Helena held Myka for several minutes after their conversation had faded to silence. She presumed that her lover was considering the situation that her cousin had somehow become tangled into, but Myka had already spoken of her fears for Savannah's safety, so Helena was content to dote tender caresses upon her while Myka processed the knowledge in quiet.
But not long after, Myka interrupted the peace of her room to exasperatedly call out, "You can come in, Pete."
Helena's brow lifted with swift amusement when Pete and Claudia all but tumbled through the door, Claudia's hand gripped firmly around Steve's arm as she towed him behind her.
With a sheepish look, Pete tossed Myka a pack of Twizzlers, but he said nothing as he speculatively eyed her from his position by the window. Helena supposed he was probably trying to get a read on Myka's mood before he ventured into inquires.
"Dude, what did Mrs. F want?" Claudia spewed when Pete failed to produce words.
Myka's fingers readily moved to tear open the package of candy that had been thrown in her direction, and she pulled one out before she replied, "My cousin's coming."
"Here?" Steve probed suspiciously, pointing with both index fingers to the floor. "To the Warehouse?"
Myka nodded.
"How come?" Steve asked, his head tilting to the side interestedly.
"Apparently she's the proud new owner of Nero's bow," she began dryly, "which goes with Nero's fiddle," she continued, tearing off a bit of Twizzler with her teeth, "which we don't have."
"Please do 'splain," Claudia demanded, jumping onto the bed and snatching at one of Myka's sweets before anyone could think to tell her not to.
Helena fought off a scowl as she bounced with Claudia's leap onto the mattress, but Myka smiled indulgently and rested her free hand against Helena's thigh, which curiously halted the reprimand that threatened to snap from her lips.
"I don't know very much about it," Myka sighed. "I have to do some research before – "
"Always with the books," Pete interrupted, rolling his eyes.
"You know what, Pete, my books have saved your life more times than I can count, so shove it."
"Books have great value. You oughtn't disparage them," Helena admonished reproachfully, though Myka's aggravated rebuke had emerged concurrently with Helena's words, and she wasn't certain that either of them had been heard, despite that their joint message had been clearly received.
"Alright, alright!" Pete surrendered, throwing his hands into the air. "Jeez," he frowned. "I knew having two Mykas around would suck," he grumbled.
"Okay, kiddies, that's enough," Claudia mediated, before she shifted her attentions back to Myka. "So why's your cousin coming here? I mean, can't we just snag, bag, 'n tag the thing?"
Myka shook her head. "Mrs. Frederic said that we can't do anything with it until we have the fiddle, and it has to stay with her until then because the bow is clingy and it likes her."
"It likes her?" Steve said, raising his eyebrows. "You have to put your cousin's life in danger, because an artifact likes her?"
Myka's Twizzler curved into her mouth as she nodded with wide, annoyed eyes, and Helena was immediately certain that those candy twists would be the death of her, because she simply couldn't avert her eyes from Myka's strawberry reddened lips, despite their present company.
"That sucks, Mykes," Pete said sympathetically, plopping into the armchair.
"Yeah," Myka agreed.
"But we get a new friend to play with!" Claudia asserted exuberantly, performing a little jig. "No offense to you guys, 'cause you know I love you, but seriously, I'm around you all the time. And you guys aren't that exciting anymore," she pouted.
"We already barely get hot water for the shower," Steve reminded.
"Seriously," Pete rolled his eyes. "It's Myka's freakin' baths that mess up the whole schedule."
"I happen to be quite fond of those baths," Helena defended with a smirk, and Myka lightly smacked her jean-clad thigh for the dirty quip.
"Behave," her lover instructed firmly.
"Yeah," Pete agreed, nodding and pointing at her swiftly. "Behave. I have enough mental videos of you and Myka from… you know… the sounds and stuff…"
Myka flushed instantaneously and anxiously finished off the rest of her Twizzler, but Helena grinned and waspishly replied, "A woman well satisfied often tends to resonate, Agent Lattimer; or haven't you experienced that particular gratification?"
Claudia snorted indelicately before erupting into laughter with Steve.
"Hey!" Pete cried over their cachinnations. "I actually have some skills in that area, thank you," he declared defensively, puffing up his chest.
Myka shook her head and leaned further back into Helena's embrace, and Helena offered a silent kiss to the side of her head as an apology for rising to the bait that Pete had lured in front of her.
"You two are just so snuggly and cute," Claudia proclaimed abruptly, her face scrunched up as though she were cooing at a baby, and her fingers ready to stretch out to Helena's cheek for a healthy pinch.
"Claude, I don't think – " Steve began, but Helena glared at the offending hand before it could move and before Steve could finish explaining to Claudia that her forthcoming action would have severe and unpleasant consequences. In reply to the glower she received, Claudia scrambled over Helena's legs to sit beside Myka instead, glancing apprehensively over at Helena before shifting her eyes away, tucking herself safely behind Myka's shoulder.
"I am not cute," Helena rejected the notion emphatically, lifting her brow defiantly.
Myka rolled her eyes, and leaned a bit further toward Claudia to offer on an exaggerated whisper, "She doesn't like that word."
"It was a good thing!" Claudia exclaimed.
"I thought it was sweet," Myka indulged, smiling fondly at the younger woman. "Don't take it personally, Claude."
"So…" Pete disturbed their banter, unconcerned, "this is Savannah we're talking about, right?"
"Yeah," Myka confirmed with a nod, tucking a new Twizzler into the corner of her mouth and sucking on it pensively. Those infernal slivers of rope, however, had worn Helena's restraint far too thin and for far too long, so, before she could even conceive of taking a moment to reflect upon the action, her fingers reached up to grab the sugary cord, and she all but yanked it from Myka's mouth.
"Helena!" Myka protested.
"Uh-oh," Pete lamented warily, shaking his head meaningfully back and forth.
"Darling, I can only withstand so much of the torment that these demonic sweets inevitably bestow," Helena informed dimly, offering Myka a repentant look, to which her lover scowled at.
"She needs those!" Pete leaped upward with an urgency that Helena rarely saw from him. "Seriously, you don't know crazy until you've seen stressed-out-Myka without those things! She's gets all Hulk-like kinda mad and grrrr," he growled, while making some strange motion with his hands over his face to mimic some reference to a transformation that Helena simply couldn't understand. "HG, you gotta give it back!" Pete finished, gesturing wildly to convey the importance of his command.
"I do not get Hulk-like," Myka snapped, aggravated.
"You get kinda Hulk-like," Steve and Claudia simultaneously argued, with matching expressions of weak reluctance.
Myka rolled her eyes and, with a blistering puff, she ripped a new Twizzler from her package and tore a bite from it. She then pointed it at Helena, and declared, "I love you." She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Helena's cheek. "Don't take my Twizzlers again," she finished resolutely. "They're kinda right. It's a terrible habit, and I've tried so many times to give them up, but it's a stress thing," she shrugged feebly.
"Myka, I'm well aware that they offer you comfort," Helena sighed, pleased that her partner wasn't terribly angry with her. "But there's no cause to make a show of it, love," she said, frustrated, and drawing her hands through her hair.
"I wasn't – "
"Unintentional, darling," Helena assured, reaching out to soothe her nails over Myka's covered knee. "But tantalizing, nevertheless."
"And on that note!" Claudia jumped upward eagerly. "We're just gonna make like flies and flee," she announced, heading toward the nearest exit.
When neither Pete nor Steve made to move, she reversed her path with a fluid pivot and latched onto the boys' arms, dragging them quickly out the door, and being sure to shut it behind her with a hefty slam.
"You really get worked up by these Twizzlers," Myka acknowledged softly.
"Not the Twizzlers, my love," Helena denied darkly. "The way that you vex me with them."
"And how do I do that?" Myka asked, the hint of a provocative smile curving the edges of her mouth.
"Dear Myka, you have such a lovely mouth," she murmured, her tone sultry and low. She grazed the pads of her fingertips teasingly over Myka's lips as she leaned forward. "And so gifted," she whispered, sure that her breath stroked against Myka's face. "The manner in which you savor those sweets…" she husked predatorily, her words melting into a kiss that barely brushed Myka's mouth. "I find it simply delicious."
Myka was swiftly reduced to a puddle of silence beneath her as Helena shifted to cover her lover's body with her own. Helena skated her fingers down Myka's arm until she could close her hand over the one that she'd found, and she slowly lifted it to hover in the air above Myka's cheek.
Myka's lips instinctively parted for the Twizzler that she held, and Helena's eyes darkened with lust and greed as she used her delicate grip on Myka's hand to guide the candy to her lover's mouth. She absorbed the way that Myka's lips folded over the transgressing twist, and released a groan that couldn't have been helped even if she'd thought to try. And before Myka could sink her teeth into it, Helena eased their hands backward so that the Twizzler slithered away from her tongue.
"There," Helena crooned. "That is what arouses me so, my love."
"I – " Myka bravely tried to string a few words together, but Helena leaned forward and took the piece of candy between her own lips, and Myka's impending sentence broke as Helena hummed her approval of the strawberry flavor while Myka's breathing hitched.
"Tell me, darling," Helena purred seductively, nipping her teeth into the cord and drawing a small bite of it into her mouth. "Tell me that it doesn't have your blood running hot," she muttered wickedly. "That it isn't positively," she kissed Myka then, hot and slow and persuasive, her tongue just barely reaching out to taunt, "insufferably," another kiss, and she drew Myka bottom lip between her teeth and dangerously scraped against it until she tasted copper, "maddeningly luscious," she finished, her tongue curling around the final sound like the word in itself was a sin.
"Helena – " Myka rasped.
But Helena's mouth met her lover's, effectively silencing Myka's words, and she moaned from somewhere low in her chest when Myka's tongue eagerly thrashed out to seek her own. Helena lowered her hips to rest heavy over her partner's, and Myka grinded upwards in answer, needing so much more than the little pressure that Helena had granted.
Helena heaved Myka's hand above her head, pinning it down and capturing her opposite one as soon as she had the leverage to do so, bracketing her lover's wrists together and fastening her fingers around them in a secure hold. Her other hand swept the length of Myka's aching body, lifting her shirt to blaze heated digits across a toned stomach and up, until she could feel a pointed nipple beneath Myka's bra pressing against her palm, and her lover curved upward with a gasp that breathed of desire. Helena kneaded the breast beneath her fingers, concealing her face in Myka's neck and trimming into the flesh with her teeth when Myka tore away to release a pining whimper.
Her tongue danced over Myka's neck, inciting her, and she could feel Myka weakly attempting to free her arms to touch, to take anything from Helena that she could while the Victorian tormented her with lips and teeth and voracious, talented hands, but Helena kept a firm grip and denied her the luxury.
However, with Myka's wrists bound together, Helena could do nothing about the blouse that her lover wore but gradually unbutton it, her handicap of having but one free hand only slowing the process, and serving to frustrate Helena immensely. Once a clear strip of Myka's lovely flesh became visible, she lowered her mouth from Myka's neck to her collar, inching downward and shifting Myka's bra until she could clasp a tortured nipple between her lips.
Myka keened under the warmth of Helena's tongue as it flickered outward over her lover's breast, but Helena allowed no respite and held Myka's hips steady with her hand as she continued to lavish attention upon the vulnerable flesh. When Helena's teeth just hardly touched against it, Myka cried out as her hips pitched into Helena's, and, with determined vivacity, Helena shifted her mouth down further, just beneath Myka's breast, and then an openmouthed, desperate kiss against Myka's ribs, the side of her stomach, before a frantic nip against Myka's hip.
Her fingers fumbled – there was no better word for it – against the clasp of Myka's jeans, and when it proved nearly too difficult for her, with Myka's hips thrusting upward the way that they were, she loosened her hold on Myka's wrists only after tugging the skin at Myka's waist into her mouth with an implied warning for Myka's hands to remain precisely where they were. And then she dexterously popped the button out of place, and all but ripped the cumbersome piece of clothing from Myka's long legs, lathering kisses down the expanses of skin and back up again, scraping her nails roughly up Myka's thighs and eliciting a long, deep moan that growled from her lover's throat.
Helena hovered over Myka's sex, and seared a look up Myka's panting figure until she could lay eyes on her lover's face. And a heated blow of desire singed directly through to Helena's core, because Myka Bering was spread beneath her, arms stationed above her head and her shirt peeled to her sides, glorious curls fanning into a tangled chaos that framed her face, where her eyes pleaded for Helena's touch, and her lips parted with desperation.
Myka squirmed under her – an inevitable response to the sensation of Helena's breath as it capered over her sensitive flesh – and Helena obligingly stretched her tongue out, groaning appreciatively as she drew over Myka's clit, and Myka raked in a hard, loud gasp of air.
"Helena!" Myka cried, her hips surging forward for more of Helena's devotion, and her hands rapidly reminded themselves how to move, fisting into Helena's hair. Helena growled at Myka's rebellion, but allowed her hands to remain when the vibration of her noise had Myka's entire body lifting as her lips opened to release a silent scream.
And Helena could take little more.
She took Myka's clit between her lips, sucking hard against it and flaming her tongue over the swollen nub, exulting in the cries that hissed from Myka's mouth, and hungrily feeding off of them, lashing against her sex with determined intensity. And when her tongue lowered and dipped into Myka's heat, her partner sighed out her brief liberation, before she began to writhe under Helena's broiling worship.
"Helena, please," Myka beseeched, her voice scarcely a croak as it rushed through her lips. "God, I need you," she rambled breathily. "Please…"
The proclamation incited a hot fever in Helena's veins, and the nails of her left hand tore into the flesh at Myka's hip, while the fingers of her right moved urgently to Myka's clit, rubbing furiously against it as her tongue delved deep inside her lover, extracting the headiest of sobs from Myka's reddened mouth.
Myka's fingers coiled tighter in Helena's hair, and she moaned at the rough tug, her tongue humming into Myka's core, and the added stimulation tipped Myka, shoved her into a hard, impassioned climax, as she cried her release with a slew of hot words in a language that Helena didn't speak.
She slackened her hold over Myka's waist, and softly continued to lap the length of Myka's sex until her hips ceased to surge upward with every touch of Helena's tongue. She hushed a soothing, innocent kiss over Myka's hip, and made her way up, shifting to her side, watching, waiting as Myka drank in healthy gulps of air.
"God, sex with you makes everything else feel so much better," Myka managed several minutes later, though her voice was soft and hoarse when it arose.
"The sentiment is mutual, darling," Helena murmured into Myka's hair, hugging her arms around her partner's still-trembling frame.
Myka simply panted in the silence.
"I find I'm rather fond of a woman who speaks in tongues," Helena offered quietly, with a playful squeeze around Myka's shoulders.
Myka glanced up at her inquisitively, and Helena raised a brow. "You spoke Italian, my love," she informed.
Myka snorted, and proceeded to flush. "That's new."
"Oh?" Helena smirked, quite satisfied with the revelation.
"Mm," Myka hummed gently. "Savannah always wanted to visit Italy to see the statue of David, so I learned Italian and taught it to her, and took her to Rome the summer before she started college. But Italian isn't very widely used, so I don't speak it often. I thought I'd forgotten how."
"Evidently not," Helena quipped, but then she sighed contently against Myka's ear, and Myka quaked under the heat.
"I should get her room ready," Myka announced softly. "Mrs. Frederic didn't say when she was supposed to be getting here, but The Regents don't usually waste much time when it comes to things like this."
"No," Helena whispered her agreement. "They tend not to."
Another moment of silence, and then, "Can we just lay here another minute?" Myka requested vulnerably.
"As long as you like, my love," Helena assured lovingly, curving a messy curl from Myka's face behind her ear. "There's nowhere better I'd like to be," she promised, kissing the crown of Myka's head.
Author's Note: I promise that Savannah will be in the next chapter! I tried to put her in this one, but it just didn't work out... Myka does this teasing thing with a Twizzler in one of the Warehouse clips that I had to do a scene with, because there's no way Helena wouldn't be tempted by that. And also, I just couldn't help myself. Please review!