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"Sorry."

"No, you are not."

"No."

She pulled Leo by the lapel across the carpet to the hearth. Vivienne went down first, by choice, on her back on the rug in front of the fire, because the rug was where she had decided, and because she was not going to let Leo choose the geography. Her trousers came off by her own hand, not Leo's, because that was also Vivienne's choice. Leo came down onto her, because Vivienne had pulled her, one hand in the hair at the back of Leo's neck, the other fisted in the open shirt, and Vivienne, on her back under Leo, with Leo's weight on her and Leo's mouth on her collarbone, was not submitting. She was not going to submit. Vivienne Strauss was on her own carpet in her own house with her own fire at her shoulder, and the woman above her was here on her invitation.

"Leo."

"Mm."

"Look at me."

Leo lifted her head.

"I do not usually fuck staff."

Leo's breath went out through her nose, once, slow.

"But you can fuck me," Vivienne went on, "if you like."

There was a pause.

Leo's breath went in, slow, through her teeth. She did not break eye contact. Her eyes were blazing dark green the pupils so large her eyes looked almost black. She did not speak. Her hand, which had been at Vivienne's hip, moved flat and slow up Vivienne's ribs, came to rest at the bottom of the lace bra, and stayed there, and Leo's face, above her, was not amused at all. It was the face of a woman who had just been told, in so many words, that this evening was going to be on Vivienne's terms, and who had decided, in real time, what she was going to do with that information.

"I can fuck you if I like?” Leo said.

"Mm."

"You are going to regret that sentence."

"I doubt it."

"You are going to regret it."

Leo lowered her head and bit the side of Vivienne's throat, not gently.

Vivienne's back came up off the rug by half an inch and came back down. She did not make a sound. She had not made a sound under a woman's hand in twenty-five years, and she was not going to start tonight, and she registered with some distant part of herself that Leo, registering the non-sound, had taken it as the challenge it was.

The bra came off. Leo's hand went to Vivienne's breast, found, palmed, thumbed. Leo's mouth came down and took the other one, and for a breath Vivienne closed her eyes, and then she opened them again, because she was not going to miss this with her eyes closed. Leo's hair had come out of the elastic somewhere on the way to the floor and it was across Vivienne's sternum, and Leo's teeth were doing a thing that was not, strictly, necessary, and which Vivienne had not asked her to stop.

"Lower," Vivienne said.

"I decide."

"Lower."

"I decide, Madame."

"Do not call me that."

"Lower, Vivienne?"

"Yes."

Leo moved. Her hand slid down the flat plane of Vivienne's stomach and went under the elastic of the last piece of fabric Vivienne was wearing, and the length of her fingers moved once along the line of Vivienne, and Vivienne's hips came up off the rug, and her hand fisted in the hair at the back of Leo's neck, and she did not, would not, did not make a sound.

Leo's fingers, finding her already wet, did not rush. Leo paused at the entrance and looked up the length of Vivienne's body at her.