Charmed

Ashtep stumbles to a halt in the doorway, eyes wide.

"Hello, sweets," Drin says, but doesn't really look up, doesn't really look up from the other woman at her feet, knees tucked just inside Drin's seated feet, collar around her throat, leash wrapped around Drin's fist.

"What," Ashtep stammers, feeling unable to breathe. "Who—"

"Darling," Drin says mildly, and does look round then, one elegant brow peaking. Her free hand rises, slender wood held in a knife-fighter's grip, point toward Ashtep.

A wizard's senses are cultivated, and Ashtep made the wand herself. She practically feels it, like a kitchen knife slicing some firm-fleshed vegetable, the separation between the moment in which she might resist — and the moment which follows that.

"Now, darling, it's rude to stand there and give me that look," Drin says chidingly. "Come here."

"I'm sorry," Ashtep says reflexively. Her eyes are still glued to the stranger kneeling for Drin, kneeling where she ought to. She hiccups, feeling her eyes fill.

"Come here," Drin says, even and distinct, and Ashtep stumbles into the room, fumbling the door closed behind her, and wobbles over to her. "What are you crying about?"

She says it kindly but not — not sympathetically. Ashtep hiccups again.

"I thought—" she says, voice squeaking humiliatingly. "I thought I — we—"

"Ohhhhhh." Drin raises the hand with the wand in it, strokes the side of her face with the tip. Ashtep shudders. "Oh, I see. I see. Don't sulk, Ash."

"I'm not sulking—"

Drin's eyes skewer her in the way that always robs her of speech.

"I am the sun in your sky," Drin says, and it hurts like a boning knife, her own words turned on her while another woman kneels prettily at Drin's command; "I am your goddess."

Ashtep nods jerkily.

"Speak it," Drin says, eyes dark and intense.

"You're the sun in my sky," Ashtep says. She's shaking, she realises dimly. "You're my goddess. I — I love you."

"Yes," Drin says, smiling, more crushing than any kind of denial or explanation dismissal. "I am the sun in your sky, and you are my flower. I am your goddess, and you are my acolyte. I am great and you are small, Ashtep. I love you too, in the way the sun loves a single flower: from far above it, unable to even see its individual face. What did you think, sweets? Did you think it's all about you?"

Ashtep hiccups, painfully.

Drin pats Ashtep's hip. "Ego is the wizard's syndrome," she says kindly, and slides her foot sideways, spreads her thighs wider, looks down at the space next to the other woman. "I am your goddess. Swallow it, and serve your equal place in my congregation."

Ashtep gnaws her lip, sways, and collapses abruptly to her knees more than kneeling, making Drin start.

"Careful—" she says, before biting her voice back, eyes flashing as Ashtep creeps forward on bruised knees, shoulder to shoulder with Drin's other supplicant, trembling. "There. Good girl."

Ashtep whimpers, small and raw and humiliated.

"Do you know why you're down there, sweets?" Drin says, looking all the way down at her.

"Yes," Ashtep whispers, and Drin smiles and holds the wand horizontally in front of her face.

"It's because this made you, isn't it?" she says, soft and sharp. "And who made this, Ash?"

"I did."

"And who asked for it?"

She early cringes away from Drin's relentless eyes. "I did."

"I think you should kiss it," Drin says, and Ashtep whines and shakes and purses her lips to press a clumsily unsteady kiss to it. "Are you wet, Ash?"

She does flinch away at that, breath driven out of her, hiding her face in the black velvet of Drin's trousers.

"Ashtep," Drin says, and lightly runs nails over her scalp.

"Yes," Ashtep says, hiccups twice, shakily withdraws her face from the soft safety of Drin's thigh. "Yes."

"Worship me with your hand on yourself," Drin says, her own palm settling to gently cradle the back of Ashtep's head.

It takes astonishingly little time for Ashtep to spasm and sob through the demanded sacrament. She leans into Drin's thigh afterwards, tears drying on her cheeks, eyelids drooping.

"Ash," Drin says, gently, fingers running through her hair. "Don't fall asleep, Ash. Remind me how long until this wears off?"

Ashtep yawns and hiccups. "Oh," she says, and nuzzles Drin's leg. "You know how the mind sometimes reflexively resists charming? It didn't actually take at all this time—"

At her shoulder, Conta snorts. "It what?"

"Well," Ashtep says, smiling shyly and blinking up at Drin, "I'd already psyched myself up for the scene, so—"

"Oh, you two. Right, I can stop being a slavegirl prop, then? Because somebody promised me a world champion licking for going along with this—"

"Oh, am I being lent out in payment?" Ashtep grins at her. "Well, whatever the sun in my sky says—"

"Don't cheek me," Drin says mildly. "I've yet to see you wizard your way out of the flogger, sweets."

Ash kisses the inside of her knee. "Love you, goddess," she says cheerily.