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The flowers they’d come to gather were an abandoned spill on the ground, crushed under their bodies so the nectar clung sticky to skin, petals decorating the backs of shoulders and thighs. Sabrina knew they had been in a hurry but now didn’t know why. She felt dedicated and driven, so clear-minded every detail was crisply imprinted but there was a blur to the way time was moving. The book they brought for identification was sprawled pages-down in the grass, the Heart-Book in its pleasing shape, bound in the skin of a marquise of Hell.
One sheer black stocking, unclipped, slid down to her ankle; her lipstick had rubbed off onto them, she could see it, the red marks smeared on Nick’s throat and Harvey’s chest.
Robin said the flower is supposed to be right here, she remembered saying, book open in her hands. They had to walk backwards into the clearing because they weren’t supposed to see it, and Robin said blindfolds might be better but he wasn’t sure. Nick still had his on, mouth open under it and lips reddened, every color so bright, so electric: the green of the grass and their flushed skin, the red tangle of Harvey’s flannel shirt hanging off one arm. Sabrina was holding the book and then the air was pink and it glittered; she breathed it in sweet as sugar-dust. They licked nectar off each other’s skin and it tasted different every time, like a dozen things at once. Sabrina giggled, thumb against Nick’s lip wiping it away, Harvey sucking the glossy drop from her finger.
She was standing between them. Harvey behind her and Nick in front, the black blindfold bisecting his face. She saw the startled parting of his lips she had to kiss, her palms against his chest; felt Harvey’s hands on her hips, skirt coming up in his grasp. His hand between her thighs meeting Nick’s, feeling her through the fabric; long fingers sliding against the seam of her body, snapping her garters open. Her heart racing but feeling so incredibly calm.
Then a tumble to the grass. Reaching, tearing at clothes if they had to — losing buttons, battling over belt buckles. The strap of her bra came apart from the lace, which fell easily for someone’s mouth, she didn’t know which, another hand slipping into the surviving cup. Harvey kissed her and, god — not dark or false or ancient, just god — it had been so long since Harvey had kissed her but it was the same, his fingertips so gentle on her jaw. Nick made a needy sound because he could only hear them but wouldn’t think of tearing the blindfold off himself, so they turned their attention to him and she wasn’t surprised, though she thought maybe she should have been, to see Harvey open Nick’s mouth with his.
Time sped up or slowed down arbitrarily. She saw her own hands on Nick’s chest as she sank onto him. His shirt parted, his grey wool trousers puddled. Nick always looked a little to her like he was playing dress-up, but he seemed righter, somehow, disrobed in the woods: the naked curve of his hip against the deep green, his head tipped back for Harvey’s kiss. Like a bad fairy, the kind from bedtime stories who told you a riddle then never let you leave. Like he had on Lupercalia, before the blood.
Harvey’s fingers slipped against her clit, the base of Nick’s cock. He stroked the place where they joined and she felt impatiently wanting, sitting up so he could slide those fingers into her too, feel her from the inside. He nudged her up farther, towards Nick’s mouth. It was funny how they didn’t say anything, just knew. She wanted to see Harvey, kiss him even, so she settled astride Nick facing him, moaning at the first touch of Nick’s tongue and also the sight of Harvey settling on his thighs, rolling his erection against Nick’s. She felt the vibration of the little sound Nick made and echoed it, watched Harvey wrap one big hand around himself and Nick together. Nick was wet from her still.
She rolled off Nick, the blindfold knocked from his face at last. He blinked like his vision was full of stars. She reached for Harvey and he came to her, pushed her thighs apart and fucked her, Sabrina’s nails digging into his back. He fucked her the way she always wished he would but better because she’d thought — imagined — it would be so sweet and tender, but that was Nick’s way and Harvey was different, their rhythm easy and rough and just right. Nick kissed her throat, her collarbone, her nipple. Harvey slowed only to let Nick’s mouth between them.
When it stopped, it started again. They were wild with it, desperate, exhausted. Sabrina ached between her thighs but it was a good ache, sweet; when she whimpered the next time Nick pulled out, Harvey was there to lick and soothe the soreness, her fingers knotted in his hair. It didn’t matter if it hurt, they had to go again, and anyway the hurt felt good, each peak harder to reach and harder won, reverberating in their bodies so even the tips of Sabrina’s fingers were vibrating.
Nick was gasping, gulping air. He had pushed his fingers into himself, which Harvey seemed to take personally, taking over. With a ragged moan, Nick buried his face in the grass, hair an unkempt dark spill over his forehead. Sabrina pressed her cheek to his, kissed his ear. “I need it,” he was saying, the most any of them had said in ages, “I need it, please,” so she nestled closer, reached down to stroke where Harvey held him open. Harvey conceded to her and she tucked her fingers in one by one, bit Nick’s hip as the width of her hand pushed through. She was gratified by the sound he made — that she made him make.
Harvey kissed the back of Nick’s neck as she fucked him.
They fell asleep still trying, driven to it, their kisses lazier and lips dragging as their eyelids got heavier and heavier, until the uncertainty of time came to a stop; the strange silence of the dark woods was in her ears and her dreams incomprehensible. When Sabrina woke, Harvey was already sitting up with his shirt pulled back over his shoulders, and she knew something had changed.
“I’m sorry,” Harvey said. “I know you wouldn’t, if you — god.” He put his face in his hands.
Nick moved to touch him but then thought better, only gently extracted a petal from the back of his hair. Before, when they were all — Harvey had eaten a blossom from her bellybutton, neon pink on his tongue. “Don’t be, you — be whatever you want, mortal, but,” Nick cut off. “I’m sorry, too.”
Sabrina never knew how to say she wasn’t.