Dinner was arranged for seven at a small Italian restaurant down the street from Jessi’s Java.

Tara had packed an extra outfit into her bag that morning (approved by her best friend Daisy beforehand, of course), and she changed into it the moment her shift was over. Fluffy baby blue sweater, blue jeans with embroidered white flowers and white trainers.

Ava was standing outside the restaurant, still as a statue, when Tara crossed the street.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I-I know that this isn’t a date,” Tara blurted nervously.

Ava’s eyes grazed over her hungrily. “Why do you look so cute then?”

Tara flushed, opened her mouth a little, and froze.

Ava’s short and sharp laugh knocked her soul back into her body. She managed to close her mouth and winced a little.

“I am teasing you. I am glad I don’t have to remind you that I don’t do relationships.”

“I guess I’m a quick learner,” Tara mumbled.

“Mmm, very puppy-like, I would say.”

“I’ll take it,” said Tara, pushing the glass door of the restaurant open. “There are worse things you could say about me.”

Ava didn’t respond but followed her inside. The dining area was warm, filled with yellow light and calorific smells. Tara could feel herself gaining ten pounds from the thick scent of carbs alone. There were a few couples dotted about and they were given a small table just far enough apart from them to have some privacy.

Ava flicked through the menu incredibly quickly, her black eyes zipping down each page with ease. Tara wondered if she was trying to get the night over with. The thought made her feel a little nauseated with embarrassment. When Ava had raced through every single page, she put the menu to the table, closed it, and glanced up to Tara’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Ava asked with a concerned frown.

Tara shrugged and continued looking at her own menu. Ava watched her for a few moments, her eyes were softer than usual.

Finally, she said, “Do you mind if we get starters? I’m starving.”

“Oh, s-sure,” Tara agreed without thinking. “You’ve decided what you want already?”

Ava tapped her menu twice with her finger. “Yeah, I don’t like to waste any time when it comes to food,” she said with a half-grin showing a pointed canine.

“I-I’ll hurry up then.”

“Don’t feel pressured,” said Ava coolly.

Their waiter meandered over a few minutes later to take their orders and then returned shortly afterwards with water and breadsticks.

Tara made her first swing for casual conversation as she nibbled on a bread stick. “So, what do you do? Shawn never told me.”

Ava took a deep sip of her water before settling in to answer. “I work freelance at a garage mainly, but I also pick up the occasional bartending shift when I’m needed. My roommate works at the bar on our street, and they’re understaffed just about every night. She always manages to rope me in when they’re at their most desperate.”

There was a warm feeling that spread through Tara as she congratulated herself for a good question choice. This was the longest she had ever heard Ava speak in one go, and it was fascinating. She supposed, with her toned arms and don’t-fuck-with-me demeanour, Ava would fit in very well in the garage environment.

“I can imagine you in a garage, but a bar? Not so much.”

Ava tilted her head with an almost innocent expression. “Why’s that?”

“You can be a little… intimidating,” Tara confessed slowly.

“Why do you think she asks me?” Ava laughed quietly. “When they have the least amount of staff is when they have the most amount of trouble with drunk men acting like fools.”

“Isn’t that scary?” Tara whispered. Drunken brawls existed in an entirely different world to the one she lived in. She went to bars and clubs occasionally with her friends, but not the kind where there was any crazy behaviour. Maybe the odd middle-aged woman toppling over after a few too many cocktails.

“Not really; they’re pretty easy to subdue when they’re that drunk.” With the aggressive flash that crossed Ava’s black eyes as she answered, Tara suddenly understood why Ava was the person you would call for wrangling violent drunks. It gave her a mild chill in the warm room.

She blinked a couple of times to clear her head. “Oh,” she said flatly.

Their starters were plopped in front of them, and they thanked the waiter in unison. He smiled, nodded, and left them to it.

Tara’s tricolore salad was twice the size she had been expecting, but she dug in dutifully and it tasted amazing. Ava had calamari.

“I could eat tomatoes and cheese for every meal for the rest of my life!” Tara announced after inhaling the first quarter of the plate.

“Really? I heard it was common for you to be intolerant of dairy?”

Tara paused to process the strange statement before asking, “Me?” She was not lactose intolerant as far as she knew.

“Apologies, I meant people.”

“I guess a lot of people are lactose intolerant,” Tara agreed, doing her damndest to hide her confusion at the strange topic they had fallen into. “Are you?”

“No, I can eat anything.” There was a dark edge to her tone that sat somewhere between threat and flirt. It did not fit the context of her words at all.

“Anything?”

“I’m saying that I can, not that I would like to,” Ava corrected with a grin.

“Well, I guess what they say is true - you can eat anything but some things you can only eat once!” Tara agreed.

The expression on Ava’s face was unclear but Tara got the impression she found her amusing; although, not for her words.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just like hearing the strange things you come out with.”

“Thanks, I think.”

They discussed far more common subjects for the rest of their meal: Tara’s family, where she had grown up, previous jobs, her roommate Daisy, her favourite places in town, and her time at Jessi’s Java (including a few of her favourite stories involving Shawn and crazy customers).

Although their conversations felt incredibly Tara-centric, she did manage to get a few more tidbits of information about Ava when she pushed back. Only around one in every five questions she asked about Ava’s life got a clear answer; many did not get an answer at all. She held onto the little she had learned, though: Ava has no family (both her parents had passed away); she has known Shawn for ‘a long time’, and she had only lived in the area for a couple of years. Before her current home, she said she had lived in a town that Tara wouldn’t have heard of, but it was a ‘shithole’.

Ava insisted on walking her home after they stepped out of the comforting warmth of the restaurant and out into the crisp night air. Autumn was approaching so quickly; Tara was dreading the massive influx of customers the season always brought to coffee shops. She used to love pumpkin-flavoured snacks and drinks…

She allowed Ava to lead her down dark roads and through dingy alleyways, still enquiring after more of Tara’s background. Tara answered as well as she could, describing the bushy family tree she came from with numerous cousins and great-uncles, the shops she liked to buy her clothes from, the kind of cakes that she found hardest to resist at work…

Her apartment building appeared before her, and Tara stumbled to a stop as she finally took a moment to wonder how Ava had known where she was going.

“How did you know where I live?” she asked.

“I was following you,” Ava chuckled with obnoxious disbelief.

Tara thought of the route they had taken. It was not the way she usually walked home from work, and the restaurant was on the same street as Jessi’s Java.

Was there any reason to disagree, though? Did she want to end a nice night with a squabble?

Tara made a soft ‘hmm’ noise and shrugged.

“And there I thought we had a good evening, but if you want to accuse me of being a stalker…”

Tara stammered and babbled in apology, but Ava simply laughed at her, pinched her cheek tightly and used it to give her head a gentle shake.

“Don’t send yourself into shock on my account, Tara.”

Hearing Ava say her name sent a little tingle along her neck, but she managed to suppress the shiver that almost followed.

When Ava let go of her cheek, she managed to find her words. “I… I had a good evening, too.”

“Good. I’ll text you.”

“’kay,” Tara mumbled.

Tara watched her walk away until she got to the end of the street, then she slipped inside. Her phone buzzed with a text.

Ava: Stalker

Tara flushed and fell back against the closed door of the building. How had she known Tara was watching her? She didn’t text back.

After a very speedy debrief with Daisy, Tara got washed and dressed for bed. She had work in the morning and no time for a long dissection of every single moment that had passed between them on their not-date.

It did not take long for her to fall asleep, thankfully. She had been expecting to have more trouble as the scenes of the night flickered past her closed eyes, that she would be scrutinising every word that had come out of her mouth and worrying over every one of Ava’s reactions to her actions. Instead, she fell into the land of dreams within a few minutes.

She dreamt of Ava.

The room’s walls were formed of thick clouds of black smoke that Tara knew instinctively she would not be able to pass through. A double bed dressed in black silk sheets and pillows sat in the centre of the bare wooden floor. Tara climbed aboard and picked up a pillow, squeezing it between her hands curiously. She had never had a lucid dream before, but she had read about them. Wasn’t she supposed to be capable of manifesting whatever she wanted in a lucid dream? As she began to muse over what she would choose to draw into being, a shadowy figure approached through the smoke.

Black eyes. Tall, toned figure. Black clothes that accentuated the lines of her well-trained muscles. Half a smile with a pointed canine shining. Ava entered the space with graceful strides, the confidence in her gait that of a predator about to play with its prey.

A quiver ran through Tara’s thighs involuntarily, and a throb rang through her vulva as Ava stalked towards the bed. She clutched the pillow to her chest like a shield when Ava leapt onto the sheets and dropped to her knees in front of her. She leant in, hovering just before pressing their lips together, allowing Tara to be the one to close the distance, crushing their mouths together enthusiastically. Tara figured it didn’t matter if she were embarrassingly eager in her dreams; no one would ever know. The Ava of her dream laughed into her mouth and squeezed her face between her strong hands. They broke apart, Tara panting and Ava grinning wildly.

The pillow was pulled firmly, and Tara unclenched her hands from its edges, allowing its removal to leave her bared under Ava’s eyes. She glanced down, curious as to what she was wearing. She had gone to bed in soft cotton shorts and a baggy shirt. Now she had a white night dress covering her to the knees, and no underwear that she could feel.

Ava used a single hand to press her down by the chest, flattening her into the sheets. Not a word was spoken between them as she dragged the hem of the delicate night dress up to Tara’s waist, pushed her legs apart and swept a firm and flat-tongued lick from her vagina to clit. Tara let out a short huff at the warm-up lick; slow and steady wasn’t what she needed - especially not when she could wake up any minute. Did dream time pass at the same speed as real time? What if her alarm went o-

A much more direct curl of Ava’s tongue brought Tara’s thoughts to a halt. Warm pleasure rippled through her when it was followed by another, and another. Her knees jerked together as the pointed, digging tongue overwhelmed her. Ava was quick to push them down, squeezing the flesh of her thick thighs once between her fingers in warning. Tara did her best to keep them down as her clit and lips were ravaged by Ava’s devilish tongue. But it was made impossible for her to succeed when a gentle bite to the sensitive skin of her outer labia sent a jerk of motion from her toes to her thighs to her spine where it jumped, lifting her off the bed for a few seconds. She gasped and squeaked Ava’s name.

Ava ignored her, grabbing her backside between her hands, and pressing her face in deeper, giving herself access to every inch of Tara’s most tender areas. Tara’s body struggled a little against the strong hold, overstimulated and unable to control itself any longer. Ava pressed the wide muscle of her tongue so hard into Tara’s folds with each stroke, the smaller woman could no longer remember how to speak actual words. All that could be pulled from her lips were high-pitched whines and strangled sounds of shock.

Just as Tara could feel the white-hot pricks of her climax running over her sopping skin, Ava pulled back. A sob-like cry burst out of Tara without her intention and Ava chuckled darkly. Taking Tara by the knees, her large hands curled around them fully this time, she pulled her further down the bed and crawled over her, winked, and turned her body to lay her own dripping slit over Tara’s face.

Tara’s mouth fell open without thought, eager for a taste. When she got it, she ate with vigour. She latched her lips over Ava’s, sucking on the outside of her vulva and flicking her tongue against her clit with all the force she had in her. It was difficult to tell how much of the slick was from Ava’s arousal and how much was Tara’s diligent efforts to lick every inch of her.

Two fingers entered her in one wet stroke and her body heaved a little off the bed again, moaning into Ava’s cunt. They were dragged out and slammed back in to the knuckle. In and out. In and out. Tara couldn’t keep her feet still, they kicked at the sheets beneath her with every forceful thrust. She was so close, and she needed it so much. Ava dropped her hips back a little, rocking herself onto Tara’s face and groaning deeply. The fingers didn’t stop, and Tara didn’t want them to, not when she was so close. She couldn’t bear for Ava to stop again. When the pad of Ava’s thumb ground into her clit, she was sent hurtling into the void of orgasm. The combination of Ava on her lips, inside of her, stroking at her… it was all too much.

Tara awoke with a shuddering gasp. Her body was covered in sweat; her muscles were tensed, and her hands were trembling. Between her legs she could feel her panties were soaked, slick spread over her inner thighs. An ache pulled at her inner walls, as though something had been roughly shoved inside. In and out. In and out.