Page 38 of Queen Crow

Lips is covered in blood.

The black fabric hides most of it but there’s droplets and smudges on her cheeks. I can smell it now and, God, I must have been out of my mind completely to not notice it in the small confines of the car. I glance down and there’s a smudge of red on my hand from where she’d held it on the way back.

When I glance back up at her, she cringes at it. “Sorry. I tried to warn you, but you weren’t yourself. I thought it was better to give you comfort until we could get you a shower. I’ll—I need to get your car cleaned too. Sorry, Aves.”

I shake my head at her and then shock everyone when I lurch over to her and hug her tightly, blood be damned.

I hate it, I hate everything about the blood, but there’s never been a time that this girl has let me down. Not once in our years of friendship, and once again, she’s here, doing her best for me and apologizing for her trauma-inducing methods.

I’m a different girl now.

I can hate this and still function now.

“I love you. Fuck the car, I’ll get a new one. Do we need a cleanup crew? What… what can I do?”

She shakes her head as she hugs me back even tighter. “I’m good. I already called it in and got it taken care of. Let’s just get Amanda six feet under and then move the fuck on from some stupid tape. You hear me, Aves? Stop freaking out about something we all know about. I don’t give a fuck what you did back then. You’re alive, you’re whole, and Aodhan is fine too. Who the fuck cares about any other part of it? Not me. Not Ash, not Harley, Blaise, Illi, Odie, no one. No one cares.”

I swallow roughly but no one argues with her, no one starts yelling or fighting over it. No one tells her she’s wrong and that I was a monster.

I want to cry all over again but for very different reasons.

“C’mon, Queenie, you look like a fucking bloodbath yourself. Shower and get something fucking strong to drink,” Aodhan murmurs, prying me away from Lips with a look over our shoulders at Harley.

He’s already worked out their secret language, speaking with nothing but a look and some eyebrow action, and he directs me back into the house.

It’s like the final exoneration.

No one cares about what happened.

Aodhan immediately steers me upstairs, waiting until the bedroom door is locked behind us before he strips the dress off of me and throws it into the trash for me.

“Such a fucking waste,” he mumbles as he slowly slips my lingerie off as well, his fingers slow but respectful of the fact that I cannot think about anything even remotely sexual until I’m clean.

Someday that might change, but today is not that day.

When I step into my shower, I get the water as hot as Aodhan will allow it to be, grabbing the soap and attempting to be subtle about how much I’m scouring away at myself. There’s not a lot of blood and it only takes a minute to get it off, the rest is just the act of scrubbing the night away.

Scrubbing the shame of the tape away one last time, because it no longer owns me.

“I will tan your ass if you keep that up, Queenie. We’ve talked about this.”

I roll my eyes at him and then smile playfully. “Instead of just standing around critiquing me, you could come help out.”

He doesn’t need any more encouragement, the suit sliding off of him faster than lightning, and I giggle when he throws it dramatically in the direction of the bin as well.

“The suit is fine, no need to throw it out.”

He huffs and steps into the shower with me, both hands cupping my face and bringing me in for a wet and slippery kiss. “The suit makes me look like something I’m not. I’ll play that part for you, but it ain’t me, Queenie. Fucking you against the glass in here is more my speed.”

And then he makes good on his word.

His hands are everywhere on my body, in a rush to touch everything, fingers tweaking and pulling at my nipples, and he’s groaning into my mouth as his hips jerk and rub his dick against the soft skin of my belly.

When one of his hands slips down to my pussy, I gasp into our kiss, desperate to come, but also needing more right now from him than just this. More than the firm and gentle ways he gives me pleasure.

I want more.

I slide down his body until I’m on my knees at his feet, his hand fisting in my hair as he guides my mouth down the length of his cock, his hips thrusting as he grunts like a dying man. There’s something so powerful about having him at my mercy like this, the ways that I control his pleasure even with his hand guiding my head.