look through the chest of drawers. Maybe there’s some unwashed clothes in there. Maybe the key to my collar is in there. Who can say.

“What are ya doing, soupsey?” When I hear her squeaky, sing-song voice I freeze. Doing a year’s laundry is preferable to whatever she has in mind now. “Are you playing with Pammy’s undies?”

“No.”

“And jerking off to them?”

“No, I’m not doing that.”

“If I walked in on ya pawing around my panties I’d call the police.”

“I am literally doing your laundry.”

“Oh,” she says, tilting her head back, arch and knowing while still thundering down a completely imaginary path, “‘doing our laundry’, huh? Ya know, there’s words for people like you.”

As petulant as it is, I open my arms, to let all the clothes fall to the floor so I can simply walk away. But Quinn is faster than I’d like, and all of a sudden there she is, under me, catching them.

“Oh,” she says lightly, her eyes flashing with the green of the clothes that fill her vision, and I fear I have dropped fuel on an already blazing fire. “Oh fuck,” she breathes, as she rifles through her armful of silky underthings, “Pammy’s socks…” She draws them out, striped and knee-high as they unfurl. I have never actually seen Isley wearing anything like them.

“Really, socks?”

“You,” she sniffs, “don’t understand what it’s like being in love.” She slips them over her arms like puppets, letting everything else drop to the floor, and presses them to her face in the way I’ve seen her take a smell of a rose. Perhaps it’s the scent that makes her knees give way and send her dropping to the floor, perhaps it’s just the imagined intimacy. “Here, come on, you try,” and I splutter a wordless protest before she has clapped them over my mouth and nose.

It is Isley’s floral aura that chokes me, not the kind of stale taste I might expect from well-worn socks. Lilies and pollen, fresh-cut grass and leaves clattering together in the wind, as they begin to take me drifting away I consider, not for the first time, that Isley is a creature like me, something beyond simply human, she has the power and so it is a matter of the will to use it…

Quinn stretches the sock off her fingers, keeping it held across my face, and kisses me through it. All of a sudden she is close, part of me, while I feel her lips move through this fuzzy prophylactic. With Isley’s essence rubbed off on her face so many times, small wonder she’s this fired up. When I see her again she is reeling back, flushed and pink, devilishly excited. “And, and,” she backs herself onto the bed and bounces on the mattress like a red setter, “let’s put on some pornos as well.”

“Do we have to?”

“Aw, can we? I wanna see some hot gals doing weird shit.”

“I understand the appeal, I just think pornography presents a distorted, unrealistic image of sexuality.”

“Yeah, but if it’s hot enough and it horns me up enough I might have sex with ya. And, and if Pammy catches us maybe she’ll join in. Ya can’t tell me you’re not into that. God, I wish I was in your shoes and had someone who wanted to watch porno with me…”

Of course, you tune it out before too long. When you can see through bedroom walls and hear every orgasmic yelp in the tri-state area, eventually it simply doesn’t matter any more. And it’s not just the human race going at it with the rest of the human race either, since I’m equally aware of it when they watch pornography, which really is a revelation, I feel far too old when I think it but honestly, kids these days, the things they’re into.

Quinn flips on the adult channel, all over-saturated skin tone and slapping noises. For a few minutes, we watch in silence.

“He’s got a tattoo reading ‘Rachel’,” says Quinn eventually, “but the programme information calls her ‘Chloe’.”

“Perhaps they’ve all come to some arrangement,” I suggest.

“It’s putting me off, though. I’d wanna know they really are enjoying it – I mean, I know it’s just a job for them, but come on, that job, it’s like getting a job at the cream cake factory – like, it’s just thrown up too many questions. I think I want backstory in my porn. Some kinda setup. Not the kind where it’s like two hours before the fucking starts, though, but something.”

I look at her with jaded eyes. “So, the idea a participant isn’t enjoying it puts you off?”

“Come on, soupy, I didn’t mean it like that. Ya know, present company excepted and all that.” She playfully runs her fingernails across my chest. Then, the thought dropped as quickly as she picked it up, she starts flipping through channels until she lands on a young woman not wearing much and dancing around in front of the camera. “Aw, see, this is nicer.”

“This also has zero backstory.”

“Zero’s better than that self-contradictory mess last time…” Without much ceremony, she’s started to masturbate, slipping a hand down the front of her underwear and casually beginning to explore. “That one just dragged ya out of it, there’s no awkward sticking point here. Like, ya can make up your own backstory. Maybe she’s all sweet and innocent, or maybe she fucks like a beast. May-maybe she’d like me.” She smirks sideways. “Maybe she’d like you.”

I look at the woman on the screen, not even really at her body, just the fact she’s out, on the beach, happy. Maybe she would like me. It makes me profoundly depressed.

“Come on,” breathes Quinn, “try and tell me this isn’t way hot…” She scrubs at her clitoris, and her face, her pose, gives away that she’s already drawing close to her climax. Then, from outside, we both hear Isley putting her keys on the side. Quinn gasps, nearly chokes, bringing her hand away in shock. Still half-panicked, but with a mischievous grin spreading over her face, she springs off the bed and hides in the closet, tee-hee-heeing all the way.

Isley walks in, and looks down haughtily at me, in a pile of her lacier washing with pornography blaring. “Well well. Rifle through my underwear drawer and get them everywhere and then tie yourself back up, will you? You sick animal. You ape.”

“Yes, it’s a secret power I have.”

She smirks, and clicks off the TV. “Now where can Harley have gotten to? Oh well, never mind, I’d better get undressed.” She puts one foot up on the bed – paying me no mind, actually facing towards the closet – and unclips a stocking before slowly, swayingly, rolling it down her thigh inch by inch. She takes her time about it, glancing eagerly between what she’s doing and the closet door. Eventually, she plucks the stocking off her toes and holds it out at arm’s length, twirls it slightly, and lets it fall to the ground. Then she starts on the other. It’s a good three minutes of her thrusting her hips and treating the nylon as gently as the fuse on a pipe-bomb before she’s done.

Next she fumbles behind her back. She’s very clearly able to get at the clasp on her bra. Nonetheless she looks over her shoulder at me, and when she does the vines unwrap from my wrists, I feel so terribly naked without them, and she asks “Would you mind?”

“I thought you didn’t want me messing with your underwear,” I say dully, rolling myself up off the bed.

“You know I’m only playing.” No, I can’t deny that. I pop the clasp open as quickly as possible and let my hands fall back to my sides, anything to not give her an excuse. She wiggles the straps off her shoulders. When she’s lifting the cups off I turn away. “God, it’s good to let the girls breathe. What a good thing there’s nobody here to see me with my tits out.”

Quinn now audibly laughs in the closet. This may be their weakest pretence yet.

“Since I’m all alone, I may as well just lie in this pile of my own underwear and masturbate thinking about my hot girlfriend.” She descends onto the bedsheets with a soft movement of fabric. I find myself wondering why, if she wants to tease Quinn, she doesn’t simply use me – no, what am I thinking? This might distract them for a while. But the little sighs of pleasure she gives as she fingers herself end up distracting me too.

How is this making me feel this way, after everything? She doesn’t even regard me as fully here. It shows on her face, too, complete abandon as she lies back, closes her eyes and enjoys herself. I cannot turn away, it’s just like her trances. With both hands now cupping her vulva, her breasts are squeezed together between her arms, I feel rude watching, but when I try to move my eyes they just end up on her legs, or her breasts again, or on her face, eyes shut, mouth open, as she starts to moan.

“Oh, I do like spying on Pammy while she gets naked,” Quinn comes right out and says, loudly, she actually cracks the closet doors a bit. Isley gives a big, operatic gasp, then sweeps up to her feet and hauls Quinn out into the light, it was probably meant to be rough and forceful but she’s just ended up holding Quinn’s hand.

“You might have said,” Isley accuses me. I shrug, and, for a second, she smiles. Meanwhile Quinn tweaks out, she wriggles in Isley’s grasp, the sexual energy twisting her from within. “Look at her, something’s got her all worked up. What did you do?”

“He made me put on pornos,” declares Quinn. “He said he wanted to watch something with no plot that was all just fucking.”

“How could you?” Isley makes it sound authentically outraged. Let it wash over you, I tell myself, it doesn’t matter.

“Then he raped me.”

For her to say that, and have the audacity to sound like she means it, it’s like having a finger bent back. “I’d thought better of you,” Isley says to me, not angry, only disappointed.

“You are fully aware this is just today’s deranged fantasy,” I say.

“Don’t ruin it.” Isley follows this aside with “He made you watch pornography, did he?”

“Yeah,” croons Quinn. “It was disgusting.”

“And I suppose that’s what warped your vulnerable brain enough to spy on me while I got undressed.”

“No, that was all me. No, wait, actually he told me ta do it.”

“So what? It takes two to tango.”

“Yeah, but it takes three ta waltz,” and I actually see Quinn fill with misguided confidence as she whips out that line, she spins around in front of Isley to kiss her. Then, I’m too slow to react, they both topple onto the bed and onto me and knock the wind out of me. They’re still devouring each other, but I’m not just the living mattress, they grab at me too in their insane decadence – why would they ever need pornography, anyway?

*

Isley lets her newspaper flop over the breakfast plates, and gets to her feet. “Right, I have to make a move,” she says, jingling her keys. “The governor approved more fracking, so I’m going to make a giant flower appear in his office and kill him with hayfever.”

“Have a good day,” says Quinn with her bleary smile, looking up from her coffee with eyes barely open.

The old instincts kick in. All at once I know how to stop this, because I have to, there is a way and it must be done, and I am the only one who can do it. With an unconvincing movement of my arm and elbow, I bang the table and also spill the milk in my lap. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry!” I cry, standing up with sopping trousers.

“Silly boy,” says Isley fondly.

“And it’s on my shirt, too…” I strip it off. I put on a show, I flaunt and flex every part of my superior torso, and by the time it’s come over my head, now Quinn has reached for Isley’s hip.

“Do ya have ta go, like, straight away?” she wheedles.

“Aww, I do need to be there early,” Isley agonises, tense and torn between two clear paths, although she has already taken Quinn’s hand. “Look, I’ll rattle through that as fast as I can. Promise.”

I grit my teeth with renewed vigour. This can still work. I go to take the damp shirt elsewhere, and then trip artificially over my own feet, fall softly over the table, grab the pitcher of orange juice and splash it across Isley’s front. “Ha! My God, you’re all over the place today,” she tuts, and unbuttons her blouse, and is barely unfastening the third before Quinn is up and all over her, one big long kiss while she too fiddles with those pesky buttons. I sit down and breathe a silent breath.

When Isley’s shirt is off, Quinn gets a hold of it and wrings it out into her mouth, in a way that must be meant to look sexy but just seems completely mad. Isley purrs at that and plants another kiss on Quinn’s damp lips. I’m not quite sure if I was reacting to save a man’s life or to avoid spending another day alone with Quinn, and now, insanely, I regret it, now I have to sit through it as they fawn over each other. Despite everything, despite who they are, I can’t help but be jealous.

“I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can,” Isley vows, visibly weak in the knees, in just her bra. Normally they don’t need this much prompting. What else can I possibly do?

“But – but Doctor Isley, look how attractive Doctor Quinn is looking,” I say, my back to the wall, and the squinting little figure with flyaway morning hair and toast crumbs around her mouth beams up at Isley.

Isley fixes me with a stare – then concedes “First sensible thing you’ve said in days.” Then she turns to Quinn. “So what would you like to do today?” A breath of relief escapes me, despite everything. The governor will have absolutely no idea how close he just came to an uncomfortable death.

“Hmm…alright, I know, I know, let’s play doctors and nurses,” says Quinn,

“Well, there’s two doctors here already, so by process of elimination...” smirks Isley, looking sideways at me.

Quinn comes to stand formally in front of me. “For medical reasons, I’m going to have to examine your dick. For lesions.” We both wince a little when she comes out with that. This isn’t even her area of expertise. She could, presumably, perform some level of first aid, but I don’t think she has any specialised knowledge in sexual health – but then, why does that surprise me? “There is absolutely nothing sexual about this and if you become aroused it’s highly inappropriate.” As she says it she’s so puffed-up and confident I could almost believe it, if it wasn’t for that millisecond glance back at Isley, a look of total silent longing, desperate desire for reassurance, for approval, for love, all of that in one flash of the eyes.

“No,” I sigh, because after all I started all this, “well, it is just an ordinary medical examination.”

Quinn grabs me, the entire package, cupping her hand round underneath. Then she pauses for a moment, and now she’s not simply grabbing at me, now she’s exploring with her fingers, actually examining me. “I don’t wanna alarm ya,” she says, “but I think I’ve found a lump.”

I feel myself start to sweat. All the radiation coming off the green stone – and for this to happen now, while I’m being held prisoner -

“Hold on,” she says, and weighs my other testicle in her hand. “I’ve found another one.”

Isley’s held breath comes bursting out in helpless laughter. “You’re evil.”

Now Quinn takes hold of my penis, no more or less roughly than I’ve come to expect, and starts pulling on it which makes me resign myself, thinking here we go – but then she stops, and sort of takes a step in no direction. For a moment she breathes heavily, and then declares “Oh, it’s giving me the vapahs. I do feel quite faint. Quick, Doctor Isley, I have ta be revived with chest massage.”

“Clear!” says Isley, and grabs Quinn’s breasts. “And, also, I’d better check your fluid levels, for medical reasons.”

“I’m not a fucking car,” says Quinn – but once Isley’s fingers crawl down past her waist the last syllable gets drawn out into a moan. “No, watch out, we’re losing the patient, doctor, you’ll have to operate.”

Isley makes a “Boom-boom!” noise, going back to her invisible defibrillator, and shuffles her hand rapidly about in Quinn’s underwear.

“Oh no – her – her heartbeat’s dangerously erratic-” And so is her breathing, if I was being cruel I’d say so are many things about her. Then her whole body jerks, and she makes the noise of a woman who’s just been hit full in the face with a lemon meringue pie.

Quinn folds up neatly, she only stops when she hangs by her chin from Isley’s shoulder with all power gone from her limbs. Isley looks at me with sheer exuberant delight, one of those times when there’s genuinely no trick to it, when she’s simply so happy she would share it with anyone present.

“Oh, or instead,” Quinn effortlessly returns to her previous level of perk, “we could play sexy gals in prison.” And without a moment’s pause Quinn throws herself at me, the same terrifying strength in her skinny frame that’s done in at least a dozen sworn police officers. “Oh no,” she purrs, looking me in the eye as she locks a leg around my waist, “help, the guard’s trying to take advantage of me.”

“You leave her alone!” Isley declares, it isn’t really a struggle for her to get us apart but she still jabs a knee between my legs. There’s a jolt of pain but no follow-through, it’s mainly for the look of the thing.

“Oh, thank you,” says Quinn, falling into Isley’s arms.

“Now your ass is mine. You’re now my prison bitch, and I’m gonna make you…” Isley’s pseudo-hard look melts in the face of Quinn beaming up at her. “I literally cannot conceive of making you do something.”

“You could rape me in the shower,” suggests Quinn, all sweet light and innocence. “Nah, I know what ya mean though.” She puts her arms out and twirls around, gesturing at the room in its entirety, the hanging plants and the moss on the floor. “How could I ever think that this is a prison? Even pretending?”

An infinity of things I could say to that. You can leave when you want to. You’re not in danger. Of course it’s not a prison for you. But they know, and they don’t care, and it won’t do me any good angling for sympathy, not with these two.

“I know what we can play,” says Quinn, tentative this time, as if she’s worried this won’t be quite the same success as her other ideas.

Naturally, I am tense, at least the others did not involve knocking me around but that could change at any second. But Quinn doesn’t say it out loud, she gets up close to Isley and whispers whatever nightmare it is into her ear. Isley does not respond, she just turns smartly and leaves the room – and then bursts in again, shouting “You burnt the roast again, you bitch!”

“No,” says Quinn, as Isley grabs her hair, “please,” and she does not manage to make it come out even remotely scared. The please sounds flirtatious, the no sounds like an impassioned proposal of marriage.

Isley holds her up – and pauses for a moment, reluctant in the face of a naked come-on. Then she slaps her. Quinn drops to her knees, but it’s only to grasp Isley around her thighs and cover them with kisses.

“And – and the house is untidy,” Isley attempts, as her hand goes seamlessly from gripping Quinn’s hair to stroking it. “And you haven’t dusted, and...do you have any idea how hard you are to abuse?”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn wheedles, drawing out her syllables, rubbing up against Isley’s legs like a cat. “Oh, maybe you could abuse me because of that.” How can she want a reprise of all the horrible things that happened to her? How can she want it so badly, so desperately? Then she cries out, because the vines are taking hold of her ankles, and they pull her head over heels up into the air to let her dangle from the ceiling.

“Yeah,” nods Isley, and gives Quinn a little nudge so she swings. “Now I have you at my mercy, the way I want you.”

“Aw, man, I would always try out some line like that and it never really landed. That’s what this can be, maybe, maybe we have, like, a super-rivalry.”

“So, you’re the girl who’s been poking around and trying to steal my secret documents. You think you can make a fool of me? Ha! Ha ha ha ha-ha!”

“I’ll never tell ya where I hid the secret plans for that, uh, arboretum,” Quinn improvises defiantly. “You’ll never beat it out of me, not in a million years. Not even if ya hit me on the vagina. Try all you want.”

She yelps when Isley’s hand slips inbetween her thighs, but it goes in there gently, and starts merely to touch her.

“F-fuck,” Quinn trails off, swinging gently. “No. Never. I’m not talking. No matter what ya do.”

“Still won’t talk, eh? Perhaps this will loosen your tongue.”

And now Isley does hit her, a swat across her breast instead, no sooner is the yelp of the impact out of her mouth than she chokes out “Harder.” For a second, Isley hesitates, but then she puts her hand across Quinn’s chest again at twice the speed and makes it bounce, only a little but enough to know. “Ooh, yeah, that’s about right...that one felt like it might take my nipple off.”

“Surely you know resistance is quite futile,” says Isley, she looks down her nose at Quinn beaming back up at her, and with barely any change in gear continues “sometimes, when I hit you, you look like the sun coming up.”

“Thank you,” says Quinn simply, then contorts her face and makes a stupid noise, and says “Flattery will get ya nowhere.”

The plantlife on the floor moves again, and along comes a rose, big and pale pink, which Quinn actually tries lamely to sniff as it passes her face and creeps up into Isley’s fingers.

“Oh, no. Not that. Anything but that.”

Isley touches the stem, lets it brush between her fingers, and traces her way between the thorns – then she presses it into the bare flesh of Quinn’s torso. The noise it elicits is half scream and half sigh. But she’s not bleeding, and it makes me less uneasy, the thorns only poke at her, dimple her skin.

“Stop, stop! I’ll talk!” declares Quinn, and Isley barely has time to get the rose away from her before she’s blurted out “I actually have a massive crush on ya and I was only trying ta steal the secret plans ta get ta know ya better.”

Isley stops, and slumps a little. “For fuck’s sake, Harley, how am I meant to torture you after that?”

“Oh, um – ah ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! You fell right into my trap! Behold my master-plan of psychological mind-games which I’m gonna use to…” She frowns in thought as Isley waits, eagerly, for the follow-up – then her face lightens again when she lands on something. “It’s sexual favours. I’m gonna trick ya into having sex with me.”

“No. Surely not. You’ll never get inside my head that way.”

“But, but what if I did this…” And she reaches out for Isley and pines, a high-pitched whimper which surely she would never do seriously – but what even is serious at this point? - she flexes her fingers, grabbing at nothing.

“You – you think your psychological mind games can defeat me?” says Isley as her shoulders slump and her legs shake and she visibly yearns to take Quinn’s hand. “I think I might prefer this to doing it for real. You play the part so much better.”

“I’m scared,” confesses Quinn, still in the same yearning, pining mode, “I’m scared sexy plant mommy is going to put some kind of sex spell on me, to make me want her and wanna do whatever she says…”

“I won’t,” says Isley, and steps closer. “I will never make you do anything you don’t want- I wouldn’t even have thought of the thorns if I hadn’t known it would drive you wild.”

Quinn whimpers again. “But now ya have made me want ya and wanna do whatever you say.” And both women, one standing upright, one hung upside-down, slide their gaze over towards me. I never thought I’d be thinking this, but I really wish I’d just let them kill the governor.

*

“Ngh.” I try to hold back, bringing muscles I usually don’t use into play, while Quinn thrusts violently against me from underneath. If this were a fight she’d be putting up a good one. “Gnr.”

“Keep going,” Isley orders me, her hands on my hips, making me move. “Please her. Make her feel good.”

I could stop still, let her keep pushing fruitlessly – no, I couldn’t. Quinn goes “Ah, ah, ah,” and a dam quietly bursts inside me. As she squeezes down and tries to fit all the arousal into her little body I go off like a firework. Before I’m even done I feel the emptiness, the sense of utter defeat and humiliation.

“Did you just come?” Isley asks as I collapse slightly, a question like barbed wire – then she strokes Quinn’s cheek and says “Understandable, really.”

“Was it too much for you?” says Quinn, and perks her head up and kisses me. “My big strong man.” I did feel big, and I did feel strong, every inch a man while she squealed and yowled beneath me – and then when I came it was with the horrendous realisation that my captors have once again gotten me to be so intimate with them. Quinn kisses me again, and then kisses Isley, and then I don’t know who’s kissing who.

“Isn’t it sexy having power over him?” says Isley, now lying propped up against Quinn, next to me.

“I just like making him come,” she glows in response. “It makes me feel all satisfied.”

“This is exactly what I’ve been trying to get through to you.” She climbs up on top, edging me aside, and I fall freely. My penis slips out of Quinn’s vagina as if it were never there. Her, the satisfied one? And yet on some gut level I know what she means, when I pleasure them I can’t help but feel a little pride in myself.

Chapter Text

On a clear day of blazing sunshine it is windless and still, even in their rooftop garden. Quinn lies flat by the pond, trailing her fingers in the little stream that goes over the edge. Isley has propped herself up against one of the trees, wearing nothing but men’s boxer shorts, and makes me grease her pale, lovely body with sun oil.

I had worried she would taunt me, tease me with my own desire. Instead, as I smear the stuff over her thighs and her belly, she acts as if I am not there – even when I reach her breasts, hesitate, and then plough on, working the oil into the shaded region beneath them.

“Where would you want to go on holiday, given the choice?” Isley calls over, stroking her fingers along a frond’s tiny leaves.

“Here,” Quinn responds cutely.

“Where besides here?”

“Back in bed.”

“And where would you most like to go to eat out?”

“Aw, come on, don’t set me up like that.”

Isley chuckles away, as I rub around her shoulders – then she jerks like she’s had a fingernail ripped out. Quinn has rolled onto her stomach, and is making a daisy chain, plucking them up by their long, thin stems.

“We could go to one of those little islands,” she prattles on, knotting the stems while Isley glowers and grumbles, clutching at her own guts. I can feel her muscles tense up. “And it could be like today, all sun, and we could swim. Oh, perhaps this is trite, but we could go to Lesbos, and then we could be lesbos in Lesbos.”

Quinn finishes her chain, and balances it around her hair. For a moment I think it is over. Then she picks another daisy and all hell breaks loose.

“Can you stop?” demands Isley, she jerks forward all of a sudden, white with rage.

“What? They’re only flowers,” says Quinn, and I can see, on her face, the exact moment she realises this was the wrong answer. She looks down at the creation in her hands, her eyes looking straight into hell.

“Wait,” says Isley weakly, all her fury gone in a second. Quinn breaks, nearly falling over herself as she runs back inside. Isley pads over to where the daisy chain that started all this trouble has fallen. She picks it up, and clutches it to her heart. When she turns toward me she almost jumps, as if she’d forgotten I was here. “Enjoying this?” she snarls.

“No,” I say.

“No, I know. I’m not angry with you. Ah, Christ!” Through her undirected fury she is still covered with sun oil. Did I really have my hands all over her breasts moments ago? And then, to herself, she recollects “She was making a second one…” and clenches her fists. But the fight leeches out of her, and she repeats “Christ,” as she slithers to the floor. Eyes closed, mouth twisted up, trying not to show the emotion.

I sit up, next to her. “You’ve spoken slightly harshly to her. It’s not as if you’ve ruined it.”

“I,” she says, teeth together, “was meant to be better than this.”

You were? No, don’t try saying that – “Do you think that’s why she’s upset, or do you think she’s thinking exactly the same thing? That she should have known better?”

Isley begins to turn her snarl in my direction. Then she says “I’m starting to think you’re not just a pretty face.”

“No, well, while I’m not an academic it did occur to me that the woman who’s clearly still dealing with her bottomless self-hatred might still be dealing with her self-hatred.”

“You dick,” smirks Isley, poking at me. “Never ever say it like that in front of her.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

Isley rolls her eyes, with a bitter little chuckle. “See, you’re acting tough about it, but I don’t think you would anyway.” Yes, maybe I can get a read on Quinn, but everyone can get a read on me. Sometimes I really do wish I could come right out and tell them both to get a grip – yet it’s simply not me.

*

We walk back inside, I’m slightly behind Isley, slightly to one side, I’d tell her it’s to be supportive but it’s mainly so I can dive out of the way. She pulls on a towelling robe, and it’s a relief I can now look at her without feeling rude, or feeling other things.

The bathroom door opens, the black streaks on Quinn’s face are smudged now. She runs over to Isley, without a trace of embarrassment, and clings to her as she says “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“I shoulda known, I shoulda thought.”

“I shouldn’t have been so angry. Normally it doesn’t hurt like that. I think it’s because it was you.” Then Isley brings out the flower crown, and arranges it carefully on top of Quinn’s head, and gives her a weak, faint smile.

Shyly, Quinn confesses “When ya raised your voice, and ya got all stern, my pussy got a little wet.”

“Look, I really don’t want this to be another relationship where fighting is just fuel for the fire. I don’t want that to happen to you again.”

“No, but, maybe, so we’re even, you, you could spank me – or, or just grab hold of me and fuck me.”

“I’m not going to punish you. And I’m definitely not going to force you to have sex with me.” Isley crosses her legs. There was probably a way she could have done that without making her dressing gown slip open and show off her whole thigh. “What’s wrong?” she adds, the picture of innocence as Quinn hyperventilates.

“You’re not gonna tempt me,” insists Quinn, folding her arms, eyes skating around the room as she tries to look anywhere else. “I got more self-control than that.”

“No, I’m sure you do.” And Isley twitches open her dressing gown – not fully open, just slightly, exposing a modicum more of her chest. It’s barely even a movement, and everyone in this room knows that Quinn has seen it all before. Still, this is enough to make her self-control give way completely, and she leaps on Isley with such mad aggression for a second it does seem like a fight. But no, her touch is tender, and her mouth sucks on Isley’s neck.

When Quinn is gasping for breath and cannot possibly kiss any longer, recumbent in Isley’s clutches, in a tiny voice she suggests “Let’s never fight again.”

Isley sighs as she curls in tighter. “We may well fight again. We may have moments of thoughtlessness that infuriate the other.” Quinn looks up at her in mute appeal, and she concludes “But it won’t stop me loving you.”

Quinn immediately buries her face in Isley’s breasts, although this time I think it is not just an explosion of lust. Then she cranes her neck up, and whispers in Isley’s ear through all those copper curls, she stays there for some time, it must be very involved.

“Really?” says Isley, genuinely reluctant. “Right now?”

“The worst ya possibly can.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can take it,” nods Quinn, setting her shoulders.

“I’ll have to put it on a bit.” I shudder to think what it is that worries them like this. Then Isley straightens up and says “You’re flat” – and so is her voice as she speaks the words, emotionless and cold. “See, look at these.” She gives Quinn’s chest both a grope and a push. “There’s nothing to them.”

“You’re right,” says Quinn, her back is to me but I hear her looking at the floor.

“And you made about the worst romantic decision possible. I mean, what did you even see in – like a sorority girl who’s only ever even heard of fathers, and who lost a bet. If you went with him you’d go with a dead dog with a rake jammed through it.”

“Yeah, not unfair,” Quinn trembles.

“And,” Isley swallows, almost imperceptibly, “psychiatry is a stupid discipline anyway. You’d be the first to admit you can only help people who want to be helped. There’s nothing quantitative about it, it’s like playing fucking darts. No, I know what it is, it’s you living out a fantasy of being a talk-show host. Actually wanting to hear people drone on about all their petty personal whining.” Quinn is silent now. Isley visibly steels herself, and continues “Imagine wanting to become a talk-show host. You might as well just slap your ancestors in the face, and tell them to turn back because they’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Quinn seems to gather herself, and looks up. “And none of that stops ya loving me?”

Isley breaks down a little, she sighs and smiles and says “Of course not.”

Quinn looks back at me, behind her, gives me a soft kick with her heel, and says “Lift me up.” I get her under her arms and hoist her up to look Isley in the eye, and they kiss like they mean it.

When they break apart Isley holds up a shivering hand. “That was fucking intense...now do me, I think I deserve it after that. Come on, you must have one.”

Quinn glances at the floor again, and admits “Sometimes, I find little red hairs in my teeth-” which sets Isley off laughing, she puts one hand behind Quinn’s back to draw her in, and the other behind my back, maybe simply because I’m there.

“You know I wouldn’t have said that, not if you hadn’t asked.”

“I guess, if those are the worst things ya can think of, I’m doing alright.” She nuzzles into Isley’s shoulder, so it is only me who sees Isley’s expression of concern. “Ya really think it’s all navel-gazing?”

“Well, yes, but I’m no fucking good at it, so I would, wouldn’t I.”

“I don’t know, if ya ever gave it a serious go...although, maybe before that, um, when you called me flat and sort of gave me one of these,” Quinn pushes Isley’s chest in a way which could never do anyone the slightest harm, “that really worked for me.”

“I don’t really think there’s nothing to them,” says Isley, one hand on Quinn’s breast making her eyes fuzz over as she leans like a reed into it, and then Isley’s grip turns painful and she intones “You stupid little-titty slut.”

Quinn opens her mouth, it sounds as if she’s injured, but the words she speaks are “Fuck, yes, keep shaming me.”

Isley grins, then tells me “Come on, you get in on this too. I know it’s not really your speciality, but – look how much Harley’s enjoying it.”

I lean in a little, then open my mouth a few times as I realise I have no idea what to do here. Finally I land on “Look how much bigger Doctor Isley’s breasts are than yours” in a way that makes it sound a completely neutral thing.

“Yes they are,” whines Quinn, not anywhere near neutral about it. And Isley comes in closer, putting her chest against Quinn’s, so that her breasts – the difference is, really, quite ridiculous now I see it played out – completely cover Quinn’s.

“What you do mean, her breasts?” asks Isley in loud rhetorical fashion while Quinn looks as if she might physically melt any moment. “What breasts, I certainly can’t see them. Where are they?” And Quinn splutters like a backfiring sedan, unable to put her frustration into words, face contorted into a heavily lined cartoon of distress. Isley looks down at her as if she is the only woman in the world.

After they are done, and Quinn sleeps a light careless sleep in Isley’s arms, Isley looks at me and asks “Do you feel it too? Perhaps you don’t have all the sensation, but when someone is in pain, when someone screams, do you hear it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you ever save them all?”

“Of course not.”

She stares at the ceiling, into some private nightmare world, and she clutches Quinn all the tighter.

*

Hardly any point having a specific laundry day here, I think to myself as I gather up their clothes, because they do get through so many and will just leave them lying where they fall. It’s not even wear and tear, they go too fast for that, usually it’s stains of some sort where something has splashed on them, whether it’s from outside or inside. I pick up one of Quinn’s clown suits, and the chest falls open, graphic, violent tears, as if she genuinely was shot through the heart.

As if I’ve walked over her grave, it’s then I hear her voice, just outside, saying “Do it for me.”

“I’m not sure,” and the hesitation, the vulnerability, the lack of cold command, for a moment I don’t quite place the other voice as Isley’s.

“I promise you’ll like it.”

“Yeah, I, I know a lot of people do, the issue is that it rubs up against a lot of hard moral boundaries...which, alright, that is a bit of a thrill.”

“Just try it. Open your mouth.”

“I’m not sure...but alright.”

I cannot smash bodily through the door to confront them. But I can open it with some degree of emphasis, and when I do stamp out into their private garden they look round immediately, faces full of the old fear, the fear they might have shown if I was here at full power. Quinn is still lying alongside Isley, dabbing a fat red strawberry around the corner of her mouth. The fruit actually falls from Quinn’s fingers as I take in the scene and realise exactly how I’ve gone wrong.

“False alarm,” I manage, and turn to leave.

“Were you worried?” Quinn could make that mocking so easily, but she hasn’t – but still, Isley blocks off the door, seven brambles across it, it’s as if they’re operating as one. So I go to face them again, hardly expecting praise, just resigned to whatever happens now. “He got worried because he heard me getting all date-rapey with ya.”

“Oh, you weren’t really,” shrugs Isley at her – and then turns to me with “You were ready to jump in here?”

“I had no idea it was all over you trying fruit,” I clarify, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“It was very considerate of you,” she croons, the same wry warmth as when Quinn sees a policeman eating a hot dog and busts a pun.

“Maybe,” says Quinn, sitting up now, the manic grin making itself known, “he wants the strawberry instead.”

“Yes, come on, come sit with us, take this bullet for me.” I sit down on the grass opposite them, against them, without really understanding why since it’s not as if that will stop them. But this way, I might even get a strawberry. “I don’t think it was working. I couldn’t really taste it.”

“Sure ya couldn’t. Ya gotta bite into it first.”

“Really,” muses Isley, eyebrows up.

“It’s like – don’t make that face, come on – ya bite into it, and it’s all sweet, and juicy, and this isn’t all some hideous euphemism, I mean it,” Quinn has the strawberry in her hand again, and presses it to Isley’s mouth, and as she realises she’s using more force than she should need and glances between us, she draws back a little and says “Ya don’t have ta.”

Isley considers a moment, then lunges, like a snake, and snaps off half the strawberry with her teeth. Quinn yelps and snatches her hand back, as if she was in any serious danger. Isley chews, and her eyes open up wide, the way she might look beholding a whole new world.

“I woulda thought, I don’t know, I had had it in my head you’d be pigging out on fuckpiles of fruit the whole time,” says Quinn, nibbling at the remnants around the stalk in her fingers, while Isley stuffs another berry into her mouth and crushes it.

“I aw-wayf-” Isley begins, and then swallows, “I always thought eating fruit was a bit too much like collaborating. Take these, they’ve been domesticated over many years in basically the same way as a grossly distended battery hen, they’re a product of human interference.”

“I mean, yeah,” nods Quinn, a little trickle of red running from the corner of her mouth. “You’re not wrong, they’re the end result of all society’s horrible business, they’re what we’ve somehow ended up with. But so are you. So am I.” She lets that hang in the air for a moment before the topper of “And ya like the way I taste.”

“You really are the most precious creature in the whole world. Come on, give me another.” When Quinn rolls over onto her front to reach for the punnet, Isley looks at her bottom, and makes the face of a woman with absolutely no problems. “And there’s the sweetest plum of all.”

“Really? Where?” Quinn springs up to her hands and knees, like a prairie vole that’s detected danger, but all her worries vanish too when Isley laughs and grabs hold of her and bundles her back into their embrace. Quinn giggles as Isley kisses her on the cheek and leaves the faintest red mark at the point of impact, what the ghost of lipstick might look like.

*

I am out in the corridor, dusting the corpseflowers, this pointless manual work all I have left, when Isley staggers in – and for a second I wonder why she went out without her clothes, but it is only green sportswear. She is tired, sweaty, her hair sticks to her forehead, and both her knees are bloodied.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I-” She leans on the wall for a second, fighting to get her breath back. “I was out for a run, and tripped over where the roots have split the sidewalk.” I picture the crazy paving around the base of her tower, it’s probably quite easy to do. “Now you’re thinking I’ve sown the seeds of my own destruction, haven’t you?”

“I thought nothing of the kind.”

“Yeah, well, I was.” When she moves, it’s slow, jerky, and laboured, she’s clearly in some pain. “Go and get me the first aid kit.”

Not even out of a desire to get away from her, I turn to obey. Then the door opens, and Quinn shrieks “Pammy!” in shock, as if it’s her who’s been hurt. She pushes me aside, even though I wasn’t in the way, and rushes to Isley’s aid.

“I’m – I’m alright,” says Isley limply, as Quinn gets under her arm to support her – then Quinn changes her mind, and, with a great yelp of surprise from Isley, lifts the taller woman in her arms. Shuffling along, one foot at a time, the veins standing out in her neck, Quinn manages to carry Isley into the bedroom and plop her gently down on the bed.

“Lemme kiss ya better,” says Quinn – now also flushed – and starts with Isley’s forehead before going for her knees. When she comes back up I’m expecting her to simply have red lips, instead there’s a smear of blood across them, like she’s taken a bite of a major artery.

“They – there’s probably grit on there,” says Isley, breathless, flustered again. I have the first aid box in my hands, and with a worryingly expert hand, Quinn dips into it without looking and gently wipes her knees off with clean cotton.

“It’s okay,” Quinn says, all soothing, “ya only skinned them a bit.”

“How am I skinning my knees at this point in my life?” declares Isley, distressed, clutching the bedclothes.

Something hardens in Quinn’s face, and she snaps at me “Soak a piece of cotton wool in TCP, stat!” I do, used to taking orders by now, and hand it over. She applies it to Isley’s scraped skin as if she’s defusing a bomb.

“It’s – ow! - it’s alright, I might just be shuffling for a day or two.”

“No, damn it! I’m not gonna lose ya!” Quinn pounds the bed with one little fist, then stands over Isley and pushes down on her chest, trying to revive a woman who is completely aware and conscious.

Obviously I was expecting her hands to be trying to resuscitate Isley’s breasts, but no, she’s over the sternum, she’s doing it properly or at least going through the motions. Then with surgical precision she pinches Isley’s nose, tips her head back, and gives her mouth-to-mouth that only looks to involve a little bit of tongue. Isley catches my eye through Quinn’s flustered hair, looking, for once, completely out of her depth.

“You’re not fucking dying on me, do you hear? I love you! I love you!” For a moment she collapses, distraught, over Isley’s body, then thumps at her chest again.

Isley, her eyes still open, gives a forced cough and takes a huge breath. “Where am I?” she asks sleepily. Quinn gives a great gasp of delight and relief, and throws her arms around Isley’s neck. “Fuck, that was intense.”

“It’s seeing your blood,” says Quinn, in similarly confessional tones. “It does things ta me. If it hadn’t had been an accident, if someone tripped ya or something, I’d’a gone out and broken their...I wanna say their spine.” There’s that other side.

“God, I’m a mess,” breathes Isley. “I mean, you’re always so worried about being sweaty, but – look at me.” Her skin shines, dark rings of perspiration are radiating out from under her arms into the cloth of her sports bra. And maybe I could have had a moment of pathos there, if she wasn’t looking up at Quinn with an expectant little smile.

Quinn leans over her once more, and swipes a finger across her forehead, through her film of sweat – then pops that finger into her own mouth to sample it. “Mm – I’m not sure. I’ll need to try it again.” And she falls forward into Isley’s armpit. Isley’s face goes through all sorts of different shades, first the shock, then enjoying it, then the pride that her body is being enjoyed, and before long an expression of alarm since Quinn’s been down there a long time.

“Harley,” she says, shifting her body side to side to shake Quinn slightly – but Quinn has rooted herself in place, face buried and arms locked around Isley’s middle. “Harley!” And suddenly Isley looks to me, scared – and then Quinn lifts her head as if she’s bursting out from underwater, taking a massive, face-flushed breath, a gasp as if she was on the brink of death.

“Oh my God,” she wavers, then turns to me and says “You have got to try this.”

When she grabs my head I don’t even resist, it’s not the first time I’ve had my face pressed violently into Isley’s pillowy body – and, yes, she tastes the way the sweetest flowers smell, I can already feel the pheromones tingling through my blood. Quickly I begin to drift off into a waking dream, the one where I am not trapped in their mad sex festival, where I can go where I want and I’m not bound by endless duty…

It is my lungs screaming that snaps me out of it, and I resurface with the same ungainly gulp of air as Quinn, who’s crawled around onto Isley’s other side, licking at her skin. “I wanna crawl up in your pits,” she clarifies, still catching her breath, “an’ drown there.”

“You couldn’t drown there,” scoffs Isley, as she rests her hands behind her head to give Quinn better access.

“But I can try. Oh my God, I feel dizzy...” Then Quinn fixes me with quite a stern gaze, over Isley’s lightly heaving breasts, points to the cleft where all the muscles of Isley’s arm and shoulder and chest curve inwards, and explains in a completely serious voice “This is where Pammy stores the love.”

“There’s some in this bit, I can promise you,” Isley claims as she spreads her legs and gestures to her vagina with her eyes.

“Tell her how good she tastes,” Quinn insists.

No way out. No reason to lie. “You have a very pleasant taste and smell,” I tell Isley, who simpers slightly in accepting the compliment.

Quinn takes hold of her chin to steal her attention, and freely declares “I wanna fucking bottle your sweat so I can sip it through the day” – and then they both turn their gaze at me.

I look between them. “I’m not going to compete,” I say. “You’re the ones with an emotional bond and – aaaaangh,” because now Quinn has prompted me by squeezing my testicles too hard, “it could be sold as, as perfume, and probably be successful.”

“Perfume?” Isley asks Quinn, yes, how’s she going to top that one? How can she possibly do that?

“Lubrication,” says Quinn, thinking hard, “for – for the moving parts of a time machine, you’re, like, the secret ingredient. Of the time machine.”

“A time machine,” recounts Isley.

“Top secret ingredient, that has ta be kept in secret mountain bases an’ bunkers an’ things, because it’s so precious, holy fucking shit I could live off of you,” and Quinn goes in again with a smrrrrp. “I want you ta water me like a window box.”

As Isley cracks up I try to calculate, is this all just Isley’s pheromones and general vegetable magnetism?

“I don’t understand how,” Quinn takes another thirsty lick, looks as if she’ll finish the sentence, then has another long suck that makes Isley laugh in a different way, “anyone would ever wanna bang anyone else but you.”

Isley shifts in place, to loom a little way over her girlfriend. “Because they’re a little sweetie-pie who says the nicest things, and who means it.”

Quinn is breathless for a moment. Then she pushes Isley back down on the bed, grabs her arm like a control column, and mounts the side of her torso – groin against armpit. I’m all too familiar with the sight of them tribadising each other by now, and Quinn is going through all the same motions, only this time up against her new favourite part of Isley’s body, not her vagina. Isley looks over to me, me of all people, in shock and what could almost be distress.

But no, it’s not really, any trace of displacement starts to melt when Quinn makes a little “hmph” sound of effort with every thrust of her body. Isley’s startled, fascinated gaze turns hooded and lusty, she doesn’t simply start to enjoy it, it is as if she was the one to ask for this in the first place. It is not a huge surprise when Quinn actually gets off from this display, her strangled cry of lust before she trickles down off Isley’s body and onto the floor – then springs upright again like a bell’s rung somewhere.

“Now, you,” Quinn orders me, hazily directing traffic as Isley reclines, hands behind her head, to see what happens next, “make me take it. Make me love her there.” She has already taken my hand in hers, brought it sweeping up around her face and round behind, my fingers in her hair. And she transposes herself down onto her hands and knees, poised over Isley’s exposed underarm. From there, it would seem rude not to, I drive her forward. She flattens out as if she has tasted true bliss. Under her mouth, Isley relaxes too – happy this is happening, or happy Quinn is enjoying it so much? Perhaps the distinction means less to her. “You’re so sweet.”

“Harley,” Isley croons with a little giggle.

“Nah, I mean literally. I’m amazed I didn’t hafta fight my way through a horde of bees down here.” Isley’s affectionate amusement turns into a full belly laugh. “But, no, seriously, you’re the one who’s hurt, an’ still you’re being all nice ta me, an’ your feet must be sore,” says Quinn dreamily – and suddenly, hard as steel, tells me “you, slave boy, make her feet feel better.”

And I might be more reluctant, if it wasn’t Isley. Her feet are wreathed in the same floral atmosphere, I feel as hazy as Quinn’s mad arousal. So I work my thumbs into her sole, rubbing aimlessly. To be taken prisoner by a supervillain and made to massage their feet is of course a dead giveaway I have failed in my role, but her skin is so soft.

“Yeah,” nods Quinn, tucking herself in next to Isley. “Does that feel degrading? Is it putting you in your place, being made to rub her feet? I bet it’s…” Then she turns non-verbal and turns to Isley, whimpering and plucking at her, begging something without words.

“Go on,” says Isley, with a weary smile, “you get down there too.” Moving more like a cat or excitable dog, Quinn springs from the bed and pivots around, defying gravity to end up next to me working Isley’s other foot.

“Oh my God,” rambles Quinn as she twines her fingers into Isley’s toes, “my hot sexy girlfriend is making me rub her feet.” The green skin is so irresistible to her that she forgoes her hands to caress it with her mouth, kissing and sucking like she’s got a popsicle – and it has the right garish colour, but it’s so much warmer. “So many li’l piggies, I don’t know which I like best, I’m gonna have ta try them all…”

One, and even two, and perhaps fully three she can fit between her lips in a reasonable manner. Then she draws back, and strikes like a snake, now the balls of Isley’s foot are in past her mouth and her cheeks bloat out as she tries to keep it all in there. She gives an “Mmph!” of protest as if it is stuck there, stored for the winter. Her little face is stretched wider than the point of sense, I can’t help myself, I laugh, Isley laughs too, and Quinn looks at us with a pathetic winsome expression over the foot in her mouth that actually makes me feel a little guilty.

“’on’ may fuh ov me,” she protests, I think.

“I would never,” intones Isley, as she sits up to touch Quinn’s alarmingly distended cheek. This is clearly enough contrition, because while Isley’s foot does come free of Quinn’s mouth, the tongue stays firmly on it, exploring around the sole. Isley giggles and says “Harley, you’re tickling.”

And then Quinn lets loose one of her choicer expressions, where her eyebrows flash and her hair seems to stand on end and she grins like a devil. Her little fingers dance around Isley’s toes, making the woman on the bed scream with panicked laughter and thrash her legs around, I narrowly dodge what would have been a vicious kick to the face – then all the undergrowth comes alive, shaking stormily under me, and I am grabbed roughly around the midsection.

This time I cry out, and so does Quinn, as we hurtle up off the ground and slam against the ceiling. It’s the vines, tight around my stomach. Far below Isley looks up at us, face full of fright.

“Oh my God,” she bursts out, “I’m so sorry.” She gently lowers us back to earth as she herself levers her way off the bed, stiff-legged but hardly showing her own pain. The plant fibre around me seems almost hesitant as it sets me back on my feet, it handles me as if I’m made of glass. “That – that was a fight-or-flight thing, it’s a reflex.”

“It’s fine,” shrugs Quinn, as her bare skin spirals out from beneath the vines, and adds merrily “Made me jump!” Isley takes her in her arms, and for a split second, Quinn winces, something anyone might have missed, and then we see the gruesome purple bruise spreading around the side of her chest.

“Jesus Christ,” says Isley, her face falls and turns grey.

“It – it was an accident, it’s okay,” says Quinn, vaguely patting Isley’s side – and then looks over to me, panicked. I have nothing to add. Of the two of them I’ve never seen Isley this rattled. “It doesn’t even hurt that bad.”

“It looks so…” Isley swallows. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am. I promise.” But Isley isn’t even focused on this.

“This is the one thing I’d never wanted to happen.” Isley is stiff saying it, not because she doesn’t mean it but because she’s all too clearly trying to hold everything together. I edge my way towards the door. It doesn’t seem quite gentlemanly to pick now to try and escape, but I don’t want to be anywhere near them when this comes to a head. “I can’t-” And here she tries to pull back, but Quinn won’t let her.

“It was an accident,” says Quinn, firmly. Isley screws her face up and turns away. “You do not need ta feel bad...an’ what’s more, I might ask ya ta do it again sometime.”

And then, with different air, different intonation, Isley says “I am sorry” again, and this time she’s looking Quinn in the eyes. “I shouldn’t have freaked out like that. It’s just, seeing you hurt...I think it might be another reflex.”

“You’re too sweet.”

“I wish I had the faults you ascribe to me.”

“That’s how ya always make me feel,” and as Quinn purrs that one out I breathe again. It’s like sharing a room with nitro and glycerine, without even the certainty of how they’ll react when rubbed vigorously together. Then Quinn takes Isley’s hand and brings it to the bruise, gentle as anything, the contact still enough to make her go “Ah-!”

“Harley,” Isley chides her, not quite able to stop herself from smiling.

“Ya don’t have to be so worried,” says Quinn, and as she works Isley’s hand over the purple skin she winces around her smile, “but I do kinda like that you were. C’mon, your knees must hurt, come on, sit down.” She arranges Isley back on the bed, where they know each other best. “What if we said, occasionally, because we love each other, that sometimes in the heat ‘a passion we play a li’l too rough?”

“It just feels like dangerous ground.”

“Yeah, I know, my track record of knowing what is and isn’t that isn’t the best. I know that. But I know that now, it’s different. With you.”

“Oh God,” the words catch in Isley’s throat, she fans herself as if she cannot bear it, now there are actually tears in her eyes. “God, this is stupid, it’s – y-you’re the one that’s hurt.”

Quinn kisses her gently on the chest. “It’s alright. I’ve got ya.”

And Isley does laugh, it’s no zinger but then it’s not the sighed laugh of Quinn’s mouldy old one-liners, this one’s a laugh of relief, of everything going back to normal.

*

While Isley and Quinn watch a prestige crime drama, I experience the blessed relief of cleaning the bathroom, just me and a couple of drippy taps. Finally, peace, safety, or as near as I’m likely to get any time soon. Even the simple pride of putting a decent shine on the showerhead is a haven.

Quinn runs into the room and tackles me. My head bangs against the tile. I brace myself for what she’ll do next until I see she’s crying, crying her eyes out, as she buries her face in my chest.

“What’s wrong?” I say, after preparing myself mentally.

She takes a deep breath, and looks up at me with bloodshot eyes. “The show has this therapist character, and-” then she breaks down again. Out of her tearful incoherence, I hear her admit “I want my mommy.” And somehow it really is no different, to when I have borne the child from the burning building, or from the path of the runaway truck, the distress is somehow innocent so all I can do is comfort. “I’m sorry,” she says eventually, wiping the tears on the back of her hand, “you don’t wanna hear this, it’s not like you’re here for the emotional labour.”

“That’s hardly up to me.”

“Oh, alright. Um, there’s the therapist and the mobster, and they’re hot for each other, but she can keep him in check. And, it’s, it’s all like what I obviously shoulda done on like ten, twenty separate occasions but didn’t.” Just from saying the words, she’s hyperventilating, not quite full-blown panic but not far off either.

“I understand how that must be upsetting.” And even though this is something she should absolutely be discussing with her girlfriend rather than her captive I do hold her, she’s given me little choice of course, in this moment I don’t have a lot of choice. She hugs me like she’s trying to throttle the life out of my chest. Then after a long, long moment, she takes my hand and leads me back out of the safe little nook I thought I’d found.

Isley is there to greet her. “What’s wrong? We don’t have to carry on, if you don’t want.” Quinn continues to sob, and Isley wraps her arms around her like a cloak. “I can’t make it better if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

But Quinn still cannot quite find the words, so I supply “Doctor Quinn found an element of the show upsetting.”

“Yes, I get it. It’s the therapist character, right? Clearly not a patch on you.” It’s sincere. I can tell it’s sincere, but in Isley’s wry tones it does not sound remotely like it. And from where Isley is, she cannot see on Quinn’s face, that this isn’t quite their usual vulgar fantasy but actually pissing her off – so when Isley keeps going Quinn swivels slightly and cries out a half-formed swear and shoves her back with a forearm.

Immediately Quinn panics, pleading “Oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” as if Isley is kneeling before her, rather than just slightly flustered while standing the same old almost-a-head taller. “I didn’t mean to, something just snapped-”

“It’s fine,” shrugs Isley. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were taking it like that.”

“Don’t,” says Quinn, still so gut-wrenchingly remorseful but now building a fury with it, “do not apologise, you do not need ta apologise, you have done nothing wrong.”

“I went too far, I…” Isley stumbles on her words, a little, and reaches out to take Quinn’s arm, the arm that pushed her, and Quinn snatches it away as if it is sacreligious and forsaken.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Quinn trembles, managing to look Isley in the eye as she does – then loses her will completely. She makes to retreat into the corner, but gets lost partway there and ends up slumped against the side of the dresser.

“Harley, listen to me. I’ve been around the block enough to know the difference between a moment of madness and frustration, and actual abuse. Look at it this way, if I had thought for a second I was in real physical danger, I would have just done this.”

And like all the spears of the angels, vines lash from every corner of the room, they bind Quinn at her wrists and ankles and spreadeagle her in midair, which seems to calm her down a bit.

“You see?”

“I crossed a line,” Quinn insists.

“Harley, the amount I’ve slapped you around recently, part of me’s been feeling like I deserve for you to – oh, God, that’s probably the wrong thing to say right now. But, really, it is a bit like-” she prods Quinn, who bounces slightly within the vines “-now we’re even.” There it is, the sign-off, the capper, I can only see part of that smuttily seductive smile but even I feel a bit flirted with after that.

“Part of me did think,” says Quinn, cautiously, “like, immediately think, that maybe, it might make it okay, if you got even with me.”

“I will not do that,” says Isley stoutly. “I will not engage in tit-for-tat retaliation – oh, for God’s sake,” because of course the phrase tit-for-tat has set Quinn off into a helpless fit of giggles. “The only reason I will strike you is because it drives you wild with lust.”

“I oughta do a penance for ya,” insists Quinn with some desperation, “at least.”

With a twitch of Isley’s hand, the vines retreat, and set Quinn down on her feet. “Stand up straight. Look into my eyes.” She holds Quinn’s jaw in her hand for a second, as if evaluating her – and then kisses her, on the mouth, not even with the kind of force behind it I’ve come to expect from them, I don’t know if it even puts her under. “Do you feel penitent?”

“Always,” breathes Quinn, without thinking, as she dangles from Isley’s hand.

“I forgive you,” says Isley, and it makes Quinn’s lip tremble.

“This is totally,” Quinn muses dreamily, “the textbook dynamic a’ domestic violence as explosion of passion followed by the loved-up rush of reconciliation.” And she rubs her nose cutely against Isley’s.

Isley’s mouth twists. “You,” she tries to contain the laughter, “are awful. The sheer depths of – you know, sometimes I feel like a law-abiding botanist next to you.”

Chapter Text

“You can come in me,” Quinn says, sweetly, too het up and flushed up inside herself to be trying anything now, “You are allowed.” The cords pop out in my neck, I try and bite it all down, but despite myself I do come, giving in, all my wild thrashing effort for nothing. I lie shaken and spent and she rolls off my body with a breath, perfectly cool and relaxed. “That was nice,” she says, nuzzling into my neck. “I hope you liked it too...it seemed like ya did at the end.” And despite the vicious, knowing grin, I think she means it.

Then she takes hold of my chin, and I flinch, half-expecting another attack. But instead, she waggles my jaw, and in an absurd put-on deep voice that doesn’t sound anything like me she chirps out “Thank you Harley, but I only wanna please you and give you the biggest, hottest loads.”

Herself again, she replies “Aw, well aren’t you sweet.”

I say nothing, merely try to give her a withering look. But there again, if anyone withers here it is me, taken captive and reduced to a bizarre sex puppet. She doesn’t particularly react, lying on her side, an arm across my chest, as if what we just did was anything like, anywhere near, an ordinary act of lovemaking.

“Would ya, um…” She seems coy now, coyer, at least, than the usual diet of using my sex organs as playthings, and I try to conceal the icy ball of fear this forms in my gut. “Would ya tell me ya love me?”

That I genuinely hadn’t expected. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

Her features turn flat. “Did I stutter?”

“You’re in a…vaguely committed relationship with Doctor Isley. Don’t you think this would be, well, would cause problems?”

“Aw, come on. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s all just pretend, you get that. I just wanna feel cared for.” Now her eyes brim with tears. “Would ya do that for me? Please?”

“Do you not feel cared for?” I can’t see why. Not everyone has a gorgeous redhead sweep them off their feet and take them away to a room full of roses. “Look, even as one of your – one of your games,” she grins at that, and we’re probably both thinking of a different instance of her hitting me, “you’re not long out of an abusive relationship. A long-term abusive relationship, that I know has screwed you up in a lot of ways. I just think that playing around with a serious emotion like love wouldn’t be good. For any of us.”

She sighs a little. “Come on, supesy, I can tell the difference between reality and the fun stuff. And – I don’t wanna tell Pammy you were being disobedient.”

“Equally, I could tell her I didn’t want to move in on her girlfriend.”

Quinn laughs at that. “She’ll understand. Matter of fact, I think she wants me ta know that I’m desirable.” Hazily, I ponder how that does seem to be what’s driving a lot of Isley’s actions. “Go on, just say it. It doesn’t have ta mean anything. Just make me feel good? Please? Please please please?”

Body slumped, hoping vain hope this might make her stop, I mouth the words “I love you.” The effect is immediate – Quinn sits up in bed, and gasps loudly, with an expression of genuine horror.

“But ya know I can’t love ya back! I’m with Pammy, it wouldn’t be right! Oh no, and now this is gonna ruin our beautiful friendship!” She flounces, uncertainly, from side to side, trying to suppress her obvious smirk. “Would we run away together? Would we live on the road, with nothing but our love ta sustain us?”

“No.”

She crosses her arms and pouts. “And ya said ya loved me. Are ya just gonna toy with my vulnerable heart? Have ya no decency?”

“I honestly can’t tell where the fantasy begins and ends with you.”

This actually does give her pause, and she settles back down, lying against the headboard next to me. “You sure can kill the mood,” she complains, but her heart isn’t in it.

If I can actually put her off, this is huge. Maybe she’ll get Isley to cut me loose.

“Not that I give a shit,” she says suddenly, as if returning to some established point, “but ya know that you’re safe in all this too, right? Or at least, ya know, in no real danger.”

“It does not feel remotely like that.”

“Oh, come on. If we wanted ta kill ya we’d’a done it already,” she says, with a lounging swing of her hand. “Why are ya being so serious?”

“What is it you want me for? I mean, really? You and Isley seem particularly happy with each other.” I’m throwing it at the wall, I’m pissing in the wind.

Still, Quinn dips her head to think. “Sometimes ya can’t have fish, so ya have beef instead, ya know?” Then she does the half-smile that means she’s thought of a capper. “And, I guess, ya might call this whole arrangement surf’n’turf.”

Yes, that’s right. I’m turf, then, or at least some kind of meat. I’ve been feeling guilty about simply having it all done to me, with Diana out there, and she acts as if... “Sex is – is sex. I mean, you’re a psychiatrist, it’s meant to be about love, not make a person something to be consumed. Don’t you think that’s exactly the way your ex-boyfriend thought about-”

She hits me. Hard and immediate, her palm across my jaw. It’s not really as if I hadn’t expected it. For a moment she breathes hard, she takes a little look at her hand, still out in front of her. Then she says, with great caution, “So, that was out of line, what I did, but we both know you were too.”

“You have to realise this isn’t healthy.”

“Part of it is – I mean, this is awful to you – that I don’t wanna believe every man is like that. And I know that’s petty and prejudiced, but...I think this is good for me. I think you’re good for me.” And what leaps into my mind, ready to fire back with, is well, in that case maybe I shouldn’t be good for you...but I can’t do it. “If ya want, we can do what you want for a bit.”

“What I want?”

“Sure.”

“Take the collar off and let me go.”

She gives me a sad smile. Yes, still every chance she’ll go after my guts if I push too far. No need for an answer there.

“Can we just, have a break?”

At that she jumps slightly, surprised, lifting her hands off my chest and hip. “From what?”

“From...this.”

“Well, alright. If that’s what ya want. It feels strange, though.”

So I sit in an armchair in the corner and read a book, a travelogue of Australasia, over a glass of water. There’s nothing else I can do and still it feels like a slice of freedom. Quinn rattles about in the background, she asks “Do ya mind?” before she flips on the TV, and turns the volume right down.

The book’s a decent hardback. What if I got her over the head with it? Would I be able to run? Right now, with her lying tiny on that big bed, distracted, the idea seems faintly ugly. Besides, even if that works, there’s still all the plantlife to contend with – and I can practically see it, me struggling with a door rooted shut, and then I hear her coming up behind me, no, let’s not tempt fate.

She’s shifting, uncomfortable. I think perhaps she needs the bathroom. But then she walks over to me, and says “I am trying so hard not ta jump on ya.”

“You did say-”

“I know, I know! Aw, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to snap. I just, ya know when ya get all – ya want something? I just feel so empty.”

I’m not going to feel sympathy for that. Not the way she’s said it, anyway. She breaks away and strides about the room, swinging her limbs, as if trying to exorcise some recurrent thought. With mad, frenetic energy she does pull-ups on the doorframe, she squats, she lunges, and yet she keeps looking back over at me, and every time she does I panic slightly and look back at the book. Apparently in Queensland it’s eighty degrees in the shade and everything is poisonous. How I envy them.

I turn a page, and jump when her eyes loom into view over the top of the book. “Aw, come on, please? What if I tempt ya? I can do a sexy dance.” She jigs from one foot to the other, to no known tune. I suppose I look a bit perplexed, because she soon gives up, disgusted. “Right, I’m gonna ring Red,” she says with wicked determination, and picks up the phone, an old-style Bakelite in crimson, “and then you’re really gonna get it – ya know, in a playful, good-natured way.”

She lays the receiver down between us, no intention at all of making it a private call. “Hello?” squawks down the line when it stops ringing.

“Pammy,” Quinn whines, “supesy’s denying me sexually.”

“He’s disobeying you?”

“Well, no, I told him we could take a break, but still...I’m all needy.” As she speaks, she shoots me a little pout, not even angry, only frustrated.

“Oh yes?”

“Yeah, it’s getting me worked up.”

“Maybe you could do with being denied for a little while.”

And Quinn’s little mouth falls open. “Ya wouldn’t.”

“I’m going to leave you all needy until I get home.”

“But, but...but I’m just gonna jill off the whole time, and there’s nothing ya can do about it. Yeah, yeah, ya didn’t think of that, did ya?” The vines are rising behind her. Do I shout a warning? Oh, who cares. “Yeah, think ya can leave me all frustrated, now why don’t ya talk dirty while I – erk!”

She is lifted up to the ceiling by her feet. Then, as she whirls her arms around uselessly, two more green tendrils catch her wrists and pull her arms out below her.

“Oh, you’d better not stretch me out.” The vines go taut. She moans like it’s the rapture.

“Now, you stay like that until you cool down.”

“But I’m not gonna cool down, I’m gonna stew…”

“Mm-hmm. I know.” Then there is only the dial tone.

Quinn looks over at me upside down. “Did you know she could do that?”

“Yes,” I say.

She wriggles in her bonds. “Look, I know we said, I know we agreed but, this is important now...please come over here and touch my vagina. Please? I’ll let ya do whatever ya want, I mean, again.”

Maybe I am even going to get up – but no, a dozen thick stalks are wrapped around my waist to pin me to the chair. “Sorry,” I say, pointing at them.

“Alright. Well, I’m not licked yet. I’m gonna think really hard about having way hot sex with Red and make myself come using the sheer power of the human mind.” She wrings her eyes shut. Even with all my senses dull, reduced, I still fancy I can hear her heart beat faster, and feel her thighs squeeze together, as she tries to dry-hump a dream.

Little beads of dew are sliding up her belly. She opens her eyes. “It’s not working,” she huffs, as if she genuinely expects me to do something about it. So, again, I pluck at the vines around me slightly helplessly.

“I realise, of course, you are depending on me to prove that all men aren’t evil.”

“Ta be honest, you’re way ahead just by addressing it out loud,” she replies, and through all her sweaty breathlessness flashes me the purest, sweetest smile. I hate myself for enjoying it.

*

When Isley returns, Quinn switches from punily, half-heartedly cursing her name to an excited squeal of “Pammy!” She swings back and forth, saying “It’s been so long, I missed you.” It has been around twenty minutes.

“Don’t you look special, all trussed up like that,” says Isley, running a finger along the vine around Quinn’s thigh, as if she’d had absolutely nothing to do with it. “If you’d like, I could let you down. Or I could keep you like that, and we could see what happens then.”

The confusion on Quinn’s face! The way it tears her! “Maybe...for a little bit. Just a little bit.” Isley turns out her palms, and the whole room moves, the vines come alive, her ankles drop and she squeals again, as for a second she falls – then the vines on her wrists jerk her around, head over heels, and bring her pressed against the wall the right way up. Then they lift her legs, too gently to jackknife them up to her chest, just so that they’re straight out in front of her. And, as Quinn flashes Isley a look of charged desperation, the vines prise her legs apart.

“I don’t think I could actually physically do this,” muses Isley, passing a hand over one of Quinn’s perpendicular thighs.

“But I’m not all the way open yet,” wheedles Quinn, and she flicks her gaze down towards her vulva. Concerned this is too subtle, then she thrashes her whole head in that direction, looking as if she’s having the time of her life.

Isley draws back one arm, as if she’s about to spear straight through Quinn’s bound body. But when her hand goes forward, it’s measured and gentle, barely even touching Quinn, whose face flashes through shock and surprise and desperation, and begins thrashing about wildly, as she tries and fails to be touched properly.

While she struggles, unable to really move, Isley laughs, the full villain sound, rich and ringing. Now I have you in my power. But then Quinn looks up, looks Isley in the eye, and with helpless sincerity says “Please.” So the vines let her ankles loose, and put her down dizzy on her feet. Quinn immediately begs and gestures and cajoles Isley to come tumble down onto the bed with her - then starts saying half-coherent stuff like “Snuggle-up mommy sex?”

“And what would that involve?” Isley probes, taking the girl in her arms.

“That would be, if, like, ya were...taking advantage of me. Like, I say I’m confused and ya just keep going and fuck me properly.”

“Oh, you’re sick. You’re perverted.” She gives Quinn a feathery kiss. “Come on, cuddle up closer. That’s it, really get close to me. Does that feel good for you?”

“I feel funny,” Quinn tells her, in her put-on higher-than-usual voice, sounding like what they’re doing should be illegal. A disgusting thought, but the same enchanting image, seeing them entwined in each other. “My ‘gina feels funny.”

“That’s completely natural. It means my perfect girl is becoming a woman.”

Quinn snorts. “You’re fucking sick. Oh, mommy, I don’t understand, I’m all hot and tickly, down there, and, and your boobs feel so warm.” Their bodies shift gently, pushed up against each other, fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle. Isley’s hand slips in between them and Quinn squeaks. “No, ya shouldn’t touch me there, if ya touch me there we’ll get pregnant, and die.”

“Surely not. When I touch you there your eyes will be opened, and we will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”

Quinn thumps the bed. “You know you’re doing the wrong character right now.”

“This is a special thing that two girls who love each other very much do – better?”

“Yeah. Now, now tell me I’m a good girl, and that you’ll take care of me and love me unconditionally and all that shit.”

“There’s no point now, is there, you’ve covered it all.”

“It feels different when you say it,” Quinn protests, a little feebly, but perhaps that’s from having Isley’s fuller body on top of her.

“Don’t let him know that,” says Isley, and I flinch, but she doesn’t even look at me – no, thank God, I’m not about to be dragged back into this dark fantasy. “This can just be our little secret.”

Quinn laughs. “See, I knew you were just as sick as me. Aw, mom, none of the pretty girls at school wanna go out with me…”

“Then they’re fucking idiots,” and then they are both laughing. “What do the girls at school look like?”

“They, um, have red hair. And hot tits. And pretty smiles, aw God, when they smile I start ta lose my mind…” At this they laugh again. “They make me have sick, weird thoughts. About you. About doing weird, dirty, adult things with you, and deep down I wanna, I wanna do all those dirty things. Actually – fuck, hold on now, backtrack a bit – um, mommy? I need ta tell ya something.”

“What is it, my sweet one?”

“But I’m real nervous and I don’t know how ya might react.”

“You know you can tell me anything.”

“I think I like girls.”

Isley arches an eyebrow. “Which is kinkier, if I’m all gentle and accepting, or if I declare that I won’t have a lesbian under my roof?”

“Ooh, I don’t know,” trills Quinn with glee. “It’s gotta be the second one, hasn’t it? Maybe it could be, like, you caught me eating pussy, so you make me eat a whole pack of pussy to try and put me off it.”

“I could send you to an all-girl Catholic school, that would definitely set you straight.”

“Set me straight,” repeats Quinn, and guffaws, she doubles over with laughter, lolling about, this way and that. “And, and then, maybe the nuns would catch me kissing the other gals after lights-out and give me a bare-bottom spanking.”

“Fine!” flounces Isley. “Now I’m jealous of these imaginary nuns, I hope you’re happy...and, anyway, they’d be the first to tell you that being gay is a sin.”

Quinn sets her shoulders and puffs out her chest. “Fine, then I’ll go ta hell.”

Now it’s her doing the wrong character, we all know that, I can see it in Isley’s eyes – but then all of a sudden I can’t, because she seizes Quinn in a kiss, all the depraved familial stuff forgotten, not able to muster any response to that beyond unvarnished love.

They only break apart to come up for air. Then Quinn adds “Told ya I like girls.”

When Isley grabs Quinn by her hair, it triggers a cry of pain and delight. Then she drags the smaller woman up off the bed, to look down at me, and declaims “This is a man, you whore, this is what you’re meant to like, not women, you’re sick and-” Without moving, Isley’s whole posture changes. “No, you’re not sick and wrong for that. I know I’ve just killed the fantasy but I don’t want to say that to you, not even playing.”

“It’s cool,” says Quinn, swiveling around with a hank of hair still held up over her head, “I understand.” She pushes herself up on her toes and gives Isley a reassuring kiss. Then she crumples, and – “Wait, no, I don’t understand, I don’t even know what gals would do ta each other, you’ll have to show me, so I know what I’m meant not ta do…”

“I will show you, little slut of mine.” And she hauls Quinn squealing over her knee. “I’m going to spank you until you’re not gay any more.”

Quinn peeps nervously over her shoulder. “That, um – that might take a while, is all.”

“I’ll spank you with my mouth.” And she bends over Quinn’s behind. Isley’s waves of red hair hide both her face and a lot of Quinn’s lower body, so I cannot see exactly what it is she does that makes Quinn’s eyes bulge and her mouth fall open.

When Isley finally releases her, there are toothmarks on her bottom. Quinn touches them, then twists herself back upright and says “I honestly thought that ya made me bleed then.”

“You know I would never hurt you like that.”

“Please?” So fragile and yearning a request it is, Isley has no choice but to go in again, and leave another ring of toothmarks in a livid darker pink, she hasn’t made Quinn bleed but they both seem very happy with the result. As Quinn checks it out in the mirror, she fondly declares “I wish these were permanent.”

For a moment I see Isley’s face twist, not quite with guilt but some residual knee-jerk at having marked the skin of someone she loves – but Quinn is happy, and this makes her happy too. Quinn pads satisfied back over to Isley’s lap, and when her mouth touches Isley it is in a way that is nothing like a spanking. First on Isley’s neck, then her cheek, then the edge of her jaw, again and again as if it has not quite found the mark yet.

“Can we do something where – where there was a gal who liked me, who I thought liked me, and I liked them too?”

Isley lies back, and Quinn sprawls on her chest, she cannot help but sound a little lordly when she says “What’s she look like?”

“It was a kinda savage beauty. And, and she got me. Or at least, I thought she did. She kept talking about psychiatry as a way to find some measure of control over the inherent chaos of the human mind – but that ultimately any kinda effort like that is futile – and I’d been at Arkham for months by then, I was doing twelve-hour days and watching them just not get better. Nothing made sense, nothing was going right, and it seemed like the world around me was all going to hell.” She swallows. “And then I had a bad day.”

“I don’t think this person was right for you,” says Isley, trying not to sound too brittle, too easily broken.

“No, they weren’t. But I thought they were.” Quinn lowers herself to a whisper and adds “I thought there could never be anyone else.”

“I’ve got you,” Isley tells her, already squeezing her hard.

For a moment, Quinn is on the edge of weeping – then her expression changes, and she says “Mommy, there’s a boy at school. He hits me, and everyone keeps saying it’s because he likes me.”

“They are wrong, and you do not have to tolerate that. You don’t deserve to be hit...by anyone you don’t want hitting you.”

“Boys are gross,” Quinn concludes, before her gaze roves onto me and she adds “Though men do have their charms.” And she kicks me in a playful fashion. I could avoid so much trouble if I just stood to attention in the corner, rather than right next to the bed.

“Don’t be cruel,” Isley scolds, in a way that doesn’t seem as if she’s on my side at all, and smacks Quinn sharply, across the left breast. Quinn closes her eyes, and breathes in, long and slow. “Harley?” Isley adds, all her air of discipline dropped like a lump hammer.

“I just love it when ya knock them around like that,” Quinn confesses.

Isley’s face twists again. Before long she cannot help herself, she coughs out a little laugh. She tries to keep the next one in, I see the cords stand out on her neck, but it’s hopeless, now she is crying with laughter, she topples all over Quinn, helpless to resist. Quinn isn’t joining in, she seems frozen – no, she’s simply delighted to have produced this reaction. “Alright, alright,” Isley finally manages to gather herself a little, “now, who’s mommy’s special girl?”

“It’s me!” Quinn declares, immediately up on her knees. “It’s me, it’s me, I am,” she hops about on the bed, and gets tapped on the nose.

“But you’ve also been a particularly bad girl, in some way, shape, or form, so I’ll have to strap your butt.”

Quinn gasps, and somehow makes that squeaky. “Oh no, not my butt,” she implores, crawling closer into Isley’s orbit.

“Even that. I’m going to strap it, and smack it…”

“Oh, you mean that kind of strapping it! Okay, that’s cool too, I like the olde-worlde touch.” She naturally says the ‘e’s out loud there.

“What did you think I – oh, for God’s sake. Using it as a verb! You make me feel about fucking fifty sometimes.”

“Ya look good for it,” Quinn fires back instantly, and Isley rewards her with some indulgent chuckles and another bop on the nose.

*

Finally that ends, and they leave me to gather up the remains of their clothes. Once I have swept them into a nice little pile I look for the key to my collar – but stop quickly and back away when I hear the door.

“Hey daddy, I’ve just been shopping…” Quinn is actually wearing a school uniform, a plaid skirt and a red blazer with something about Catholicism on the breast. What fresh hell is this? I’d dared to think that the forty-minute spanking for being a bad girl earlier might have satiated her, instead it’s just sharpened the edge. “Can ya still drive me to soccer practice later? No, wait, it’s band. Oh no, actually, cheerleading.”

Her white shirt is too big, slightly gawky-looking, in a way that – I realise with a shudder – makes her look genuinely awkward and adolescent. Even though I know she’s the furthest thing in the world from an innocent schoolgirl she has at least tried to create the image, she is spinning the fantasy.

“Math class sucks,” she pouts. I roll my eyes. “Trig is, like, so boring. I’d definitely rather be leading the cheer and hanging at the mall with my girlfriends, and, um, going on spring break.”

“Are you role-playing a bad TV show?”

She snickers at that – then gives a big, bright, false laugh and clasps her hands together to make her breasts swell out between her arms. “Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl. Aw, daddy, you’re always so refreshingly scornful of all my vapid shit.” As sunny and innocent as her smile is, she’s still showing her teeth. She plops down on the bed next to me in a distinctly undaughterly manner. “I get really insecure at school, all the other gals have pretty girlfriends.”

“That’s statistically very unlikely.”

“No, no, they totally do, it’s, like, one of those all-lesbian private Catholic schools you get.” Can nothing dissuade her? She whines, and hits the bedclothes in frustration. “They’re all doing hot sex and I’m not and I wanna be. And I’m nearly seventeen now.”

“You don’t even look that young.”

It could have been an insult, could have infuriated. But she takes it in her stride and responds “Aw, I know, daddy’s little girl is growing up. See?” And now I play the role too, instinctually averting my eyes when she unbuttons her shirt and shows off her breasts. “I got hair as well, come on daddy, look.” She gracelessly holds her skirt up while also trying to keep her shirt open, in a strange tangle that actually hides more of her body than it shows. “You’re gonna have ta take me ta get my first training bra before long. After all, I am nearly fifteen now.”

I simply look at her. The laughter dances somewhere beneath her lips. Yes, she’s clearly having an immense amount of fun with this. I feel like I’m pointing out the flaws with the route as the Titanic goes down and the seawater laps past my knees.

“But, but, I’d be shy if I was getting it fitted by a hot girl who works in the lingerie department and who looks all prim but secretly has a nipple piercing. You’d have to come in the changing room with me, and...help me get it right.” Amazing how she makes the last five words each sound vulgar in their own special way.

“I think this whole scenario is completely disgusting.”

“Hmm,” she shrugs. “Ya know, the part of the brain that registers disgust is the same part that deals with arousal. So when ya get horny, it blots out any kinda revulsion ya might otherwise feel.” But somehow it does not happen the other way around, because the sight of her bare skin through that plain white shirt still makes my breath catch in my throat. “’sides, I don’t judge you.”

No, she’s right. Probably best to stop trying to reason her out of this before it gets personal.

“There was a guy at school – alright, it’s not really an all-lesbian Catholic school, I made that up – and he asked me out, but I didn’t wanna...and I didn’t know why, until I thought about it, and...it’s you, daddy.” The word makes me shudder. “The other boys aren’t like you, they’re not so sweet ta me, they don’t keep me safe. I wannit ta be with you, daddy, I need this, I need it ta be with someone I can trust. I just wanna have it be safe.” In that little word, the sudden dark regret in her eyes, I’m reminded that, yes, for some time she was not safe at all. “Maybe, maybe this could just be between you and me...maybe mommy wouldn’t need ta know.”

Somehow it’s this that makes me bristle. “Doctor Isley is only about seven years older than you, and also looks nothing like you.”

“Aw, I wish I took after Pammy, I mean, mommy. I could have red hair and killer tits...yeah, actually, that’s it, I’m jealous of her, my insecurities all stem from thinking I need ta be like her ta land an ideal man. A man like you.” There is the icy fear, the idea she genuinely desires me. If she’s only using me like an object, then she may lose interest, but if she actually has feelings for me? Heaven help me. “Sometimes I feel like I hate mommy, like, when she spanks me.”

“No you don’t. When she does that you become visibly aroused, and usually insist she goes harder.”

She pouts, and thumps at the pillows again. “I didn’t say it didn’t make me wet. Come on, don’t kill the fantasy, play along.” And suddenly she has hold of my hand and is looking up at me dead on, with nothing but want in her face. “Be daddy.”

What would her father think of this? If he saw this scene, would his heart give out? There again, if he knows what his child’s been doing with her life then this probably counts among her lesser sins.

She keeps toying with my penis, saying vulgar things like “Please daddy, make your little girl a big girl” as I hope she might lose interest. Then she brings her other hand around and – Christ! It’s the purple crystal she’s slapped on my back. A wave of electricity goes through my body, it shuts down the higher functions and redirects all my energy to the penis.

I am above her already. Her legs are spread, and all I can do is give way to these savage, seething impulses.

“Come on, come on – oh fuck, daddy, it’s so big, oh fuck, this is so wrong but it feels so good, I hope mommy doesn’t walk in now, come on, give it to me.”

Even her slipping persona makes me think my penis inside her is violating her, that I am committing a horrible transgression against an innocent girl who trusts me. That’s exactly what she’s not! At our hips she squeezes down on me, and up above she moans, she sounds like this is something new for her, maybe at one point that would have disgusted me.

“Tell me...tell me about how I’m better than mommy. That I’m younger, and stuff. Tell me how you’ve always wanted this.”

“Nghk,” I manage.

“What if – oh, what if now I’ve stolen you from mommy, she has to be my sexy lesbian slave?” She says this as if it’s the solution to Fermat’s last theorem. I cannot even begin to explain how obvious it is that Isley would immediately and enthusiastically go for that scenario. “Then I’d be in charge, and, and then I could make her-” Her expression of lusty imagination suddenly snaps to wide-eyed overwhelmedness, as something somewhere in her mind crosses some line, and she squeaks “Oh fuck, daddy, I’m coming!”

Amazing how she keeps up the lie as her whole body begins to shake and her eyes roll back in her head. The crystal is gone now. She has thrown it aside, so it is just me overcome with lust now, still thrusting, still inside her, as if by magic I have somehow ended up in this position, and she’s so wet it would be harder to stop. She wraps her legs around my body, clutching me up close, and looks me directly in the eye to give me a sultry-toned “Don’t come inside me, daddy.”

“Argh!” My head snaps back as the dam bursts and the orgasm hits. I come with no trace of the reluctance, expressing myself deep inside her happy and thoroughly pleasured vagina. It is still impossible to see her as anything other than a woman in her late twenties with severe personality disorders, but she has made me feel as if I am somehow the one who thrust this encounter upon her. I doubt myself, worry that if I ever was around a teenage girl who – ugh, no, don’t even think of it.

“Oh no,” she grins as I slump onto the bed beside her. “I told ya not to. This is so wrong, ya came inside of me, and I’m not on birth control. Ya mighta fucked a super-baby into me.” Suddenly the depravity goes from fantasy to horrifyingly real.

“Isley – Isley wouldn’t want you having my child.” The situation has cut through the pleasant post-orgasmic fog. Now I’m desperate, trying to talk her out of this.

“I don’t know,” she teases. “It’d have all your powers, and Pammy could teach it about botany. And, I guess, it’d have my predisposition towards self-destruction.” What a monster we’ve formed! She reaches up, plucks out a pillow and shoves it in under her hips. “Mmm, that feels good. Not just from it feeling all wet and warm inside of me, but being a little up like this, I’m definitely gonna do this again.”

Before I am fully recovered she hits me with the stone again. All the sounds in the world turn into one vacant whine, and when she climbs on top of me for a moment I don’t even feel it. But when she slips down onto me the sensation is immediately too much. I clench my teeth, I can feel the cords popping out of my neck, and somehow she looks so happy.

“Yeah,” she intones, half a moan and half a sigh, “I wanna take another load from you. Make me take another.”

I say nothing, the levers and mechanisms that form speech frustratingly beyond my grasp. But I can still move my hips, and I can still mirror her movements, so that we both pull away and then meet in the middle. In fact, with the noises and looks of joy she gives me, it’s not even that I have no choice but to do it, it simply doesn’t occur to me to go anything else. We struggle and cuddle, rolling over each other across the bed. If it wasn’t for every aspect of the context of this, it would be wonderful.

The sound of the door finally breaks through this negative zone, and then Isley’s voice explodes “What on earth are you doing with our sexy daughter?” She approaches in a rage, standing over us as Quinn bounces on my penis.

“Daddy likes me better,” gloats Quinn, “so I’m gonna be mommy now, and you have ta do what I say. Daddy thinks I’m younger and hotter, and...and, alright, he’s wrong, you’re gorgeous...but, ya know, still, I’m homewrecking.” By the end of that she had almost regained the confidence she began with.

“Oh no,” purrs Isley, lowering herself onto the bed next to us – next to Quinn, paying absolutely no attention to me, she clutches her hand. “My sexy daughter has stolen my husband. What a turn of events.”

“He said he liked my tight young pussy much better than yours,” Quinn fires back, also completely disregarding me even while I’m actually inside her. “And, and, that your tits are too big if anything.”

“You should make me lick your clit while he fucks you,” suggests Isley, at which point Quinn loses all control and sloppily kisses her. “That’d put me in my place.”

“Aw, Red, don’t get inta it right away, be all frustrated first.”

“Oh, how could you,” she tells me, expression dull and flat, before she turns back to Quinn and comes alive again, and squeezes her around her middle as she goes merrily up and around. When Isley pushes her down, the equal and opposite reaction is me driving further up inside her which makes her moan – then Isley gives Quinn a couple of light sharp slaps on the side of the face, and for a moment Quinn’s mouth opens up in shock, but then she laughs aloud when Isley touches her lips to Quinn’s other cheek and kisses it better.

“Now I’m gonna make ya do stuff,” Quinn gloats, and it makes Isley shudder with lust. “You’re not allowed to sleep in bed with us any more, I get to sleep in the bed and you have ta sleep on the floor, and-” Her hips stop rolling around me. “Wait, that’s no good, how the fuck did I talk myself into that?”

“Yes, have another go.”

“Well, I could, I could ground ya, and stop your allowance, and...aw, this isn’t working! How’d this get so complicated?”

Isley jumps to her feet, dagger-jabs a finger at me and says “Admit you like her better! Say, deep down, you’d rather be with her than me!” Quinn stops even her lazy, distracted bounces, and looks up, concerned.

“Yes,” I say quickly, wanting to cut this off at the pass, “I would certainly rather be with Doctor Quinn.”

“Of course you would,” and she has me by the chin now. “You know as well as I do she’s not as mean as me. You’ve seen all the love she has to give.”

“C’mon, Red,” Quinn says, as she twists round to face Isley in a motion that nearly makes me blow a valve, “you’ve given me plenty of love.”

“But you mean it,” Isley’s pouring out now, “you didn’t start this off with – well, with manipulating a vulnerable woman for sex.”

“That is not what happened. No, look at me, that is not what ya did.”

“You were fresh off a breakup, and I got you liquored up and I put you under-”

“I had wanted to fuck you the second I walked in this fucking room.” It’s one of those statements that causes a sudden silence. For a moment, even the vines, creeping over every wall and surface, are still, they too hold their breath. “I mean, ya know, when we met up that day part of me was like ‘does she want to-? I wonder what it’d be like if-?’.”

Isley, a little deflated now, takes Quinn’s hand and puts it to her own face. “You’re perfect.”

“I’d never really thought I was gay before that day. I mean, sometimes I’d see a gal and think she was pretty, and want to hold her hand and kiss her, and think about what it’d be like going ta bed with her and how it would make me so happy because it would feel good and she’d be happy and that woulda made me happy too...but I didn’t think I was, ya know, gay.”

I try hard not to clear my throat and point to the obvious fact she’s having what can only be straight sex with me. But I do make a noise, and it draws their attention.

“Bi, then,” Quinn shrugs.

“I don’t know...I have always thought that when you have sex with him, you do do it in a distinctly gay way.”

“My favourite part is that the gal is you.” As if in casual conversation, Isley swoops in and kisses her on the cheek. “Alright, I know what we can do.” Quite casually, Quinn dismounts me and leaves me twisting in the wind. “I think daddy oughta pull down my undies” – here she pulls them up again, in readiness – “and spank me right on my bare bottom, right in fronta my crush.”

“We’ve slept together, you’ve moved in, we’ve talked quasi-seriously about commitment,” Isley ticks them off, “strictly speaking, is that still me being your crush?”

“What else could ya possibly be?”

In an instant Isley loses any edge of menace, she reaches out and touches Quinn’s cheek with the very tips of her fingers, and as they grow nearer she whispers “Harley…” - but then the spell is broken, and Quinn flings herself across my lap, knocking the wind out of me. She has skilfully positioned herself so that she can still look Isley in the eye. Isley, for her part, regains some of her thorns when she glances at me and says “You heard her.”

So I flip up Quinn’s tiny skirt, and, holding the material between finger and thumb, ease her underwear down over her hips. Somehow, even soaked with the mess of her lust, even with her actually lying across me, I’m reluctant to put my hands on her – which is probably why Isley has that gloating look on her face.

“Come on, you heard what she said.”

“I’m deeply uncomfortable with this,” I tell her.

“Ah, you know she doesn’t mind.”

“I am deeply uncomfortable with this. I don’t understand what she sees in it, or why you’re so eager to have me do it.”

And then Isley laughs – not even the villainous laugh of knowing she has me in her power, but a genuine laugh from the diaphragm that brings her tumbling down onto the bed. She wipes away a tear, and says “How are you meant to be mean to a guy like this?”

“Pammy,” Quinn wheedles, and Isley rolls along the bed so Quinn can whisper in her ear – then she laughs again, springs to her feet and goes over to the wardrobe. When she turns back to us, she’s holding a slim leather belt.

“How’s this work for you?” she asks me, and snaps the belt in her hands. “You won’t need to actually touch her. Well, any more than you already are.”

“Come on,” says Quinn, looking enthusiastically back over her shoulder as she wiggles her hips at me and Isley presses the belt into my grasp, “papa spank.”

So I move my arm, with no real malice, only resignation, and drag the belt against her skin. It’s a half-hearted effort, no crack of impact, but still Quinn whimpers and whines.

“Is this embarrassing for you?” Isley asks. Of course it is.

“Yeah,” says Quinn, as if she’s agreeing to get married or been asked if she’d like a chocolate cake. Then they both look at me expectantly, so I close my eyes and swing the belt again, and pretend I’m not here. “Oh, it hurts so bad, I feel so pathetic.” Consciously I know this is just her sick play, because I’ve seen her hit a lot harder than this and actually weep with joy from it. “It’s so embarrassing…” And now I shift awkwardly when I feel her wetness on my leg.

“Now, you know you deserve this, don’t you? Because…” Isley smiles, and looks aside for a moment, and whispers “Secretly because I know how much you love it because you’re a bad, bad girl.”

“I am a bad, bad girl,” Quinn confirms. “Thank you for punishing me, and – for fuck’s sake, do it like ya mean it.” She’s looking back at me again. When I look away, there’s Isley, striking like a snake, and it’s barely a peck but it still takes control of my arms away from me. I swing the belt like it’s got the doomsday device. Isley is laughing and Quinn is crying out “Oh! Ooh! Ohh!” and with my thoughts going swirly as I leave red marks on the white skin of her bottom I hazily begin to see the appeal. “Oh fuck – it hurts – I’m sorry mommy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’ll be good, I promise-”

“Harlena Marie Quinn!” The tone of Isley’s voice makes me jump like I have my fingers in the cookie jar. “Get up.” Quinn shivers to her feet, looking half-coherent, she leans desperately in Isley’s direction. “Now, you think about what you did.”

This immediately sets Quinn off, she grins and chuckles softly, smuttily, any trace of her play-acted contrition gone. “I’m gonna think about it a lot,” she whispers, in a detached daze. Then she says “Did – does making him do it to alleviate any leftover guilt ya might feel?”

“Oh! Maybe,” says Isley.

“Aw, that’s good, I’m glad.”

“I know you like it, though. Would you prefer it, if it was me?”

“I don’t wanna make you do anything you’re not completely comfortable with,” Quinn tells her, all sudden seriousness. I scoff. She looks over and laughs along with it, yes, because that is the big joke here. “But, when it’s you,” she takes Isley’s hand and strokes it, feels and caresses her, practically screws her palm, “it’s so intimate.”

*

It feels distinctly wrong for them to have left me out here on my own, but in this broad mall forecourt I have nowhere to run to. Perhaps I should cold-cock a security guard, then at least I might have the privacy of a cell. But no, here comes Quinn, wearing a ridiculous pink top bearing the legend 'my best friend', bee-lining toward me like the proverbial iceberg, and I try my best to steady myself for whatever comes next.

"Excuse me..." I look down at her - was she always this small? - as she tugs on my arm with both hands, and tears begin to well in those baby-blue eyes. "I got lost and I can't find my mommy." In every syllable of her voice there’s an underlying threat, not that she'll hit me but that she'll make a spectacle of herself and melt down completely.

"Alright," I say, all the weariness of our time together coming through as her hand wriggles into mine, "let's see if we can find her."

"Also, I'm hungry."

We stand in line at a fast-food place. She tugs on my arm and declares “Want burg. Want fry.”

A woman in the queue says “Oh, is she your little one? I think it’s nice seeing a man do the parenting.”

Quinn draws herself up, and with complete poise and precision tells her “He is not my father, he is one of my sex partners.” My face burns. The woman splutters and leaves very quickly. Then Quinn smirks, an expression of craftsman’s pride, sighs, and leans against me. Her hand touches mine, but she’s just trying to stuff something into my palm – money. “You pay,” she whispers. “I’m too shy.” But then when I do, she calls out in a clear, robust voice “Get one with a toy!”

I eat in silence, a filet-o-fish that makes my stomach turn. Quinn eats her burg messily, and lifts her hand, about to wipe some sauce and grease from her mouth – then catches me with one wicked glance and leaves it there.

When we leave she flicks the wrappers into an art deco trash can and punches the air. "Now I want candy," she announces, hardly even remembering she's meant to be upset that she's lost her mother.

"How are you still hungry?"

"Absent parental supervision, I can eat and do and say whatever the fuck I want," she says concisely. "Whether it's even a good idea or not. Come on, now it's just candy. Any second it might turn into 'I love candy, mister, but why do I have ta eat it in your van?'"

"You must see how that's almost exactly the opposite of what's going on."

"Of course, are you kidding? That's what makes it so funny!"

So I slump by the door of Wonka World while Quinn loses herself in a labyrinth of jellybeans and strawberry bootlaces. When we leave she has a paper bag in each hand, striped like the circus, and a gelatin snake in the corner of her mouth. It was her money that paid for this too, but could it possibly have been more excruciating if she'd made me pay? What depths are there left for her to plumb?

As we walk along arm in arm, her exploding off the ground with me as an ineffectual ball and chain, there we see it – a small, fenced-off area with a slide and brightly coloured foam shapes. She goes to move, to dart over there like a bat out of hell, but I keep hold of her arm and tell her “No.”

“I need ta remind you who’s in control here?” she says evenly, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“Your fantasies, my captivity, that’s one thing,” I say, “but do not inflict yourself on them.”

And we both look at the children in the ball pond, completely unaware of us, I expect the thought of being held prisoner by a mass murderer never even enters their heads. For a moment, Quinn looks sadder than I’ve ever seen her. Then she chews on her candy, tugs on my arm, and we walk off.

Isley stands like a statue at the mall entrance, but softens instantly when Quinn declares "Mommy!" and runs into her arms. "I got ya fudge. I mean, I know the sugar trade's a blight on the natural world, but I wanted ta get ya something nice."

"It'll all be high-fructose corn syrup anyway," says Isley, "which I have separate problems with, but - oh, what the fuck am I going on about, that's very sweet of you. You’ve got something on your face, though,” and she licks her thumb to wipe away the smear of grease by the corner of Quinn’s mouth, but does it slowly, like a lover, when Quinn actually takes that thumb in her mouth it destroys the illusion completely. Then Isley looks at me and says "You found my daughter? You're my hero," and right now with a happy Quinn in her arms I think she might almost mean it.

“Come on, supesey, say what I told ya.”

I sigh, for a second my shoulders drop before I square them, and I reply "Never fear, ma'am, it's all in a day's work, and if you're feeling grateful I'd certainly want to suck on your tits."

Quinn beams, Isley goes “Harley!”, and I'm done. Why bother even objecting to any of this any more.

“He wouldn’t let me go in the soft play area...but that’s alright, because I got an even better soft play area, right here…”

“For fuck’s sake. I genuinely preferred you calling me ‘sex mommy’.”

*

“What a day.” Isley goes through the delicate motions of unbuttoning her shirt, and I wonder why it’s drawn my gaze until I see the green material of her bra. “I’m sorry I ended up leaving her with you all afternoon, you look beat.” She sits me down and starts to rub my shoulders.

“What do you want, Isley?”

“Nothing,” she says, and as if in a weird mirror at once she sounds genuinely hurt, and also as if uttering some filthy suggestion. “I just thought, you know, it’s been a long day, early night. Come on, get undressed.”

Oh yes, I know where this is going. But, I reason despondently, may as well not ruin the outfit, so I get back to my feet and start going over my own buttons. Isley casts her clothes idly aside, to where the endless creeping moss can inch it over to the laundry basket, and I can’t help myself, I have a twinge inside when her bra comes off. If she were leading into something, wouldn’t she have had me unhook it?

“Heard the Dean of Stockton U’s used their endowments to renovate his house,” she says, quite casually, as she unfastens her stockings.

“Yeah, that’s an old trick,” I reply, loosening the tail of my belt, “they say they use it for university business, receiving visitors and stuff like that.”

“He was jetting off to the Bahamas last year. Who knows, maybe that wasn’t to launder money.”

“You know the Bursar’s his wife’s cousin, right?”

Perhaps she did not, because then she laughs, careless and open, and not for the first time she is just a woman, not a monster. “No!” she declares – but she clearly means ‘yes, of course’. “I’m glad I’m out of academia. It’s like the fucking Sawney Bean clan.”

I go to speak, catch myself, then realise it’s hardly a giveaway, nobody has ever recognised me from a byline photo before – “Journalism’s just as bad.”

“Really? No, I mean, yes, of course, but…” The last inches of stocking come free of her toes. “I’d somehow always pictured you as a salesman. No offence.”

“No, well, I’d somehow never pictured you as a family woman.”

Isley laughs again and swats at me. “Don’t be cruel.” She’s down to her panties and garter-belts now – but it makes no difference, really, it’s all green, deep jungle green, and she comes stalking her way over the bed towards me. “It wasn’t, you know, you as a used-car salesman, I think it was more being out on the road, which I guess of course you would be...and obviously you’ll get all kinds of scoops with super-hearing.”

Her hands go to my shoulders again, she gently kneads the muscles, and I do not resist.

“Now I just have this image of you, trying to persuade some little town somewhere to let you stop the meteorite coming down on them. It gets the job done, and at a very reasonable rate.”

It’s not even particularly funny, it’s not one of Quinn’s vaudeville groaners, but it still makes me smile. God, the woman knows how to comfort, it’s not even one of her cardinal abilities but still I’ve seen it in action, I’ve seen Quinn work herself up into a frenzy when the news tries to talk about theory of mind, and then with barely even a light touch Isley’s soothed her to the point where she can laugh again.

Her cheek presses against the side of my face, and I drown in the noxious floral smell that follows her like a cloud. She doesn’t put me under. She doesn’t do that. But somehow when she kisses me I still end up kissing her back.

“I don’t know,” she purrs, fully jungle cat about it, “do you think we have time?”

“Ahead of what?”

“Oh!” she concedes happily, and puts her tongue in my mouth again. I could hurl her aside, but at this moment she seems too soft and gentle for that. I am not used to battling female supervillains, and, yes, I suppose it shows. And as she lies back on the bed, and lures me in after her, it’s somehow hard to think of her as the aggressor.

I pull her underwear free of her legs, telling myself that I do not want us to rub uselessly together for the next hour, that I simply want to get this over with, and yes, I do want that. She’s laughing, not at me, not the way she guffaws when Quinn says something silly, it’s low, gloating laughs, that somehow make me want to strike back hard by giving her exactly what I know she wants. When I penetrate her, her eyes light up, and she gasps out a fresh cloud of the sweet-smelling haze that pours off her body.

Going in to kiss her and breathe in that dizzying fume doesn’t shut her up, quite the opposite, she muffles out an “Mmmm” of such warmth I nearly don’t regret ending up in this situation. And as I have sex with her, some horrible part of my hindbrain spurs me on, convinced that if I make it rougher that’ll really show her. Then there’s some noise from the door, and I freeze – because suddenly Quinn is standing over us.

“I had a bad dream,” she snivels, wearing comic-book pyjamas, and actually holding a stuffed unicorn, which I really hope isn’t about to get involved.

“Oh no!” declares Isley, shoving me off to one side like a sack of potatoes. “It’s alright, come snuggle up with us.” And she flips open the bedclothes, showing off her naked, half-screwed body. Quinn’s face lights up from fake dismay to real delight. She climbs in laboured fashion over Isley’s breasts and hips to nestle in between us. “See, you’re all safe now. What was it, monsters in the closet?”

“Yeah. A wolfman or something.”

“Poor, poor Harley.” Isley gives her an incredibly unparental kiss. “Come on. Let’s all try and get some sleep.” The light goes out, we all settle down, and at the very moment I think we really might get some sleep, I feel a hand curl around my still-hard penis. Then, on the other side of the bed, Isley says in a hushed late-night voice “Is that you, dear? We shouldn’t, not with Harley here.”

“It’s alright, she’s asleep,” Quinn replies, deepening her voice less than an octave. I can practically see the glint of her grin, even in the dark.

“But – no, but, what if she wakes up- aaahhh…” And as Isley sighs, I feel myself stroked in an incredibly intimate way too. Which of them am I even worried about catching me? “Yes, fuck, just there, just there. Oh, you’re getting good at this, my good girl – I mean, good boy, it’s him doing it, Harley’s asleep.”

A ridiculous spluttering snigger rises between us.

“Oh my God, imagine what she’d think if she woke up now. I suppose she would feel confused,” Isley purrs the word, “and sexually vulnerable.”

“She so totally would,” Quinn eagerly agrees, hardly even putting on the voice.

I’m trying not to, really I am, but I’m starting to enjoy it. Her little hand, her fingers – her body pressed up next to mine, here in the dark I can at least pretend – oh God, how’s someone supposed to resist this?

Then she stops, and a bottom-of-the-barrel voice floats out next to me. “Mommy,” Quinn whines, “I wet the bed.”

“You didn’t.”

“It’s definitely wet, anyway – here, feel.” And she grabs my hand as well, when she pulls it over I feel Isley’s too – all our hands, groping between her legs. Yes, she’s dampened her underwear, of course she has.

“You disgusting girl,” Isley says, and Quinn whimpers again in a way that has nothing to do with shame.

“I hope ya don’t hafta teach me a lesson for this,” she says, and sits up now, voice sounding wretched while her face is alive and eager – and then, thank God, thank God, she flings her plush unicorn aside.

“I can’t believe you interrupted us, you dirty, dirty girl,” Isley continues, she says it quite normally, she doesn’t make it filthy – it doesn’t matter, Quinn’s eyes flash back and forth between us, hungry and yearning for whatever comes next. “And now I’m all halfway, and pent up,” this is making Quinn visibly hyperventilate, “and, and – hmph!” In a moment of petulant fury, Isley takes hold of Quinn’s head and brings it straight down in between her open legs.

“I’m sorry, momm-mph-pfft,” Quinn manages as she tucks in. She makes more noises, less coherent if anything, when Isley seizes the back of her pyjama pants and pulls, hard, hard enough that it turns skintight up the cleft of her behind, like she’s wearing nothing at all but her skin is patterned with cartoon characters, stretched and disappearing up her bottom. Droopy has never looked quite so alarmed.

“Honey,” Isley wheedles at me, “since our sweet little daughter completelyblue-balled you, right when you were starting to enjoy it, don’t you think that you –ah! - should teach her a lesson too?”

“Do not,” I insist, “try to put the impetus for this disgusting fantasy on me-”

But I’ve been foolish enough to lean forward with it, as though to confront her.Isley simplymoves in a little bit and kisses me, and there I go, pulling Quinn’s pants down and her arms back behind her and penetrating her with one rough movement, as if it’s actually me doing it, as if she does not want me to. She squeals, and the vibrations of her mouth make Isley roll around in place.

With them both laid out in front of me I feel as if I am somehow having sex with Isley, with Quinn as my prophylactic – and I immediately resolve never to let them get their hands on this idea. It could only possibly lead to bad things. And I wish there was some sort of prophylactic involved, anything to stop me feeling Quinn clutch sloppily at me as if she is reluctant to let me go. I keep going, in and out of her as if it will eventually scratch an itch.

Isley comes. As she cries out, and her hands claw at the bedsheets, for a moment the whole bed is lifted off the floor. Quinn makes her own muffled wail when we crash back down, but it’s only when Isley strokes her hair that her whole body spasms and she too rips at the sheets like they owe her money.

Is this it? Is it over? No, Isley’s look turnsfrom the bug-eyed shock of a huge orgasm back to her usualsmouldering gaze of having something in mind for me. Or perhaps not for me, because she shunts me aside to flip Quinn over – it raises a little yelp of delight – and lie down on top of her and kiss all over her face. It is the perfect opportunity to slip away, neither of them are paying me any attention. But the trance spurs me forward again.

“Mommy,” Quinn whimpers as I penetrate her again, so much easier than her mewl of distress makes it sound as if it should be, she welcomes me back into her as she sucks on Isley’s lower lip. Isley reaches down and fumbles around my penis, where it’s going into her girlfriend, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Quinn starts to flail again, beads of sweat on her forehead, torn between the two people actively pleasuring her. And then I tell her, as I’m deep inside of her and she’s gazing up at me half-coming, I tell her, this must be Isley’s trance, this must be, I say “Good girl.” Inside my skin I cringe into a million pieces, at having said that, to any adult woman, even now. But this tense, winced embarrassment has made my erection strain inside her. She moans, and wails, and then the flash in her eyes, the look of delighted terror that means she has hit the point of no return.

As Quinn starts to scream Isley gets me from behind, one hand around my testicles and the other – still smeared with Quinn’s love – over my mouth, and drives me forward, with sultry snarls of “You – keep – fucking – her -”

By the time I finally reach orgasm the bed looks like it’s been carved in two. “It’s a funny thing,” says Isley, like it’s around a post-coital cigarette. “Time was, the phrasing people would use for established gay couples was that they were just playing house, which I suppose is exactly what you’re doing.”

Quinn drinks this in – then hops up onto her knees. “Would ya play house with me on a committed, long-term basis?”

Isley reaches out to take her hand. “You know the answer to that.”

“No, I’m serious, I – I could go out out ta work an’ bring home the bacon, and you could be back here having a daiquiri an’ wearing onea those see-through nightdresses with furry bits.” Well, at least this fantasy doesn’t have me as a part of it. The final insult would of course be if they made me work to support their ongoing lesbian sex carnival, but then – no, if I volunteered they’d know I was looking to escape. “An’ I’d get in all tired, but you’d wanna bang right away, but I’d be like ‘no, I’m tired’ an’ you’d hafta convince me-”

“Come on, this is implausible. I’ve never known anyone need less convincing.” Quinn giggles, and wriggles, all the way up Isley’s body to kiss her again.

“But I wanna do my part,” Quinn insists now, as if this last interaction never happened and as if she isn’t literally pressed to her girlfriend’s bosom. “I will support ya, I will, I promise, I’ll show ya I’m worth it.”

Strange how she’s gone directly from helpless, vulnerable girl to this – or perhaps not strange, perhaps all too comprehensible. I know Isley is the last person in the world to need support, not here, sequestered in a high-rise block infected by her roots and her consciousness. And as for bringing home the bacon, the last time I was alone in here and had a chance to look for the key, instead I just found stacks of useless money, and piles of pointless gold bullion. But Isley does not mention this, instead she simply says “I know you will,” and kisses Quinn tenderly on the forehead.

*

It could be anything between a day and fifteen minutes before Quinn shows me back through into the bedroom, wearing the delicate pink clothes of someone far more harmless than she is. “Hello mom, this is my boyfriend, Supe- uh, Ste- uh, Stupard. Oh, look at that, I need ta go to the bathroom, ta change my tampon. I am so awfully bloated an’ the acne’s coming back.” She abruptly slaps her hands on her knees and goes to leave, but she pauses by the door, letting the image linger of her porcelain skin twisted in that knowing smirk.

“So, young man, what are your prospects?” Isley asks me – then laughs a bit, and pats my side. Now her voice lowers, and she explains “Her idea this time is that I’m stealing you. While she’s distracted I ply my womanly ways and then you betray her, and she walks in on us having sex. At some point I’ll send her out, but then we’ll catch her peeking through the keyhole.”

“Yes, I see. Should I be torn, or genuinely betray her?”

Isley rolls her shoulders. “I, I don’t think it really matters. I suppose I give it the ‘oh, she’s just a girl, you need a woman’ stuff, or, oh, maybe we can say she hasn’t given you any action, so you’re all primed and ready to give in.”

“Does any of this bother you?”

“Well, it’s not my fetish, is it? I’m not actually going to run off with you, don’t worry.” Which could seem like a taunt, given everything, but there is a bit of relief to hear it said. So when she kisses me and puts my hand on her breast, I don’t resist. Immediately I am deep under and see myself, all horny schoolboy, as I tear at her clothes. It’s only the trance that gives any measure of challenge to the process, she’s naked under her kimono.

Should this have lost some of its appeal, by now? This is not even close to the first time I have found myself like this. But as I start to have sex with her, and she moans and jiggles and flashes a loving smile up at me, I lose myself in the moment almost immediately.

“So young, and strong, and – ah, fuck this,” and now she raises her voice a touch, “I sure hope Harley doesn’t walk in on us like this! What would she think?”

Isley said this wasn’t her fetish. But when the door opens, when we hear that gasp of faux-dismay, the way she squeezes down on me, perhaps she has made a dramatic discovery about herself. “Mommy,” Quinn’s favourite word rises to a flustered whine, “what are ya doing?”

“It’s not what it looks like.” Isley doesn’t even try to sell that. “I’m doing this because I – unh! - love you. I remember what it’s like to be a young woman in love, so I have to do this, don’t you see? I have to make sure he’ll be good for you.”

“Okay, mommy, I understand. Thank you for taking care of me,” says Quinn, as she goes to her knees by the side of the bed and puts Isley’s hand on her face, letting the fingers play in and out of her lips. “But I don’t know, somehow I still feel so terribly – mhm – betrayed.”

“That’s because you’re a bad little girl with bad little desires. You’ll wait until marriage and like it.”

A giggle around Isley’s fingertips. “I hope he’s making you feel good.”

“Oh, fuck this, c’mere.”

Isley curls her hand round the back of Quinn’s head to bring her decisively in for a kiss with some force behind it. They break apart and after a few seconds, Quinn exclaims “Mommy!” with such convincing shock and confusion that Isley starts laughing, she tenses up involuntarily and almost forces me back out of her.

“You see, it’s important that I do this, I’m doing this for you, I’m testing him out, to make sure he can deliver the goods, so to speak.”

For a moment, Quinn wears her smuttiest smirk – then flips back to distress and declares “But I don’t know why you’re doing this ta me, I’m a good li’l gal”, and wrings her hands. Maybe, for someone else, that pose could have a believable innocence to it, but the way Quinn has done it, it’s just pushing her breasts together at us.

I try not to look. This doesn’t help at all. Quinn leans in, apparently hesitant to get too involved, so she kisses Isley’s shoulder – and Isley immediately curls the arm round to stroke Quinn’s hair, and from the corner of her mouth tells me “Ease off a bit, don’t jostle her.” And I do, for it is my curse, I tone it down exactly the right degree as Isley drinks Quinn in with her eyes and Quinn looks back with tears of lust in hers, as if they are the only two people in the world.

“Fuck yes,” she whispers, voice cracked but wholehearted, “yes, betray me.”

“I’ll betray you so hard,” Isley purrs at her, they’ve lost track of the roles of this charade and it could not matter less.

“I’ll still love you,” whimpers Quinn, “no matter wha- oh my God I hope that feels good for ya.” I don’t think I even do anything different, but Isley moans and Quinn’s eyes tick-tock over me as I slip in and out of her.

“It does feel good,” and though Isley grins through it, it does seem so rote, like she has only just hit her cue. “It feels very good – now get out, you bad little girl, you’re not allowed to watch.” Quinn pads from the room, shoulders deliberately slumped. The door clicks, Isley looks up at me and asks “Do you want a breather, or anything?”

“No, I can keep going.”

“Heh, I expect you can, too.” She touches my chest, I count down the strokes, and mercifully it is not too long before the door clicks again and opens up a crack. Quinn is not remotely subtle, there is a shaft of her face and one wide blue eye very obvious on the other side.

“How should we do this?” I ask – Isley looks around, and behind the door Quinn clearly covers her face with her hands. “Realistically I would be the one to notice.”

“Yes, that’s true, isn’t it? Yet another reason I should have gone on top. Although,” and here Isley raises her voice again, “if I were to hear some suspect noise, I would definitely look round!”

Quinn needs absolutely no further prompting, she collapses in through the door in as loud a fashion as possible, and from the floor gives a squeak of “Oops!”

“Oh my God!” Yes, Isley very nearly sold that. “You were watching? And also masturbating?”

“Yes,” confesses Quinn, and she tries to make it wobegone and ashamed, she gives it her all, but she cannot fully keep the glee out of her voice.

“You’ll have to be severely punished for that. I think you should take-”

“Take all my clothes off so it’s extra-embarrassing? Oh, no!” Quinn declares while already fumbling with the button of her trousers.

“But yes,” Isley tries not to chuckle as Quinn whips off that silly pink shirt in one practiced movement, “yes, get ‘em off, this’ll really teach you a lesson.”

“I can feel it sinking in already,” says Quinn, she struggles for a moment when her ankles are tangled, but then kicks free the last of her clothes.

“You hardly seem betrayed at all,” muses Isley, looking off to the side while I continue to have sex with her. Then her face turns wicked and she declares “I know how to really teach you an erotic lesson” – and she brings back her leg, to hoof me gently away from her. She looks Quinn straight in the eyes and continues “You take a hold of his dick and put it inside me.”

We all know the truth, so it is not a surprise that Quinn has grabbed me within a second. She lingers over the second part, though, using me to draw little scribbles around Isley’s vulva, and in a fragile plate-glass voice trembles “Are ya ready?”

“Do it,” Isley orders her. “Make him betray you-uuuunngh.” I suck in air too, Quinn has used me with some force and no little speed. “I think you’re enjoying this, you filthy girl.”

“No I’m not!” Quinn protests childishly, but when Isley reaches out and tweaks her nipple she corrects herself to “God yes.”

“Just look at these little things.” Isley pinches Quinn’s chest this way and that, with every motion she takes on another look of bliss. “Look how they stick out. I think you’ve been having naughty thoughts. Only bad-girl nipples stick out like this.” It seems like labouring the point, but it works for Quinn, she gives a little moan and her hand goes between her legs. “Oh no you don’t, young lady, you put your hands on your head, right now.”

Quinn obeys instantly. “I was gonna be a bad gal, but, it was so I would associate my pleasure with, with you…”

“Oh, you’ll learn to associate your pleasure with this alright.” The vines don’t creep up behind Quinn, they rise up before her and she accepts it happily as they wrap her hands to her hair. Then she jumps, because another has lapped all the way around her thigh, holding in it one of those alarming buzzing toys from Isley’s sock drawer. The way it’s fit flush to Quinn’s vagina, I have the disquieting feeling Isley has done this before.

“Ah!” she cries. “Oh fuck.” The words are out, but her lips don’t stop moving, hardly sure of where to put themselves. “I’m glad you’re doing this ta me. I’m glad we have a relationship where we can...it makes me feel so close to ya.”

“You feel close to me?” scoffs Isley, one finger hooked on the bonds over Quinn’s chest. “I’ll show you close, you bad, dirty, very bad girl.” Then she makes me stop and back off for a moment, and turns herself over, so that when she brings Quinn down onto the bed she’s right on top of her. “How’s this for you?”

It’s a relief, if anything. Quinn is basically concealed from view. I can pretend this is just me and a faceless redhead, not the melodrama it has become.

“Please don’t make me look right inta your eyes while he fucks you,” comes floating up around Isley, the words full of fragile hope. Isley bows her head, and there’s Quinn now, she kicks me a little bit as she squirms. No, there’s absolutely no escape from this, and worse yet, now they’re sharing that vibrator that’s tied to Quinn’s leg, so I can feel that very prominently under my penis, in an area which had somehow up until now escaped their attention.

At times it feels as if they hardly notice I am here. Now that seems like the merciful option, as Isley grinds back against me, and shoots me a cheeky little glance over her shoulder. Then she turns her attention back to Quinn. “I lied to you. I’m not doing this to help you,” she husks.

“Mmnh,” Quinn replies, the first little spurts of lava before the eruption.

“I’m doing this because I can. To show you how far my sexual power goes.”

“Ohnh. Mmf.”

“And you can’t help but get turned on from it.”

“Hmmmn…”

“And you love it.”

Quinn wails, for a moment all her limbs spasm and she flops like a fish out of water, before she sinks into the bed. Once she has regained the power of speech she responds “I love you. Thank you for stealing him from me.”

I’m still thrusting away, into Isley, but it feels somehow empty. It was a sideshow from the start, now it scarcely seems to rise to the level of fringe. I start to pull out to let them kiss and fondle each other and whisper, I mean to – want to. I’m about to even. But Quinn beats me to it:

“Now take him away from me! Make it so I never have ta see him again!”

Isley springs off the bed, and hauls me along with her. “And now we’re off! Off for a whirlwind marriage cruise, on the other side of the world! Ha ha ha!”

I am led from the room. Isley closes the door behind us, and holds up a finger. Through the thin plywood we both hear the squeaky cry of “God, YES!” and that familiar muffled thump of a body falling loose and spent over the bed. Isley smiles with some satisfaction, then opens the door again, and though puffy and flushed Quinn hops up to meet her as she comes back in.

“How was it?”

“You were marvellous.” She says it like it’s opening night. “Thank you for...doing this.” And at Quinn’s gentle pulling Isley gets back on the bed, and Quinn tucks herself in under Isley’s arm.

“Do you know, there was a time when I’d thought I was the kinky one. Come here, come on my other side,” Isley asides to me. No possible alternative now, but at least the trance doesn’t make me take it literally.

“I love this part of you best of all,” muses Quinn, already sounding half-asleep.

“Pits again? Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Not those,” says Quinn, prodding, “these.” She barely moves her finger, she pokes around the bottom of Isley’s arm, between her tricep and her shoulder. “So soft.” And then there is a startling noise as she sucks hard on that select area. Isley flashes me a look of utter open-mouthed shock and disbelief – more amazed, more delighted, more heart-fluttering than any expression she wore while I was physically inside her.