by Amy Star
Cheyenne wasn’t sure if Harry was keeping it slow for his benefit or for her own, but she had her suspicions that it was for her. And while she appreciated the thought, coddling was not what she had ordered for the evening. She didn’t want to go slow and gentle, considering how long it had been since she had been fucked by anyone at all.
After such a long stretch of time where she went without, she wanted to be well and truly fucked.
She lifted her head from his shoulder to nip at his ear, teeth closing gently around his earlobe before she dragged it between her lips for a second, releasing it to instead trace the shell of his ear with the tip of her tongue.
“I’m not going to break, you know,” she murmured into his ear, one hand sliding from his shoulder to the back of his neck and then into his hair. “So, why don’t we stop acting like I will?”
Harry paused for a split second, and then he turned his head and kissed her, lightning quick and bruising. Cheyenne hardly had a chance to start straightening her legs again after that, as he simply lifted her up, off of his lap, before lowering her back down again with enough force that she was pretty sure her teeth would have rattled if they hadn’t been kissing.
That was more like it.
The pace they picked up after that was neither slow nor gentle, as Cheyenne bounced on his lap like he was trying to find a way to fuck her upwards through the ceiling so he could show her to the entire world. Each thrust only seemed to get harder, as he lifted her faster and dragged her back down to his lap more abruptly, pounding into her until she was just holding on for the ride, moaning into his ear and against the side of his neck, shameless and loud. She swore she could hear the glass of the window rattling with each thrust.
As it was just beginning to feel like it was too much—like she might need to slow down after all—she could feel her stomach growing taut, like she had lightning beneath her skin. It took only a few more thrusts before she came, turning her head to the side as she did to avoid sobbing right into Harry’s ear as she came on his lap. Her fingers tightened in his hair as he kept thrusting, slowing down as she tried to catch her breath, but carrying on towards his own inevitable end.
It didn’t take long before he, too, got to the edge and toppled over, and when he came, it was with a last handful of stuttering thrusts, until finally Cheyenne came to a rest on his lap, still panting against his shoulder as his chest heaved beneath her.
It didn’t really occur to her until the room was quiet again just how loud she had been and how quiet Harry had been in comparison, but she felt no embarrassment over it. She wasn’t going to feel embarrassed for enjoying herself, and even if she might have been inclined to, there was no one else in the house to hear her. She could have screamed at the top of her lungs, and it would have been fine.
Her thoughts wandered along similar paths for a few moments as her breathing gradually slowed back to its normal pace.
It all seemed to come to an end very abruptly, though whether that was really the case or if it just seemed that way to Cheyenne was up for some debate. Harry lifted her off of his lap one more time, his softening cock slipping free before he set her down once again so she was straddling his knees, and he slumped back on the window seat, and that seemed to be that. Not an inch of skin was touching that wasn’t necessary to keep Cheyenne from tumbling down to the floor in a graceless heap.
Cheyenne couldn’t say she disagreed with the outcome, though. Maybe it was for the best. They had broken up, after all. Pretending that everything was exactly as it had always been was just going to result in someone getting hurt, and Cheyenne was pretty sure it was going to be her more than it was going to be him.
Maybe it was best to just let the evening end quickly. A clean break was supposed to be for the best, right? And that was all she was doing. She was just giving the entire situation a clean break.
Cheyenne hoisted herself off of his lap slowly and swung her legs over the edge of the window seat. She glanced at the clock. Daphne was going to be back soon. Cheyenne had no plans on hiding what had just happened from her, but either way, it seemed like it would be a little inappropriate if she was still naked and in bed with Harry when Daphne got back.
“Leaving already?” Harry wondered, straightening up as Cheyenne got to her feet and started gathering her clothing back up.
“It’s a little too early to decide to spend the rest of the evening lounging around in your room,” Cheyenne pointed out as she shimmied her panties back up her thighs. She pulled her shirt back over her head, foregoing her bra; it wasn’t as if she needed it just to wander around the house.
As she was pulling her pants back up, Harry replied, “True, but you practically leaped back to your feet.”
“Did you want to cuddle?” she asked dryly as she settled the waistband of her pants around her hips again. Without waiting for an answer, she carried on. “We aren’t together, Harry. You saw to that already. I’m not going to act like we are.” She smoothed down her shirt and picked up her bra, slinging it over her shoulder.
Harry watched her thoughtfully for a moment, before he sighed and conceded, “You’re probably right.” He ran a hand over his hair.
“And really, that’s probably not a bad thing,” Cheyenne added, turning towards the door. “I mean, something probably would have gone wrong eventually anyway. The world just…hurried it along.” She paused when she reached the door, with a hand on the doorframe. Looking over her shoulder, she grinned impishly, the very tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. “Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t do something like this again,” she added, her tone cheeky. She faced Harry for just long enough to see him roll his eyes, before she turned and made her way out of the room, closing the door behind her as she left.
She paused outside, leaning back against the door for a moment, before she breathed out a quiet laugh and let her head gently thump back against the door. She stood there for a second before she pushed herself away from the door and carried on down the hall.
She needed to get a change of clothes. It seemed like a good time to take a shower.
*
Cheyenne was toweling her hair dry in her room when she heard high-heeled footsteps in the hallway, and Daphne poked her head into the room. “I’ve returned from the mines,” she deadpanned, grabbing onto the doorframe to throw herself into the room and onto the bed, sprawling out on her back. “Did you get up to any trouble while I was gone?”
Cheyenne cleared her throat and smiled slyly. “That is a very good question,” she replied, her voice very placid and deliberate.
Daphne’s eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion, and she pushed herself up on her elbows as she stated, “I’m concerned.”
Cheyenne laughed briefly and dropped her towel to the floor. “There’s a very distinct chance that Harry and I had a, uh…an encounter.”
Daphne’s eyes narrowed slightly more, but it took her only a moment to suss out what ‘an encounter’ was code for just then, and she gasped in a sharp breath, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. “You did not!” she shouted, slightly muffled behind her hand. She sounded slightly scandalized, but at the same time she sounded as if she was going to burst out laughing. When Cheyenne simply offered her a smile—trying and failing to look innocent—Daphne practically squealed, “You did!”
“Mmhmmmm,” Cheyenne hummed in confirmation. “Just as good as I remember it being,” she sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed and toppling over backwards, her arms sprawled out over her head.
Daphne fell back again, so she was flat on her back once more, and she folded her arms over her chest. She tipped her head back, so she could look back at Cheyenne. “Was it just to annoy Lorraine?”
Cheyenne stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a moment before she sighed slowly and replied, “No. I mean, I figure that will happen, and I’m not going to be disappointed when it does, but it wasn’t the actual reason I did it.”
“Thinking of getting back togethe
r?” Daphne wondered, and while she sounded slightly cautious, she didn’t sound particularly judgmental.
Cheyenne snorted. “Of course not,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “But he’s still just as attractive as he was before, and if we’re both willing to have a little fun while I’m stuck here, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t go ahead and do just that.” She paused for a moment, hands flexing open and closed. “Besides, I’ve sort of missed spending time with him.” She shrugged as best she could while still laying on her back, as if it wasn’t any sort of big deal.
Daphne jabbed her lightly with an elbow. “You are such a softy,” she scoffed good-naturedly. “What next?” she wondered loftily, lifting a hand towards the ceiling as if she were contemplating the world and all of its options right then and there. “Having coffee with him just because?”
“One of us is usually at work whenever I get my designated one cup a day,” Cheyenne returned blandly.
“Oh, well.” Daphne rolled her eyes. “Then I guess that’s okay, and everything will stay exactly as it is.”
The two of them lapsed into silence, until Daphne sighed slowly and sat up, looking down at Cheyenne as she did. “Seriously, though,” she added carefully, “just be careful. He’s hurt you before. I doubt he’s wised up enough to avoid doing it again, and who knows what sort of trouble Lorraine might be able to get you into?”
“You mean assuming she doesn’t just transform and eat me in my sleep?” Cheyenne returned wryly.
Daphne rolled her eyes and swatted Cheyenne’s knee lightly. “Don’t even talk about that. That’s disgusting.”
Feigning innocence, Cheyenne added, “You know, I haven’t even seen her transform. For all I know, she can’t and Harry just wanted to make her sound special. Or maybe she lied to Harry to make him think she was special and that they had more in common.” It was bullshit, of course, but even so, it was sort of entertaining to imagine someone coming up with that sort of elaborate lie.
Daphne gave her knee another swat and levered herself up from the edge of the bed, dusting herself off as she got to her feet. “You keep telling yourself that,” she snorted as she turned towards the door and made her way back out into the hallway. She paused long enough to look over her shoulder and offer, “Just look after yourself, alright? I don’t want this all getting so messy that we can’t clean it up later.”
Cheyenne lifted a hand to flash her a thumbs-up. “Aye, aye, Captain,” she agreed, letting her arm drop limply back down to the bed once again. “And I’ll limit my caffeine, avoid alcohol, eat my veggies and my vitamins, and be in bed before midnight.”
With a last snort of laughter, Daphne waved her middle finger in Cheyenne’s direction before she finally turned and left.
Cheyenne stayed right where she was, staring at the ceiling as the last of the early evening sunlight slowly slid across it, gradually replaced with dim, distant orange light from the street lamps outside.
She wasn’t going to lie and say the situation wasn’t complicated. She was way beyond that level of self-deception. But she supposed it wasn’t as complicated as it could have been. At least they weren’t dancing around the possibility of getting back together. And there was nothing wrong with being friends with benefits. Or…whatever they were. She wasn’t entirely sure if they still counted as friends. That might take some time yet.
She fell asleep early that night. After all, it had been a strenuous evening.
*
It wasn’t until the next morning that Cheyenne really took stock of her situation. She’d had sex with Harry. She hadn’t expected to ever do that again after he broke up with her. And as she thought about it like that, she almost expected a wave of self-loathing to crash over her out of nowhere.
She waited for a moment as she ate her cereal, her expression quietly expectant. When the self-loathing didn’t come, she shrugged and waved the thought away.
She was a grown-ass woman, after all. Harry was a grown-ass man. They were both consenting adults. (Very enthusiastically consenting, in fact, as the previous evening had shown.) Why should she feel bad for enjoying herself? It was ridiculous.
Of all of her current troubles and problems, she didn’t need to let that be one of them. If she wanted to have a good time with Harry, then goddammit, she was going to do so for as long as he was willing to let her. And the fact that she didn’t need to worry about Daphne judging her for the entire situation was just an added bonus.
(Well, not judging her out loud, at any rate. For all she knew Daphne was judging her on the inside, but she doubted that was the case. And even if it was, she was content to say that it would be a Daphne problem, rather than a Cheyenne problem.)
And really, it could solve a few of her problems, considering relaxing had been rather hard since she took up residence in one of Harry’s guest rooms. And if she could find a way to do that more easily, then far be it from her to scoff at it. She wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she wasn’t going to stand on ceremony.
Her thoughts were getting circular, though, so she let the moment pass and turned her attention back to her breakfast, intent on finishing it before it could get too soggy.
*
Cheyenne had expected there to be some sort of response to her sleeping with Harry. (Well, alright, she hadn’t slept with him, but that was about the only thing she hadn’t done with him.) He was a bit of a gossip, after all. Not maliciously, most of the time, but simply because he tended to chat about whatever happened to be on his mind at the time. So, she had known that Lorraine (and probably a few other people, but Cheyenne didn’t know them and so didn’t especially care) would find out pretty quickly. It would be naive to the point of idiocy to assume otherwise, and Cheyenne liked to believe that she had never been an idiot.
And indeed, Lorraine gave her a few sharp, meaningful glances in the evening whenever Cheyenne walked past her. They were always brief before she managed to plaster her pleasant smile back into place, but Cheyenne managed to catch them all the same. After one such moment, she caught Daphne’s eye, and they shared a very emphatic eye roll once no one was looking at them.
She made no mention of it to Harry. He would likely say she was just seeing what she expected to see or that she was jumping at shadows, and she had expected it to happen regardless.
So, yes, she had expected there to be a bit of fallout, but she thought that would be it, and then it would be done with for the time being.
She hadn’t actually expected there to be consequences, though. After all, Lorraine so rarely displayed any of her true self or any of what she actually thought, so Cheyenne had assumed that her irritation at the situation would also remain tightly under wraps.
She wasn’t expecting to wake up at 3:00 in the morning when the door to her guest room squeaked open, and the floorboards shifted as a large weight walked across them. Slowly, Cheyenne opened her eyes and rolled onto her side, and she froze when she found herself staring at a pair of enormous eyes glowing like mirrors in the darkness of the room.
As her vision adjusted to the darkness, she could gradually make out the rest of the shape of the enormous cat—the lioness—sitting calmly in her room, watching her, as her tail slid slowly back and forth across the floor, as if she was pondering something.
Cheyenne could feel her heartrate beginning to pick up as Lorraine watched her, calm and quiet. She made no motions closer to the bed. She hardly moved at all, simply sitting as still as a statue, save for the slow, rhythmic motion of her tail. She hardly even seemed to be breathing.
And then she opened her mouth, huffing out a breath, and very slowly and deliberately licked her teeth. Even when said with silence, Cheyenne could recognize a very obvious threat, and she watched with wide eyes as Lorraine got back to her feet and made her way out of the room with the same slow, deliberate pace she had walked in with.
Cheyenne pulled her blanket over her head, huddling in the bed until it seemed as if she might suffocate in th
e heat, and only then did she inch her blanket back down. It felt as if she was awake for hours after that, but eventually she managed to find sleep again, fitful and uneasy.
When she woke up the next morning, the encounter in the middle of the night seemed hazy and fuzzy around the edges, and her room was in the exact same state as it had been when she first fell asleep, as if nothing had ever been disturbed, and she could almost believe that she had simply dreamed about the encounter.
But that couldn’t be the case, could it?
And yet, when she asked if Daphne had heard anything strange in the middle of the night, she simply shrugged and said that she hadn’t heard a thing and she had, apparently, slept like a log the whole night through.
And when she asked Harry if Lorraine would have had any reason for going into her room in the middle of the night, Harry looked at her askance before informing her that Lorraine had left for the evening around 9:00 at night, just as she did every night she worked. As far as Harry was aware, Lorraine hadn’t even been in the house to prowl into Cheyenne’s room.