It is still dark when the Morrigan wakes to the bed shifting beneath her.
"Baphomet?" Her voice is weak, rough from sleep and injury, and the Morrigan realizes, as the now-familiar aches come flooding back to her, that the dark figure slipping into bed with her cannot possibly be him, even before they betray themselves with speech.
"Better," Sakhmet purrs, stretching out beside her with a seductive smirk. She sweeps the Morrigan's hair back from her face, and speaks so that her lips brush against her neck with each word, "I can put on my nurse outfit if you'd like."
The heat of Sakhmet's body against hers reminds the Morrigan far too intimately of Baphomet. She yearns for him with a fierceness that causes every bruise and broken bone in her body to ache more acutely than ever. But still the thought of him hurts far more than any of her injuries, a complicated, miserable tangle of worry and betrayal. Without her…
The Morrigan understands then, with a sudden, sickly kind of clarity; the rest must tire of telling her to be reasonable. "Triple queen will not talk."
Sakhmet only shrugs, trailing her fingers down the Morrigan's neck more gently than the Morrigan would have thought her capable. Even though she lounges, her body is whipcord tight, all muscle and hard edges. Irresistibly lethal. Her eyes seem to glow in the darkness, piercing. "We don't have to talk."
Something about her touch, or her voice, or the look in her eyes has the Morrigan's heart racing and she knows Sakhmet will be able to feel it. She swallows hard - and winces at another unwelcome memory: bruises ringing her throat from Baal's grip - but that doesn't stop the heat from spreading beneath her skin. Sakhmet leans in again and flicks the very tip of her tongue out between her fingers, just enough to have the Morrigan draw breath at the contact.
She knows she's being teased, that Ananke will have sent Sakhmet to her, but that does not stop her from feeling, and it has been far too long since she last took Baphomet to her bed. The Morrigan's throat is too tight in an instant, and she turns her head away.
"It doesn't have to be you here," Sakhmet suggests, as the Morrigan knew she would, her fingers tracing lower. "Give him up. We'll lick your wounds down where you like it."
Sakhmet is temptation incarnate, and the way her tongue curls around the words feels nearly tangible. If the Morrigan had doubted Ananke's wisdom in sending her before, the surge of blood at Sakhmet's words alone would have pushed any question from her mind.
"I know not where Baphomet hides." It's not a lie - there are many places he could be - but the Pantheon will never find him without her help.
Sakhmet must know this, or she wouldn't be here now.
Once again, she follows with her mouth the path her fingertips have blazed across the Morrigan's skin. It is rougher this time, more insistent. "He hurt you," Sakhmet suggests, as if it could ever be so simple, but her eyes narrow dangerously, vindictively, at the words that follow; it is the most emotion the Morrigan has ever seen her show. "Make him pay."
"No," the Morrigan is pierced through at the thought; it is a hurt far deeper than the ones Baal inflicted upon her that Sakhmet calls to mind, but her response is automatic. She is heartbroken and she is torn, and the Morrigan doesn't think she'll ever reconcile the urge to slaughter him herself with the need to protect him to her last breath. But she loves him as if that half of her soul has been ripped straight from her chest. To betray Baphomet - no matter what he's done - would destroy her. "I won't."
It feels perverse to want to take comfort in someone else's arms, to lose herself even if only to a new agony, but just then it seems as if Sakhmet's fingers tracing their way up her ribs are the only thing that keeps them from splitting further. The Morrigan presses up into her touch, wishing she could cease to think, to feel - that the hands on her skin were far larger and rougher; that Sakhmet could burn the memory of his body from her skin for good. Her breath catches in her chest, and she knows not if it is for grief or desire. I can't.
But then Sakhmet continues, unperturbed and unaware of the gaping wound she has opened. "If you ask nicely, Ananke might even let you do the honors. I'd like to see that." She licks her lips before kissing her sadistic words into the Morrigan's skin, not breaking eye contact. Something predatory glimmers there, and there is a low purr in her throat that feels far too good for the suggestion behind it. "Especially if you fuck him first."
The Morrigan seizes Sakhmet by the hair, ignoring the pain in tearing her mouth from her collarbone - the coppery reminder of Baphomet's blood on her own tongue, "Never." They are too much alike: creatures of flesh, of destruction and death. She doesn't need to see the heat in Sakhmet's gaze to know she's been understood, but the Morrigan doesn't want her kinship. They are not friends. There is a warning blazing in her own eyes, her talons gone sharp against the back of Sakhmet's neck. Well worth the agony it costs her.
The unspoken threat lingers between them - broken as she is, the Morrigan hasn't a prayer of backing it up, but she'd rather fight to the death than admit defeat.
Sakhmet smirks. "I hoped you still had claws." She nips at the Morrigan's forearm, her teeth scraping over bruises. "It's more fun that way." Her touch is still soft though; the Morrigan wonders if she was told to be careful, because even when Sakhmet digs her nails into her chest there is only enough pain for it to be pleasurable.
The Morrigan sighs. She lets her head fall back against the pillows and looses Sakhmet's hair from her grasp. Her body is too damaged to change with her, and the rage Badb would have borne out ebbs away from her even faster than it flared to life. "Would not have come to me if you wanted fun."
No matter how it tempts her to reciprocate, she is in no state to. She doesn't attempt to mask the cant of her hips or the way she exhales when Sakhmet catches her nipples between her fingers, but the Morrigan closes her eyes and tries not to imagine why she should. "Not now."
"I make my own fun," Sakhmet assures her, making sure she's watching again before bending her head to the Morrigan's chest. "For example," her tongue is at once rough and surprisingly soft rasping across her nipple, and it isn't long before the Morrigan is panting, arching up into her touch until pain shoots down her spine, "turning the feared underworld queen into my personal pillow princess?" She licks her lips again pointedly, perverse in satisfaction, "yes please."
It's not quite an insult, but it still rankles. The Morrigan scowls - far more used to being on the other end of these games - though she knows better than to add fuel to such a fire. She is at Sakhmet's mercy, no matter that they're playing nice for the moment, and she'd do well not to forget it.
She hates Sakhmet for making her burn this way - and oh, how the tables have turned; the Morrigan wonders if Baphomet ever raged so, half-driven out of his mind while she continued to taunt and tease. Delight in her own cruelty, the intoxicating effect she had on him - the power she held the way Sakhmet holds her now, as if toying with her prey. It shouldn't be so sexy.
But it is. Oh gods, is it ever.
Sakhmet prods one of the bruises on her side this time. Considering how much of her is bruised, it's no great feat, but that catches the Morrigan's attention anyway. "Love doesn't last. I do." She smirks, and adds, "longer than he ever could," in between kisses as she works her way down the Morrigan's body. It's too straightforward to be vengeful, but there is a satisfaction bordering on outright pleasure in Sakhmet's tone when she adds, "he won't, you know."
She drags her fingers up the inside of the Morrigan's thighs even as her tongue teases out every last crevasse to be found between her hipbones. The contrast has the Morrigan's insides twisting up in knots, tingling in a way that sparks of pleasure and dread twined so tightly she can't separate the two. It forms its own perverse feedback loop - so many jagged edges overlapping again and again - and each time the Morrigan thinks she has found the thread that will unravel it all (will it unravel her too?) Sakhmet licks fire into her skin and blurs it all together again.
The Morrigan would cry, would beg Sakhmet to spare him, debase herself in every way if she thought it would do any good. Because it isn't Baal she worries about; he is emotional, might be relied upon to make mistakes. But Sakhmet is a hunter, a killer - nothing will sway her, nor stay her hand now that Baphomet is in her sights. The Morrigan might as well try to bargain with death itself.
"I won't help you," she repeats. "I won't betray him."
"You'd make yourself the traitor for your fake god instead?" Sakhmet scoffs. Waits only a minute for that to sink in: the implication that Morrigan is equally doomed by her silence - the threat she expected to be laid out far sooner, and far more violently. "Lost causes aren't romantic, they're stupid. Playthings are replaceable."
"No."
When Sakhmet grins, it's predatory. "He's dead the second I catch up to him, Morrigan, your help or not. There's no use defending him."
The Morrigan has the sudden, perverse mental image of Sakhmet - true to her namesake as lion-goddess - dragging Baphomet's lifeless body in to lay at her feet like a dead rat or broken bird. Look what I've caught. She shudders, and has to fight back the sudden impulse toward tears.
At least she won't have to live long without him. Unless the Pantheon would rather keep her alive to bear consequence for her defiance -
He is not yet caught, the Morrigan thinks, and repeats it to herself over and over again for good measure. It becomes the cadence to which she rocks her hips, hidden mantra behind her every gasping breath. She would know it if he was. She would know if Baphomet's heart ceased to beat, his fires to burn. And every moment that Sakhmet spends between her thighs is one that she is not in pursuit.
As if the Morrigan needed further reason to capitulate. There are tears rolling down her cheeks before she knows it, despite the pleasure. If only she could have stopped him, if only she'd fought back while she still could...
"You care too much," Sakhmet schools her, nudging one of the Morrigan's thighs aside to give herself more room, settling in the space between them as if she's always belonged there, as if there had never been another. She mouths at the skin left bare above her fingers, heated breath stirring something low in the pit of the Morrigan's stomach despite the chill creeping up her spine. "Do what I do - don't."
"How?" The word slips out before the Morrigan can stop herself.
"It's easy." She walks her fingers back up the Morrigan's abdomen, feather-light touches that set her skin aflame. "I wasn't supposed to fuck you until you told us where to find him." A wicked grin splits Sakhmet's features as she leans in closer, mouths her last words into the damp curls atop the Morrigan's cunt with just enough breath behind them to make her quiver, heat staining her skin. "But I don't care."
It could be a sob or a moan that forces its way from the Morrigan's throat when Sakhmet traces her swollen labia with two fingers - drawing it out, winding her even tighter if that's even possible. "Please," she forgets herself long enough to beg. Sakhmet laughs.
"I could make you tell me," she gloats. "Tease you until you'd give up your own life for it, or fuck you so hard and so good you forgot him entirely. Mmm," Sakhmet buries her face between the Morrigan's legs at last, letting the vibration of her lips speak even louder than her words, "Baphomet, who?"
Her tongue flicks out against the Morrigan's clit before she can protest; noise of outrage turning to a strangled cry in her throat. Her broken ribs burn with the involuntary jerk of her hips, and her cunt throbs in Sakhmet's wake. It feels as if a touch would set her off already -
But of course Sakhmet wouldn't make it that easy. She backs off again, nuzzling and scenting and licking at every over-sensitized bit of the Morrigan's flesh so lightly that it only urges the burn of arousal deeper.
The Morrigan's thighs quake with the effort of holding herself still; she refuses to play along and chase Sakhmet's mouth the way she so desperately wants to.
"Don't be shy, Morrigan," Sakhmet continues teasingly, the Morrigan's fluids glistening on her chin when she glances up, "close your eyes and pretend I'm him if you want. I don't mind."
It's meant as a mockery, but there is a part of the Morrigan that wishes she could - if only because it means they'd be together again. But Sakhmet is far more deliberate than Baphomet ever was: taunting the Morrigan with every last bit of pleasure she allows her.
She alternates strokes and swirls, teases the Morrigan open with her tongue little by little. And still she avoids her clit; drawing it out and driving the Morrigan to desperation.
"Queen's consort would have made her cum twice over," she returns, barely able to catch her breath. She won't beg Sakhmet - she won't. Not again.
Sakhmet laughs, a deep vibration in her throat and on her lips that makes the Morrigan shiver. "Maybe I just won't let you stop." She nips at the folds of her labia, enough hint of her teeth to be a warning before sucking gently and releasing her again instead - so close; the Morrigan nearly has to bite back a scream, though of pleasure or frustration even she can't decide, but there's thrill like an electric shock that passes through her at Sakhmet's assertion.
The Morrigan doesn't doubt that she could - and has the sudden mental image of herself: writhing and crying, far past mere oversensitivity, one orgasm blending into the next at the mercy of Sakhmet's tongue. She craves and dreads it in equal measure even as the thought occurs.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Sakhmet asks, the heat of her breath stirring against the Morrigan once more. Enough to make her tremble, matching heat in the pit of her stomach flaring bright -
"No," she moans.
There is a recklessly bright glimmer in Sakhmet's eyes that comes close to striking fear into the Morrigan, but then Sakhmet flattens her tongue and licks her properly for once before she can consider that - long, smooth, slow stroke before flicking back down over her clit - over and over again until the Morrigan is coming almost before she knows what's hit her.
Her vision goes white from the burst of pleasure and pain combined, fisting the sheets hard enough to make her hands ache; body pulled far too tight and breath driven from her lungs from the force of it. She can only lie there panting for a long moment, Sakhmet pressing a parting kiss to her inner thigh that would likely inflame her further if she had the energy left.
"Tomorrow, Morrigan," she assures her, as much a threat as it is a promise, slipping out of bed as gracefully as she'd entered it, "and every night until Baphomet is mine."