Chapter Text
Larissa craved it. Warmth beneath her palms, sweetness melting on her tongue, the dance of her fingertips along the porcelain edge. With her eyes closed, she summoned the memory and trained her senses on what it was like to have it in her hands. A nice cup of hot chocolate.
The tension in her neck left her no choice but to surrender. Her head dropped against the backrest of the armchair she’d curled up in. In front of the fire, she at least had a semblance of the warmth she longed for. And what the fire could not provide, the wine glass, with its stem threaded between her middle and ring finger and the bowl of it resting in her palm, made up for. She swirled it in light circles as she sank into the alcohol-drenched feather pillow that had formed around her restless mind and smothered the pain that had driven tears into her eyes.
The evening drew a long, deep sigh from her, and she started to hum along to Billie Holiday’s melancholic tunes resonating from the gramophone in the other corner of the office. Large rooms were only nice so long until they echoed her sobs. She hated the sounds of them and thus, drowned them with the last sip of wine her glass had to offer, stared and blinked at the ornamented ceiling where painted, dreamy cherubs gazed back at her. Their round little faces and cheeky smiles made her heart ache as she felt the clock in her lap tick far away from her. If one of them fell from the ceiling, she’d catch it in her arms and hold it tight.
Her chest heaved at the thought and collapsed. She blindly grabbed for the bottle on the floor, somewhere next to her discarded heels. Upon lifting it, she regrettably found it empty and groaned, running her fingers through the front coif of her up-do. The pinky of her left hand missed its red colour since the cold had drained her energy earlier when she had painted her nails.
It was as if she had to tell each of her individual muscles to move only to slip out of the armchair and drag her long, unsteady limbs to the desk. She stopped at the window to look out into the night, but lost her balance and just about caught herself in the floor-length curtain that wrapped itself around her. She clung to the fabric, cheek resting in a slope, as the silhouettes of a few trees outside came in and out of focus. The curtain hugged her curves like no man or woman had ever done before—not because they hadn’t wanted to but because she hadn’t let them. And now that she was willing to let herself be touched, nobody wanted to any more. Absence had left her skin raw and dry.
Dropping the curtain, she slumped into her office chair and stared at the laptop screen. Her wallpaper was a photo of the dog she used to have growing up, with his white shaggy hair and googly brown eyes that still made her heart melt everytime she looked at them.
Her skin reacted to the memory of him licking her neck and face, of his nose nudging her hand until she’d stroke him. He’d loved her affection, and she’d loved giving it; she couldn’t help but feel protective of small creatures. Perhaps a furry companion would be the cure for the cancerous loneliness infiltrating every cell of her body.
Opening the browser to search for nearby animal shelters — because nothing is more reasonable than to make important life decisions while being drunk — a number of pop ups sprang in her face.
“Hot milfs in your area”
Instantly, her cheeks and chest were covered in a hot blush and she closed the windows quickly. She cursed herself for seemingly having caught some kind of adware again from the ways she tried to quench her thirst for intimacy. At the same time, she couldn’t help but be curious about those things…
What it would feel like to be this close with another person, so close that she would feel them inside herself. Be desired, wanted, needed and able to express these things in return. To be pleasured by another hand, to be explored, known and— owned .
Drunk and aroused, the dampness between her legs made her refrain from closing the last window and instead click on it. There was one particularly urgent need a pet could not help her with… but a dominatrix might. The word alone sent a shiver down her spine, not exactly from excitement but the feeling she was about to do something remarkably scandalous.
With a hammering heart in her chest, she scanned the website and found that it was truthfully a woman based in Jericho—how small the world was. No matter how long she searched, there was no picture of her face. Instead, the sub-pages for the different serívices and rates were decorated with tasteful boudoir detail shots. One was of her veiny hands holding a riding crop, intricate rings on two fingers; another zoomed in on the garter around her stocking-clad thigh; and even one with her thumb on another woman’s scarlet-painted lips.
She felt her lips part to allow the air she desperately needed to flow better, looking at those pictures for longer than was appropriate. She squeezed her thighs together as she read through the list of services and got hung up on one in particular. One that made her heart skip a beat and caused her mind to be flooded with fantasies of this woman whose face she hadn’t even seen yet.
The alcohol made her eyelids grow heavier the more she tried to read. Running out of time and breath with the ache between her thighs, she hit the “contact” button and quickly typed an email, suggesting a meeting at the Weathervane for a warm beverage.
Her body was buzzing with excitement, her face almost feverish. Spending another night like this was no option, even if she had to pay a sex-worker to touch her. This way she wouldn’t have to risk rejection, or worse, homophobia and humiliation. And she would finally, finally get to feel a woman’s body pressed to hers after all those years of denial and self-restraint.
… And so it happened that Larissa Weems decided it was time to treat herself to a hot chocolate.