“Then we’ll find out.”
They moved to the bed, and Zara’s skin was warm under her hands — not the scorching inferno Ramona had catalogued through the seven weeks they’d spent together. She pressed her palms flat against Zara’s stomach and felt her breathing change.
“Tell me what you want to try,” Ramona murmured against her collarbone.
“Everything,” Zara said. “Start anywhere.”
So Ramona did. She took her time working down Zara’s body, learning what had changed and what hadn’t — Zara’s sharp inhale when Ramona’s teeth found the curve of her shoulder was exactly the same, and she filed that away with satisfaction. The heat between her thighs was different. Less supernatural, more human, and somehow more intimate for it.
“Ramona,” Zara said, her voice rough. “Please.”
Ramona slid her fingers over Zara’s inner thigh, and Zara’s hips lifted immediately, chasing the contact. She was wet and warm and sensitive, and Ramona watched her face as she circled her fingers slowly — the furrow of her brows, the way her composure came apart in increments, nothing like the controlled precision she wore everywhere else.
“More,” Zara breathed.
Ramona pushed two fingers inside and felt her clench around them, a low sound wrenched out of her. “Does that feel good?”
“Mm-hmm,” Zara managed. Her hand found Ramona’s wrist, not pulling away but holding on, grounding herself. “It’s… Everything is so much more—” She stopped, because Ramona’s thumb found her clit and whatever she’d been about to say dissolved into a sharp exhale.
Ramona moved to use her mouth instead of her thumb, desperate to taste her. With the sounds Zara began making, Ramona was grateful that her roommates weren’t home. She learned the new rhythm of her, the way her body moved and responded without a tail to betray her or supernatural heat to mask her. Just Zara, undone, her fingers twisted in the sheets, her hips moving against Ramona’s mouth with increasing urgency until she came apart with a long, shuddering release that Ramona worked her through until she went boneless.
Afterward Zara lay there for a moment, breathing. Then she turned her head.
“Your turn,” she said, echoing Ramona’s demand from earlier. The familiar precision was back in her voice already, which was deeply unfair.
She rolled Ramona onto her back and took her time about it — her mouth tracing down Ramona’s throat, her collarbone, lower. When she finally settled between Ramona’s thighs, she glanced up first.
“Still the same?” she asked.
“Find out,” Ramona said.
Zara’s mouth on her was different without the supernatural heat, and Ramona stopped trying to analyze it approximately thirty seconds later because Zara was very good at this regardless of which plane of existence she was operating from. She knew exactly where to focus, exactly when to add her fingers, and Ramona came with Zara’s name on her lips and her hands twisted in that perfectly styled hair.
Zara kissed her way back up and settled beside her, and they lay in the dark, breathing.
“Well,” Zara said to the ceiling. “That was significant.”
“High praise.”
“It was meant as high praise.” A pause. “The mortality is an adjustment. Everything feels very immediate and tenuous and intense.”
“Good intense?” Ramona asked gently.
Zara considered. “Very good intense.” She turned her head to look at Ramona. “I’m going to mention the immortality thing at least once a day, by the way. I want that established.”
“I figured.”
“It was a significant sacrifice.”
“I know, baby.”
“I just want to ensure you appreciate the full?—”
“You’re so ridiculous,” Ramona teased, tilting her head up to look at her. “I do appreciate it. Deeply. Every day. For the rest of your mortal life.”
Something moved through Zara’s expression — not quite a smile, but the thing that lived right next to one. She pulled Ramona closer without saying anything else, which was its own kind of answer.
The spring air drifted through the window. Ramona fell asleep to the sound of Zara’s heartbeat, steady and new, and thought — distantly, at the soft edge of consciousness — that she’d spent thirty-five years finding things that were lost, and she had never once considered that she might be one of them.
