With a gentle smile, Nica let her eyes drift about the room, making sure to avoid eye contact with the veritable sea of people that surrounded her. They, like her, listening to Nat King Cole’s greatest Christmas hits.

And though the music fit the lovely decor of the room, and the giant Christmas tree strung up with lights, Nica felt anything but merry.

For she, amongst all those gathered, was new.

New to both the Upper East Side mansion in which she found herself, but also the family whose attention she sought to illude.

One that joked and jabbed — chatted and chortled with one another. They being a collection of brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, sons-and-daughters-in-law, as well as close family friends. All brought together by the patriarch and matriarch of the Windgate clan, Reginald and Delilah.

A pair that wore warm, loving, and proud expressions. Expressions brought on by the mere presence of the one woman who sought most fiercely to disappear in the noise and grandeur of the entire red, green, and gold affair.

A black-haired twenty-something who sat awkwardly in a shimmering dress that matched her hair in color, if not in length. Her own onyx locks being so short that they would barely reach her chin, even if she combed it straight down.

Short though her hair was, and ill-held though her posture may have been, still did she look breathtaking as she clung to the arm of the man who brought her. Her looks, unlike most of the older women at the table, coming not from a pair of large, top-exposed breasts — as hers were on the higher end of the alphabetical spectrum. But instead from everything else there was about her.

It was her eyes, Grant had told those same parents that stared. No, her lips. Perhaps her cute little nose. He could not choose, as he described his new girl to those that brought him into the world. And they, as they looked at her, found themselves no less taken. No less undecided.

She had a grace, though obviously unrefined. A strength, though it was well-hidden behind adorably timid eyes. Qualities that made her an enigma, just like Grant had said.

But whatever and whoever she was, their son had chosen her. And so, Reginald and Delilah felt compelled to find out more. Not so they could determine if she was worthy of their son, but instead to discover why she was.

“So, Nica….” Reginald began suddenly as he set his wine glass down. The family that had only a moment before been chatting loudly, coming to a quick and well-practiced silence — the high volume and heavy bass tunes of the season seeming to gain in the absence of theirs.

“Grant has been … well … let’s just say — less than detailed in his description of how you two met. Would you mind regaling us with the tale?” As the well-spoken, gray-haired man spoke, Nica found herself terrified. Her hands shaking as they held one of Grant’s beneath the table.

“Oh, ummm….” She began nervously, as she battled a mugging insecurity. An insecurity that had haunted her since she and Grant first met.

“We ugh….” With every beginning, she found the words she planned to say flee from her. All as her voice quivered, just as it had when she used to go to the local bodega to pick up packs of smokes for her mother as a child.

“Son, what have you done to this girl…? She’s shaking like a leaf on a tree.” With true empathy, Reginald moved his eyes to his youngest son with concern.

“Dad, she just isn’t used to….” Grant began, before a seemingly resurgent Nica cut him off.

“We met at the club.” The short-haired beauty spit out, if only to stop Grant from telling more than she wanted known.

“Grant was sitting by himself at a table. I thought he looked … not lonely, but….” Finally having found the strength to speak, with so many people listening, and in the middle of such festive pasontry, she looked to continue. But even in her stride, or as close to one as she could muster, suddenly did Delilah, Grant’s mother, blurt.

“Oh, it was his lost puppy dog face. Don’t let him fool you. He was trying to get your attention. He uses that with all the girls. And why wouldn’t he? You’re so pretty. Are you a member of the club too?” Every word spoken my Grant’s mother landed like a medicine ball crashing into Nica’s dress-bared chest. And yet still, she remained composed as she sought to come up with an answer.

To her dismay, however, a woman’s voice from further down the table provided it in her stead. “No, she isn’t a member. She’s a waitress there. Or is it janitor? I do have such a hard time keeping track of staff.” At the speaking, Nica saw Reginald’s eyes go wide and the rest of the table gasp audibly. Not at the cruelty of the words spoken, she assumed, but at the revelation.

Grant had brought home a waitress.

It was exactly what Nica had feared. Exactly why she begged Grant to let her miss the family dinner. The dread that at some point in the night, her lineage or lack thereof would be discovered. And that in the midst of a family brimming with wealth, her social status would be discovered.

And that when it was, she would feel exactly what she did at that moment.

Shame. Blistering, nausea-inducing shame.

An overwhelming emotion brought on by the fact that unlike every other person at the table, Nica had grown up poor. Not poor-ish. Not middle-class and climbing. But truly and brutally impoverished. She Living in the rattiest apartment, in the most rundown building, in the worst part of town. A neighbor to prostitutes and drug dealers — pimps and ex-cons.

Prostitutes she would beg for stitches of clothing, so that her mother could sew her clothes to wear to school.

Drug-dealers who provided her guidance when they found her crying on the wooden staircase that spiraled up from the first floor to the last.

Pimps who made sure Nica made it home from school safely, if not entirely unscathed.

And ex-cons who would make dinner and give Nica their left-overs — knowing if they didn’t, the cute little girl might starve.

It wasn’t a perfect childhood, but it was her’s. And though she believed she was better for it, as she sat there listening to Grant’s family gasp — she wanted to die.

She didn’t belong. Not in such a beautiful mansion of a home.

Not at this cartoonishly long dinner table, surrounded by people who looked like they came from the set of the movie Trading Places.

And certainly not on the arm of one of New York’s most eligible and well-off bachelors.

“Genevieve, hush.” Delilah reprimanded, without looking to see the smirking face of Grant’s childhood friend. A woman who at every age had chased after Grant.

She seeing it as her birthright to marry him. The daughter of his parent’s closest friends, Astrid and Gerald Budreau. A daughter who had grown up to be every bit as beautiful as Nica. Her hair just as short, though blonde and expensively styled. Her face reminiscent of a movie star from the 50’s, whereas Nica looked more like a pin-up model from the same era.

A contrast that Genevieve wore, along with a Monique Lhuillier red silk dress. One that contoured her own small breasts to look a smidge larger than Nica’s, though in truth they were identical.

“I’m sorry, dear. Go ahead.” Came Delilah’s soft, reassuring voice. The sound of it breaking through the horror and self-loathing Nica felt, and the audible murmuring going on from one side of the dinner table to the other. A break in destitution-derived derision that allowed the onyx to continue — though with tear-welling eyes.

And though she continued her tale, about how Grant and she had met and fell in love. Without interruption or further degradation, she could feel it. Genevieve’s presence — even as she sat a table filled with twenty plus people.

Hear it. Genevieve scoffing and snickering at her hatefully, whenever she said anything that spoke to her less than prestigious social strata.

See it. Genevieve glaring and mouthing insults at her, whenever she dared to look her way.

A performance that Nica alone seemed to notice. A distraction that the black-haired waitress fought to ignore, as she finished her tale and then excused herself from the table. She kissing Grant sweetly, before reassuring him that she was ok and just needed a moment outside in the snowflake-filled air to breathe.

A moment he gave her, as the well-built and well-dressed man turned back to his gathered family to continue chatting about the stock market, business ventures, and his memories of Christmas past.

As he sunk into such heady topics, Nica did what she could to stay upright while walking in high heels. A type of footwear she had never worn before that night, and never would again if she could help it. Difficult though it was for her to move in such stilt-like footwear, before she knew what was happening, she felt someone grab her left arm and pull her.

Not back into the dining room, or outside in the chilly, New York air, but up the rose-lined white staircase in the center of the foyer.

In that journey of ascending stairs, Nica found herself drug up one step and then another, her every effort spent on avoiding a collapse. A struggle that left her unable to answer the single-syllable questions that filled her mind.

What? Who? Why?

And though Nica should have known who had grabbed her arm and proceeded to steal her away, the thought of it…. Being grabbed and taken, pulled and pilfered, in the midst of such a joyous, albeit personally painful holiday celebration, was simply too shocking for the streetwise newcomer to think clearly.

The sound of another pair of heels clicking along with her own being drowned out by the ongoing party and house-filling music of good old Nat Cole, even as it faded into the distance.

Unexpected and unwanted though the journey that led to that distancing was, suddenly did it come to an end. As Nica found herself, after reaching the top of the stairs, and in unstable stumble, tossed forward and into a lavishly decorated bedroom.

“What the fuck?!” Nica shouted as she, after regaining her footing, spun back around to face the one who had brought her. That being the glaring girl from the far-end of the table. The identity of whom had become clear about half-way between the Windgate home’s first and second floors.

“Who the shit do you think you are?!” With her right hand moving to massage her left bicep, one which ached from the door-closing blonde’s tight and demanding grip, the Onyx again flared.

“Who do I think I am? You should ask yourself that question you stupid little gutter slut!” As Genevieve spoke, she moved. Stalking towards Nica with narrowed and hate-filled eyes.

“Huh?!” The blonde prodded for a response, as the waitress searched for words amongst the adrenaline flooding her body.

“I mean, look at you. The tag is still hanging out of that ratty dishrag you call a dress.” As she insulted Nica’s attire, Grant’s bitter childhood friend reached out, and with a single pull, tore the small white string that still held the purchase price of the dress.

“Awww….” Genevieve mocked in feigned concern.

“I guess you won’t be able to return it now…. Good luck with rent….” She added with a merciless smirk and scrunched nose.

Every word. Every action that spewed from the blonde’s mouth made Nica fume, and yet she clung desperately to what little composure she had left. Knowing how terrible it would look to be caught in any kind of altercation in the home of her lover’s parents.

But as the afflicted newcomer struggled to resist her temptation to lunge at Genevieve, claws first, the latter saw it. A necklace hanging from Nica’s neck — one that the blonde had somehow missed at the dinner table.

Not just any necklace, but THE necklace. The one that Grant’s long-passed great grandmother gave to him on her deathbed. She hoping, like the romantic she was, that he would put it on the one special girl he fell in love with.

It was a request that Genevieve learned of not from word of mouth, but because she was there when it was given. Like she was there for almost the entirety of Grant’s childhood. And though she always had a crush on the young Windgate, it was only at that moment. At the bedside of his dying relative, that she truly understood how deeply she coveted.

Not just the necklace.

Not just Grant.

But to be a Windgate. Forever and always.

To donne the feathers of the brightest peacock in the borough, and wear them until she died.

And though since that moment, she had chased him. Thrown herself at him. And tried, in every way she could think of to make him love her. Try though Genevieve did, there she stood staring at the beautiful, diamond-tipped heirloom as it hung from the neck of another.

The sight made Genevieve’s eyes grow wide and her lips bend into a wicked snarl. “You wretched cunt! He gave you the necklace?! You don’t…. You can’t….”

Before Nica had even processed the words being spewed at her, the short-haired blonde doing the spewing lunged. Her grasping hands reaching out to tear the near priceless necklace from around the neck of a woman she felt had no right to wear it.

In reaction and defense, the raven-haired Nica raised her own hands and grabbed the wrists of her attacker, just before they reached their target.

Then, even as Nica struggled to process all that was happening, Genevieve refused to calm or settle. No, for instead she leapt forward again, closing the gap between her and the girl who had stolen the affections of the man she had always wanted to claim as her own.

At that second leap, and without large breasts to play the role of buffers, they each possessing cute, but unimposing A-cups, the two women’s bodies crashed together from sternum to waist. One of them pressing forward, and one simply trying to remain upright, and unharmed.

“Get off me! What’s wrong with you?!” Nica cried out in protest, as she tried desperately to control and subdue Genevieve’s necklace seeking wrists.

“No! Not until you give me that necklace, and go back to the sewer you crawled out of!” As Genevieve found her words, and then released them, they one by one landed like punches. Each dizzying Nica with their weight — even as the close, body-to-body battle of intentions played out.

“Wha…?” Came a broken reply from the black-haired and beautiful popper in a home and an affair far beyond her station. She finding herself struggling less, and thinking more by the second.

About Grant, and how she had finally found a man who … who … As the thoughts swirled in her mind, Genevieve suddenly broke her wrists free, and delivered a single hard slap to Nica’s face. The blow, and the distraction from the socialite’s demands being enough to knock Nica to the ground.

A ground on which she sat, a hand on her stinging cheek, her tear-filled eyes looking up to her tormentor.

“He doesn’t love you….” Nica tried to offer as justification, with her voice shaking, but before she could finish, Genevieve bent over and landed a second slap across her cheek.

“Don’t pretend you know him…. You’re just a whore he brought to this year’s Christmas party. I’ve known him since we were both children!” With every word Genevieve’s anger and passion grew more and more uncontrollable.

“You’re the one who doesn’t know him!” Nica shouted in response from her seated position, her eyes still locked on the mad woman in front of her, even as her cheeks began to stain with running mascara. “He loves me….”

“He falls in love with every broken plaything he finds….” Genevieve hissed, as she turned her back to Grant’s newest mistake. “He’ll leave you, just like he did all the others. Then, when he’s ready to settle down, he’ll choose me.”

The words, sounding so much like the truth Nica had always feared, made Nica want to burst into tears and run.

From Genevieve.

From the house.

From Grant and all the pain Nica feared such a fate would cause her.

Instead however, she rose. From her seated position and to her feet. Feet she then used to move herself closer to Genevieve. Her tears and eyes drying, and her confusion and fear turning into anger.

“He’ll never choose you. He’s mine….” Sternly, and with a fire she had only then shown, Nica growled as she came nose to nose with her new rival.

“There is literally nothing you can do about me taking him, you Hot-Topic-shopping skank.” As if the two women weren’t close enough, as the blonde Budreau spoke her icy words, she leaned in. Her eyes and Nica’s fused together in unblinking glares.

Electricity seeming to leap from the body of one to the same of the other.

The once timid Nica having found what she needed to harden and confront. The suggestion that anyone would take Grant from her. Especially a woman as spoiled and cruel as Genevieve.

“You wanna bet?” Nica asked in a confidence-laced question she needed no answer to. She leaning in just as far and just as deep. The tips of the two women’s noses glancing, just as their long, fake eyelashes began to interlace.

“I don’t make bets with trash.” The blonde replied in a hiss. There being an excitement in it for Genevieve. Confronting Nica. Confronting a woman who sought to take the man she had always chased. In insulting her. In telling her that she was nothing, and that Grant would one day be her’s.

“I might be trash….” Nica began in a low, snake-tongued whisper. “But I’m the trash who’s fucking the man you love every. Single. Night….” The feeling of it. Of telling the bitch who tried to ruin her night off. Of hurting her with words, when action could break out at any second made Nica’s heart pump fast. She being so close to her enemy, that she could see in the eyes of the same, the pain every word of her taunt caused.

“You’ll never fuck him again….” Seething to the point of shaking, Genevieve could barely breathe. And yet she had the air to make clear her intentions.

“You don’t ge-TTTT AArrggghh!” As Nica went to respond, the long moment of nose-to-nose tension broke. As Genevieve, without warning, buried her hands in Nica’s short black hair. Just a flash before she who had been grabbed, took for herself the same grip of her rival’s golden strands

With those holds, and as they stood in their red and black dresses, the two hate-filled women snarled. Pulling closer and closer, as foreheads met, and delicate breaths fought for the same oxygen. Each lost in the intensity of the threat the other posed, and their own insistence on stomping it out.

“Let go of me, or I swear I’ll ruin you….” Nica growled, as she and her rival settled into the scalp-burning pull of the other’s tug.

“I’m not letting you go UNTIL I’ve ruined you, tramp.”Came Genevieve’s turn of what Nica had said. She smirking at her own cleverness, as together their mirrored bodies pressed and rubbed through fabric.

Each having said their piece, the clinging pair fell into silence, though around them the incandescent voice of Christmas music’s king played.

Soothing though that voice was, it did little to calm or quell the fire that raged in the two women. Women whose noses met at their tips and then flattened length for length as each leaned in deeper.

“You’ll regret ever mee-BITCH!!” Mid-promise, the battle of Genevieve and Nica began, as without warning or waiting, the latter pulled hard on her grips of hair.

A surprise wrenching that sent the two dress-and-heel-wearing women into a spin, a stumble, and then at least for Nica, a fall. She only barely knowing how to stand in heels, let alone fight in them. An unfamiliarity which led her steps to drag, her heightened footwear to capsize, and her legs in the process to give way.

At the unexpected drop, both Genenieve and her rival released their holds on each other’s hair. The former to avoid being drug down and Nica to focus on catching herself as she crashed down to the carpet.

Crash though she did, in sudden and clump, it was the words of the still standing blonde that hurt most of all. “Aww, poor girl doesn’t know how to keep balance in heels?”

At the speaking of the words, and the flashing of a cruel and mocking look of concern from their speaker, Nica kicked the hanging pair of formal wear from her feet.

“You fucking bitch!” Nica shouted, as she tried to raise back up to her finally free feet. But as she did, she found herself under fire. Not from hands or bullets, but the heels of her rivals. Shoewear thrown down and at the black-haired beauty’s face as she sought to stand.

Strike and nick Nica’s face, though one of the flying pair did, it did not stop her. From standing. From finding. Or then from lunging at Genevieve.

Yes, the arrogant blonde could have dodged or retreated from her enemy’s anger-fueled dive, but Genevieve instead stood. Not out of foolishness but desire.

The blonde wanting more than anything to get her hands on the floozy who had the gall to try and take a man she was destined to be with. A desire soon realized, as in another crash, one of one woman against another, Nica and Genevieve met.

Each grabbing for each other’s hair once more, as in a tangle of intertwining legs, fancy dresses, and pressing bodies, they fell. Not in a well-angled or smartly placed descent to floor or mattress, but instead awkwardly, with a slam into end of the expertly made bed, and thereafter into a heap on the carpet.

A heap in which the two Grant-focused women pulled tight on their sides. Their legs, which were already braided beneath kicked-up dresses, seizing tight. Just as their foreheads and nose-tips met once more.

“Poor little slut….” Genevieve hissed, in their closeness.

“Stuck-up, richy, brat….” Nica growled back in the same.

With every insult the two women tightened their grips on each other’s hair and then tugged. Not viciously. Not brutally, but as warnings and almost foreplay.

Each of the two, filled with hate though they were, feeling as the battle in which they found themselves was something they wanted to savor. And though that odd, expectation-defying sense was mirrored in each, the feeling came from different places.

Genevieve’s coming from years of wanting, of wishing, of dreaming about putting one of Grant’s flings in their place beneath her. Whereas Nica, the indigent waitress, felt far more comfortable wrapped around her Prince Charming’s childhood friend than she did at the painfully perfect family gathering downstairs.

Reasons aside, such enjoyment left the pair without the need to rush or sprint through their conflict. Neither fearing, perhaps foolishly, that they might be caught. The self-centered nature of the gathering below being far too intense to allow for the questions to be asked.

Where is Genevieve? Where might Nica be?

I’m sure they’re fine, would be the answer.

They’ll find their way back to us, would be the echoed reply.

And so without worry, wise or not, the two women began to focus on the minutiae, as they laid on their sides.

The two matching the extension of their criss-crossed, and calf-locked legs. Focusing on the grip the other had on their hair, only so they could make sure their own hold was just as tight. Adjusting their hips so that their dresses rode-up no less high than their rival’s.

Why would the young women find such a need? To settle deeper into their hateful embrace? To make certain that they were no less connected with the woman with whom they writhed?

Was it experience in such battles?

Or some tactic they had learned?

To each the answer is no. As instead, their seeming demand to work themselves closer and further into each other was motivated by instinct alone.

An instinct to stop their enemy from escaping. To have her there and bound with them.

As if they feared it: abandonment.

Not because they loved, but because they needed. Each other and the moment. For different reasons, but reasons with an equivalent power.

A power that then pushed them, when their bindings had been secured, to return the entirety of their attention back to one another and their red-hot and mutual glare.

“I’ll make you beg me to let you go.” Came a promise so hateful from Nica, that the heat of it warmed Genevieve’s face.

“I’ll make you beg me to keep you.” Pitched different though the threat was, it, like the words of she to whom it was aimed, made hair stand on end.

The electricity of the two women’s contrary wills arching back and forth between them. And like an EMP going off in their minds, that uncontrolled charge shut down their inhibitions, and fried the circuits of their rationality and logic — restraint and repression.

Freed from such bindings, the two began to push into each other. Not only with their hips or their chests, but the entirety of their bodies, as they, in adverse attempts, began to fight to roll themselves on top of the other.

Looking for leverage.

Looking for ownership of the moment and each other.

Yes, for Grant. Yes, because of the malice each felt in their hearts. But also because every step the two had taken towards, and every leap the two had taken into their affair of violence had felt right.

Each finding the one thing they needed. For the blonde, years of pent-up rage set free, and for the oynx, a thrown rope, pulling her out of a social engagement that made her skin crawl and stomach knot.

And though they didn’t understand or recognize the appreciation they had, not for each other but for their beginning war, still they felt.

In the strongest way a person can, a pull. A drag even.

Into not only the fight in which they found themselves, but to hold onto the pain-drenched heaven they had found. Even as they fought to earn their own ascension to a mount. Their contrary pushes and then correcting pulls sending them into a slow, up-and-over turn.

One in which their eyes closed, heads shifted, and faces buried in the crook of the other’s neck.

There being a peace to it. The ritual, though before that moment it was unknown to them.

The binding of body against body, though never before had they wanted anything like it.

A clinching with another woman so very close that the mixing of their worn perfume made them both dizzy.

A constriction so intense, that though both wished they could pull tighter, they failed at the effort.

And though there were no strikes being thrown, no nails being drug, and no submissions being drawn from the other’s lips in such an embrace.

As again and again the women rolled together. Up and over. Side to side. They each vowed. Without speaking. Without signing on any dotted line. Their every tightening of hooked calves and tugging of hair swearing.

That neither has made a mistake.

That neither wished to retreat upon release.

An oath upon its giving which led Genevieve to suddenly anchor, as on one turn amongst many, she found herself on top of Nica.

A placement she held with effort, as without warning or sign, she opened her red-sticked lips and then bit. The blonde sinking her teeth into the dress-exposed flesh of Nica’s left shoulder.

A bite which caused their binding of bodies to end, as in pain and unexpected alteration of their game, the black-haired waitress groaned out loud.

Her mind beset not only by the sting of her rival’s teeth digging into her soft, alabaster skin, but also the sudden rush it gave her.

They had begun.

In a blink going from foreplay to ferocity — from a bound rolling to a breaking of skin.

A breaking Nica responded to. Not with a bite of her own, but with a series of sudden slaps from hands removed from the young Budreau’s hair.

Those strikes, as blistering as they were, came aimed not at any particular target, but instead at every surface on genevieve’s body Nica could land her hands on, dress-covered or not.

And though each such strike carried with its own force, and drug from the blonde a mumble of mouth-filled lament. She held on. Letting her teeth sink deeper and deeper into Nica’s shoulder, as the same remained on her back. Their legs having fallen loose and their closeness having ebbed.

With that end, came a speed. A force. An intensity that each had spared the other from in their long, methodical, floor-rolling embrace.

An embrace that felt like a distant memory, as suddenly Nica’s closed left fist smashed into Genevieve’s right cheek. A blow that not only ended the blonde’s bite, and knocked her off of the onyx and to the side, but also caused the same newly freed woman on bottom to cry out. As the flesh of her shoulder snapped out of her rival’s mouth painfully, after a blow-caused increasing of pressure.

“You’re gonna bite me?!” Nica shouted enraged, as she rolled onto her hands and knees and then chased after Genevieve who remained on her back recovering from the blow.

“That’s how you want to play this?!” No answer received, and none needed, Nica dove at Genevieve. Who, upon hearing Nica’s words, and the anger within then began to scoot back and away. She, not wanting to suffer the same pain she had just inflicted, fairplay or no.

Move though the blonde did, both back and away, still did Nica reach them. The retreating Budreau’s bare feet. Feet on which the onyx pulled as she leaned and raised up to her mouth, as the same opened.

“No, no, no, no, no!” In a quickly increasing panic, Genevieve chanted until it was almost a scream. A scream drowned out by festive tunes, that came as her bite-threatened toes neared and for a moment entered Nica’s mouth.

At least until Grant’s childhood friend began to kick. Not brutally or with force, but wildly and with just enough strength to pull her legs free.

Free from jaw and teeth though her lower digits were, Nica held onto her grips of Genevieve’s achilles. A keeping with a consequence.

Namely that as the back-laid blonde tugged her legs back and down, Nica came with them. Both down and forward. Not onto Genevieve, in another body to body collision, but face-first and deep between the legs of the same.

Legs which in an instant lifted into the air, closed tight around the head between them, and then locked at the ankles high above the waitress’ back.

“Caught you — you little tramp.” The blonde cood, as Nica’s mouth and nose pressed tightly against the center of her lacy white panties.

“Mmmnnnpphh!” Nica shouted in a muffled, unintelligible attempt at retort.

“Oooh, oh yes…. Keep shouting, gutter rat. It feels ever so good.” Like a spider with a fly trapped helplessly in her web, Genevieve, as Nica squirmed between her squeezing thighs, took on an air of unflinching confidence.

A confidence Nica could hear and most cruelly feel, even though she could not respond to it.

Not with words at least.

She having no other option than to reach up and grab\ for the bottom of her tormentor’s dress.

But before she could find and tighten her fingers around its kicked-up eaves, Genevieve grabbed them for herself. She thereafter pulling her long, beautiful dress up and after a teasing little shift and shimmy, up and over her head.

The youngest daughter of the Budreau family tossing it onto the bedroom’s neatly made bed, before returning her focus to Nica.

“Aww, no dress for you to tug on.” The blonde mocked, as she leaned up and onto bent elbows. Her petite breasts, perky as they were, hanging as her gorgeous eyes looked down to her rival cruelly.

A rival’s whose hands moved to the outside of Genevieve’s thighs and clawed. From hips down, and then back again. Each such dragging of nails causing she in control to stutter out. “Owe, owe, owe.” And then demand. “Stop it, you tarted up little cunt!”

A command and a curse the blonde fired off as she reached for Nica’s hands. Wanting to grab them. To claim them. And in so doing, leave the black-haired beauty between her outstretched and squeezing thighs trapped.

But as Genevieve leaned further forward, her legs parted just enough for Nica to open her mouth and bite. Her teeth sinking into saliva-and-excitement-wet panties and the soft, swollen lips that laid underneath.

“Aaagggggghhh!” The rich New Yorker shrieked, before pain caused her to abandon all pretense of headscissor and hold. And then, once more, look to retreat. But as she went to scoot back, Nica burst forth. Through the legs unclasping around her and on top of the woman whose pussy she had just found herself immersed in.

It was time! Nica thought. For vengeance! For offense! To beat the crap out of the girl who had thus far had her number. And yet, as she sought to mount and tackle the blonde, that same blonde grabbed and pulled. Dragging Nica’s own dress, and without intention the necklace that lay underneath, up and over her face.

But cleverly, Genevieve left the cheap knock off hanging over Nica’s arms and upper body, as she, with Nica blind, rolled.

Not away, but to her knees.

Not to escape, but to rise up, and then as the waitress struggled to free herself from her own chosen outfit, drive a knee deep into her ribs.

A blow that collapsed Nica to the carpeted floor with a loud “Ooomphh” Just as her vision and movement blocking dress and the necklace attached thereto fell to the floor.

“You just don’t learn!” Genevieve taunted as she stepped forward, and then, as Nica nearly-nude body turned, dropped down into a mount just above hips. The center-wet white panties of the mostly untouched blonde coming to a rest just below the dominated onyx’ navel.

“Get off me!” Nica muttered as her hands moved up and towards her rival. The eyes of she who reached remaining shut from both pain and broken focus.

“No, no, no….” Though no longer from fear, once more did Genevieve chant. All as she struggled to catch Nica’s poorly guided arms at their wrists. Points of articulation the blonde after a moment found, secured, and then after a quick application of force, slammed down to the carpeted floor.

“Now….” She on top said shortly, before leaning down, in, and without warning or mercy, latched her teeth onto Nica’s bared left nipple.

“AAaagggghghhhh!!!” It was agony! It was horror! And no doubt the family below heard it! They must have! Both women assumed. And though the bet on their parts was safe — so too were they.

To continue fighting.

To continue hurting each other.

As the thick walls of the house and the blaring sound of the season drowned out Nica’s suffering.

A suffering that continued as the blonde above chewed without cessation or relenting.

“BIIIIITTTCCHHH!!! FFUUUUCCCKKKK!!! OOOWWWWEEE!” Nica cursed and cried, as her hips began to buck upward into air and not else. Her own black, Amazon Basic brand panties wet, from nothing more than her war with her newfound rival. A wetness and excitement lost on she beneath, as her feet dug into the carpet to try and gain even the slightest bit of lift, as to displace her mirrored-body foe.

And though she bucked, fighting all the while to push her own arms off of the floor and past Genevieve’s pin. She found no success. No freedom.

She instead suffering the long lingering bite of her enemy.

An enemy who methodically chewed as she looked up and watched Nica’s face contort and twist in agony.

All as the thought of submitting — of conceding — of begging Genevieve to stop began to seep into Nica’s mind.

After all, in their battle so far, the floor-pinned waitress had landed only a single blow on the blonde. Along with only the most temporary of bites.

Maybe, the oynx thought. Despite their upbringings, and her own rage, the spoiled bitch was tougher than her. Stronger than her. At least in a battle like the one they found themselves in.

But what would she be giving up? Grant? Her soulmate? No terms had been discussed, and yet if she gave in, who knows what Genevieve would do to her and what allowances she might draw from her lips.

Calm and logical though such thoughts read on paper, they flew through Nica’s mind like a heavy gust of wind. A wind blown alongside pain and panic — hatred and frustration.

Emotions which shrouded every assessment and analysis. Sufferings that obscured every avenue of escape.

Until finally Genevieve’s teeth came unclenched, lifted, and then moved. Not back up and away, but over and with the intent to latch onto Nica’s unravaged right nipple.

It was only then, as the blonde leaned and as the pain went from searing to aching, that Nica could act. That she could counter.

Doing so by driving herself upward and her face forward. The first such shift causing she and her rival to roll up and over. Just as the second brought Nica’s own mouth and teeth over and onto Genevieve’s hard, right nipple in a viciously vengeful bite.

One that tore a scream from Genevieve’s lips, as she, in desperation sought to release Nica’s wrists and attack. But as the blonde’s hand’s released, the onyx above her found them. The fingers on each lacing, as the tables turned completely.

She who had been on top and pinning, finding herself on bottom and restrained. The one who bit and inflicted, in no less a rebound of fate, finding herself bitten and by a war she started betrayed.

“Owe! Fuuuccckk!!! No! AAAaAAGGhhHHh!” Genevieve cried out in between whimpers, as for almost the first time she suffered in Nica’s grasp.

Suffer though the socialite [did, her rival felt glee. Unadulterated, unmitigated elation at the fact that finally she was hurting Grant’s childhood friend. One who was so cruel and mean — smug and merciless.

Excitement though Nica felt, she made sure not to let it drive her into making a mistake. She, instead, after securing her mounting — not of abdomen, but of Genevieve’s left thigh, dropping her nude upper body down and atop her rival’s. Making sure that her gravity was low, and that if the blonde was to find a way out of the predicament, she would need to press the entirety of her weight up and off of her.

A difficulty and defense presented as Nica settled in. She, promising to herself that she would lay there on that floor, body pressed against body for eternity.

Never adjusting.

Never relenting.

Never relinquishing her bite.

Just holding. Just punishing. Until the girl who had made her night hell cried out her submission and begged for her to stop.

And though such had not been said, the blonde knew. She would get no softness. No clemency. Not from Nica. Not after all she had put her through.

Certain though she was of her enemy’s malice, still was Genevieve trapped. Her attempts at leaning up and biting Nica’s forehead or ears coming up an inch or two short. Her pushes, to lift their clasped hands proving useless. And so she, just like Nica, began to buck her hips.

Hoping to throw her rival up and off of her.

Hoping to perhaps throw the onyx forward, and make either of her previously failed avenues of escape possible.

And though every bucking upwards did shift Nica, it did so only at their centers.

Every thrust lifting the waitress’s own panties-covered pubic mound up and then closer to Genevieve’s. Once then again. The pair of feminine hills never moving back, but only nearer.

Until finally, as Nica continued to gnaw and the blonde below her to bleat out in pain, their fabric-enclosed womanhoods met. And when they did, the wetness of their panties each had earned in the intensity of their battle, along with the closeness of their bodies, caught and then in part glued to each other.

Even as the Budreau on bottom continued to buck. The pain of Nica’s biting and her own desperation to free herself rendering her oblivious to the coming contact until in a sudden burst of unexpected pleasure, it hit them both.

“Unnnghhhmmm” Nica moaned, even as her teeth continued to dig into the base of Genevieve’s flamingo pink nipple.

“Fuuuuccckkk” Came an equally pleasure-drenched utterance from the blonde.

To fuck the out-of-station, poverty-striken cunt above her. And to in any way admit that she was something to be desired would have, at any other moment, made Genevieve recoil with revulsion. And yet, upon hearing Nica’s reaction, and feeling how in only a single thrust she had earned a lessening of pain. She continued.

To earn, by way of driving. Her own womanhood up and into Nica’s. Once and then again. Not wildly, and without purpose. But instead with the pure intent to crash one clit against its counterpart.

Through their wetness.

Through their panties.

Through those lips of each which parted more and more with every contact.

And though Nica was focused on keeping her position and her bite. As one collision after another came, she began to reciprocate. Her once clamped and blood-seeking teeth loosening as again her lips parted in a moan.

A moan like Genevieve’s.

A moan, that along with the pleasure that brought them, robbed she above from a focus on inflicting and she below on any thoughts of escape.

“You bitch….” Muttered Nica, as her mouth fell from placement, and her cheek came down to lay on Genevieve’s chest.

“Fuck you….” Responded the blonde. Her verbal deriding despite the fact that, finally, the biting pain she had for so long endured had come to an end.

Each losing themselves to the moment. To each other. To the meeting of one clit and another.

Again and again.

In the heat and the passion.

In the midst of a war of hate, that even as they fucked one another, did not sleep.

Yes, it had come by chance and without and perhaps against intention. But still, in such a back and forth thrusting of mounds and chalices, they continued. For minutes and then more. For what felt like an eternity to both of them, though for each it ended far too soon.

They together in a moment of loathing-laced bliss cuming. Not apart, but in unison. In a paradigm-breaking hurricane of satisfied passions and momentarily unrepentant lusts.

One that left them quivering in a heap together on the carpeted floor. Their fingers still laced as together they laid.

As together they simply breathed.

Neither sure what had happened or what it meant. How they had gotten there, or where it might mean they were going.

And though for a shattered second, each thought about becoming more or even less, in a sudden burst of energy and emotion, once more, did they seize.

Not in orgasm, but each other. Their hands unclasping and then moving to each other’s hair, as once more, and as they lay on their sides, they locked themselves in a hateful embrace.

“Poor little slut!” Genevieve snarled, as unfiltered malice took hold once more.

“Stupid richy cunt!” Hissed Nica as at the same moment, their legs interlaced and at the calves hooked, just as they had before.

Neither mentioning what had just happened.

Neither casting blame or denying their own role in it.

Each instead pretending as if they hadn’t just driven each other to orgasm. Even as their mixed, pleasure-born essences dripped and streamed down their crossed inner thighs. Even as their wounded, raw, and yet still hard nipples met and with a sting drove into each other.

Ignore though they meant to, all that had just occurred between them, in each other’s eyes they could see it. The passion and lust that had been awoken and then in the bliss of a long, uninterrupted session of tribbing, they sated.

Or did they…? The uncertainty ate at them, as with every second they spent glaring, bound around one another, they felt themselves needing more.

Wanting more.

Until just when the two women thought they could resist not a second longer before together they dove back into their traitorous, carnal desires, Nica bit.

Not cheek, chin, or tongue, but Genevieve’s lower lip. Just as it lowered to release some new insult and vulgarity.

It hurt. It stung. And within the very first piercing of teeth, the pale-carmine-colored insides of the blonde’s lip bled. A sign of force and ferocity, and yet still, the bite itself seemed to be something other than an attack.

Something other than a re-engagement of their fiery and hateful struggle.

But was it? Or was the Budreau girl just imagining what she wanted? Deeply? Secretly? No!

She hated Nica!

She being nothing more than a tramp and a hussy! The blonde told herself as she started to weaken.

A street rat and a gutter snake! The blonde screamed within her mind and without sound, as she fought to maintain control of desires she could barely understand.

That’s when it she heard it, Nica whisper through the teeth she let cling. “Bitch….”

Just the word… As hissed and hateful as it was, suddenly drove Genevieve mad with excitement. Even as Nica once more began to bite painfully at the lower lip between her teeth.

Give into it. Lose yourself. Let the animosity and rage that had fueled you drive not violence for violence’s sake but instead to make it an intoxicating aphrodisiac. Her lust whispered to her like a devil on her shoulder.

Whisper though that devil did, again Genevieve rebelled, as with a sudden push of her own topless body against Nica’s, she rolled them.

She unwilling to let the closeness and intimacy of she and and her rival’s battle overwhelm her. Even though her body begged her. Even though her soul screamed for it.

“Cunnnttttffrrpphh” The blonde shouted as a promise to herself not to give in. Even though her curse was affected by Nica, who still clung cruelly to her lower lip.

A cruelty Genevieve threatened to finally match, as in quick return to all she was on the edge of losing, the girl on top dropped her hands from the hair of the onyx below her and with fingers hooked like claws, dared to dig them into Nica’s cheeks.

In a flash, Nica knew of the peril the blonde’s nails might mean to her. How deep ravines of peeled skin or surfaced blood might give their battle away.

To the family and the assorted gathering downstairs.

Regardless of which of they two cats came out on top.

And so she whilted, before Genevieve began to drag. And released, before the same weapons had even pierced their way through flesh.

“Don’t…..” Nica asked, as her bite on lip released and her hands let loose of her enemy’s hair.

For a moment, Genevieve remained silent, as she looked down on the suddenly pacified rival. She not following through or wounding, though at any second she could do either.

“Why? Why shouldn’t I…?” The blonde asked in a venom-drenched voice.

“Because…. They’ll know….” Nica answered in a timid whisper, as she and her rival’s legs began to decoil.

“Know what…?” Though she knew already, still Genevieve asked. As she, with only the tiniest pressure, warned Nica she might begin her face-marking attack.

“That we’re…. That we….” As Nica spoke, trying to answer, she studied her enemy’s face. A face on which she found not understanding or acceptance, but instead malice and hatred. And yet, just like before, there was also something else.

Something primal.

Something needing.

Something she had felt herself, only minutes before.

And so, almost certain that Genevieve would not listen to reason, Nica, as her rival had before, began to thrust. Upward and into. Mound to mound, and as thighs parted on instinct, clit to clit. Once again through soaked and sticking panties. One pair black and the other white.

“Unnnggggh.” The blonde moaned as her eyes closed from the unexpected pleasure.

“Don’t….” The oynx asked again, as she moved her hands from hair to panty bands on either side, and with a single pull tugged them down and out of the way.

“Slut….” Genevieve cursed, as for the first time their river-wet sexs met flesh-to-flesh.

“Please….” Soft, almost pitifully, Nica continued to ask for the blonde’s mercy. And though she did, she also reached. From the panties she had lowered and removed from the equation to Genevieve’s hands.

Hands on which she pulled. Slowly. Delicately. Not wanting to trigger the rival above her to suddenly drive them in or drag them down as she had threatened not moments before.

At the pulling, as light and forceless as it was, still did Genevieve whisper — even as she, in the fog of meeting cunts, let her claws recede. “This … doesn’t … change….”

The words were aimed at Nica, though in some ways, they were made in an effort to assure herself.

That even though her own hips had begun to angle and aim — drive in and at, they were still fighting.

Still hating.

Enemies, no matter what between their legs and in their minds was occuring.

“I know….” Nica whispered reassuringly. Lovingly, almost. And though the words she spoke and tone she used made the blonde feel as if she could just enjoy. Just fuck her enemy once more. To orgasm and a release of sexual tension that seemed to build more and more quickly, the longer they two continued to fight.

Without warning did Nica strike. Not with another bite, or a set of claws of her own. But instead with a roll. She looking to turn them over, so that once again she was on top and in control.

Such placement, Nica hoped, would allow, once their inescapable tribbing had ended once more, for her to take advantage. Or at least, not be at a disadvantage and trapped beneath her foe.

But Genevieve sought and worried about that same aftermath of a colliding of cunts that she could not control. And so, even as she and her enemy continued to thrust their sticky, shaven womanhoods together, she fought. The blonde pulling Nica past her point of ascension, just as the the oynx used the momentum gained by the same.

They, together fucking in a slow, body-to-body roll. One that, as they moved, worked their previously displaced panties down their intertwined but unbound thighs and then off.

And though, like before, they could have continued in that dilatory turning, only changing course when they ran out of room.

In a simultaneous and heel-driven adjustment, they stopped, raised, and as thighs layered over each other in opposing arrangements, the two women brought themselves into a seated position. Their kittens still pressed and dragging — met and mashing.

Neither woman, despite their hate for one another, able to resist the desires their battle had awoken in them.

“I’ll … fuck him … ungh … in front of you….” Genevieve stuttered out weakly, as again and again their cores met and interrupted her focus and breathing.

“I’ll … make … you … our ritzy little … sex slave….” Nica replied, no less affected by the goings on between their criss-crossed and essence-splattered thighs.

“Shut up….” Genevieve bristled, though weakly.

“You shut up….” Came Nica’s response, with no more strength.

Too weak to show rage and too lust-filled to escape their scissored heaven, each of the two warring women leaned in and bit at one another’s ear. All as in unison, they drove their nails into each other’s back and then drug.

The fear that once controlled Nica, of scratch marks giving away their battle meaning less when they would be left on her back. For though Grant might find them, she — at that moment, didn’t care.

For as the passions of fighting and fucking took a deeper and deeper hold of the waitress, the idea of her lover knowing began to turn her on.

Began to entice her. In fact, as again and again she and genevieve drove womanhoods together, she pictured her threat coming true. The two of them claiming Genevieve as their slave. The image of the short-haired blonde calling her mistress, a collar tightly bound around her neck.

It was a thought that began to drive her, along with her rival’s tiny, barely audible whimpers and moans which were released again and again into her ear. An envisioning and a sound wish propelled Nica closer and closer to orgasm.

And though Genevieve was able to enjoy the same symphony of suffering and sensuality from her enemy, she had not yet allowed herself to focus on what the making true of her threat might be like. Nor did she have some other take on their tribbing to push her as far or pull her as fast.

An inequality of fetish and fantasy that gave her the advantage. One she saw and understood. One she acted upon as without permission or conscious allowance as she leaned in and with her own upper body and breasts moved Nica down and to her back once more.

A lowering that came as the poverty-drawn beauty let her once clawing hands flatten against her rival’s back and her biting teeth retract into a barely-there nibble.

One she used not to harm or hurt, but instead to share her own growing ecstasy with Genevieve. The back laid blonde moaning, again and again, as the woman above her began to focus all of her efforts on forcing the perceived upstart into orgasm. Not only before her, but without her.

It would make her weak. It would make her helpless. And though Nica could sense it all happening and knew the devastation it might mean, she was unable to stop.

Unable to resist.

She being too far down the road of pleasure and bliss. Too enthralled by the image in her mind. And too well-ridden by her enemy.

An enemy who had shifted her own valley down. So that it was the very tip of her hood that drug against Nica’s clit, and not her own. She letting her own passions settle, as her rival she drove home.

“You…. bitch….” Nica muttered in protest, though she could offer no more.

“Cum for me, trash….” The words were hateful and telling, and yet in the depths of their seemingly endless engagement, they were just enough to make Nica cum.

Hard and violently.

With a sudden seize and eye-shuddering shake.

A state of complete surrender that in an instant Genevieve capitalized on by rushing forward, and mounting her cuming rival.

Giving here no chance to rest or recover. She instead planting her soaked inner thighs over the waitress abdomen and pinned forearms. Just before she began to slap.

Once and then again.

Maliciously and without an ounce of mercy .

Each palm landing hard and with an echo. An echo that then mixed with Nica’s cries of both lingering pleasure and newly inflicted pain.

“You’re done, slut!” The blonde taunted, as her slapping ceased.

“Now I’ll make you regret ever meeting Grant.” With her intentions spoken, Genevieve lowered her hands down to Nica’s nipples and began to twist. Both injured left and untouched right.

The attack made Nica scream out again, and when she did the woman atop her smirked. “That’s right. Scream for me you uppity little dish washer….”

At that moment, she was helpless. Not only trapped, but unable to protect her wounded left nipple, which would have already ached for weeks. And though she wanted to fight back and escape. And wanted to keep fighting. She knew she could not take the pain or risk having her nipple torn off by the mad woman above her.

And so Nica spoke through her pain. “Ok! Ok…. Please….”

The words echoed through the room and Genevieve’s head as her lips curved further from a satisfied smirk to a self-pleased smile.

“Mmm…. Ok what…” The blonde asked as she released Nica’s nipples and moved a hand to the pinned waitress’ cheeks. She thereafter squeezing them together in taunt, as her hazel eyes looked down at her conceding victim.

“I…. You….” Nica stuttered as her own eyes began to well up with tears.

“Say it!” Genevieve demanded, wanting to hear her enemy give up. Not only their battle, but the love of her life too.

“You can….” As the sentence started, all seemed to fall quiet. As the entirety of the universe condensed down to just they two. Broken girlfriend and victorious best friend.

At the end of their violence.

At the victory of one and defeat of the other.

But just as the words should have come. And as Genevieve’s focus on all else but listening ebbed. Nica leaned forward and sunk her teeth deep into the flesh between the blonde’s thumb and index finger. The taste of copper filling her mouth as blood began to seep from the wound.

At the vicious latching Genevieve screamed and recoiled. She throwing herself back and away, wanting to end the pain though at the cost of so very much.

And though Nica could have held onto the bite, she let it go and then chased. Diving after and upon her enemy’s back as she scrambled to get away.

Try though Genevieve did, to shake Nica off, the latter held on and rode her rival down to the carpet.

A rival who turned over at the last second, and in the madness of the struggle, found herself pinned. Nica’s shins landing atop the socialite’s outstretched biceps, as the sopping pussy of the same lowered down in a wet clap over the blonde’s mouth and nose.

It took only a second for the Budreau girl to decide to bite. To latch her teeth in her enemy’s cunt, just as that same enemy had done to her before.

But as she went to open her mouth, she felt Nica’s fingers pinch at her damaged right nipple, and take a firm and painful hold.

“I swear to god if you bite me, I will rip this thing right off your chest, cunt….” Nica threatened, as she adjusted her new and dominant placement.

Muffled though they were, her rival’s words, Genevieve could still hear them. Still understand them as the onyx sitting on her face lightly twisted her brutalized nipple as sample.

“Ok, bitch….” Nica spoke out proudly, as instead of biting, the blonde beneath her squirmed — searching in desperation for any way out she could find.

“You’re going to lick my fucking pussy clean….” As she spoke, the finally ascendant waitress lowered her free hand down to her rival’s hair and then grabbed a tight and unflinching grip.

“So when I bring Grant up here, and fuck him on top of you, he won’t have to get any of you on him….” Oh how cruel the words were. Oh how painfully they stung as they pierced Genevieve’s ears.

And though she would have fought Nica forever. And struggled against her until she had nothing left. She knew she was trapped.

Not only by pinning shins and an oppressive bottom, but by her wounded nipple. One she knew Nica would ruin if she did not comply.

“DO IT, SLUT!” Nica demanded in a shout, knowing that if the noise they had made so far hadn’t drawn guests, no amount of shouting would.

“NOW!” The oynx yelled again, as she tugged on both hair and nipple in warning.

Hate. Anger. Regret. And unrelenting malice filled Genevieve as her eyes filled with tears. Emotions which coursed through her veins and tore at her heart.

Even as she began to lick — to “clean” as Nica had demanded. She looking up at her tormentor’s pretty, breast-framed face as she did so.

A face which held no empathy or softness. It smirking in delight, as Genevieve did as she was told.

Obediently, with her tongue, claiming and cleansing the mixed essences of their mid-fight orgasms from lips and clit — valley and canal.

All as Nica hovered above her. Moaning, though never grinding. Whimpering with pleasure though she made sure not to cum again.

Not until she had drug Grant upstairs and showed him what she and his best friend had done to each other.

Might he be mad? Wishing that the two of them could have settled things politely? Maybe.

But Nica, after all she had been through, and knowing how Grant felt about her, was sure she could quell his anger and reservations.

Especially if she explained it all while holding his cock in her hands.

Her lips coming down and encircling his head as his own first parted to voice his worries.

That thought itself, along with Genevieve’s working tongue could have been enough for Nica to reach her zenith once more. And yet when she felt as if enough had been done by her pinned and bested rival, she lifted herself. Not up and off of the blonde entirely. But just far enough to shift forward and plant her cute little ass cheeks over the cum-covered face of her shattered enemy.

An enemy who in a panic shifted and reached, slapping with her useless, pinned arms at whatever flesh she could find. Struggle though she did, her eyes blocked by Nica’s wet inner thighs, Genevieve could find no escape.

No air.

And after the effects of burning and oxygen-deprived lungs took their toll, found herself unconscious and left strewn naked across the floor of one of the many upstairs bedrooms in the Windgate home.

It was then that broken and battered.

Clawed and scratched.

Light-headed and half-dizzy.

That Nica found her once entrapping and shimmering black dress. Her necklace which had fallen off somewhere in their struggle. And then her heels, which laid not together but each on opposite sides of the bedroom. Attire and accessory that she put back on, before making her way to the room’s heavy door before spilling out of it.

An exit she made, stumbling and tripping in her exhaustion and soreness. Her pussy lips still wet with Genevieve’s release-exchanged saliva.

A punishment-earned coating that she could feel dripping down her inner thighs as she struggled to put her heels back on her feet.

Heels which, once returned to soles, that Nica walked down the stairs slowly in.

Her every muscle aching as she held onto the railing with one hand, and fixed her disheveled hair with the other.

She knowing that no matter how much work she put into that fixing or any other, she would still look like a wreck.

Her makeup smeared by friction and tears.

Her dress not torn, but stretched and consequently ill-fitting.

Oh how humiliating it would be, she thought to herself. To have, after her hard-fought victory over Grant’s childhood friend, to walk into a dinner party filled with people just waiting to judge her in such a state of wreck and glamour abandoned.

At least they would be distracted. Busy in conversation with each other and half drunk of the endless bottles of champagne bought for a most special night in the Windgate family.

Expectations though she had of such mercy — of such luck and grace. As Nica turned the corner from the foyer to the dining room, she found every eye upon her. From one end of the table to the other.

In an instant, she assumed that they knew! They had heard! Over the music. Over the din of conversation.

Or maybe that somehow, as she descended the stairs, that Genevieve had woken up, crawled to her cell phone, and in a text or a call told someone of their battle.

Of their vicious, nasty little war.

Terror. True and unending took her heart. Her already smeared and mascara-streaked face no doubt morphing into some truly hideous visage of shame.

The night she had feared for so long having turned from difficult and shaming to something else entirely. Something intimate and cruel — malevolent and sexual in ways she could have never possibly imagined.

And though a darkness had risen in her, and in many ways still held sway, as she stood there under the scrutiny of so many well-off strangers, she felt weak once more.

Her eyes softening. Her eyelids shaking. Just as the first tears of what would no doubt be legion beginning to form and then, as her heart began to shatter, fall.

But before the first droplet of regret and hopelessness made it even to cheek, she saw Grant.

He being not in his seat or at the table, but instead in front of her with a warm, loving smile.

One he wore as he dropped to a single knee, lifted both arms, and where they met at his hands, opened a small black velvet box.

A box which within it contained a ring. No, not just a ring. But a relic. Of Life and love — history and family. It being the same one his father gave his mother, when first they got married.

A ring to match the necklace that still hung around Nica’s neck. Genevieve’s promise to take it from her having faltered and failed along with so many other threats she had made.

“Nica, my love….” Grant began, as all those at the table began to squeal and melt with excitement and love-triggered empathy.

“Will you marry me?” It was cliche. It was normal in the cringiest of ways. And yet after all that Nica had been through. Not just as a victim but also as a victress, the waitress out of place cracked and split open.

Her tears coming like rain, as her shaking body collapsed into a last-second catch by Grant.

“Yes!” She shouted as she sobbed. Her acceptance being only thing she could get out before she wrapped herself around the man of her dreams in a hug so tight that he was only barely able to breathe.

Constricted though his lungs were, still could he smell it in his shallow, chuckle-affected inhales. A strange mix of not only Nica’s perfume, but Genevieve’s. The latter scent being one he knew well, if only from the years they spent together.

“Where….” He began in a whisper, unable to resist the need he felt to satiate his curiosity and concern. “Where were you…? Where’s Genevieve?”

A question to which Nica responded in a soft, sob-pitched mutter that trailed off until it suddenly it hardened into a sensuality-drenched whisper. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you.”

The answer made Grant pullback, and with questioning and worried eyes look deep into the eyes of his new fiance.

Eyes which burned with a fire he knew well, but for reasons he knew not.

Confused though he was, once the new wed-couple-to-be had stood and given their thank you’s, they together disappeared upstairs.

Neither they or Genevieve coming back down until the next morning. When in the aftermath of the party, and as Christmas music still played, they three slipped out the front door together.

Grant in the lead with unfixed tie, untucked shirt, and unclasped-belt held pants. As behind him came Nica, dragging Genevieve by her hair.

The former whispering harsh, forceful commands as the latter replied with not but a single soft, submissive phrase again and again. “Yes, mistress….”

The End

Thank you for reading! For More of Rival’s Rapture’s stories, Choose a Category Below!