PROLOGUE
=====
The ceiling fan ticked above them, stirring the Sicilian night just enough to lift the gauze curtain over the open window. Outside, the city was warm and slow. And somewhere down an old, lost alley, a dog barked once. The heat was heavy and thick.
Inside the room, there was a hush of golden light. A scarf-wrapped lamp shone dully, and the heat of two women wrapped in each other, in the way of lovers who knew their time was short, filled the space.
Matilda lay on her back against the pillows, flushed and wrecked. A fine sheen of sweat clung to her sun-kissed skin, it collected lightly in the hollows of her collarbone, and ran in slow trickles down the valley between her breasts.
One long leg was bent high and trembled slightly, while the other draped loose and lax over Alice’s shoulders, as though she’d given up trying to hold herself together.
Her lips were parted as she panted, and her chest rose in stuttering waves. And when she tried to speak, her voice was thick with arousal, sounding like it had been torn from somewhere deep inside her.
“Mmh, right there, Dream. Oh, don’t you dare fuckin’ stop,” she gasped. The edges of her Southern drawl thickened with her wretched state.
Her faintly freckled cheeks were flushed, and her blonde hair was damp with sweat and plastered across her face. She looked like she’d been baptized in the storm of Alice’s mouth. She would tell you that’s exactly how it was.
For her part, Alice didn’t answer with words. She just gripped Matilda’s thigh tighter, with one hand, her fingers digging into soft skin slick with sweat, and dragged her tongue up slowly through the wet mess of Matilda’s swollen folds.
She was nestled between Matilda’s legs, a woman with no other god. Her face was buried in pussy, and her braid had loosened and was sticking to her neck.
One cheek was caught in the lamplight. Her jaw was sharp, and her dark brown eyes disappeared into shadow.
Her mouth worked with unrelenting focus, and her tongue moved in slow, exacting circles, as if she were writing prayers with her mouth, sin in cursive, and salvation in heat.
She wasn’t just eating Matilda, she was worshipping her, and drinking her in. Two of the fingers of her other hand curled deep inside her lover with practiced grace. She moved them slowly, angling them just so until Matilda let out a soft, feral cry, the kind that didn’t give a shit if it was overheard.
Alice knew Matilda’s body better than a hymn she’d sung for years. She’d examined every sacred, secret place of this woman and knew what every muscle twitch meant. Especially the ones that warned of the coming flood. And she moved in time with all of it, conjuring Matilda’s climax, one wet flick of her tongue, and one curled thrust of her fingers at a time.
Matilda moaned again, the sound breaking in her throat. Her hand slid down, fingers trembling as they found Alice’s nape and slipped beneath the sweat-damp braid, clutching it at its root. Her hips bucked up, chasing more of Alice’s mouth.
God, she needed this. The climax, yes. But also this unraveling, this raw, intense intimacy. It had been weeks, maybe longer, since they’d had more than a few minutes in passing. But tonight, the clock had stilled. And Matilda wanted to live inside this pause forever.
“F-fuck, Alice, l-ah can’t, I’m—” Her voice failed and disintegrated into something more primal. She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Alice had been listening for that moment all along. She smiled, and then it happened. Matilda shattered.
It wasn’t pretty, but fuck, it was glorious. Her long spine arched, and her powerful thighs seized up, and her mouth opened with a splintered crack. Matilda’s hips convulsed, and then she fell still. Her whole body spasmed in the after-shock, and her breath caught in sobbing little hitches. One hand flew to her eyes, the other clung to Alice’s braid like it was the only thing tethering her to this world.
Alice didn’t move for a few moments. She stayed there, eyes closed, face wet with Matilda’s climax, breathing her in. Her lips softened, and then her mouth slackened, tasting and honoring her lover.
The air was ripe with their scent, raw and feral. Matilda’s sweat, her salt, and her sex. Alice breathed it all in, as though it were incense at an altar.
Then she pressed her open mouth to Matilda’s thick, soaked landing strip and inhaled her, tasting her fully again before shifting to kiss the inside of one trembling thigh. Then the other, wet and slow.
Only then did she begin to rise. Her mouth trailed up the long slope of Matilda’s belly, her tongue tracing the edges of her abs as she went. Her breasts hung and grazed every inch of sweat-glazed skin. She knew Matilda loved that. So Alice moved slowly, letting herself drag against her lover’s trembling body. Her lips pressed into every freckle they passed. Until finally, her fingers smoothed the damp hair from Matilda’s brow.
Matilda reached for her blindly, still dazed, still undone, and pulled her close. They kissed, and it was wet, and messy, and consuming. Their mouths moved together in gratitude and lust.
Matilda moaned as she tasted herself on Alice’s tongue, recognizing her rich, unmistakable tang. And instead of recoiling, she leaned in harder, devouring herself in Alice’s mouth.
Alice moaned back, deep and broken. Her hand slid beneath Matilda’s jaw, holding her still as their kiss deepened further, into something even more thick and filthy.
When their lips finally parted, Matilda opened her eyes, pupils blown wide, and mouth swollen. Her voice came low, and wrecked, but always somehow playful: “Shit, Dream,” she breathed. “I think I saw the inside of a star.”
Her chest was still rising and falling in a shattered rhythm as she tried to regain her breath.
Then, wicked and reverent all at once, she whispered: “Scoot up, darlin’. I want to hold you open and enjoy all that you are.”
And the air changed as Matilda’s gaze shifted with something more than just lust. Something closer to awe, maybe. She had never loved anyone the way she loved Alice. Alice was where everything began for her. And Alice was where it always came to rest.
Alice shifted and moved up the bed, sitting back against the headboard. She looked down at Matilda and reached out and tucked a damp curl behind her ear, her fingers pausing at her jaw, and her thumb grazing the corner of her mouth. “Take your time with me, Hollis,” she said softly, her deep voice clipped low and cracked slightly at the edges. “I’ve no intention of rushing you tonight.”
The contrast between her British restraint, spoken like a secret, and Matilda’s Southern was almost obscene.
Matilda smiled and began her descent, mouth open, and breath hot, following her hands down Alice’s ribs. Her lips found the soft hollow of her throat, then the swell of one breast, then the tight, responsive peak of her nipple. Mmmm, she suckled gently on it, teasing it, and circling it, until Alice’s breath hitched sharply through her nose.
Alice didn’t look away. She liked to watch Matilda make love to her. That was what always undid her.
Matilda kissed lower, down the gentle curve of her flat belly to her hipbones, and into the crease of her thighs. She painted a path with her mouth. And when she finally reached the soft curls between Alice’s legs, she didn’t just dive in. She stopped and breathed there first. Letting her lips linger in the hair. Letting her tongue register the first subtle taste from the roots of her pubes.
Alice’s breath caught, and Matilda, who was being reborn in that inspired moment, whispered, hot against her sex, “Open for me, baby.” And she parted Alice’s wet, hot lips slowly with her tongue. One long, deliberate lick. Alice’s head finally tipped back with a hiss, and Matilda moaned low, the sound vibrating into her.
“That’s it,” she breathed.
And then her mouth was on her, open and ravenous, licking with wet, patient strokes that had nothing to prove but everything to give.
Alice’s body began to shift and tremble. Her breath turned ragged, and her thighs twitched with restraint. She didn’t want to cum yet. But Matilda, holy hell, she was relentless.
“That’s it, love,” Alice rasped, hand fisting in the sheets. “Slower. Take your time. I want to feel every fucking second.”
And Matilda obeyed. She moved like the world was ending and she had one job: to make the woman she loved fall apart, slowly. To mark her with her mouth and hold her together with her hands.
Alice’s orgasm came like thunder. She groaned through clenched teeth, her whole body tensing, and her thighs crushing Matilda’s head as her hips lifted off the bed.
But Matilda didn’t stop. She held herself there, tongue firm, mouth wet, until Alice’s strength faltered, until her breath stuttered and her body collapsed.
Alice shifted up into a sitting position, propped against the headboard. She was flushed, her chest rose in slow, fractured waves. Her skin gleamed, damp at the collarbones, dew slick between her breasts. And her hands still faintly trembled as she reached for Matilda.
And, when Matilda rose up and straddled her, it wasn’t a demand. It was gravity, a homecoming. Her thighs settled around Alice’s hips, warm and slick from what Alice had done to her earlier. They both moaned and then giggled at the contact.
They pressed together in the damp heat. Matilda’s lips brushed Alice’s temple, her breath hot. The scent of them filled the room. Matilda curled into her, mouth grazing Alice’s ear, whispering softly, “You taste like you missed me.”
Alice’s fingers gripped her waist in response, inviting Matilda to nestle in closer. She rested her forehead against Alice’s and their noses brushed. The air between them was thick with want and history. Her fingers trailed up the back of Alice’s neck, threading into the sweat-damp hair there, and stayed.
=====
Eventually, the heat made stillness impossible, and reluctantly, they shifted enough to breathe.
Alice lay on her back, one arm folded beneath her head. Matilda lay facing her, close and easy, her cheek tucked near Alice’s shoulder. Alice’s other arm curved beneath Matilda and around her back, her hand moving slowly along the familiar line of her spine until her fingers found those soft dimples at its base, the small hollows that mesmerised her.
Alice’s skin glowed faintly in the dim light, golden-olive, where the sweat had dried, and a soft blush warmed the delicate edges of her collarbones. The rise of her breasts was just visible beneath Matilda’s hand.
Matilda moved and her arm brushed Alice’s in a quiet ripple of heat. And, as she glanced up from where she lay, her eyes caught it, the mark she loved.
High on the inside of Alice’s right bicep, just visible now, as her arm rested above her head, was a single, deliberate line of ink:
Tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo. “I carry within me all the dreams of the world.”
That tattoo always did something to Matilda; it stilled her and lit something fierce and tender deep in her chest. It was more than a line.
It was Alice. Composed, contained, and impossible not to feel. And now, here she was, holding her own dream in her arms.
She still didn’t know all the hopes Alice carried, but she wanted to—God, she wanted to know them, and share them, and be trusted with their weight. That single line of ink was a map into Alice, and Matilda wanted to follow it deeper.
==CYPRUS, TWO YEARS AGO==
The mission had been tense, but clean. It had been a joint operation with limited personnel, which is how a hotshot Raptor pilot found herself, once again, sharing temporary quarters with someone who could make shadows feel nervous.
Alice hadn’t said much in the last ten minutes since they’d returned. Actually, as Matilda thought about it, she hadn’t said anything at all. She sat on the edge of the narrow bed, blood drying in a thin smear across her bicep as she peeled off her shirt with clinical detachment.
Matilda crouched behind her with gauze and antiseptic, trying to focus, rather than get flustered, but it was so hard considering Alice’s back looked like a Renaissance sculpture.
She wasn’t supposed to be the one doing this, but the field medic had been pulled away to triage someone else, and Alice had waved off other offers. So Matilda stepped in, half a joke, half a dare, and Alice hadn’t argued. She’d simply sighed and handed her the gauze.
They weren’t dating at that point, and technically still weren’t. That word felt way too normal and structured, like there were scheduled dinner plans and shared playlists involved. That’s not at all what this was.
They were attempting a situationship under extreme security clearance. Trying to see each other and trying not to die while trying to see each other. Which, you know, was tricky, considering one of them flew fighter jets, and the other could disappear in plain sight.
But, here they were, in Cyprus, sharing gauze like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Hold still,” Matilda murmured, voice lower than it needed to be.
Alice didn’t flinch when the alcohol hit, or when Matilda’s fingers did. And that’s when she saw it again, high on the inside of Alice’s bicep, just visible in the lamplight, the line of cursive, delicate ink, written in a foreign language: Tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
Matilda took a breath. This was the first time she could actually ask about it without interrupting one of their intense, top-secret, tragically short hookups. Not that the world knew it, but Matilda was convinced global stability hinged on their covert sexual escapades.
Matilda read it aloud, her drawl doing questionable things to the vowels. “Portuguese?” she asked, glancing up. She knew that was a part of Alice’s heritage, and her whole mysterious-European-warrior-goddess résumé.
They were getting to know each other, but it was slow going, like, glacially slow. It was the reality of their work. But, whatever this was, it had started shifting, and evolving from “accidentally sleeping together whenever they ran into each other,” to “maybe I care if you live.” So, progress.
Alice had nodded silently, still facing forward.
“What’s it mean?”
“I carry within me all the dreams of the world.”
Matilda blinked. “Oh, cool. No pressure.”
She meant it to be funny, and she stood by it, but something in her chest had twisted all the same. Because, of course, Alice would be walking around with that inked on her skin. Of course, she’d be carrying something vast and secret and beautiful, and just slightly tragic.
Matilda exhaled through her nose, gently pressing the gauze down.
“Meanwhile, I carry a granola bar and like three childhood issues I’m still namin’.”
Alice didn’t laugh, but the corner of her mouth flicked, and Matilda was learning to accept how rare that was, so she felt like she’d won the lottery.
But what she really wanted to say was: “Tell me your dreams, baby. All of them. I’ll carry them too.”
The realization of that had shocked her more than a little bit, so she hadn’t. But she had kissed the skin just beneath the words twice. And Alice had let her, twice.
And then she’d cleared her throat, re-taped the gauze, and muttered something deeply sophisticated like: “Cool ink.” And then she’d panicked about it for three months.
==PRESENT DAY==
Matilda leaned in again and pressed a kiss just beneath the words. Then she folded herself back into Alice’s body, head tucked beneath her chin, her breath warming the hollow of Alice’s throat. Her hand returned to cup Alice’s breast casually, not to arouse, but just because she liked Alice’s breasts. Ain’t my fault they fit so damn well. She thought to herself.
They hadn’t spoken in a little while, and they didn’t need to. She rested her cheek on Alice’s shoulder, lips ghosting over skin, and watched her in the hush. Watched the way the light kissed the strong line of her cheekbone, and studied the impossible softness of her mouth, mmmm.
Alice looked like something from a war poem, insanely sexy, dangerous, and untouchable. And, Matilda, who had the spiritual gift of interrupting profound silences, blinked up with a familiar, crooked grin. She lightly pinched Alice’s nipple, feeling it between her fingers to get her attention.
“You ever get tired of lookin’ like a Bond villain with better cheekbones and a skincare routine?”
Alice gave Matilda an utterly unimpressed look. Her voice came low, warm, and smooth. Matilda could never quite tell if Alice’s voice was trying to seduce her or just lull her into surrender. It usually did both.
“No,” Alice said coolly. “But I do grow tired of hearing myself described as one.”
Matilda tilted her head, mock-thoughtful. “Yeah, but if the thigh holster fits.”
Alice arched a perfect, lush brow.
“That. That right there,” Matilda said, brushing her thumb over Alice’s arched brow. “That’s exactly what ah’ mean.”
Alice smirked, “You forgot to include devastatingly clever and unreasonably attractive.”
“I was savin’ those,” Matilda replied, biting Alice’s shoulder hard enough to leave teeth marks. “For the part where I shamelessly beg you for round two.”
Her hand slid lower, combing through Alice’s short pubes, claiming them again. “And possibly Cheez-Its, if we’re being honest.”
Alice just stared at her, enjoying where Matilda’s mind was going, and her fingers.
There was a moment’s pause before Alice said, as dry as ever: “Well, you sound like bourbon in a church pew.”
Matilda blinked. “Okay, is that meant to be sexy or sacrilegious?”
“Both,” Alice murmured, brushing a finger across Matilda’s bare shoulder—just enough contact to say stay close, don’t go anywhere.
“It’s the way your voice gets low when you lie,” she added, her tone a warm hush. “Like it wants to sin but will still feel sorry after.”
Matilda flushed instantly. She always did for Alice. Her entire body apparently had an Alice setting, which meant one look from Alice could make her blush like a cartoon character.
Which was honestly kind of wild, considering Matilda Hollis was a captain in the United States Airforce, and a battle-hardened fighter pilot from Texas t’ boot. She was the kind of woman who flew supersonic death machines for fun and once landed with a nosebleed just to prove a point.
And yet, one glance from Alice, and she melted like a homeschooled girl at her first youth group crush.
It had always been that way. Alice had known it from the moment they met that Matilda was hers. All she ever had to do was tilt her head, and Matilda’s freckles would light up like a bad Wi-Fi signal. She would try valiantly to hold it together, but she’d fail each time, and Alice always knew.
And if Alice ever bit her lower lip when she looked at her. Well. Matilda would grin like a cowgirl on the tarmac, boots planted, fuel topped off, and already halfway to yes ma’am—perfectly willing to stir up WWIII, if that’s what Alice wanted.
Matilda shifted up onto one elbow, trying to look smooth and composed, which only made it more obvious she wasn’t.
Her fingers found the end of Alice’s braid, which was half-undone now, strands curling free to frame her cheekbones. Matilda couldn’t help toying with the ends like they might unravel a little more than hair. “You always look like this after sex,” she murmured. “Like some ruined painting of a queen.”
Alice’s eyes were lidded, unreadable. “And you look like the servant who got above her station.”
Matilda grinned easily. “Yeah, but like, a servant with benefits. Right?”
She reached up without thinking and tucked a curl behind Alice’s ear.
Alice held still, but her breath hitched just enough to betray the fact that she felt it everywhere. Matilda’s fingers lingered near the curve of her cheek, warm and maddeningly tender, before falling away.
Alice didn’t move. She couldn’t. Not until the edges of her control smoothed themselves back into place.
Alice knew perfectly well the effect she had on Matilda. God help her if Matilda ever realized quite how thoroughly Alice came undone at her touch.
=====
Matilda’s thoughts drifted, and the room blurred. The last time they’d managed to run into each other was Morocco, in a glorified shoebox of a safehouse with no electricity, a mattress that felt like it was stuffed with rocks, and walls thinner than paper.
Alice had shown up bleeding across her ribs, eyes like flint, and royally-pissed-off about something she never explained.
Before that? Cyprus, again, in the Airport hotel. Alice’s hair was still wet from a quick shower, and Matilda was still high on altitude from a sortie she wasn’t technically cleared to fly.
They hadn’t planned it. They were rarely able to do that. And yet, somehow, they managed to see each other. It was in Cyprus that Alice had asked her, each word measured carefully.
“Tell me something, Hollis.”
Matilda had turned toward her, cheek half-buried in Alice’s shoulder. “Mm?”
“What made you fly?”
She had blinked. That was not the question she’d been expecting. Not post-orgasm.
“You mean what made me want to?”
Alice gave the smallest nod, fingers tracing idle lines along the curve of Matilda’s hip.
Matilda thought for a moment and then sighed. “There’s this moment,” she murmured. “Right when the wheels leave the ground. You might not even notice it, not really, but your stomach does. And, it’s like the earth just…lets you go.”
Alice’s gaze went soft and unfocused, lost somewhere between Matilda’s voice and the images and feelings it conjured.
“I was eight,” Matilda said, even quieter. “My uncle had this old Piper Cub, bright yellow, smelled like motor oil, leather, n’ somethin’ that probably violated aviation safety codes. I couldn’t even see over the dash. But the second we were in the air…”
She trailed off. Her fingers kept drifting in slow, reverent circles across Alice’s lower belly. Like touching her made the memory easier to tell.
“It was the first time I ever felt free,” Matilda said. “Like I didn’t have to be anyone. Not for a little while.”
Alice’s hand found its way into Matilda’s hair, brushing slowly at the nape, a move so gentle it made Matilda ache. So she continued to let Alice in.
“I used to lie in the grass and stare at the sky ‘til my neck hurt,” she said, half-laughing. “Made my sister hold a stopwatch when jets flew over. We’d time how long we could still hear ‘em.”
Alice nodded slowly. “You were born for it.”
Matilda looked at her sideways. “You think?”
“I know.”
Matilda shifted closer, pressing into Alice’s side until there was no space left between them. Her hand drifted down again, slow and sure, and came to rest on the inside of Alice’s thigh, still hot and damp from what she’d just done to her.
She felt Alice shiver beneath the touch. And smiled, quiet and low. A smile that said, Mine, without needing it to be spoken.
“You never talk about your childhood,” Matilda said softly, then.
Alice’s jaw tensed. “There’s not much to say.”
Matilda snorted softly. “That’s what people say when there’s too much to say.”
Alice had never answered the question. She hadn’t in Cyprus, and now, here, over two years into being together, Matilda still didn’t know a damn thing. Not really. She tilted her head, cheek brushing Alice’s bare shoulder. Her voice softened.
“I know what this question means. But I also think you know why I gotta ask.” She let that land for a moment. Then: “Tell me your real name?”
Matilda’s question hung in the air, and Alice stilled. A kind of internal locking occurred, like something had braced deep inside her to keep from splintering. Her gaze moved over Matilda’s face, catching the quiet ache there, along with a flicker of soft defiance.
The way Matilda had asked without pleading, and fully aware of the weight it carried, made it cut deeper. It cut deep, because Alice knew she still couldn’t answer.
So, instead, she lifted her hand and curled it over Matilda’s breast with a claiming grip that made Matilda wince and bite her lip. Alice smiled and traced her thumb upward, brushing the peak in a motion that caused Matilda to whimper.
Alice held her gaze fully, unflinchingly, and a breath passed between them, thick with ache. Then Alice leaned in, eyes still locked on hers, and took Matilda’s nipple into her mouth. Soft, wet, and unhurried.
Matilda’s breath hitched, and she uttered a sound that was drawn from someplace beneath her chest. Her fingers twitched against Alice’s thigh, as if trying to hold on to herself. And Alice’s mouth moved, her lips wrapping, and her tongue circling wet and warm. This was more than seduction. It was an answer.
Matilda’s lips parted, but no sound came, and the question she’d carried was already dissolving. Alice sucked gently, then harder, becoming demanding and certain, before adding a sharp graze of her teeth. The sting sent Matilda’s hips lifting of their own accord, seeking more.
“Mmhmm, oh, come on–” Matilda gasped, voice breaking, and one hand threading tightly again into Alice’s ruined braid like she needed something to anchor her. “You’re such a bitch.”
Her words fell apart when Alice released her nipple with a soft, wet pop, only to trail lower. Then lower still, and Matilda arched, with no resistance left. Alice pressed a steady hand to Matilda’s thigh, coaxing her open with a patience that left no room for question. Her touch was firm and inevitable. A silent command that Matilda obeyed with a low breath, her thighs parting without resistance.
Alice’s mouth moved on. Her tongue traced a slow path down the slope of Matilda’s belly, savoring every inch of her sun-kissed skin.
Matilda arched beneath her again, all lean muscle and restless want, and in her surrender, every nerve was tuned to the next touch. “Oh god, woman,” she breathed, hips tipping under Alice’s mouth. “You keep that up n’ I’m gonna start writin’ psalms.”
Alice hummed as her fingers moved with quiet intent, gliding along the tender inside of Matilda’s thigh, then higher, mapping the aching length between her legs. She didn’t rush or ask. Just moved slowly, and knowingly. With every touch, every breath, Alice said what she could, that she was here. But also, that this was all she could give.
Matilda’s eyes fluttered closed, fingers still buried in Alice’s hair. Her voice cracked like glass, sweet and sharp, as her thighs opened around her. “You’re like if emotional repression had cheekbones and—“ she moaned, “a PhD in oral history.”
She sucked in a breath. “Nnn,’ I swear, the only reason Ah’m lettin’ you dodge my question is because I currently can’t remember my own damn name.”
Alice huffed a low laugh into the heat of her, her mouth slick and sure against the tenderest part of Matilda’s ache. The subtle curl of her lips sent a shiver ricocheting up Matilda’s spine. She gasped, her hips jolting helplessly, and let her head fall back with a half-choked moan.
“God,” she breathed toward the ceiling, voice ragged, “you’re unfair. I hate how good you are at this. It’s actually distressin’.”
Alice’s tongue flicked against her in reply. And that was the end of Matilda being able to think or speak.
=====
The following morning, early light spilled through the kitchen window, low, golden, and far too quiet for Matilda’s taste.
She stood barefoot by the counter, one hip cocked, her coffee cradled in both hands. She’d tugged on her washed-out Air Force tee and cotton sleep shorts that clung low on her hips. Her hair was an unruly mess falling loose around her shoulders. Freckles scattered faintly across her collarbones and nose, darker than usual thanks to last night’s heat, and Alice’s mouth.
She looked like divine trouble. All long limbs and ocean-blue eyes, with a mouth built for sass and sacrilege. The kind of mixture that made Alice forget her own rules. And Alice had a lot of rules.
Alice moved across the room in shadow, her black shirt crisp, her cuffs squared, and her collarbone still damp from a fast, disciplined shower. She fastened her gear with focus, but her eyes kept drifting back to Matilda.
She tried not to get distracted, but Matilda in a T-shirt? Bare-legged, tousled, and sipping coffee like a guilty thought? It was all too much for her. She could still taste Matilda on her tongue and feel her warm, smooth skin all over hers. Shit. Focus, Alice.
Alice stood at the mirror, arms raised, pulling that heavy curtain of dark chestnut hair into a high, tight braid. There was no softness to it. Just discipline and intention. Doing this was a ritual she’d forged from god-knows-how-many early mornings, hot zones, and extraction ops. It wasn’t pretty; it was built. It was a vow, and a promise, disguised as a hairstyle.
It was all a religious experience for Matilda, who stared unashamedly. “Dear lord,” she muttered into her mug, “you’re sexy when you do that.”
Alice didn’t turn, but in the mirror, the corner of her mouth flicked upward. “I know,” she replied, clipped and calm.
Matilda exhaled through her nose and leaned against the doorframe. She never tried to hide it from Alice anymore.
Alice smiled, then she zipped her gear shut, secured the side straps, and adjusted the hidden fastener under her ribs.
And Matilda, now openly grinning, added, “You always do that thing with your jaw when you’re mentally ghostin’ the room, like some kinda hot, tactical Roomba.”
Alice paused, then crossed the room, a glide of lethal grace. When she reached Matilda, she lifted a hand to her cheek, thumb brushing under her eye, grounding herself in freckled warmth and defiant light. “I’m not ghosting,” Alice murmured.
Matilda swallowed. “Hey, you said touching wasn’t allowed when either of us was in uniform.”
Alice didn’t respond. She just kissed her—hard and deep. And they both moaned.
When Alice finally pulled away, Matilda blinked, lips parted, and brain buffering. “That’s cheatin’,” she whispered. “Weaponizin’ your mouth.”
“You have no idea what I could do if I really wanted to cheat,” Alice said softly and dangerously.
Matilda let her fingers find the thick braid now resting over Alice’s shoulder. “Just be careful. And come back to me. Okay?”
Alice stared for a moment too long and let the silence thicken between them. “I always come back.”
“Don’t say that like it’s a guarantee,” Matilda said softly. “Just, say it like you’ll shoot first and burn anyone who even breathes wrong in your direction.”
Alice didn’t argue, so Matilda pulled her in, one last time, kissing her quick and fierce, her hand at Alice’s waist. And then she let go.
And Alice turned, and then she was gone. Matilda didn’t move right away; she just stood there, coffee long since cold, and her heart ticking quieter than it should have. Outside, the sky was heavy with the threat of rain. Inside, Matilda would wait.
=====
Later that same night, the door unlocked and opened quietly. Matilda turned from the open window, the breeze lifting a curl from her cheek, just as Alice stepped through the door.
She exhaled in one long, rough breath. Like her whole body had been holding still—waiting for the shape of that silhouette. “Thank God,” she said as she rose and crossed the room without hesitation.
She caught Alice in a fierce hug, her arms wrapping tight around her neck. Alice smelled like rain, and metal, and hotel soap. Her dark hair was wet and pulled into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, loose strands already falling free.
Alice rested her face against Matilda’s temple. “Hey,” she murmured. Her voice always sounded like it belonged in secret places. Worn and smoothed by the things she always left unsaid.
Matilda tilted her face to look at her. “You okay, Dream?”
Alice nodded. “I’m here.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, but Matilda didn’t push. She cupped Alice’s jaw, her thumbs brushing the high arch of her cheekbones. Alice’s brown eyes burned darkly.
Matilda shivered, and then said gently, “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one you get when your soul’s still catchin’ up to your skin.”
Alice blinked once and rolled her eyes. “You say the strangest things.”
Matilda shrugged, “Only when I’m relieved and trying to flirt through the dread.”
Alice smothered a sigh, “It’s working.”
Matilda kissed her then, soft and unrushed. Then, “I made soup,” she whispered, when they parted. “But, then forgot it existed. So it’s probably glue. But you can shower, and I’ll resurrect it.”
“I already did. Hotel.” Alice’s voice was quiet. “Didn’t want to bring any of that shit back in.”
Matilda stilled at the way she said the words. Like danger was something you could wash off if you scrubbed hard enough.
“Okay,” Matilda said.
She stepped back and watched as Alice moved like she always did after a job, precise and gentle—almost like she was haunted. First the jacket, then the belt and boots. It was all returned neatly to its place.
She didn’t make a sound, she didn’t waste any movement, and there was something sacred and sterile in it all, like she was cleaning the day out of herself piece by piece.
Matilda sat cross-legged on the bed, arms curled on her knees, watching her like she might watch the tide come in, beautiful and inevitable, but still too far away.
“You want tea?” she offered.
A small shake of the head. “No.”
Matilda leaned back, fiddling with the duvet corner. “Can I ask you somethin’?”
Alice was unlacing a boot. “You always do.”
Matilda smiled faintly. “What will you do when this life is over?”
Alice paused. “This is the life I have.”
“Yeah, but if you could walk away. You know, clean slate, a different life. What would it look like?”
Alice didn’t answer. She didn’t blink. She just stood and moved to the wardrobe, turning her back to Matilda. “I don’t think like that.”
Matilda huffed. “Come on. If I tattooed the question on my ass, would you answer it then?”
“YOU THINK THIS IS A FUCKING GAME?” Alice exploded. And then in the next instant, her voice dropped, lethal, and low. “I don’t get to play games, Matilda. I bury people. Or I get buried.”
The silence that followed hit like a rifle crack. A sudden rupture from a woman who usually measured every sentence like ammunition. It cut clean through the air, leaving no place to hide.
Matilda flinched. But she didn’t move or back down. She held Alice’s fierce gaze, her hands braced on her knees, and her body steady, even as something deep inside her recoiled. Giddy-up, Alice, she thought. There you are.
Alice hadn’t meant to snap. But she had. The pressure, the fatigue, and the burden of Matilda’s questions, which, tender and human as they may have been, were relentless. They brushed against the parts of herself she’d spent years fortifying.
Matilda exhaled. Giving herself courage. “Alice—”
“I’m not on leave,” Alice interrupted coldly. “I’m not someone with options. I don’t get to dream. I do the job, and I keep doing it.”
Matilda’s breath caught. There it was again, the wall, and the locked gate. Alice had a steel plate behind her ribs that nothing ever broke past. And maybe it shouldn’t hurt so much. Maybe she should’ve expected it by now. But it hurt badly.
Matilda spoke again, slowly, her voice almost too calm. “I just want you to let me in.”
She watched Alice carefully. She watched the line of her jaw tighten and saw the angle of her spine go stiff with effort. She noticed the way even her stillness felt tactical, like she was bracing for a breach that would never overcome her, because she wouldn’t allow it.
“You have the version of me I choose to give you,” Alice said, her eyes unreadable. “And even that is more than I should allow.”
Matilda went very still. Inside, her chest was splitting along old seams, the kind you tried to pretend had healed until someone touches them just right. She’d slowly given Alice everything in careful pieces, offered over time. And Alice had taken everyone, without ever truly giving anything back. She realized that, now. She’d been trying to ignore it, but she saw it plainly in that moment. She had no part of the real Alice.
She swallowed hard. So that’s it, she thought. This is where it ends. Not because Alice didn’t care, but because she didn’t know how to want more than survival. Was the tattoo a lie, then? All that poetry, all that promise, was it just a beautiful shell? Had she wooed Matilda in, only to reveal nothing was inside?
Because Matilda, God, she had wanted more. She’d hoped. She’d let herself imagine a version of them that didn’t have to end in flames. She’d imagined a life with open windows and morning light. A life where laughter wasn’t just an accident, but a regular rhythm. A world where kisses weren’t rationed or hard won, and where trust didn’t have to be earned with blood. She had imagined a home—Alice. Alice in a lounge room. Alice holding her in her lap. Alice in love with her.
But instead, she was here again. Staring down the barrel of Alice’s silence, and knowing, with a grief so deep it almost felt calm, that it wasn’t meant to hurt. But it would still destroy her.
Across the room, Alice didn’t move. She was frozen like a woman trying not to breathe. As if exhaling would fracture something, or worse, let something true escape. Because she could feel it. That dread that always found her in the end. The whisper in her blood: You’re doing it. You’re failing the one person who might have stayed.
She hadn’t meant for this. She hadn’t meant to be this—a locked door rusted shut. There had only ever been one other woman who had made her feel the way Matilda did, and she still haunted Alice in her quiet moments. And that woman hadn’t even been gay.
But when Matilda had asked her, “What will you do when this life is over?”, it had scraped straight down to the bone. Because for all the poetic bluster of her tattoo, she didn’t really know how to dream, or how to choose. Not without unraveling and losing herself.
And maybe that was the quiet truth between them. Matilda wanted a life, but Alice only knew how to survive. And somewhere between them, something rare, something astonishing and surprising, was dying.
Matilda’s voice, when it finally came, was soft and barely audible. “Then why did you give me anything at all?”
Alice blinked. She didn’t answer; she couldn’t. Something in the air went weightless. Like that second before lightning strikes.
Matilda took a deep breath and then stood and moved slowly through the room. She collected her jeans first, then her hoodie. She scraped her hair into a rough ponytail while she packed the few things she’d brought to their little hideaway.
Alice watched it all, but she didn’t stop her. And maybe that was the part that would haunt them both.
Matilda’s hands didn’t shake as she gathered her things; her hands never shook. But something within her was coming loose. She took another breath, blinked hard, and then turned back. She forced a sad smile, trembling and brave. “I know you’re good at surviving, Alice,” she said. “I just hoped that you had wanted more with me.”
Alice opened her mouth, but Matilda lifted a hand, soft and silencing. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “But if I stay, I’ll teach myself that this is okay. That it’s enough to be locked out.”
She swallowed, and her voice finally cracked. “And I don’t want to be locked out anymore.”
With that, she turned toward the door, but then paused one last time. “Someday,” she whispered, without looking back, “a girl’s gonna love you enough to ask for more, just like I did.” She hesitated. “N’ I hope… I hope you’ll give it to her.”
Then she left Alice to the silence.
Alice didn’t move. Her hands had curled into fists from the ache of holding back everything she didn’t say. She sat slowly and stiffly, like someone lowering herself into grief. Her eyes locked on the point in space where Matilda used to be. And then, as the stillness settled, something in her cracked open. Her shoulders folded, and her head dropped forward in surrender. And there, alone in the quiet, Alice finally broke. But there was no one there to witness it.
