Laurel awoke to a hot mouth against her own. Somehow she thought Oliver and Tommy at the same time. She sleepily kissed back, letting a moist tongue into her mouth, a sly touch onto her nipples. Starting fires. She fumbled for a touch, feel warmth, smoothness—no scars—not Ollie. Not Tommy; Tommy was dead. She came awake to find Nyssa al Ghul, the Demon's Heir, atop her.
"What are you doing?" Laurel asked, too stunned to be angry.
"Your sister made certain promises. Took certain obligations. As her sister, it falls to you to fulfill them." A pink tongue teased the lobe of her ear with the cold certainty of a knife dragged cross a vein. "You are not so unlike her in looks. Your scent is similar. You taste very nearly the same…"
"I'm not a lesbian."
Teeth flashed at her ear, the nibble just hard enough to hurt. "The illusion is most complete when you do not speak."
Laurel put her hands on Nyssa's back, finding its slope lined with muscle, but still enough yielding softness to be pleasant to the touch. Almost absently she bucked and moaned, Nyssa digging fingers into her sex. They were moist already. Nyssa didn't need her to get wet.
Sara didn't know why she was going along with this. Maybe because she hadn't fucked anyone—felt anything—in so long that she couldn't say no to something freely offered. Perhaps because she'd failed Sara so utterly that bringing a measure of comfort to her lover was the only thing that mattered. Or she just liked being needed by someone, by anyone.
"I want to try something new, Sara," Nyssa said, and her dark hair covered her face as she swept down Laurel's naked body, making her disappear into the night. Laurel half-expected a set of preparatory kisses along her belly, like Tommy used to do, but no. Nyssa licked her without preamble, tasting the juices she had released with her fingers.
Laurel arched, groaning in pleasure, Nyssa reaching up to caress her breasts with a callused hand—so much like Oliver's, the one time they had had each other after the island—Laurel went hot and wet, feeling an orgasm gathering. She wanted nothing else now. Just the full force of that breathtaking surge.
She rolled her hips, moaned to assure Nyssa it was working, helped Nyssa's tongue into her soft chamber. Thought of Sara: strong, confident, beautiful, and remembered she had felt the same way countless times. For the first time in a long while, she felt close to her sister.
Nyssa took her wonderful tongue away and Laurel hated her for it, hated her for making Laurel feel good and then taking it away, just like everyone else in her life. Laurel was ready to punch Nyssa in the jaw and force her back to work, even if it ended up getting her decapitated, when she heard Nyssa warn "Here comes your new thrill, beloved. Ready?"
Remembering Nyssa's illusion, she only nodded. Nyssa took a plump breast in her hand, leaned down to Laurel's spread crotch, and then her nipple was teasing the lips of her sex. Laurel whined softly, even through another nightmare thought, her brain fucking with her—at least Sara had gotten to enjoy this, at least she'd had someone.
Nyssa's nipple was thick and long and it only seemed to get bigger, probing inside Laurel with Nyssa actually laughing in triumph to see her lover moaning and panting with bliss, face a familiar silhouette on the whiteness of her pillow.
"Come here," Laurel said, her voice hoarse enough to be Sara's. When she lifted Nyssa by the hair, the assassin complied, merging her mouth with Laurel's. Her lips tasted of Laurel, maybe of Sara, and Laurel hoped Nyssa had enjoyed the taste as much as she did now. She lowered her head to Nyssa's stiff nipples for more of it.
A sudden flash of anger had her—she stabbed fingers into Nyssa's cunt, bit at her tits, but Nyssa only moaned spectacularly. Bucked up and down on the penetration, hands pulling Laurel closer to the breast already filling her mouth, thigh bruising Laurel's cunt as they rocked and clenched together, tying themselves into a Gordian knot without ever thinking of how to untangle it, just pulling it tight, tight, tighter, until they were gasping on the bed together, slowly coming undone.
"Ta-er al-Asfer," Nyssa cried with gentle fervor, over and over again. "My sweet canary, my blackest bird…"
Nyssa left without dressing, without saying a word. Laurel watched her go, still gasping, and didn't ruin the illusion with one word. She didn't even think too hard about what had happened. For one person, for one moment, Sara had been alive.
Perhaps Laurel had wanted it to happen. She'd slept in the nude, after all. Naked except for Sara's jacket.