I woke up in my old bed with Leah beside me and realized you can’t sleep in the same bed twice.
My neck hurt. I felt stiff.
I used to be very comfortable in this bed.
I rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom, but froze when I opened the bedroom door and heard work being done downstairs.
Okay. Robe, then brush teeth.
Fuck.
No robe.
As I rummaged around for something to wear, Leah woke up.
“What are you doing?” she asked through a yawn.
“Work people downstairs. I’m looking for clothes so I don’t flash anyone on the way to the bathroom.”
“Good idea.”
She checked her watch.
“We have thirty minutes before the car gets here. Brush your teeth. Breakfast in the car.”
I got dressed, brushed my teeth and hair, and decided I was good enough for a spa.
I was still not entirely sure what spa involved, but I was expecting mud baths, cucumber slices, and at least one terrifying German woman rearranging my spine.
At eight-thirty, we stood outside the building with our travel bags as a big black SUV pulled up.
A man in a suit got out, opened the door for us, then took our bags and put them in the back.
“Is this some kind of super-Uber I didn’t know about?” I asked Leah.
“No. TEG has a car service. It’s part of the ridiculous rich-people benefits.”
I looked at her.
“So private Uber.”
“Basically.”
I climbed inside and found a basket filled with breakfast sandwiches, yogurt cups, fruit, and two thermoses labeled BREAKFAST TEA and COFFEE.
“When you said breakfast in the car, I thought you had packed us something.”
“It was an option when I ordered it. It let us sleep in.”
“So where are we going?” I asked in as neutral a tone as possible, not revealing that I knew it was a spa.
“The Lodge at Woodloch, in Hawley, Pennsylvania.”
“A lodge? I thought we were going to a spa?”
Leah gave me a look before saying, “I’m gonna murder Rina.”
“Hey now,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich. “Rina made an honest mistake. She was super sorry and told me to act really surprised.”
I chewed for a second.
“And to be fair, now I am surprised, because a lodge sounds like somewhere I’m expected to chop wood.”
Leah gave me a decent breakdown of what the Lodge actually was. It sat out in the woods and had all the usual spa things I expected, massages, saunas, pools, but also restaurants and pretty much everything else you needed to disappear from normal life for a few days.
It took about three and a half hours to get there.
When we arrived, my first thought was that this was absolutely where rich people got murdered in movies.
It was genuinely remote, surrounded by woods in every direction, and yet somehow someone had dropped a very impressive hotel right in the middle of it.
The car stopped under the entrance canopy, and the driver came around to open our door. The back was already open, and I watched a bellman approach with a luggage trolley.
“It’s Takahashi for the reservation,” Leah said.
The bellman nodded, and Leah headed toward reception, glancing back to make sure I was following.
I looked back at the driver handing our bags over to him and thought the whole thing was wildly unnecessary.
But I also knew trying to carry my own bag would somehow create more problems than just letting them do it.
Leah was already talking to the receptionist when I entered.
The lobby looked like what someone with too much money would build to convince you they were very connected to nature.
Warm wood everywhere. Dark trim. Big square lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Soft chairs tucked into little seating areas. Stone and muted colors.
Nothing shiny or corporate-looking. Even the reception desk somehow looked more like part of an expensive country house than a hotel counter.
There were large windows pulling the woods into the room, which I suspected was intentional.
The whole place smelled clean, woody, and expensive.
By the time I reached Leah, the conversation had apparently already ended. She turned toward me.
“Lunch in a bit, then we have a side-by-side Swedish massage. We get the room around four, but we have access to everything here until then.”
“What makes it Swedish?”
“The technique. Long strokes, kneading, loosening muscles. It’s basically the normal massage people mean when they say massage.”
“Done by Swedes?”
“Unlikely.”
“Disappointing.”
The receptionist had apparently overheard us and decided to speak up.
“You’re in luck. One of your therapists today is Swedish. Hanna.”
I looked back at Leah.
Leah rolled her eyes at me.
“Anyway, we have two options. We do the rounds now and have lunch after, or we eat first and do the rounds afterward. I vote lunch first.”
“Second.”
We headed toward the restaurant called TREE.
Rich people were apparently not the best pun makers.
TREE was brighter than I expected, sitting up among the trees with huge windows along one side and enough wood in the walls and ceiling to make the name feel slightly less stupid.
A hostess met us near the entrance.
“Table for two?”
Leah gave her our name and explained that we had only arrived that morning. The hostess seemed to understand immediately and led us through the dining room to a table by the windows.
Everyone around us looked disturbingly healthy.
There were a lot of salads.
I opened the menu.
“Do I have to order a salad?”
“Only if you want one.”
“Fuck no.”
The menu was less depressing than I expected. I found a grilled chicken sandwich with fries and stopped looking.
“Chicken sandwich.”
Leah glanced over.
“I was thinking it would be that or the hamburger.”
“A hamburger is too much commitment for lunch.”
Leah ordered grilled salmon with vegetables while I committed myself fully to not becoming a better person over lunch.
While we waited for the food, Leah told me Rina had accepted the PC build and was heading to Micro Center for the parts. She’d also asked Malcolm to set up two desks upstairs.
“So everything will be ready when we get back?”
“If Malcolm is as good as my mother says he is.”
“You think Rina’s gonna make another video?”
“Oh, yes. She asked to use my camera. Expect to come back to an internet-famous PC.”
My sandwich was particularly good. The fries were okay. The fact that they came with truffle mayo was a little annoying. When I asked for ketchup, I got the distinct feeling I was being judged, despite having absolutely no evidence anyone was actually judging me.
Leah seemed less than impressed with her salmon.
“Anything wrong with it?”
“It’s farmed. Not really a mistake, but it’s just not as good.”
I looked at her.
“You can tell?”
“Texture. Wild salmon breaks apart more. This just… slides. Tastes fine, a bit fattier, but the mouthfeel is off.”
She ate the vegetables and about half the salmon.
I finished everything and spent another minute dipping broken bits of fries into ketchup.
Leah got up from her seat.
“Let’s go for a walk. See what this place has to offer.”
I looked up at her.
“Don’t we have to pay first?”
“They have my room number. Everything gets charged to the room.”
I stood up.
“So they don’t want us thinking about money while we’re here?”
“Pretty much.”
We walked out of the restaurant, and I decided to hold Leah’s hand. It wasn’t something we usually did, and she gave me a look before smiling and giving my hand a squeeze.
She led me into the changing room, where we were given robes and slippers.
“Switch over to robes,” Leah said. “It’s what we’ll be wearing until dinner.”
I took off my top and trousers, then my socks and shoes, and pulled on the robe.
When I looked over, Leah had stripped off everything before putting hers on.
“Is underwear not allowed?”
“Perfectly allowed. Keep it on if that makes you comfortable.”
“But you’re naked under there.”
“I’m comfortable.”
We spent the next while wandering around and figuring out how the place worked.
The spa was split into separate men’s and women’s areas, plus one co-ed section. The co-ed section required swimwear. The women’s side apparently trusted everyone to make their own terrible decisions.
There was an Aqua Garden, sauna, steam room, whirlpools, and enough other water-related things that I stopped trying to remember all the names.
By the time 1:30 rolled around, we made our way to the massage area, where a male and female therapist were waiting for us.
They introduced themselves as Hanna and Daniel.
They were dressed almost identically: dark trousers and soft-looking grey tops somewhere between hospital scrubs and a staff uniform.
Hanna was blonde, with her hair tied back, while Daniel had short brown hair. They both had the kind of expression of calm and wellbeing that I assumed took years of training to achieve.
Hanna and Daniel led us into a room with two massage tables set up side by side.
They gave us the basic rundown. Robes and slippers went on hooks by the wall. We could undress as much or as little as we were comfortable with, then get under the sheets and lie face down. They would step outside and knock before coming back in.
Daniel asked if either of us had any injuries or areas they should avoid. Hanna asked about pressure.
“Medium,” Leah said.
I looked at her.
“What does medium mean?”
“Not being beaten up, not being petted.”
“That sounds reasonable. One medium, please.”
They both somehow managed not to laugh.
Then they left.
Leah hung her robe on the hook and got under the sheet.
I took another moment, looking down at my underwear. In or out?
I decided I was more comfortable with them on.
So they stayed.
I had only just managed to get under the sheet when the knock came.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” Leah called.
Hanna and Daniel came back in.
Hanna moved to my table while Daniel went to Leah’s. The lights had been lowered while we were changing, and some soft instrumental music was playing quietly from somewhere in the room.
Hanna stopped beside my head.
“Before we start, did you have a preference for aromatherapy?”
I lifted my face slightly from the headrest.
“What did she pick?”
“Cedar and cypress,” Daniel said from Leah’s side.
“Same as her then.”
Hanna smiled.
“Cedar and cypress it is.”
I instantly recognized it as the smells from most of Leah’s soaps.
Hanna started at my shoulders, pressing through the sheet first before folding it down far enough to expose my upper back.
Then she stopped.
“Miriam, would you be comfortable unclasping your bra? You can leave it on if you prefer, but it gives me better access to your back.”
Oh.
“Sure.”
I reached underneath myself and fought with the clasp for a few seconds before getting it open.
I guess I had not thought about clothing being an impediment to massage.
Hanna adjusted the sheet without exposing anything else and started working across my shoulders.
I understood almost immediately why people paid for this.
Her hands moved slowly at first, pressing along muscles I had not realized were annoyed with me until someone started finding all of them individually.
“How’s the pressure?”
“Good.”
She pressed into a spot between my shoulder and neck.
“Fuck.”
Hanna paused.
“Too much?”
“No. That was a good fuck.”
I heard Leah laugh from the other table.
Hanna somehow remained professional.
“Okay. Let me know if it becomes a different kind.”
“I will.”
She went back to work.
For the next while, I mostly stopped talking.
There was something deeply unfair about how good it felt to have someone methodically locate every bit of tension in my body and bully it into leaving.
Every so often Hanna would move the sheet, work on one arm or leg, then cover me again before moving somewhere else. Nothing ever felt exposed for more than a few seconds, and after a while I stopped paying attention to the sheet entirely.
At some point Daniel asked Leah something too quietly for me to hear.
I lifted my head enough to look over.
He was working around her shoulder, one hand pressing into the muscle while he moved her arm up above her head. The sheet had shifted with it, exposing the side of her chest and considerably more of her breast than I thought was appropriate.
Daniel was standing right there.
Not looking at it. Not doing anything weird. He was completely focused on her shoulder.
That wasn’t really the problem.
The problem was that he could see it.
Leah, meanwhile, seemed completely unconcerned.
“More pressure,” she said.
Daniel adjusted his grip and leaned in a little harder.
Leah let out a satisfied breath and put her face back into the headrest.
I lowered mine too.
Apparently, I was the only person in the room who thought anything unusual had just happened.
Eventually Hanna leaned closer.
“We’re going to have you turn over now. I’ll hold the sheet up for you.”
That sounded significantly more complicated than it probably was.
She lifted the sheet high enough to block her view while I rolled onto my back underneath it.
My bra was still technically on, just unclasped and trapped somewhere beneath me.
I considered fixing it, but that seemed like it would make everything more complicated.
Hanna lowered the sheet back into place and adjusted it around my shoulders.
“You comfortable?”
“Mmm. Could you take my bra out and put it with my robe?”
“Of course.”
I lifted myself slightly while Hanna reached beneath the sheet, pulled the bra free without uncovering me, and placed it with my things.
Well.
I was naked now.
From where I was lying, I could see Leah properly now.
Daniel had moved down to one of her legs and was working slowly up her thigh, pushing into the muscle with both hands.
Higher than I expected.
Quite a bit higher, actually.
I watched his hands move up, then back down again, apparently completely unconcerned by how close he was getting to certain places.
Leah did not react beyond letting out a slow breath when he found a tight spot.
I frowned.
“Anything the matter?” Hanna asked.
I snapped my attention back to my own massage.
“Oh, no. Everything’s good.”
Thoughts were running through my head about the big muscular man working that close to my girlfriend’s pussy. The worst part was that somewhere underneath the outrage of him doing it, I was wondering what it felt like.
Hanna moved down to my legs.
Calf first. Then knee. Then thigh.
Then very much thigh.
Her hands worked up the inside of my leg until I became intensely aware of exactly where my panties started.
Oh.
So that was how high Daniel had been going.
That answered one question.
Unfortunately, it created several others.
Hanna worked back down without hesitation, completely professional.
My pussy remained unconvinced by the distinction.
I stared at the ceiling and decided not to think about it.
Hanna moved on to my other leg, then my arms.
Beside me, Daniel asked Leah something too quietly for me to catch.
“Yeah, there,” Leah said.
A few seconds later she let out a long breath.
“Better?”
“Much.”
I glanced over.
Leah had her eyes closed again, completely relaxed.
That should have made me happy.
He was helping her. She was enjoying herself. Her shoulder had probably been tight from three days of hauling cameras, packing bags, moving apartments and trying to run half of New York at the same time.
Good.
Excellent.
So why did I want to tell the giant man to take his hands off my girlfriend?
I looked back at the ceiling.
This was becoming a very complicated massage.
Hanna finished with my shoulders and neck, then rested her hands lightly against them for a second.
“That’s us done.”
Beside me, Daniel stepped back from Leah’s table.
“Take your time getting up. We’ll give you a few minutes.”
They both left the room.
I stayed where I was for another second, staring at the ceiling.
My whole body felt heavy in a good way.
Leah sat up first, pulling the sheet around herself.
“How you feeling?”
“Like somebody removed several screws and forgot to put them back.”
“That good?”
“Surprisingly.”
We got our robes back on.
A few minutes later, Hanna and Daniel returned with two drinks and a small tray of treats.
“Your bath is ready. I’ll put the tray over there so you can enjoy it while you soak.”
Leah followed Hanna, and I followed Leah.
A huge hot tub was waiting in the next room, already filled.
Hanna placed the tray near the edge.
“I’ll be back in about twenty-five minutes.”
Leah slipped off her robe and stepped into the bath.
I took mine off, then my panties, and joined her.
Leah handed me my drink.
I sat back and let out a long breath.
“Daniel really gave it to you.”
“Jealous?”
“No. Hanna was quite nice as well.”
Leah smiled at that.
I took a sip of my drink. It tasted of mint, with slices of cucumber floating in it.
“Mint water?”
“It’s good for you,” Leah said.
I put my drink on the ledge and stroked her thigh.
“No. Stop that.”
“What? We are alone, naked, and fully relaxed.”
“We have twenty-two minutes before Hanna returns. What I have planned for you later is not a twenty-two-minute activity.”
“Oh? You have plans?”
Leah looked at me.
“Do I ever not have plans?”
She took the cucumber slices out of her drink, placed them over her eyes and leaned back again.
God, my girlfriend was sexy.
But I could wait.
I leaned back too, trying to look as relaxed as Leah.
“What’s on the plan after this?”
“Sauna.”
“Do we whip each other with branches in those?”
“No. I don’t know where that trope comes from, but I don’t expect there’ll be any birch branches waiting for us.”
I looked around the room again.
Private bath. Massage. Drinks with cucumber slices in them. Some woman coming back in twenty-five minutes to make sure we hadn’t drowned in luxury.
“This is weird.”
Leah lifted one cucumber slice enough to look at me.
“What is?”
“This.”
I waved vaguely at everything.
“I keep ending up in places like this because of you.”
Leah put the cucumber back over her eye.
“You say that like I kidnapped you.”
“No, I mean…” I sank a little lower into the water. “Your apartment. The gala. Cars waiting downstairs. This place. I feel like I skipped something.”
“What?”
“The part where I become the kind of person who gets to have all this.”
Leah went quiet.
I stared at my drink.
“You’re successful. Your mother is successful. Rina built her whole thing. I got fired and moved into a penthouse because my hot girlfriend likes me.”
“That is a very one-perspective way of looking at it.”
“But it is one way to look at it.”
“Mm.”
I smiled, but it didn’t really stick.
“I don’t know. Sometimes it feels temporary. Like eventually somebody is going to check the list and realize I shouldn’t be here.”
Leah took the cucumber slices off her eyes and sat up.
“Mia.”
I looked at her.
“I came to New York angry five months ago. I had blown up pretty much every relationship I had in London, and Mother managed to connect me with an internship just to get me away from there.”
She shifted in the water.
“I was angry about being sent away. Angry about being an intern. Angry that I hadn’t fought her harder on any of it.”
“That sounds more like the Leah I met.”
“Shut up.”
I smiled.
“One day I started talking to this guy at work. He was calm. Relaxed. Everyone else around me seemed permanently stressed, and I really didn’t need another source of anger in my life.”
“Dan as emotional support furniture.”
“Basically.”
I laughed.
“He wasn’t really my type. But I needed a friend. I had two months in New York and knew nobody.”
She smiled a little.
“Then it turned out this guy had two female friends he was sleeping with.”
“Very casually dropping that information, as I recall.”
“He was terrible at explaining it.”
“Still is.”
“Mm.”
She leaned back against the bath.
“I was surprised. He didn’t seem like someone who’d somehow ended up in the middle of whatever the three of you were doing.”
“Neither did we.”
“But I liked Dan. So I thought if the two of you were anything like him, you were probably worth getting to know.”
I took another sip.
“And then?”
“And then I started really liking one of you.”
I looked at her.
“We’d only texted, and I was already getting butterflies every time my phone went off.”
That shut me up.
“And then I met you.”
She smiled.
“And you were everything I’d hoped you’d be.”
Fuck.
I looked down at my drink.
“I was terrified I was going to mess it up. I kept thinking you’d reject me, or decide I was too much, or realize you didn’t actually like women.”
“I had eaten Lin’s pussy by then.”
“I knew you liked Lin. I wasn’t convinced that meant you liked women.”
Fair.
“Then Mother sent me the gala invitation and some money for a dress, and suddenly I had this whole stupid plan for how to love-bomb you without making it sexual.”
I looked at her.
“You were love-bombing me?”
“Yes.”
“With waxing?”
“It seemed reasonable at the time.”
“It really wasn’t.”
“Okay, maybe that one was for my own enjoyment.”
I laughed, but Leah stayed looking at me.
“When you slept in my bed after the gala, I barely slept.”
“You seemed asleep.”
“I was pretending.”
My eyebrows went up.
“I kept thinking you were going to wake up, realize what you’d done and leave.”
“Leah.”
“So when you tell me you’ve somehow stumbled into my successful life because your girlfriend likes you…”
She reached through the water and took my hand.
“I think you underestimate how much I feared you would not like me.”
She smiled at me.
“Mia, don’t ask whether you deserve something.”
I looked at her.
“We deserve it.”
I gave her a kiss and leaned back into the water. This was gonna be a great day.
Oh lord, why are all these women so naked?
Ten minutes earlier, I had been sitting naked in a private bath with my girlfriend, drinking mint water and deciding spa life was actually pretty great.
Then Hanna came back and told us our time was up.
Leah had climbed out first, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself.
“Just use the towel. We’re going straight to the sauna,” she said.
Seemed reasonable.
I did the same and followed her out.
We stayed on the women’s side of the spa and headed down a short hallway toward the sauna. By then I was warm, loose, pleasantly useless, and still thinking about the bath.
Then Leah opened the door.
Heat rolled over me first.
Steam hung thick enough that I could barely make out the benches on the other side.
Leah took my hand and guided me toward an open spot.
I sat down.
She let go of me, pulled off her towel, folded it once, laid it on the bench and sat on top of it completely naked.
Then she leaned back against the wall like this was the most normal thing in the world.
I looked at her.
Then I looked around.
Seven other women were already in there.
All naked.
Not mostly naked.
Not wrapped in towels.
Naked.
A nipple piercing here. A full-body tattoo there. One woman lying back with her eyes closed. Another talking quietly to the woman beside her. Nobody covering anything. Nobody acting like anything unusual was happening.
Except me.
This was truly what alienation felt like.
I opened my towel and let it slip down around my hips.
Then I crossed my legs.
Yes. This was fine.
Nothing wrong with sitting naked among a bunch of strangers.
I looked over at Leah.
She had one eye open and was smiling at me.
“No need to hide.”
Goddammit, Leah.
I took a deep breath, leaned back, put my arms up along the bench and arched my back.
It was fine.
I looked over at Leah again.
Both eyes were closed now, but she was still smiling.
I stayed like that for a while, watching some women leave and others come in.
After about twenty minutes, Leah wrapped herself in her towel again and nodded toward the door.
Thank God.
I had started to think I was going to faint in there.
We got back into our robes and sandals, then headed toward the front desk.
The receptionist recognized Leah immediately and started talking to her.
I checked my phone and saw I had an email from my landlord.
I opened it and found a wall of text, but the gist was that he was denying everything I’d asked for for various bullshit reasons.
“Motherfucker.”
“What’s the matter?” Leah asked, suddenly standing beside me.
“Fucking landlord. He says I gave notice too late, so I’m not getting the rent back, and apparently the deposit has to cover damages.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Forward the email to me, please.”
She held up two key cards.
“Room secured. Follow me.”
I hit forward and sent it to Leah as I followed her toward our room.
When we arrived, Leah tapped one of the cards against the lock and opened the door for me.
The room was bigger than I expected.
A king-sized bed took up one side, covered in enough white pillows to support a small defensive position. Beyond it was a little sitting area with two chairs and a table beside the windows.
Our bags were already waiting near the wardrobe.
I wandered farther in.
The bathroom was ridiculous.
Two sinks. A huge marble shower. An actual bathtub separate from the shower, because apparently combining the two was for peasants.
I looked back at Leah.
“We have two sinks.”
“Yes.”
“We’re only here for two nights.”
“I can call them and ask if they can send up a plumber to remove one?”
“Seems wasteful.”
“Don’t think too hard about waste here. It’ll drive you insane.”
I considered it.
Then I noticed the glass door at the other end of the room.
I opened it and stepped onto a private veranda.
The October air hit me. I was still only in a bathrobe, and it made me draw in a big breath.
Trees stretched out beyond the building, already starting to change color, with the lake visible through them.
Okay.
That was nice.
Leah came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“You like it?”
I leaned back against her.
“I haven’t checked how comfortable the bed is yet.”
She made a small purring sound and opened my bathrobe.
Cold air hit my entire body, and I drew in another breath.
Leah was already shrugging out of her robe and crawling onto the bed.
I closed the balcony door and followed quickly.
I landed on top of her and kissed her, long and slow.
After about a minute of making out, I rolled onto my side and dragged her with me until we were lying face-to-face. I slid one leg between hers.
“You know, you weren’t the only one obsessed after I learned about you.”
She gave me a skeptical look.
“You pushed Dan to try to sleep with me.”
“Before I knew you were cool, yeah, sure. Him and Lin were getting too comfortable, and I wanted more Lin time to myself. I saw you as a good distraction.”
“A distraction?”
“Someone Dan could fuck instead of Lin.”
Leah stared at me.
“I said this story gets romantic eventually.”
“Maybe not romantic, but horny for sure.”
“Appropriate,” she said, stroking my nipple.
“I think the first time I actually wanted you was when Dan sent that sleeping photo of you.”
“Oh. I thought you were mad at Dan?”
“No, that was Lin. I agreed with her because, you know, she was right.”
Leah raised an eyebrow.
“But for me, that picture changed you from someone I wanted to push toward Dan into someone I wanted to try myself.”
“I never cared much either way about the picture. I thought it was sweet how you made him delete it. White-knighting me from Dan and his corrupted ways.”
I laughed at that.
“Yeah, but then you sent a much more impressive photo and asked for one in return. That really lit a fire under me. I wanted to impress you.”
“It was impressive.”
She smiled.
“It also told me you probably weren’t completely straight.”
“Probably?”
“I was working with limited data.”
I snorted.
“I really liked that exchange. If only because it felt like confirmation.”
I slid my leg higher between hers and felt her rub against it while I stroked her breast with the back of my hand.
“So, did you feel weird when I reached out to you outside the group chat?”
“God, yes. I was so worried I was going to come on too strong. Then you started talking about sexualized cosplay, and I was trying to work out how interested you actually were.”
She smiled.
“That whole text chain was a wild ride.”
“I was prodding you. Trying to figure out whether you were there for Dan, or whether maybe you wanted more.”
“Did Dan ever tell you what I did when he got back?”
“When?”
“So, after you guys landed, he came over to our place. We had pizza, put on The Thing, and it took me maybe five minutes after we finished eating before I tried to reclaim him.”
I pushed my leg a little higher and heard Leah draw in a breath.
“So I put him in my mouth.”
I looked at her.
“And I tasted you.”
Leah let out a small laugh.
“Oh. Sorry about that.”
“Sorry?”
“Dan said he wanted to join the mile-high club. I decided he’d been a good boy and let him.”
She shifted against my leg.
“Airplane toilets are not particularly good for sex, by the way.”
I let out a small groan.
“I did not realize it was that fresh. I thought it was from that morning.”
“Oh, we did it that morning too.”
She smiled.
“But he showered afterward.”
“I was insanely horny after he came in my mouth. I think I told Dan not to shower if he fucked you again or something. I remember him and Lin looking at me weirdly.”
Leah gave my nipple a quick pinch.
“You perv.”
“Oh, absolutely. Doesn’t even compare to what I did after we first met.”
“It gets worse?” she laughed.
“Yeah. When you brought dinner over, I was soaking wet from the moment you showed me how to use chopsticks.”
Leah stared at me.
“I jumped on Dan the second the door closed and started asking him all sorts of fucked-up questions about what sex with you was like.”
She gave me a shocked look.
“Questions like what?”
“If he went down on you. What you tasted like. What it felt like fucking you. Where he came. What you were like in bed.”
I shuddered at the memory.
“I was so horny for you, Leah.”
She slid her hand between my legs.
“Were you now?”
“I think I scared Dan.”
We both laughed.
“Dan never told me any of this.”
“I guess he learned his lesson.”
She slid two fingers inside me.
“I would have liked to know you were having sex while asking him about me. About what I was like with him.”
I made a small approving sound.
“That would have made me feel a lot safer making a move on you.”
I kissed her.
“When you fingered me at the gala, I was so conflicted.”
Leah’s hand slowed slightly.
“Because it was everything I had wanted, but in the worst possible situation. Was I really going to go all the way with you if I had to do it in front of some old guy?”
I swallowed.
“I was still deciding when he came and you stopped.”
I looked at her.
“I was a little sad you stopped, actually.”
“I was fucking terrified you were going to freak out when I did that to you.”
“I was trying sooo hard to be cool. I felt like such a slob compared to you.”
She started moving her fingers slowly inside me, rubbing me with her thumb.
“I was so impressed with you that night.”
I looked at her.
“I already liked you. A lot. And I really wanted you.”
Her hand kept moving.
“But watching you adapt to a place you’d never been in before, figuring out how everything worked and just… handling it?”
She smiled.
“That was when I knew I wanted you in my life.”
I moved my hips against her fingers while sliding my leg in the same rhythm between hers.
We both let out a small moan.
“After the gala, when I was brushing my teeth, I was wondering if I was supposed to make a move. I really wanted to have sex with you, but you hadn’t actually made one.”
Leah stared at me.
“I made you champagne drinks while naked and invited you into my bed.”
“Yeah… but maybe as friends?”
“Mia.”
I was confused, all right?
Leah’s fingers didn’t stop.
She curled them just enough that my hips jerked against her hand before I could catch myself.
“You thought the naked champagne and the bed invitation were friendship?”
“I did not know which one of us was the top, or the guy, or what,” I said.
Her thumb dragged over my clit in a slow, deliberate circle.
“I think you, like me, were worried about pushing the other away.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and pushed back against her hand.
She smiled against my mouth and kissed me like she’d been waiting for permission.
I slid my hand down between us and found her already wet. Not damp. The kind of wet that made my fingers slip the second I tried to push inside her.
Leah’s breath hitched when I slid two fingers in.
We stayed like that for a while. Side by side. Legs tangled. Fingers working.
The talking slowed because neither of us could get through a full sentence anymore.
I kept thinking about the photo of her sleeping. The one Dan sent. How long I’d stared at it before pretending I was only interested in strategy.
Leah’s fingers pressed deeper and found the spot that always made my thighs shake.
I moaned. Yeah. There.
She didn’t answer. Just kept the pressure steady and watched my face.
I fucked her harder in response. Twisted my wrist. Rubbed her clit with my thumb the way I knew she liked when she was already close.
She made a small, frustrated sound and tried to match me.
I kissed her again, messier this time.
Her fingers sped up.
Mine did too.
Leah’s free hand found my breast and pinched the same nipple she’d been playing with earlier. Harder this time.
I made a sound I would later deny.
“There it is,” she murmured.
I was going to say something clever.
Then her thumb pressed exactly right and the clever part died in my throat.
My legs started shaking.
Leah felt it.
She didn’t speed up. She just held the same steady rhythm and watched me fall apart under her hand.
I came first.
It hit hard enough that I buried my face in her neck so I wouldn’t make some embarrassing noise the entire floor could hear. My fingers locked inside her. My hips jerked against her hand.
It felt like months of fear and wanting had somehow been packed into one orgasm.
Leah held me through it.
Then she whispered, “My turn.”
I was still twitching when I pushed her onto her back and climbed on top.
No more side-by-side.
I wanted her under me.
I kissed down her chest, bit the soft skin beneath her breast and kept going until I could taste her.
She was soaked.
I licked slowly up along her and felt her whole body tighten.
Her hand found my hair.
Not pulling. Just holding.
I slid two fingers back inside her and curled them.
Leah’s thighs tightened around my head.
“Fuck. Just like that.”
I kept going.
I could feel her getting closer. Her breathing changed. Her free hand twisted in the sheets. Those tiny broken sounds she only made when she was about to lose it.
I wanted it.
I wanted to feel her come on my tongue after everything she’d just told me. After all those months of wanting each other and circling around it like idiots.
When she finally came, it was quiet.
Almost.
A sharp inhale. A long, shaky exhale. Her whole body tightening, then melting beneath me.
I stayed there until the last tremor faded.
Then I crawled back up and collapsed half on top of her.
We lay there breathing for a while.
Leah’s fingers traced slow shapes across my back.
Outside the balcony doors, the light had started turning soft and golden.
Trees. Lake. All that expensive nature bullshit.
I stared at the ceiling.
“I still can’t believe you were pretending to sleep that night.”
Leah’s chest moved beneath my cheek when she laughed.
“You were snoring.”
“I do not snore.”
“You do. Softly. It’s annoying and somehow still cute.”
I pinched her side.
She didn’t even flinch.
After a minute, I said, “We’re good at this now.”
“Sex?”
“No. The part where we stop pretending we don’t belong together?”
Leah was quiet for a second.
Then she kissed the top of my head.
“Took us long enough.”
I closed my eyes.
The bed was, in fact, very comfortable.
I still wasn’t entirely sure I belonged in a place like this.
But looking at Leah, I knew I belonged with her.