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Clorinde smells like smoke.
That’s the first thing Navia notices about her when they meet. Not harsh like tobacco, nor acrid like gunpowder, but sweet. Musky. Like the pretty silver wisps curling off incense.
The second thing Navia notices is that she’s strong. Much stronger than her, and tall and proud to match. Clorinde is a Garde, young for her position, and climbing up the ranks quickly. Callas finds her a useful contact while Navia finds her another girl of the same age. Navia has few friends that aren’t much older than her, people in suits who call her Demoiselle and act like she’s a porcelain princess in need of protection. Clorinde is different.
Clorinde does not coddle her. They speak to each other on equal terms, play card games within the same level of skill, and share the same interests. She sneaks Navia out of her gilded cage, behind Silver and Melus’ backs to watch trials at the Opera Epiclese, to try her hand at poker and blackjack at clubs, and to watch streetside magic shows.
Clorinde does not coddle her when Navia asks to be taught swordplay, frail but bold, barely strong enough to hold a blade in her hands. Clorinde simply lays her hands over hers and teaches her to swing.
Clorinde does not coddle her, even when she presents as an alpha and Navia does not present at all, even as the years go on, and on, and on.
Clorinde does not coddle her when she starts seeing omegas and brings them around Poisson, pretty girls with coiffed hair and fragrant scents that cling to Clorinde like creeping ivy.
Clorinde does not coddle Navia, and so Navia does not coddle herself. She resigns to her fate. She keeps her feelings boxed up. She is the next boss of Spina di Rosula, and she is not soft, no matter how softly her heart aches.
Navia presents at 19, much later than most. She and everyone else assumed she was simply a beta, despite the strong alpha bloodline of her father. Her mother, dead in childbirth, was a particularly weak omega, often sickly, not strong enough to pass her genes on. Which is exactly why it is such a shock when Navia goes into heat for the first time at 19 years old, presenting as the first omega in her father’s line in generations.
Spina di Rosula goes into lockdown. Callas does not want anyone in the headquarters who isn’t an omega, shaken by fear beyond even that of an overprotective parent. Navia is imprisoned in her room for a tortuous three days. She is given lavish meals exactly on time, that mostly go wasted as she barely has the strength or desire to eat them. She feels like a stranger to her own body, awareness filtering through flashes of excruciating pain and the pitiful, barely-there relief of nothing but her own fingers. She notices when certain meals are delivered, when the grandfather clock in her room strikes midnight and plays a lullaby, and when some commotion happens outside. It’s all in the distance though, through the haze of her first, ill-prepared-for heat.
When she stumbles out on day four, mind finally cleared, an omega chef tells her as she scarfs down the soup he made that Clorinde stopped by at some point.
Navia should talk to her, he says, the Champion Duelist sounded worried.
Navia thanks him and moves on to her onion gratin, famished, and knows she will never tell Clorinde about this.
Shame— that’s what she feels then. Shaky and off-kilter, anxiety seizing her weak heart. Shame at presenting so late, shame at being an omega, shame at handling this all so poorly. Clorinde, with her strong arms and long legs, with her station as a Champion Duelist that that she earned herself, promoted with startling speed up the Gardes’ stations, with her pretty girls that she brings around and the shameless half-smiles she gives Navia on the basis of them both being equal— Clorinde can never know about this.
Navia is so grateful her father agrees that she never stops to question why.
Callas has her put on suppressants immediately, and Navia does not have to endure the shame of her heat again.
Clorinde visits Poisson soon, asking after her, and Navia tells her she simply fell ill and asks to spar again, because she’s been cooped up recovering and needs the exercise. She smiles at her and Clorinde sighs, eyes troubled as they usually are around Navia, and retrieves her sword.
Clorinde does not suspect anything, Navia hopes. No one else at Spina does, thanks to Callas’ talent with trickery, though Silver and Melus are told for the sake of protecting her. They’re both betas anyway, as she should be too, and so Callas trusts them even more.
Navia takes her suppressants diligently, every day without fail, even when her Father gets implicated in murder. Even in the days following it, as she watches him ask for a duel in court; as she sees Clorinde step forward, chosen; as she watches them speak, once, before they each ready themselves, and un, deux, trois, partez! As she watches her father fall by her own beloved’s hand, dying a death he never should have died, Clorinde’s eyes devoid of all emotion.
No, Navia never misses a dose, right up until a trial for a magician falsely accused of murder, where she gets trapped inside the Opera Epiclese for one full day.
It doesn’t seem to have any effect, at first. It was just one day she missed, after all, her bottle of medication left behind on her vanity counter. She makes sure to take them continuously after, precisely on time as she was prescribed, even as she investigates her own father’s death to clear his name. Even as she learns that Callas put her on those suppressants because he was scared of her dying, omegas being an easy target for dissolution, and not because he was ashamed of her.
Up until a few days after that trial, she’s okay. She’s starting to feel a little bit feverish, warm and heady, but she assumes it’s just a bug going around. She can handle colds and other illnesses quite well— she’s no longer as frail as she was in her youth.
But it all catches up to her eventually, and it’s on the worst possible day: Navia invites Clorinde out for a meal, as thanks for testifying to clear Callas’ name, and because she just outright misses her, and that’s when it really hits. Clorinde is telling her something stiffly, small talk about her job, but Navia can’t really hear it. Her head feels hot, foggy. There’s warmth spreading through her limbs that grows uncomfortable. She takes a sip of her tea, but it doesn’t help. Clorinde’s asked her something, maybe, but she hasn’t responded.
There’s a sudden, cool touch on her forehead. Navia looks up to find Clorinde’s violet eyes above her, and her scent all around her. Has she always smelled this good? Husky and intoxicating…
“You’re burning up,” Clorinde mutters, alarmed. “You came all the way out here, knowing you were sick?”
“It’s just a little bug. I must have caught it at the Opera.”
Navia tries not to whine when the coolness retreats, Clorinde’s hand gone. The coolness is quickly returned, though, through a hand in hers and an arm around her shoulder. “I’ll escort you home.”
Navia lets Clorinde half-walk, half-carry her to the station, and they’re almost there when the heat in her builds so hot it feels like her head will burst. Clorinde smells so wonderful, and her eyes are so violet and so concerned, and Navia suddenly realizes by the wetness between her thighs that this is no simple fever. She is in heat.
She curses herself for not realizing it sooner. She can’t go back to Poisson like this now, or any Spina di Rosula quarters. Clorinde can’t realize it either, not after all these years. The shame builds through her again. 23 years old, and experiencing her second ever heat, so ill-prepared that she’s practically losing her mind.
“Clorinde,” she says urgently, planting her feet hard on the ground. Clorinde tugs her along, but Navia holds her ground. “No. No, I can’t go back. I need to stay here, book a hotel or…”
Navia pulls away, realizing she’s still half drooped into Clorinde’s arms, but stumbles back. Clorinde grabs her again, grip firm on her forearms, safe and supporting, and Navia has to bite her lip to ground herself against the desire to melt.
“You want me to abandon you? You can barely even hold yourself up!”
Navia shakes her head, as though denying it, but they both know it’s a lie. She takes a calming breath. It comes out heavy, Clorinde’s scent is strong on her tongue, sweet and smoky, and she almost buckles right then and there. She sways towards her, despite her best efforts, and notices Clorinde’s cheeks are pink.
Navia watches very carefully as the irritation and confusion in Clorinde’s eyes morphs into shock.
“You’re going into heat.”
“No,” Navia whispers, shaking her head again. It’s a pitiful denial. She’s too weak for anything stronger. Shame curls up in her yet again, hot as it nestles within her chest, serpentine.
Clorinde slings an arm around her waist, again half-carrying her, this time away from the station.
“Where are you going?” Navia is only partly alarmed; even after three years of separation, Clorinde would never hurt her. Navia openly hated her and Clorinde still came to her rescue against those Gardemeks, because she’s just that sort of person. Kind. Trustworthy. The gentlest alpha Navia’s ever known.
“Some place safer than a hotel.” There’s still an edge to her voice as Clorinde says it, as though she’s angry about that. Navia, were she in her right state of mind, could admit that it wouldn’t be her smartest move in such a situation. “You can’t be in public right now.”
Of course. No one else can know.
Navia lets herself fall against Clorinde, feet floating across the streets as she gets half-carried away. By the time they get to their destination, she’s burning up and delirious with lust. Every alpha from a block away must be able to smell her. It’s only thanks to Clorinde beside her, with her sweeter-than-gunpowder scent and her razor-sharp glares, that they travel unbothered.
Clorinde fusses with some keys and opens a door, and Navia’s lust crushes past the ceiling she thought she’d already hit. It smells just like Clorinde— heady, intoxicating, seductive. Navia’s surrounded by it, the smoky sweet incense smell, musky and floral. It’s so distinctly Clorinde, like rainbow roses caught on fire. Navia desires so badly that she starts trembling.
Clorinde looks at her in alarm. “Are you in pain?” She cups Navia’s cheek, eyes wide in concern, looking adorably like a scared puppy. It’s not quite that which gets to Navia, though. It’s that, combined with the flush across Clorinde’s cheeks, the dilation of her dark pupils, the shallowness of her breathing, and the death grip she has on Navia’s bicep as she strains to control herself. It’s insane, the obsessive want Navia feels, the depth of her desire. It’s so overwhelming that she almost sobs.
“You’re not mad?” Navia manages to get out.
Confusion clears some of the lust from Clorinde’s expression. “Why would I be angry?”
“I lied to you all this time. I’m not a beta.”
Clorinde bites her bottom lip, and Navia wants the plush thing on her desperately. A complicated and difficult to read expression flits across Clorinde’s face. “Your life is your own to live, Navia. You don’t owe me any explanations. But… I will admit that there is no circumstance under which I would ever be angry about you being an omega,” she finishes, rather diplomatically.
If Navia were not blinded by lust at the moment, she would pick that statement apart endlessly for years. Fortunately, she is not in her right mind, and goes to kiss her instead.
Clorinde pulls back immediately, panicked.
“There’s a lock on my bedroom,” she says, shoving her keys into Navia’s hands, “And plenty of food in the fridge. I’ll go sleep at the neighbor's tonight, but I’ll check on you again in the morning—”
“No.”
Clorinde splutters to a stop.
“No,” Navia repeats, and everything she’s ever suppressed over all these years builds up. The want she felt when she first breathed in Clorinde’s incense scent, when she first saw her smile. The want when Clorinde tucked her away into bushes to hide her from her bodyguards, pressed so close up against her that it made her blush. The want from feeling Clorinde’s arms around her as they practiced sword swings, from seeing other girls at her side, from seeing Clorinde across a gulf of grief and thinking she killed her father and still being unable to hate her. Navia wants so deeply that it isn't simple. Navia wants so desperately that it’s violent, that it’s not just want for now, in this moment, when she’s horny and half-drunk on lust, but want for every single moment they’ve ever spent together. Navia wants so fucking badly that it makes up for all the times she’s looked at Clorinde and denied herself, right down to the second they met.
“Please,” Navia begs. Because she wants to have Clorinde now, to make up for everything lost, even if she knows it’ll never happen again. “Help me.”
It’s like a dam breaks.
Clorinde is on her in seconds, mouth hot and rough, hands running down her back, pulling at the laces of her corset. They stumble back further into the apartment, bumping into the kitchen counter. Navia doesn’t even care that the wood digs into her back. She claws desperately at Clorinde’s shirt, popping the already-straining buttons open, pawing at her chest. Their hats get lost somewhere in all that. Clorinde pushes Navia against the counter, bending her back over, and Navia moans embarrassingly into her mouth.
Clorinde suddenly pulls back. She tears herself away brutally, walking a lap around the room and running her hands through her now-messy hair. Navia droops down the counter, heart skipping a beat in fear. Please, please don’t stop.
Then Clorinde comes back, holding Navia’s hand in one of her own and kissing her briefly.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I needed a moment to compose myself.”
And then she picks Navia up, effortlessly, like she’s carrying nothing but an errant breeze. Navia startles and wraps her arms around Clorinde’s neck, supported with a hand at her back and another under her knees. They get to the bedroom and Clorinde kicks the door behind her before gently setting Navia down on the bed.
They continue, much gentler than before, slow and easy, but the frantic rabbit’s-heart thumping in Navia’s chest just gets faster.
This is why she’s always loved Clorinde. Not for her strength, but for her kindness.
Clorinde kisses down Navia’s neck, burrowing her nose into it while her hand climbs under skirts and up thighs. She scents her, breathing in deeply, squeezing one outer thigh with her fingers flat over lingerie— Navia did not wear fancy underwear just because she was seeing Clorinde, she swears it, because it would be preposterous just to assume or even hope anything like this would happen— and Navia squirms. She wants, so suddenly and fiercely, for Clorinde to bite her, to suck a mark into her neck and claim Navia as her own, but that can’t happen. Instead, Clorinde moves on to her collar bones, to her shoulders, to her bosom propped up by her corset. She gets the laces undone with minimal fuss, and Navia is struck by jealousy at how many women must have stood in her place before, for Clorinde to be so skilled.
“Just fuck me already,” Navia whimpers, hooking one knee around Clorinde’s hip, bringing their bodies together. Feeling the bulge in Clorinde’s skirt just makes Navia wetter.
Clorinde obliges, hiking Navia’s skirt up. The flounces and ruffles are so buoyant that Navia herself has to hold it up for Clorinde to manage, pulling her own sleek skirt and underwear off to reveal herself.
Clorinde takes hold of herself but hesitates.
“I don’t have condoms on me.”
Navia would normally question why someone who presumably had a girl on each arm would be so unprepared, but she’s not in the right mind for it at the moment. Lust blindedness notwithstanding, Navia has still dreamed of this scenario dozens of times over, and the jolt that courses through her is not heat-induced.
“I don’t care,” Navia breathes. “I want you.”
A series of complicated expressions filter across Clorinde’s face before it settles into its typical aloof one. “...I’ll go to the pharmacy with you tomorrow if you want.”
Navia reaches up to kiss her, shoving her tongue into her mouth, heart pounding, because god does she love this woman.
Clorinde pushes in, slowly, carefully, so cautious in fact that it’s painful. Navia whines into her mouth, bucking her hips forward, and the self-restraint snaps. Clorinde makes a soft, pretty sound as she snaps her hips against Navia’s, fully sheathing.
Navia loses it.
Part of it is the pain, the sting of the stretch from how little foreplay they indulged in. Something about it, in the heat of the moment, feels good though. Navia bites her lip to stop from crying out as Clorinde pulls back and snaps forward, over and over again, enjoying how the pain morphs into pleasure. Part of it is also just how nice and full she feels. The only thing she’s ever had in her has been her own fingers, soft and slender little things. She hasn’t had calluses on her hands since Clorinde first taught her swordplay.
This, she thinks deliriously, is also a kind of swordplay.
Navia comes, the feeling novel and foreign. The wave of white pleasure ebbs into relief, foggy warmth clearing from her mind. She finally feels like she can breathe without sobbing.
She’s still incredibly horny, though.
Clorinde keeps mouthing at her neck, sucking and licking little kisses onto it while her hips buck, until her teeth slide against Navia’s skin and she startles, pulling back and kissing her mouth instead. Clearly, she doesn’t want Navia for a mate. Navia can do nothing to quell the anguish that brings.
Clorinde says something that Navia doesn’t catch, senses overloaded with pleasure. “Huh…?”
“Why are you holding back?”
Navia doesn’t quite understand. If anything, by the way she’s desperately trying to match Clorinde’s thrusts even though it does little, she should be holding back more. But then Clorinde runs a finger over her lip, tugging it out from between her teeth, and Navai gasps at a particularly deep thrust.
“I want to hear you,” Clorinde says, and it sounds so genuinely forlorn and hungry that Navia can’t bring herself to be anything but piercingly loud.
Navia comes again, screaming, Clorinde’s name on her tongue, from climax to climax like she’s cresting waves in a sea, and Clorinde shudders and comes inside her too.
“You’re so tight,” Clorinde whimpers, unloading into her.
It’s hot and divine, the warmth that fills and slides out of her, dripping at the edges. Clorinde pulls out and pants, leaning over Navia to collect herself, head on the pillow beside her. Navia is positioned perfectly to turn her face into Clorinde’s neck, breathing in the sweet incense smell, licking up the column of her neck.
Impatient, still turned on beyond belief, Navia pulls on Clorinde’s hair. The pain is slowly rolling back in the longer they stay apart. She doesn’t know how other omegas go through heats so frequently.
But then Clorinde roves a hand down her body, lazy, pretty, and slides it up between Navia’s folds and maybe she does understand. Like this, in heat, when it feels good it feels… so much more than just that. Than just plain old ‘good’.
Navia grinds down onto Clorinde’s hand, feeling the fingers push up into her, longer than her own and managing to reach all the sweetest spots. The slick of her own wetness combined with Clorinde’s own come still inside her makes the slide of the fingers easier, more slippery, more rapid. Navia reaches down and grabs Clorinde’s hand, trapping it between her thighs as they squeeze shut. Clorinde struggles against her, trying her best to still piston her fingers, and even though it’s awkward and desperate and cramped, Navia still comes fast on a gasp, slick trickling down through their joined hands. Ecstasy and halcyon rolled into one.
Clorinde draws back so she can kneel above Navia. She pulls the rest of her clothes off, hands trembling, knuckles skidding against warm skin. Navia wonders why before Clorinde accidentally tears the ribbon off her sleeve, and realizes it’s because she’s trying hard not to do that with the rest of her clothes.
“Sorry,” Clorinde whispers, face flushing, eyes wide with lust.
She pulls the rest of her own clothes off too, before sucking at Navia’s chest. One hand kneads a breast, while she licks at the other. She runs her tongue over the peak on the nipple, and Navia shivers. Clorinde runs her other thumb over it, pressing the already hardened nipple down before sucking at it over her finger, tongue laving over the breast. Once she’s satisfied, she moves on to the other one, showering it with kisses and kitten-licks, massaging it with her long fingers. Her teeth run off the side of it, and she tugs on the peak, pain and pleasure once again mixing, before letting it go with a soft, wet pop.
Navia, overcome with lust yet again, ready for another round, squirms and actually mewls , pulling at Clorinde’s hair and bucking up into her.
“Please,” Navia weeps, “please, please, please, Clorinde—”
And on and on and on, Clorinde kneading her, Clorinde sucking her, Clorinde fingering her and eating her out and fucking her, until the sky turns dark and the sun comes up again. At some point Navia wakes up to Clorinde hand feeding her food, some pastries still cold from her icebox, before she slings her legs around her back and begs Clorinde to fuck her again.
The best part— the worst part— is how Clorinde keeps going back to her neck, nibbling and sucking, kissing and licking, before something scares off her and she retreats to somewhere safer, like Navia’s chest or lips, leaving her screaming for more.
“Please,” Navia sobs at some point, tears blurring her vision. She doesn’t care anymore if she comes off like a delusional idiot, a fool who’s desperate for someone she’s pretended to hate for years. “Mark me, mark me, mark me, I want you, I want you to do it, no one but you, please Clorinde—”
“You’re not in your right mind,” Clorinde tells her, voice carefully stiff, face carefully blank. “Ask me again when you’re sober.”
When sobriety finally arrives it’s at four in the morning, according to Clorinde’s bedroom clock. She doesn’t know how many days it’s been.
Navia sits up on the bed, covered in bruises and love bites, all fucked out so to speak, and stretches. Clorinde, magically, immediately notices. She blinks awake slowly, cat-like, arm still thrown over Navia’s waist and painfully domestic.
Even though they just got to know each other intimately, Navia still blushes, heartbeat quickening.
It’s definitely too soon to ask about mating, Navia thinks, embarrassed and a little horrified that she’d begged so desperately to be bitten earlier. But then Clorinde pulls her closer, back to chest, and hooks her chin over Navia’s shoulder. She turns her face into her neck and presses her lips against the supple skin.
“I love you,” Navia tells her, or rather squeaks at her, like she’s a Gardemek with automated responses and her trigger is nuzzling.
Clorinde shudders. Her arms draw tighter around Navia, pulling her in, burying her face into Navia’s shoulder.
“You’re in your right mind?” she asks.
Navia nods, then realizes she can’t see that, and tells her yes.
“And you mean that genuinely?”
“How else could I mean it?”
Clorinde smiles against the back of her shoulder— Navia can feel it, the sweet curve of it on her skin. She wishes so desperately that she could see it.
“I’m struggling to believe this isn’t a dream.”
Navia laughs at that. She’s struggling too. To believe, yes, but also, a more pressing concern, to not turn around and beg Clorinde to claim her right there. It’s too soon, no matter how desperately she wants it, when they’ve only been together again for so short a time.
But it becomes easier when Clorinde sighs against her skin and says, “I love you too.”
Clorinde turns her face into Navia’s neck again, hair tickling the skin, and breathes deeply. Clorinde, with her smoky rainbow rose scent, is so exhilarating that Navia is obsessed with her, but it’s difficult to imagine the reverse.
“I can’t smell that good,” she says. “Any more and I’ll think you’re about to eat me.”
“I practically already did.” Clorinde kisses her behind the ear. “You smell good though. Perfect. Like…” She kisses the nape of her neck. “Like vanilla. Delicious.
“It’s the first thing I noticed about you when we met,” Clorinde continues. “It was like entering a bakery. I think I really did want to eat you then.”
“Oh.” Navia’s face burns.
There’s a long silence between them, one that stretches comfortably before Clorinde breaks it. She’s being unusually talkative today. “Thank you, Navia. For letting me love you. I’ve wanted this for years.”
“Me too,” Navia whispers into the dark before her.
With Clorinde warm at her back, the incense-sweet scent around her… she’s enveloped in comfort. Shame has no place, in a love like this. It’s difficult to muster up.
Navia, privately, can’t wait for her next heat if this is how she gets to spend it.