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Sometimes, Moiraine decides that she is the only one who can set the pace - that she will hold Siuan's hand tightly by the wrist and tell her exactly how to angle her fingers. That she will force her not to move it all whilst she simply takes exactly what she needs, a burning intensity overtaking blue eyes that never leave the other woman's, not even when she comes, her pleasure spilling across Siuan's skin.
But not today.
Today, she had already surrendered ahead of even beginning. Today, Siuan has her nearly coming apart at the seams before she even asks the most delicious of questions in a low, breathy voice. ‘Are you going to be good for me and use your words to tell me what you so obviously need?’
Moiraine leans right in to answer, carefully angling her body away at the same time so that they don't actually touch; so that they can both live just one moment longer inside the exquisite anticipation of it. She's so near, when she speaks, that her lips brush against the shell of the other woman's ear.
‘Fuck me,’ she says in a whisper, so close that Siuan can picture the exact way her lips shape themselves around the words. ‘I need you inside me - as much of you as I can take, Siuan.’
‘So demanding,’ the other woman says in a voice that is almost steady. She is nowhere near as good as Moiraine at maintaining her composure in these situations, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't just love having the practice. She pulls back so they’re looking one another straight in the eye, still so close that it's almost impossible to not simply reach out and give Moiraine exactly what she wants with no more preamble at all. ‘Is that any way to speak to your Amyrlin?’ she says instead. ‘Is that the kind of language and tone you were raised to use with your betters, my Lady?’
Siuan watches the last two words land and has to bite back a grin at the obvious impact with which they hit. She swears she can see the fierce, fast pulse of her wife's heartbeat at her neck now as Moiraine's cheeks start to turn a rosy, telling pink. It is one she knows to be equal parts surprise, arousal and hot defiance, with just that hint of delicious embarrassment. Because she doesn't really hate to be called that at all - at least not in this very specific context.
‘What?’ the Tairen asks casually, and Moiraine arches one dark eyebrow in an expression to convey, immediately, that Siuan is going to pay later (willingly, deliriously) for using her title. But now, she just winds her hand into the other woman's hair, grazing her fingertips across Moiraine's scalp with a gentleness that is very deliberately not at all enough. ‘You are, are you not?’ Siuan says, feeling the anticipation and frustration rolling off her wife in waves. Moiraine detests being denied, even when she wants to relinquish herself completely; even though she knows it is one of the best parts of the game. ‘Mine,’ Siuan growls.
Moiraine whimpers helplessly in response. The other woman pulls her in close by the hair until their lips meet and Siuan can swallow the sound whole. It tastes as blue and beautiful as the dresses she used to wear in Tar Valon and as the river where she grew up. It tastes like home. ‘Try again,’ she says, smoothing out the messy tangles she herself has caused.
The other woman is breathing more quickly when she does. ‘Fuck me, please,’ she says with an exaggerated stress on the last word. ‘I need you inside me - I need you to have me however you want. As much of you as I can take,’ Moiraine meets her eyes and there is something playfully malevolent in them. A second before it happens, Siuan realises exactly where this is going; she is already rolling her eyes before the syllables have even passed the other woman's lips. ‘Please,’ Moiraine says, still breathless but now with a decidedly bratty twitch of her lips. ‘Mother.’
‘Do you know the only reason you can get away with that?’ Siuan says through gritted teeth.
‘Because if you deny me what I want then, really, you're punishing yourself as well? Or because you know I'm doing it to deliberately try and get a spanking out of you?’
‘Oh, so you want me to have you over my knee, do you? And then to refuse to touch you properly until we've seen just how excruciatingly long it takes you to come from nothing but my palm against that pretty arse of yours? Would you like that?’
A noise slips out of Moiraine's mouth, entirely beyond her control - half whine, half moan, and so perfect that it makes Siuan clench. ‘Light, you're so easy,’ she says dismissively, although her own body feels shaky and her head is starting to swim with need. ‘I’m letting you get away with it because I already know exactly what you're going to have to do later to make it up to me.’
Moiraine swallows audibly. ‘Anything you want,’ she whispers.
‘Good. Get on the bed.’ She watches the other woman do just that, slowly, on legs that wobble in just the right way - the one that says she is moments away from begging. ‘Here’s what's going to happen now. First, I'm going to tease you for another minute or so, until you're just about ready to scream.’ She scratches her nails lightly - far too lightly - down the ghostly pale skin of Moiraine's back in lazy, tantalising patterns that never travel any lower, or become any more forceful. ‘And then I'm going to fuck you, as you so gracefully asked me to.’ She runs the fingers of her other hand up the other woman's neck, letting them just graze across her skin - yet another touch purely to inflame while doing precisely nothing to give Moiraine what she needs as she starts to squirm against their bed. ‘And then I want to see you come so hard you don't remember any name but mine. So hard that nothing else in the world matters except for how my fingers feel inside you.’
Moiraine arches her back with a sharp intake of breath at the words, desperately chasing more contact. Siuan only pulls her hands back in response, chucking darkly at the shaky half-sob this elicits. ‘Need you, love - my love, please,’ the other woman breathes as Siuan marvels, for the thousandth time, at the power Moraine allows her to wield in these moments. ‘I’m so wet for you,’ she whispers, opening her legs wide in invitation. ‘I - Siuan, I can't - fuck - please.’
The erotism of the view in front of her makes Siuan's mouth water. ‘I might not stop after the first few times have taken the edge off, as long as you're very very good,’ she whispers, finally letting her fingers creep up the insides of thighs already silky slick with need. ‘Now, are you going to stay still for me, or do you need me to hold you down while I fuck you?’
‘The....second one,’ Moiraine groans slowly, each word clearly an effort.
‘Good answer.’
‘Siuan - Siuan please…..please, I'm begging you….’
‘You are, and you know how I like that.’ She creeps her fingers incrementally further upwards with excruciating slowness. ‘Carry on.’
‘Need you,’ Moiraine says. By the time Siuan's self-restraint finally snaps and she stops torturing the other woman, Moraine is babbling. ‘Yes - oh Light - I love - fuck, fuck - you feel so fucking good.’
‘Hush now, love. I wonder if you can keep quiet for me, just this once.’ Her voice is full of arrogance and affection. ‘I know you’ve never managed it before, however much I remind you about the punishment. But……I live in hope.’
It seems to take no time at all - it never does for Moiraine on their first go round, not when she has been wound quite so tight, and forced to wait so long. She comes and comes, failing spectacularly - yet again - to stay silent as instructed. She goes on clenching around Siuan's fingers as the other woman puts her twenty years of long, sacred study to use. She has honed the exact skill of drawing this out into the longest possible series of gasping, shuddering aftershocks. She knows the paths to Moiraine's pleasure so well that she could walk them in her sleep; knows them better even than any weave of the One Power, or the patterns and knots that form a fisher's net.
She also knows that - for both of them - one is never close to enough. Not when they can finally steal a handful of moments to be together like this. Siuan tries so hard to do what she must without bitterness or regret or anger, even on the worst of days. She pushes for what is right even when it tears her heart clean out of her chest again to listen to the brutal sound of Moiraine leaving. She burns through time and energy forcing herself to never dwell on the impossible; on what they cannot have. But tonight - just for once - as she slides up to cover the other woman's trembling, wrung-out body with her own, she lets herself imagine a world after - a time and place where this could be their everyday. Where they could share a meal and a bed and their hopes without the constant approaching dread of the next leave-taking.
‘Not bad,’ she murmurs in Moiraine's ear, ‘although I swear you're getting louder each time I instruct you to be silent. We'll have to do something about that insubordination. But first, up on your knees.’