Inamorata
And burned her tongue on the coffee again, grimacing against the chipped edge of a pale blue mug on which white clouds (that do not portend rain) march pleasantly like legless, headless sheep in perfected asymmetry: a summer sky. Sugar and cream, sugar and cream, sugar and cream, and the coffee becomes bearable, cooled and sweetened and just barely drinkable, the way Pansy likes it. Ginny hands her the mug.
"Careful, it's still hot."
Later on she will trace Pansy's pale naval with the tip of her scorched tongue. She will taste skin as white as cream, as sweet as sugar. Pansy is a girl with a character as foreign and strong and unpleasant as coffee, with a frame as deceiving as a summer sky mug. There are storms on the horizon.
Tonight she will sleep with her hands on the dangerous curves of Pansy's jutting hip bones, her face tucked behind Pansy's neck, nose buried in the scent of the girl in her bed. Leg over leg under leg. A tangle of youth, girl, limb, further down a tangle of sinew, bone, emotion. A tangle like the kinds that form in her curls as Pansy tugs with restless fingers, teasing knots into the thick red tresses and saying please, please, don't stop, please, please -
Ginny doesn't.
And then the lazy morning after, like the morning before – this one right now, the past in the future – waking up to a kiss and searching skin for new marks in the bathroom mirror, discretely. Plotting bruises and bites like shifting constellations. Orion's belt around her neck, Ginny will let Pansy take the first shower as she heads to the kitchen to make breakfast, maybe French toast this time, and burn her tongue on the coffee again, grimacing against the chipped edge of a pale blue mug on which white clouds (that do not portend rain) march pleasantly like legless, headless sheep in perfected asymmetry: a summer sky.
