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Salem, Massachusetts, 1714
Agatha is watching Rio gather carrots from the garden, the way her fingers expertly pluck the ripe ones and leave the ones not quite ready to continue resting below ground. The skill is most likely something related to green witch magick, Agatha surmises. Agatha could do the chore herself, but Rio enjoys completing tasks for Agatha when she’s around. An errand boy with a cute little smirk and a pert ass. Agatha won’t complain.
When a lone wasp makes its way to Rio’s arm and angrily stings, Agatha hitches her breath and expects Rio to grunt. Maybe even slip out a quick ‘ouchie!’ Instead, Rio swats her arm and crushes it like one would a mosquito or ant.
“I thought you couldn’t kill anything,” Agatha calls from the shadows of the rocking chair on the porch.
“Only creatures which harbor a soul,” Rio clarifies. “Otherwise, where would it end? I step on grass and kill the blades and mites and bacteria that rest on it. I would be unable to have a material form.”
“Well, I’m grateful that isn’t the case.” Agatha admires the way Rio’s arms sweat in the late summer sun. She is wearing a tunic and breeches, borrowed from Agatha herself, so that Agatha could watch her skin glow. “How much do you allow yourself to experience?”
Rio shrugs. “As much as I’m able, I suppose.”
“But when that wasp stung you, you gave no cry of pain.” Agatha points a curious finger vaguely. “And I see no blister, either.”
Rio looks at her arm in wonder, twisting it around. “Is it supposed to hurt? Am I meant to be marked?”
“Come here.” Agatha sits back and smirks as Rio follows orders, hurriedly dropping the carrots she clutched into the harvest basket to meet Agatha where she relaxes in the shade. Is this what her mother envisioned when she had borne Agatha? Evanora Harkness, holding her babe in her arms as she divined Death at Agatha’s beck and call, concluding it was a bad omen.
No, that must not be so. These are the types of words when Death holds Agatha on the nights she cannot sleep— Evanora Harkness was harebrained, a lunatic, a shoddy divination witch. And with the way Death looks at Agatha, brown eyes full of something Agatha dares to call adoration, she is inclined to believe these words.
When Rio is close enough to touch, Agatha explains, “A wasp’s stinger is sharp enough to break human skin, darling. The skin will usually swell and turn red in response.”
“Oh.” Rio’s eyebrows turn down, as if she is a dog that has been caught chewing a shoe. “Would you like me to do so?”
“That isn’t necessary, my love.” Agatha’s hands reach out to grasp Rio’s. And then, in a thoughtful moment, she turns them palm up. “For all the manual labor you insist on doing for me, you bear no calluses.” Agatha looks up and meets Rio’s eyes. “You also have no tan lines from working in the sun.”
“Are these things you need from me?” Rio asks.
Agatha gets up from her chair, and though she doesn’t need it, Rio’s hands drop to Agatha’s waist for support. Agatha says, “I need nothing from you with the way I intend to keep loving you. I only think aloud.”
Rio smiles, like it is that simple. “Okay.”
Agatha’s hand travels up Rio’s body and to her face, where Agatha’s thumb brushes over Rio’s bottom lip. “No freckles, either.”
“Do those also come from the sun?” Rio reaches to Agatha’s own face, where she knows a splash of freckles rests upon her nose. “Like these.”
“Eugh, Rio, you have dirt on your fingers.” Agatha shoos them away.
“Sorry.” Rio sucks on her fingers like one would marrow from a bone, and it’s admittedly a little unsettling.
But Rio being a touch unsettling is as natural as the trees shedding their leaves in the autumn, so Agatha continues. “Some freckles come from time in the sun, yes. But not all do.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, some you are born with, or sometimes they simply appear. Like the one on my breast.”
“I like those freckles,” Rio says. “When I pinch them, you moan really loudly.”
Agatha sighs, exasperated. “Rio, those are my nipples. Those are different.”
“Oh.”
Agatha’s fingers trace the lines of Rio’s cheeks, jawline, the creases of her neck. “Rio, do you know what pain feels like?”
“Well, I know from you and others that pain is not a good feeling.” Rio’s tongue pokes the lining of her cheek; Agatha’s gaze is, of course, drawn to it. “But everything I experience feels good. So, I guess not?”
An idea forms in Agatha’s head. “Follow me inside.”
Rio does, of course, and even takes off her boots at the door like the obedient pet she is.
“Go to the sofa,” Agatha tells her, and goes to the kitchen to find the necessary tools for her experiment. While Rio sits, she picks at a loose thread on the cushion. Death waits for no one but Agatha Harkness.
Agatha is holding a knife with a smooth, sharp edge. Rio notices it’s not the largest one Agatha owns, about four inches in blade length, and that she usually utilizes it to cut and prepare smaller creatures, like fowl. When she sits down, she stares at Rio with vulnerable, imploring eyes. “Would you like to know what pain feels like?”
“Sure,” Rio chirps.
Agatha bites her lip and holds her right hand palm up. “I’ll do it to myself, first, and I want you to watch.” At Rio’s dutiful nod, she continues. “You need to pay attention to the way my flesh is sliced open, to the way my tendons are torn apart. The blood pumping in my veins and then staining me. The chemicals that are released from my body to tell my brain I’ve been injured.”
“Okay.” Rio’s voice is breathy.
Agatha takes the knife and cuts a clean line through her hand. She hisses, sucks in a breath as a thin line of red seeps out. Her eyes close, just for a moment, so that she may feel more grounded. When she opens them, she sees Rio watching intently, pupils blown.
“You are so beautiful,” Rio says.
Agatha feels the telltale sign of her insides turning molten under Rio’s gaze. She offers her palm. “Clean me up.”
Rio wastes no time in cupping Agatha’s wrist while licking a thick stripe of saliva on Agatha’s wound; she hums as the taste of iron floods her mouth. Agatha’s hand is healed as quickly as it had been sliced open.
“Your turn,” Agatha says, and takes Rio’s hand. She brushes her thumb against Rio’s palm, takes in the large lines as well as the ones barely noticeable. Rio had always been good at the outside, physical aspects of the human body. She does sometimes wonder, if Rio had built this body like one weaves a tapestry, or if she'd ripped it from a fresh corpse. Maybe a combination of both.
Agatha, who has stripped and prepared many animal carcasses in the course of her lifetime, barely needs to watch the knife cut through Rio’s palm. Instead, she decides to look at Rio’s reaction. Rio’s mouth parts in the way that it usually does when it’s begging for Agatha to slip her fingers in; she does not close her eyes. Rio stares right into Agatha, as if she is weighing the value of her soul against a feather. Agatha thinks her breath has been stolen right from under her.
When the tip of the knife leaves the edge of Rio’s palm, Agatha takes her finger and runs it against the wound. “How does it feel?” she asks.
“Tingly,” Rio whispers. “High-pitched. Mesmerizing. May I kiss you?”
When their lips meld into their most familiar dance, Agatha thinks about how Rio kisses like it’s a war she’s required to win. So much teeth, and nibbling— and Agatha may be the siphon but the way Rio sucks on her tongue gives her some serious competition. Agatha’s gripping the handle of the knife when a thought blossoms in her like a thorn-filled rose bush. Rio is cupping her face, and Agatha can feel a bit of blood smear on her cheek. Agatha takes her free hand and splays it open across Rio’s sternum, pulling down the neckline of her shirt. Then, in a moment of lust-filled violence, Agatha takes the knife and sticks it through Rio’s collarbone.
Rio cries out, and it vibrates down into Agatha’s throat like a decadent wine. Agatha can feel the knife’s blade and how it fights against muscle and arteries and even scrapes against some bone; she pushes until she’s stopped by the hilt hitting skin.
“Take off your shirt,” Agatha orders, and she’s helping Rio to make it happen faster. Rio wears no garments underneath her linen top, and Agatha traces a line of blood that has dripped to cup her breast. “Do you like it? When I hurt you?”
“I enjoy being the target of your affection,” Rio says. Her eyes squeeze shut and she hiccups when Agatha pinches a nipple.
“You’re mine.” Agatha rips the knife out of Rio’s corporeal form and smirks as blood starts to pour down her bare chest.
“Ye-es!” Rio’s voice grows louder in surprise. She takes a breath, unnecessary as it may be. “Yes,” she repeats. “Of course. Did I do something to make you think the contrary?”
Instead of answering, Agatha holds up the knife and touches its tip to Rio’s bottom lips. Rio follows Agatha’s implicit command and opens her mouth further so she can clean her blood from the blade with her tongue. She knows not to let the knife cut her tongue, lest it get bloody again.
“Good boy,” Agatha coos, and satisfaction boils in her groin when Rio’s spin inadvertently straightens at the praise. She lets go of the knife, leaving it settled between Rio’s teeth and gets up to unbutton her pants. “Put your feet on the floor.”
Rio uncrosses her legs and leans against the back of the couch so that Agatha, when she is finally fully nude, can straddle her. Agatha shivers as her cunt is bared and spread over Rio’s lap as she settles in position. Agatha unsheathes the knife from Rio’s mouth and brushes it against where her jaw meets her throat.
“You’re just an object for me to use.” Agatha presses the blade in until a thin line of blood runs down Rio’s pulsing neck.
“My lady,” Rio says, her tone so full of adoration it could burst. “Can I go inside? Please?”
“Perhaps.” Agatha pauses as if to ponder, but her thighs are shaking in anticipation. Her cunt already clenches on air. “Start with two.”
Rio’s hand lowers to their joined hips and her two fingers enter Agatha with startling ease. “So open for me.” Rio’s words are softer than a fledgling’s down feathers. Agatha moans as she sinks onto Rio’s curled fingers and Rio’s other hand clutches Agatha’s waist like it could possibly run away from her.
“Objects are unable to speak, beloved.” The knife digs a millimeter deeper into Rio’s neck, and both women moan. “Objects are simply used.”
“Use me however you wish, Agatha.” Rio angles the palm of her hand so that Agatha can grind her clit against it. “My physical form evolves around your desire, anyway.”
Agatha’s eyes feel heavy as she takes her free hand to tip Rio’s chin up. “Do you mean that?”
“I have no need to lie.”
This is how it goes, and it has gone every moment before this one, and, unbeknownst to both women, how it will always go: Agatha is the tide that pushes and pulls, and Rio is the sand that shapes itself to fit into a shore. If Rio were a musket, Agatha would be the finger pulling the trigger. And if Agatha were the musket, Rio would be the unsuspecting buck its pewter ball tore through.
So Agatha takes the knife and plunges it straight into Rio’s neck, right where her esophagus meets her larynx. Rio's surprise is in the form of a wet gasp as she feels the knife stick in her throat; Agatha’s eyes are wide open as blood spatters on her hands, as Rio’s wound continues to bleed and bleed.
“You are so good to me,” Agatha says.
“Aggh—” Rio tries to say Agatha’s name, but blood leaks through her mouth like a flooded river bank and she lets out a squelching choke, instead.
“It’s okay, my pet. You don’t need to speak.” Agatha’s cunt flutters at Rio’s responding gurgle. “Baby, fuck me.”
Rio may not be able to form words, but Agatha knows a growl when she hears one. Rio adds a third finger to her ministrations and Agatha’s moan is planet-shattering; she has to smack a hand on the back of the couch to hold herself steady, and her hand holding the knife slips just enough that the entry point of Rio’s stab wound is widened, and a new rush of blood stains Rio’s bare torso and chest. What would normally cause the life to leave someone’s eyes only makes Rio’s gaze intensify; her eyes grow darker, more vibrant, more animalistic.
When Rio slams her hips up into Agatha, Agatha cries out a, “Rio,” and her hips gyrate harder as Rio’s hand moves to cup her ass and dig her nails into Agatha’s cheeks. Rio’s fingers fuck her slow and hard, rubbing harshly against the rough walls of Agatha’s g-spot, and Agatha pushes the hilt of the knife down so that it’s angled far away enough that Agatha can comfortably meet Rio in a kiss.
Rio tastes like dirt, like blood and spit and more blood. She tastes, of course, like death— like murder and pneumonia and sleep. When Death herself submits under Agatha’s touch and word, Agatha worries if this is the type of hubris Icarus possessed before his wings started to melt. But the only heat she can feel is her cunt swallowing Rio’s fingers, Rio’s blood pumping freely out of her throat, Rio’s eyes the color of a bonfire begging to be stoked.
Agatha doesn’t have to tell Rio she’s close. She only wraps her hands around Rio’s hair and tugs, grinds her hips to create a frantic pace Rio easily reads and meets. Rio then takes her thumb and presses against Agatha’s clit, hard, pushing back the hood to make it as spine-curling as possible. Agatha holds Rio’s head to her breast when her orgasm finally boils over, and she can feel the dull end of the knife’s hilt press against her abdomen. She cries out when Rio continues to fuck her through her peak.
“Good boy,” Agatha cries out, her grip on Rio tightening. “Give your owner another one.”
Rio makes a sound between a moan and a gurgle and Agatha can feel blood spatter onto her bare chest. When Agatha reaches her next climax, she pushes Rio backward to lean against the couch, keeping her eyes open so that Rio can watch her come undone. Rio’s skin is red almost as much as it is her default, sun-kissed color, blood wet and dry to varying degrees. She’s staring unabashedly as Agatha moans in ecstasy, and it’s causing her to wheeze. Her chest heaves, and the knife stuck in her throat quivers with every breath.
When Agatha feels the end of her peak, she lifts her hips subtly so that Rio can take her fingers out from under Agatha. Agatha slackens as Rio’s fingers leave her, and she takes Rio’s hand to suck Rio’s fingers clean of herself.
Rio tries to moan, but at this point, it’s hidden by the amount of blood that takes up space in her throat and mouth. It’s starting to sound like something unrecognizable. Agatha takes the knife out of Rio’s throat. “Heal your wound,” Agatha murmurs around Rio’s fingers, nibbling at the fingertips for good measure. She swears she can see the tendons and muscles of Rio’s throat knit back together, like watching the fraying of yarn in reverse motion.
Rio is gulping in air like she requires it to stay on the mortal plane when she says, “Is this normal? For humanity to use pain as a means of love and pleasure?”
Agatha empties her mouth, Rio’s fingers clean with her spit. “If you do enough wrong things in your life, they start to blend together, yes.”
Rio’s brow furrows. “You have done nothing wrong.”
Agatha barks out a laugh at this. “My love, I know you carry your biases, but I have strewn corpses across the New England area like it is my God-given occupation.”
“You should not blame yourself,” Rio says. “You are only doing what you have to, to survive. Is that not what your witch kin is meant to do?”
Agatha feels her throat bobble as she swallows hard. This is not the direction she wanted to go in. She says, “I’m not done, yet.” At Rio’s curious expression, Agatha swings a leg over and lifts herself from Rio’s lap, keeping her thighs steady after two intense orgasms. She goes to kneel on the floor. “You said I can use your body as I wish, correct?”
“If you were the serpent, I would eat your forbidden fruit even if I knew it would punish me and everyone else for eternity,” Rio muses.
Okay, Paradise Lost. Agatha says, “I’m going to fuck you with the knife.”
Rio’s eyes widen, and she wiggles her hips in an attempt to get her breeches off. Agatha notices the waistline and crotch are covered in bloodstains. She helps peel off Rio’s undergarments, also.
When Rio is bare to her, Agatha uses her free hand to spread her open. Rio was so wet her desire had started sticking to her pubic hair, flattening it and making her clitoris appear that much more engorged. Agatha could practically hear it beating.
“Oh, my pet.” Agatha brushes her thumb up the sensitive skin that lines Rio’s outer labia with her inner, smirking as Rio’s hips chase the touch. “You need my touch so badly it hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rio whines, and, oh, this is exactly why Agatha had Rio heal herself. She needed to hear this tone unaccompanied.
Agatha brings the tip of the knife to Rio’s entrance. “Tell me what you want, doll.”
“I want you to fuck me with your knife.” Even just speaking the words aloud as Rio’s hips bucking. “Please, Agatha. Please.”
Agatha doesn’t budge. “Only want?”
“I need it,” Rio quickly corrects. “Agatha, please, I— I only want you to be the one to inflict pain on me. You’re the only one who is able to, I think, and I need you to hurt me—”
Agatha slowly pushes the knife into Rio’s wanting cunt. Agatha makes slow, deep movements, making sure her cuts aren’t superficial, but not deep enough to, say, debone her. Rio’s moans are of full-on pleasure. And Agatha has to take her free arm to lay it across Rio’s hips so her movements don’t ruin Agatha’s own.
“You take me so well,” Agatha praises. “Exactly like you were meant to.”
Rio preens at this; her head rolls back and her mouth is wide in an open, gap-toothed smile as Agatha keeps up her work; every thrust or so, she moves the angle of the knife ever so slightly so it hits Rio in different spots. She watches in awe as the red of Rio’s blood mixes with the clear fluid of her wanton desire.
Agatha resituates the arm on Rio so that her thumb can brush Rio’s clit. Rio whimpers in response. “You’re going to come right on my knife, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Rio moans. “I love how you feel inside me. You can take it all.”
Agatha quickens the pace of the knife, which causes more blood to seep from Rio’s cunt. It runs down Agatha’s wrist, drips onto the wood floors. “My good boy.” Agatha is practically purring. “Death heels only for me. Isn’t that right, pet? Only I can make you feel like this, and you will do whatever it takes to keep chasing the high I allow you to feel.”
“Agatha, please.” Rio’s hands are white-knuckling Agatha’s shoulders. “I’m so close.”
“I know, my darling.” Agatha angles her wrist so that the knife slices through the part of Rio’s inner core that she knows drives the other witch mad. “You can let go. I’ll allow it.”
Agatha watches as Rio’s body seizes up for a good ten seconds, her back arched enough that it looks unnatural for a mortal body, before she slams herself back onto the couch. She trembles.
When Agatha takes the knife out, she notices the amount of blood— on her hands, dripping from Rio’s cunt onto the floor, onto the sofa. If Agatha is being honest with herself, she’d been hoping for something a little more gruesome; out of context, the scene looks like she’d been fisting Rio while she menstruated.
“Don’t heal yourself,” Agatha quickly lets out. “I’m not finished.” And she enters two fingers into Rio’s open wound of a cunt. Agatha moans as she’s able to feel the torn skin inside Rio, the raw feeling of her cunt as, even in its destroyed state, sucks Agatha’s fingers in with a lewd squelch as she begins to pump her fingers. This is what she’d been searching for, when this idea had first germinated.
“It stings,” Rio cries. “Don’t stop.”
Agatha curls her fingers, bites her lip when Rio thrashes underneath her touch. Her nipples, caked in dried blood, are hard like pebbles, and her hands find their place in Agatha’s hair as Rio pulls from the base of her scalp. And then Agatha feels the telltale sign of her salivary glands becoming active, of her mouth watering. She leans down to capture Rio’s hard clit in her mouth, scraping her teeth in just a way that has Rio’s hips chasing her tongue and fingers. She can taste the salty, earthy taste of Rio as well as iron.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.” Rio’s chant sounds like a prayer. Agatha uses her whole arm to pump her fingers in and out of Rio, now, and she feels the burn in her bicep. It’s intoxicating. Her free hand roams Rio’s body, cupping her breasts, scratching down her stomach. She certainly gets dried blood under her nails, but she knows Rio will suck them clean later.
Rio’s cunt is making the kind of sounds one would hear if they were pulling their boots from muck. Agatha’s hands are covered in translucent, red fluid. She can tell when Rio is on the precipice by the rhythm of her cunt clenching. Agatha speeds up, fingers scraping the top of Rio’s inner cunt. She’s deep enough that can feel the tip of Rio’s practically vestigial cervix, and she lightly pushes into it with each thrust, smirking at how Rio mewls at the pressure.
All Agatha has to do now is suck at Rio’s clit like she’s pushing out a snap pea from its pod and Rio’s orgasm is ripping through her chaotically. Agatha can feel the crescent-shaped dents Rio is surely making into her head with the way she grips at Agatha’s hair. She can also feel the gush of Rio’s cunt that splatters onto Agatha’s chin and wrist. What a beautiful girl, Agatha thinks, and she fucks her harder so that every time Rio’s cunt spasms she squirts that much harder into Agatha’s waiting mouth.
Agatha rides Rio through her orgasm until Rio’s shaking hands are clasping her wrists, the message of tapping out. Agatha smirks, as this means she’s won.
“We should take a bath,” Agatha finally says, standing up. The amount of blood on both Agatha and Rio, the floor, and the furniture looks like a murder scene. Though, specifically the kind of murder that errs on the side of traditional, with a separate weapon, and not the kind that Agatha commits with her weapon of a body.
“I love your body,” Rio murmurs, almost to herself, as if she had been reading Agatha’s mind. But with the way Rio looks at Agatha’s figure, a little dazed, Agatha figures it’s just some strikingly devastating coincidence. (She also knows Rio is unable to read her mind, as she’d tested it a good decade ago.) Then, Rio blinks and sits up straight, like she’d just absorbed Agatha’s words. “A bath? We could just magick this away.”
“Oh, I see. You don’t want to hold me.”
“I didn’t say that,” Rio protests. “I was thinking… well, it doesn’t matter what I was thinking, really.”
“Good girl.”
Rio rolls her eyes, though Agatha knows the praise still affects her. “I… enjoyed that. Could you incorporate it next time?”
“Next time? Who said we’re done with the current time?” Agatha laughs, brushing some of Rio’s hair from her sweaty forehead. “Oh, my beloved, it’s endearing how you think I’m even close to finishing my investigation on how I can mutilate you into an orgasm. I’d just like to get cleaned up, first.”
Rio smiles at the idea of Agatha hurting her: again, and again, and again.