The Seductress
“Oh, I see,” Kara said, chin tilting upward slightly to indicate her indignation. “So you think you’re the one who makes these decisions?” She closed her laptop in order to give this matter her full attention.
On the other side of the couch, in the living room of the loft lit only by the dim stove light from the kitchen and the flickering television, Lena held her hands, palm up, next to her shoulders. “Is that not obvious?”
“Mm-mm,” Kara countered, shaking her head. “Not to me.”
“Kara,” Lena said, employing that tone of hers where the “be reasonable” was implied, “It’s not a bad thing.”
“I didn’t say it was bad. I said it was untrue.”
Lena set her jaw stubbornly and glared at Kara for a beat, then threw the blanket off her lap and stood up, hands on her hips. “Kara. Do you see what I’m wearing?”
Kara fidgeted with her glasses at the bridge of her nose. She regarded Lena’s silhouette, made of black lace and bare legs, slender shoulders framed by waves of hair.
“Yes,” she squeaked.
“And?”
“Uh, that is one of my favorites of your little -- tiny, in fact -- um, nightgowns.”
“You see?” Lena said, satisfied with Kara’s obvious fluster. “This lingerie doesn’t just walk into my closet or my overnight bag, Kara. I wear it when I want to get your attention. And it works.”
“It does,” Kara agreed. “But,” she cleared her throat, “The point is that you don’t think I do that?”
“Do what? Seduce me?” Lena asked with a small laugh at the idea.
“Well, I wouldn’t use that word,” Kara said with a slight wrinkle of her nose. “But I-- yes, in fact. I seduce you sometimes. I do. Maybe you don’t even know it.”
“How do you seduce someone without them knowing it?”
“Very. . . you know, carefully.”
Lena chuckled at her stubborn, non-seductress of a girlfriend. “All I’m saying,” she said gently, sitting back down on the couch, “Is that I’m usually the one to let you know when I think things should happen. I send signals and you pick up on them. That’s just how our dynamic works.”
Kara digested this information, and she pondered Lena’s obvious certainty about the situation.
She replied, “Hmm.”
Eyes locked on Lena’s, she slowly removed her glasses and set them on the window sill behind the couch. She stretched her arms over her head in a dramatic yawn.
Lena, now puzzled as to whether this discussion was actually over, asked with a slight smile, “Is my winning this argument boring you, Kara?”
But then the lift of Kara’s arms and the arch of her back as she yawned pulled her cozy bedtime t-shirt up across her skin. By the time her arms reached their apex, the lower edge of the fabric had left her waistline miles behind and was well on its way to crossing several pairs of ribs.
Lena’s smile faded as her gaze lowered by a few feet.
As Kara concluded her yawn and lowered her arms again, she pulled the ponytail holder from her hair and it tumbled in a messy, blonde heap around her shoulders. And though her arms returned to the blanket beside her where they had started, the lower hem of her shirt came to rest a few inches above her belly button.
Lena was silent.
“Everything okay, Lena?”
Lena’s lips pursed and she gazed, steely-eyed, at Kara.
Then she turned her head and muttered, “Fuck.”
“Your eyes are a little bit glazed,” Kara noted. “That’s why I ask. ”
“Shut up,” Lena said, already closing the distance between them on the couch so she could run her hands across Kara’s stomach and up under her shirt.
“Your cheeks are flushed too,” Kara said as Lena’s lips descended onto hers. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Shhhh,” Lena whispered into Kara’s neck, placing her index finger over Kara’s smirking lips. “I’m trying to focus on your abs and you keep talking.”
A moment later, the last traces of silliness and playful rivalry were escalating into urgency.
“Hey, by the way, Lena,” Kara whispered breathily, “You always have my attention.”
“And it’s nothing at all to do with the nightgown?” Lena murmured.
“Nothing,” Kara affirmed. “In fact,” she added, curling her fingers around the lacy fabric, “It’s actually a pain in the ass right now.”
“Let’s get rid of it,” Lena said.
As she spoke those words, Kara was already lifting it over her head.