***CONTENT WARNING/Author's Notes: Hi all! So when I originally started writing this story the most "adult" I really expected the themes to get was excessive violence and maybe a few heavier topics. However as the story has gone along, and characters and situations have done that thing where they write themselves to an extent, I found myself in a situation where a scene featuring sexually explicit material just seemed to comfortably fit. The following chapter will contain two characters taking part in said sexually explicit (consensual) acts so if that's not something you're looking for here the chapter will be broken up with line-breaks to indicate where the content begins and ends so you can always treat it as a "fade to black" scenario. I don't know that I will be adjusting the story's OVERALL rating just for the presence of this scene simply because It A: Happens so far into the story. And B: I honestly don't expect this sort of content too pop up again for the rest of the proceedings, (despite what I said about how we ended up here.) As for the nature of the content itself, well it's just some emotional and consensual WLW content, please enjoy!***
III.
Louise had awoken a few hours later to the sound of rain gently tapping against the window, the sky outside having grown darker as the day had gone on, the clouds heavier as they swelled with rain. It was not quite nighttime, but it was later in the evening and that, combined with the very uneven amounts and strange timing of sleep Louise had gotten, had left her feeling incredibly disoriented.
As she slowly rose, she realized she had fallen asleep in the clothes that she had spent the day in, and they were still thoroughly drenched with rain, sweat, and blood. Louise shook her head at her own absent-mindedness and headed slowly for the shower, her steps uneven and drowsy as she peeled the still-wet and clinging garments from her bruised and battered frame. Ali had gotten the worst of it for sure, but Louise, despite the use of healing magic, was still feeling the blows she had received, especially in her back where she had collided with the wall, and her hand where it had been impaled.
Before she reached the shower though, she heard Rosa stir and Louise turned around. Rosa, only half awake herself, had sat up in the bed and was staring sleepily after Louise, a look of confusion and concern etched onto her features, as if she were worried that Louise was abandoning her. It was only then, as she was contemplating her own state, that Louise realized that Rosa hadn't washed since she brought her in after the fight with Berserker. They had certainly cleaned her wounds extensively at that time, but Rosa herself had been confined to the bed ever since the battle. Louise, still in her underwear, re-crossed the room and sat down on the bed.
"How's your strength? Do you think you can stand?" She asked Rosa, a hopeful look in her eye.
"I think maybe." Rosa replied slowly and sleepily. "Why? Gotta go somewhere?"
"No." Louise chuckled, unable to suppress being entertained by Rosa's drowsy state. "I just thought you might feel like a shower after laying there for so long."
Rosa seemed to consider the offer for some seconds as she became more conscious. "Could maybe." She said, "Not sure how long I can stand."
"I'll help you out." Louise offered. "I'll be there to catch you if you fall."
Rosa slowly and shakily got to her feet, Louise helping to stabilize her as she rose. Though she faltered a bit at the first few steps, Louise was impressed at how steady her actual tread was, herself only having to provide minimal extra support for Rosa as she crossed from the bed to the bathroom. The dress she had been wearing since Louise first met her had been in an absolutely wretched condition, cuts, holes, and tears had riddled its entire length and the dried blood and strange black ichor both showed no signs of ever coming out. As a result, when they were cleaning her wounds, Louise and Grimaud had provided a combination of their own clothes, Louise contributing the undergarments and Grimaud offering an oversized t-shirt along with a pair of clearly never used athletic shorts. Due to the baggy nature of the clothing Rosa had little trouble removing them with minimal help from Louise, another show of the surprising rapidity of her returning strength. Louise was reassured to see that despite the wounds, the power of the Tulip, and Rosa's sometimes abstracted mental state, that her body was returning to a decent level of health.
Though Rosa had handled most of the undressing, Louise had taken on the responsibility of removing all the wound dressings before bathing. Most of the various bandages and wraps had come off with little effort, but the copious coverings on Rosa's major stomach wound had taken a bit more effort. Louise had worried at first that removing the wraps would hurt Rosa, and almost thought her concerns were real when she noticed the other woman quivering away from her touch as Louise's fingers danced across her skin. Louise looked up to ask Rosa if it was too painful, but before she could say anything, rather than the pained expression she was expecting she saw Rosa's blushing features as she tried to avoid Louise's eyes. Louise stayed silent, a slightly embarrassed smile on her face, as she finished removing the bandages and helped Rosa into the shower.
Though the shower was hardly spacious, it was at least big enough for both women to occupy it simultaneously in comfort. Louise let the water run for some time in silence, feeling the warmth wash away everything that had built up during the hectic and stressful day that had just passed. As she let Rosa have a turn in the direct line of the comforting streams Louise had to once again steady the other woman, the slippery floor making Rosa's unsteady tread more off-balance. As Louise's hands touched the soft skin of Rosa's upper arms, she for the first time took a close look at the other woman's body.
It was impossible for her eyes to not immediately be drawn to the Tulip mark that dominated the space on Rosa's back. The flower's deep black coloration seemed to almost absorb the light around it, pulling even the concept of other colors deep into its inky depths. It also, worryingly, seemed to have expanded more across the surface of her back than what it had covered when Louise first saw it, the leaves and petals opening and spreading slightly. Louise could also see numerous small scars, light red lines criss-crossing the light peach color of Rosa's arms and torso, some likely the remnants of her first fight with Alfonso Boxtell during the event of Cornelius's death, but others having happened since then.
Beyond the wounds and the Tulip though, as the blood and ichor washed away, as the matted hair was smoothed and cleaned, what Louise was really looking at so intently was Rosa herself. Louise would not deny the physical aspect of her attraction. Rosa's slender frame might have been termed petite had she been shorter. Though much of her strength was magically augmented, Louise could follow the lines of the muscles that, while lean, were still clearly defined in Rosa's arms and thighs. Louise also loved the more elegant bent Rosa's long legs gave to her frame.
Louise could see that Rosa's weakened state was making it difficult for her to properly reach up and wash her hair, still spotted by foreign fluids as it was. "Here." She said softly, taking up the shampoo bottle. She turned Rosa back towards herself, and began to gently lather the other woman's head, keeping her touch comforting and delicate. Rosa had her eyes closed as the soapy water ran down the curves of her face, the droplets tracing closely the lines of her slightly drawn features. Her defined cheekbones and just barely pointed chin both let the water run in defined rivulets, lines Louise found herself wanting to trace as equally closely with her own fingers. The young woman's eyes would flicker open occasionally as the water tickled her eyelids and Louise loved to catch the moments when their brilliant green luster was visible, the deep sadness that haunted them before seeming to have grown, at least partially, lighter.
As Louise smoothed Rosa's hair back, to let the water fall down her back and wash out the remaining shampoo, Louise looked sadly on the stomach wound where Lord Wilmore had stabbed her, the gash itself bright red, heavily bruised around the edges, and clearly still in the process of healing. She hadn't been the one to inflict the near fatal injury, but Louise still felt somehow responsible, being the one who had engineered the meeting that turned into that bloody brawl.
The young woman was just as much the observer as the observed. She was furtively contemplating Louise, each subtle glance revealing more of the other woman to her. Her dark-sepia skin glistened in the foggy light of the bathroom, the water droplets that clung to her like little jewels dotting her body. Rosa's mind was regularly distracted by a myriad of things, but she found herself mostly preoccupied, and slightly embarrassed, now by Louise whose body and its curves were more pronounced then her own. She couldn't stop her gaze from tracing the lines from Louise's round hips, up the arch of her sides, and to rest on her ample chest. Rosa wouldn't have been able to face Louise if she had noticed her amorous gaze, and she forced her eyes to look at other parts of her body.
The burn scars on Louise's left hand, whose development had been accelerated by the use of healing magic, wrapped around her arm and accentuated her slender but firm wrist. The same hand had also acquired a new scar. A large puncture wound was visible on either side of the hand, appearing as an even black dot only a centimeter or so across on the back of her hand, but was uneven and shaky on her palm where the damage had followed the folds of the skin. Her fingers, long and flexible like those of a piano player, were to Rosa the dispensers of gentle caresses, the soft skin of them being a comfort to her whenever she felt them upon her.
Rosa, her strength momentarily failing, tottered slightly. Louise perceived this and reached out to grab hold of her arm to steady her, but Rosa tilted forward suddenly, and pressed her face into Louise at the base of her neck, wrapping her arms around her back as she did so to further prevent her falling. Louise almost lost her composure at the sudden intimate contact and nearly faltered in her own balance. She brought her arms down to return the embrace, but hesitated when she once again remembered the blighted Tulip on Rosa's back where her arms would rest if she did.
"Why?" Rosa asked meekly, turning her face down slightly as the water ran down Louise's face and then over her own features, pressed close to Louise's body as she was.
Louise was silent for a second, not quite sure of the cause of the question or how to answer, worried that Rosa was hurt at her not immediately returning the embrace.
"Why help me? Help someone broken and wrong, like me?" There were silent tears tracing down Rosa's face that Louise couldn't see, lost as they were in the streams of warm water. A silent sob ran through Rosa's body as a shudder that Louise could feel tremble through her own frame.
Louise immediately wrapped one arm around Rosa, completely ignoring the fearful mark of the Tulip. She pressed Rosa tightly to her, lifting the injured woman's face up with her free hand to rest on top of her bosom. She was just slightly taller than Rosa and she tenderly nuzzled her face into the other woman's hair.
Rosa looked up at Louise, meeting her eye as she spoke. With the eyepatch removed Rosa could, for the first time, see the wound she had inflicted. The attack had been only a piercing strike, so there wasn't any sort of scar left around the socket, but the eyelid and eye itself were now a mangled mass of damaged tissue, the flesh fused and motionless, strange tangled scars intersecting one another. The healing magic of Ali and his attendants had saved her from any future complications involving the wound, but the eye was completely destroyed and Louise would never use it again. To Rosa, seeing it for the first time was a painful reminder of all that had happened, all the things she'd been driven to do.
"I'm a monster. I hurt people. Killed people." Her features were utterly pitiful as she spoke, the burning sensation of her tears felt hotter than any of the water falling down around her. "I hurt you. Look what I did to you. Why? Why help me? Why be around a creature like me?"
Louise never broke eye-contact with Rosa as she spoke, she simply looked on her with loving affection. "Because you deserve to be helped." She replied after a moment's pause. "Because you aren't defined by the things something like the Tulip made you do. You aren't defined by what was forced upon you by people like Cornelius, like Boxtell, like my-" Louise stopped before she said the final word, not sure how to bring up that horrible connection, the way she felt some deranged sense of responsibility for what had happened to Rosa, incorrect and misaligned as she knew it was. Her father's actions were not her responsibility, she knew that, but here, now, in her arms, was a woman hurting and suffering because of those actions, a woman she was quickly realizing she was falling in love with, and she couldn't help wanting to take responsibility for everything involving Rosa, as long as it meant helping her and saving her from the curse foisted on her.
"But what if it can't be fixed? What if... I can't be fixed?" Rosa stammered out. She was digging her nails into Louise's back, as if she wanted to arrest the departure of something precious she was afraid would, at any moment, fly away from her grasp. "What if I hurt you again?"
Louise could feel the desperation in Rosa's grip on her back, she could see the fear in her eyes. The truth was, she didn't have a complete answer. She couldn't say anything for certain in regards to limiting the Tulip's malign influence, to stopping its assault on Rosa's body. She couldn't even promise how much removing the Tulip would actually help Rosa's burdened mind and body. She couldn't actually promise anything as a guarantee, but she wanted to. "I don't know, Rosa. I don't know what can be done about it. But I know this." She brought her hands up and cradled Rosa's face between them. "I know you're not broken. It's not YOU that needs to be fixed. And I know that what I want to do right now, is help you. And if I'm not able to help you. I'll find someone who can. Because..." She trailed off, the words stuck momentarily in her throat as she looked deeply into Rosa's eyes. "Because I love you." The words were quiet, but resolute as she spoke them.
Rosa's expression was one of shock for a moment. It wasn't that she hadn't hoped, or wanted to hear Louise say it, but that she feared that she was beyond such feelings, twisted as she felt her very being was. "I love you... Louise." She responded, pronouncing the name of the person she adored, the person she had dared to let herself love again after everything that had happened. She slowly lifted her face towards Louise's, closing her eyes as the distance between them shortened. Louise pressed her lips to Rosa's, and pressed her body even closer to the other, pouring all her care and compassion into that embrace.
That first kiss, long and passionate, gave way to a multitude of smaller ones, slight rapid presses of the lips upon each other. They paused momentarily, Louise looking longingly into Rosa's eyes, a silent question of care exchanged between them, which Rosa, with a slight nod, answered with equally eloquent silence that she was quite stable enough and didn't feel her strength failing in that moment. Louise then resumed the passionate embrace, the kisses growing deeper and more harried, her hands running energetically through Rosa's hair as their lips caressed one another's.
The water continued to fall in heavy streams behind Rosa until Louise unconsciously turned Rosa to push her up against the shower wall to her right. She could feel the water losing some heat and, as she continued to shower Rosa with affection, she reached out and turned the heat as high as she could, the steam building rapidly from the adjustment.
As their passionate caresses continued Rosa's hands slowly crawled up Louise's back until she was clinging to Louise's shoulders, her nails digging into her skin again, but this time not from fear of abandonment, but from the passion she felt at Louise returning her affection. Her kisses moved from Louise's mouth and slowly traced across her cheek and onto her chin, then down onto her neck. Each kiss was followed by a light lick, each tickling sensation sending a shiver through Louise's frame, a shiver that Rosa could feel reverberate through her own body.
Louise was panting lightly as Rosa's kisses turned into soft bites, the sensation just as delightful as it had at first been unexpected. She could feel Rosa moving downward slowly, her tongue tracing a line that her teeth would occasionally add points of sensation to as she did. Louise then felt where Rosa had been going as the other woman's tongue traced teasing circles around her nipple, the erect tip of which Rosa was occasionally biting gently and cautiously. Louise's hands slid up Rosa's neck and gripped lightly onto Rosa's head, her fingers wrapping around Rosa's hair to hold her face to her breast as she played with it.
Rosa was, with one hand, holding and caressing that on which she was lavishing so much attention with her mouth, and her other hand was tracing lines with her nail up and down Louise's side. Louise's leg had slowly shifted to be right between both of Rosa's, and she was unconsciously starting to slowly rub herself against the other's thigh.
Louise could feel Rosa rubbing herself against her leg and, while her one hand continued to hold gently to Rosa's drenched hair, her other had slowly traced down her own body until it reached her clit and she began to instinctively rub herself in time with the rocking of Rosa's own body.
They continued like that for some time, Rosa tracing trails of kisses between both of Louise's breasts to pamper them equally with her affection. Suddenly Louise felt Rosa's hand, which had continued to draw little circles as it climbed her back, dig deep into her shoulder. Though the light pain had not been unwelcome, Louise finding herself more turned on by the pressure, she did realize that Rosa was slipping slightly, the minimal strength in her legs failing her slightly as her body was distracted and overwhelmed by the intense physical sensations. Louise slowly and gently lowered the young woman to a crouched position on the shower floor, she herself sitting down, her arms still holding lightly onto Rosa in case she required support.
"Are you alright?" She asked Rosa, stroking her hair compassionately. "We can always stop." Louise was slightly disappointed, but didn't dare let it show in her voice, her concern being more focused on Rosa's well-being than any selfish sense of physical fulfillment.
Rosa had wrapped her hands around Louise's back when she felt herself falling. Her hands were still clinging to the other woman as she looked affectionately at Louise, her cheeks flushed, not from fever or her failing strength, but from equal parts embarrassment at her compromised physical state having been the cause of the interruption and her longing to continue the intimate embrace.
"No." She said, the word almost pitiful for the desire contained in it. "I can... that is... I-I want to keep going." She paused momentarily, a small trill of embarrassment slightly slowing her actions, before kissing Louise again, After a few pecks her tongue tickled lightly at Louise's lips, as if asking permission to push past them. Louise happily parted them and she soon felt Rosa running her tongue though the inside of her mouth and playing it along the surface of Louise's own. Rosa removed one of her hands from where she was gripping onto Louise and, seizing Louise's, led the other woman's hand down to the junction of her thighs where she started to direct her to stroke the outside.
Louise, who was again feeling swept up in all the physical affection between the two of them, was not about to begrudge Rosa's reassurances and enthusiastically moved her fingers down, slowly parting her lips before retracing up to tease her clit in small concentric circles as Rosa had started her doing. Louise, her tongue energetically dancing throughout Rosa's mouth, with her free hand began to stroke and squeeze Rosa's breasts. They were on the petite side, and fit perfectly into her hand. Louise found them adorable and she lovingly tickled and pinched her lover's bright pink nipples.
Rosa, feeling overwhelmed by all the stimulation, found it slightly hard to breathe and, pulling her mouth away from Louise's, she pushed the sides of both their faces together, her breath tickling Louise's ear as she breathed heavy and rapidly, able to do little more than breathlessly whisper her lover's name. With one hand she pulled tightly at Louise's hair while with the other she pressed two of Louise's fingers deep inside herself, her legs pressing tightly around the other woman's wrist.
Louise was more and more rapidly pushing her fingers in and out of Rosa, the young woman's shuddering frame moving in time with the rhythm of her thrusts. Rosa was completely lost in all the sensations, both mental and physical, of her beloved's embraces, and could only moan and force the heat of her deep breaths across Louise's neck. Louise was more in control of the situation, and wanted to stimulate Rosa even more if she could, her whole focus at that moment on making her partner feel good, to drown the sorrows she had felt up to that point. Positioned as she was it was easy to extend her tongue and run it's tip along the outside edge of Rosa's ear, exhibiting pressure at key points that she felt Rosa react more sharply to, biting occasionally on the edge.
Rosa was overwhelmed. She could feel a warmth building out from her core, like a liquid heat that was rushing out to fill all her limbs with a burning ecstasy. There was an almost sublime torment to it as her body tensed and froze, her toes curling tightly inward before extending to their full length as her fingers that held Louise's hair twitched compulsively before seizing onto the tight curls of her lover's locks harder than before. Between the rapid penetration of Louise's fingers, her own rubbing enthusiastically on her clit, and the double sensations of Louise's tongue on her ear and hand teasing her nipples, she could only hold out so long before a long sustained groan of pleasure escaped her.
"Hnnn-gh-AHHH!" She cried out, her face red and her eyes open wide but perceiving nothing in particular. Some part of her seemed to fear being too loud, and she silenced herself by biting down forcefully onto Louise's neck, the nearest thing for her to stifle her moans. "Mmmmmnnn!"
Rosa's teeth sank deep into the other woman's neck, a sensation that Louise, having been focused on controlling the situation, had not been ready for. But the feeling of the pinching teeth and the pain of the impact on her skin had landed just right, and Louise felt herself awash with a more self-centered erotic feeling. Rosa was still breathing heavily as she bit into Louise, though the initial and hardest bite had ended, she had let it continue into a series of nibbles, nipping and pulling lightly at Louise's skin with her teeth as she calmed down slightly. She followed each kiss with a light wash of her tongue as an apology for any pain.
"Mmm, Rosa," Louise giggled her lover's name in a low tone, the mixture of the tickling sensation mixed with the more intimate feelings she was experiencing. "Rosa, I AH-" She started to speak through her own light moans but suddenly called out when Rosa bit down purposefully harder again. Louise had removed her hand from inside Rosa and, as the pale young woman pulled her head back from Louise's neck, she brought the fingers that had been paying her such kind attentions to her lips placed them inside her mouth, sucking on the tips of Louise's nails and running her tongue down the length of each finger.
"You too." Rosa said gently after a few seconds of tenderly suckling her partner's hand, her words implying her wish to also make Louise feel good in her own turn. She planted several kisses on the lips of Louise, who was looking with desirous intention on her. Rosa, assuming a somewhat more assertive air than before, pressed on Louise's shoulder, easing her down from her sitting position into a partially laying down one. Louise's knees came up on either side of Rosa as her legs stretched out to accommodate the position Rosa had encouraged her to assume. Rosa maintained eye contact with Louise's lustful gaze as she slowly lowered herself down the length of the other woman's body, passing her breasts, down the flat plain of her stomach, to her exposed cunt, Rosa's dainty butt sticking slightly up as she brought her face to level with Louise's lower regions.
Before Louise could prepare herself she let out a small yelp as Rosa's tongue drew a moist line across the lips of her pussy. The young woman set to her work with enthusiasm, worshiping at the altar of her lover's womanhood, eagerly licking all around the tender area to which she had turned her attention. She could taste Louise's excitement in the fluids that had already for some time been seeping out, and she delighted in feeling the other woman tremble under her care.
Louise had withstood her partner's caress for a time, her breath coming out in short moans, Rosa's name occasionally escaping her lips as a soft whisper, but as the other woman's tongue started to move more aggressively, the tip of it flicking her most sensitive point with purposeful energy, she felt her strength starting to buckle, and she started to slide back. She finally caved and fell back against the shower wall behind her, her foot kicking out and finally slapping the shower off, as Rosa, with an even more aggressive push of her tongue, forced its way inside Louise, twisting and prodding the inside of her.
"Ah! Ah! Nnn, Rosa!' Louise cried out, her one hand clutching strongly onto Rosa's hair, the other squeezing her own breast and twisting her nipple as her body twitched in time with the motion of Rosa's tongue. Rosa had seized the outside of Louise's thighs and was holding the other woman's crotch firmly against her face as though she thought Louise's ecstatic spasms might cause her to wriggle away before she had finished.
Louise, for how long she couldn't tell, was writhing in time with Rosa's attentions, her tongue continuously exiting Louise's hole to run wet circles around the outside before plunging back in. The mage was moaning loudly and wantonly, freely speaking her lover's name in time with the flick of Rosa's tongue on her clit. She felt warmth and tension build up in her body, the residual water left on her skin seeming to steam off of her burning form. "Rosa! Rosa! Oh god! Rosa!" It was all becoming too much and she finally felt the pent up energy and tension release. It was like an explosion that started at the center of her body and ripped out through the rest of her, every muscle for one second uniformly bent and stiff before a tremulous shudder ran through to the tips of every finger and toe. As quickly as it had shot through her, the next moment she felt a flood of release as her body softened and her mind became foggy in her final convulsion.
"Ahhhhh..." Louise let one final long moan escape as she relaxed, her hand no longer tightly grasping Rosa's hair and pushing her face into her. Rosa slowly raised herself and crawled delicately up the length of Louise's body until she came to rest with her head on her partner's chest. Louise wrapped one arm around Rosa's body, holding her softly, but securely to her, as she stroked her hair with the other. The pair laid like that for some minutes, lost in contemplation of one another, secure in the moment of peace and love they had carved out for themselves, hesitant to let it end.
Eventually though, the moment did end. Louise helped Rosa to her feet, physically exhausted as she still was from her injuries and particular situation. Louise also replaced the dressings on Rosa's wounds and assisted her to change into a different set of borrowed clothes. She walked the tired woman back to her bed of health and laid her down, silently and lovingly looking on her as she tucked the blanket in around her. Rosa, despite her bodily ailments, had a warm and satisfied smile on her face as she looked back at Louise, all her love centered in the eye-contact they shared.
"Thank you, Louise." She said, finally breaking the long silence. "Thank you, for loving me. I thought there wasn't any love in the world for someone like me."
Louise bent down and lightly kissed each of Rosa's eyes before placing a third one on her lips. She paused with her face still close to Rosa's. "You are always worth loving. And I will prove that to you. I will help you, I will save you. And I think I know a way to do just that."