Chapter 13
SIENNA
Sienna pulled Adriana inside by the lapels of her jacket.
The motion was decisive, urgent — she had spent weeks measuring the distance between professional and personal and had just stopped measuring.
Adriana came forward without resistance, her hands finding Sienna's waist, her mouth never leaving Sienna's, and they collided against the hallway wall with enough force to rattle the framed print of the Echo Park Lake that Dani had given Sienna for her last birthday.
The apartment was dark except for the light that came through the windows.
City glow, amber and blue-white, casting long shadows across the wooden floors and the bookshelves and the couch that Sienna had no intention of reaching tonight.
The bedroom was twelve feet away. That felt very far and not nearly far enough.
Adriana's mouth moved from Sienna's lips to her jaw, tracing a line down the tendon of her neck that sent a pulse of heat from Sienna's throat to the base of her spine.
Sienna's head tipped back against the wall.
Her hands were in Adriana's hair, pulling the pins from the sleek twist, releasing dark waves that fell against Adriana's shoulders and transformed her from the Ice Queen of Lovett & Associates into a woman whose breathing was ragged and whose fingers were pulling Sienna's shirt from the waistband of her jeans with an urgency that had nothing to do with control.
"Adriana." Sienna's voice was low, breathless. "Bedroom."
"Yes." The word was spoken against Sienna's collarbone, warm and rough, and then Adriana pulled back enough to look at her.
Her gray eyes were dark in the apartment's low light, her pupils blown, her lips flushed, every careful layer stripped away until Sienna's heart turned over at the sight of her. "Yes."
Adriana drew back far enough to meet Sienna's eyes. The performance was gone, but what replaced it was not chaos. It was certainty. And underneath the certainty, the real weight of someone crossing a threshold she had not crossed in a very long time.
"You should know," she said quietly, "this isn't something I usually do."
"Oh, I know," Sienna said.
Adriana held her gaze. Then she kissed her again, softer than before.
They moved through the hallway. Not gracefully.
Adriana's jacket caught on the doorframe of the bedroom and Sienna pulled it free and then pulled it off entirely and dropped it on the floor with a carelessness that would have horrified the Adriana of three weeks ago.
The Adriana of tonight didn't seem to notice.
The Adriana of tonight was pushing Sienna backward toward the bed with her hands on Sienna's hips and her mouth finding hers again with the single-minded focus of a woman who had spent fifteen years building walls and was now tearing them down with her bare hands.
The backs of Sienna's knees hit the mattress.
She sat, and Adriana followed, straddling Sienna's thighs with a fluid motion that was graceful even in its urgency.
Sienna looked up at her. Adriana's dark hair was loose around her face, her blouse half-unbuttoned, the silk catching the city light in ways that made the exposed skin of her throat and chest glow.
She was breathing hard. Her hands were on Sienna's shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric, and her eyes were holding Sienna's with an intensity that was not professional, not strategic, not controlled.
"I want you so much," Adriana said. The words came out raw, stripped, in a voice that sounded nothing like the woman behind a desk.
"I have wanted you since the gala. I have wanted you in the conference room and in the car and in every silence that lasted too long, and I am done pretending I don't."
Sienna reached up and cupped Adriana's face in both hands. Ran her thumbs along her cheekbones. Held her there and said, "Then stop pretending."
Adriana kissed her. Deeply, all-consuming. Sienna kissed her back and pulled Adriana's blouse from her shoulders, and the warmth of Adriana's skin reached her first — clean and close in a way she had never been near enough to know before.
They undressed each other with the clumsy earnestness of two people who were very good at other things and were discovering that buttons and clasps and the logistics of removing clothing while kissing were not among their shared competencies.
Sienna's shirt went over her head, and Adriana's gaze tracked the newly exposed skin with an attention so focused it made Sienna's stomach tighten.
Adriana's bra unclasped with a small click, and when it fell away Sienna pressed her mouth to the space between Adriana's breasts and breathed against her skin and Adriana made a sound that was so quiet and so raw that Sienna's hands shook.
Jeans were kicked off. Underwear followed.
Sienna's caught on her ankle and she shook it free with a gracelessness that would have been embarrassing under any other circumstances and was, under these, the funniest thing either of them had experienced in weeks.
Adriana's laugh vibrated against Sienna's shoulder, brief and warm, and Sienna grinned against Adriana's neck and thought: This.
This is what it should be. Laughter and skin and no performance.
Then they were horizontal on Sienna's bed, skin to skin, and the laughter dissolved into a denser heat.
Sienna took her time. She kissed her way down Adriana's body — the hollow of her throat, the curve of her collarbone, the soft weight of her breasts.
She took one nipple into her mouth and sucked slowly, and Adriana's back arched off the mattress, a sharp exhale breaking from her lips.
Sienna did it again, harder, and Adriana's hand fisted in her hair and pulled. Not a signal to stop. A signal not to.
Sienna moved lower, dragging her mouth down Adriana's sternum, across the flat plane of her stomach, pausing at the soft skin below her navel where a sharp kiss made Adriana's hips jerk.
She spread Adriana's thighs with both hands, pressing them open and holding them there, and looked up to find Adriana watching her with eyes so dark and wide that Sienna's breath caught.
She lowered her mouth and tasted her.
Adriana's thighs tensed immediately. Sienna worked her slowly — tongue flat at first, learning the shape of her, learning what made her breathing fracture, what made her hips press upward.
When she found the angle that made Adriana's voice dissolve into an unguarded moan, she stayed with it.
Stayed with it as Adriana's hand tightened in her hair and her thighs began to shake.
Stayed with it until Adriana was whispering her name like a question that only had one answer.
Sienna slid two fingers deep inside her.
The sound Adriana made was wrecked and helpless and nothing like the Ice Queen and everything like a woman who had spent years keeping herself held together and had just given up the effort completely.
Sienna curled her fingers and felt Adriana tighten around them, felt the slick heat of her, felt the way she moved her hips to chase the pressure.
She worked her steadily — fingers and mouth together, building rhythm, taking her apart one tremor at a time.
"Fuck. Sienna." Adriana's voice broke on the second syllable. "Please. Don't stop."
Sienna didn't stop. She pressed harder with her tongue and fuck her faster and felt Adriana's whole body lock, tighten, and then shatter — her thighs clenching around Sienna's shoulders, her hand pulling so hard at Sienna's hair it stung, her voice releasing in a sound that was raw and exposed and still ringing in the quiet apartment when the last tremor moved through her and her body went slack.
Sienna kissed her way back up — her stomach, her ribs, the underside of her breast. She pressed her mouth to the hollow of Adriana's throat, tasting salt, breathing in vetiver gone warm from body heat, nothing like perfume anymore. She looked into eyes that were wet and wide and completely open.
"Hi," Sienna said.
Adriana laughed. The laugh was broken and real and close to tears. "Hi. Well, that was FAST."
“It’s the build up. I’d say it’s been the longest foreplay I’ve ever known,” Sienna laughed.
Then Adriana's hand was on Sienna's waist, turning them, and the shift in weight was sudden and sure — a decisiveness that the orgasm had not diminished. Adriana settled between Sienna's legs, her dark hair falling around both their faces, and the look in her eyes was clear and certain and hungry.
"My turn. I’m desperate to taste you," she said, and the words in that low, rough voice made Sienna's entire body clench with anticipation.
Adriana kissed her way down Sienna's body with the same focus she brought to closing arguments — except that every point she made was made with her mouth, deliberate and devastating, and she paid attention to every sound Sienna made and adjusted accordingly.
She spent time on Sienna's breasts — her tongue circling one nipple while her hand cupped the other, the dual sensation making Sienna's hips roll involuntarily.
She moved lower, mouth dragging down the curve of Sienna's waist, teeth grazing her hip.
She pressed Sienna's thighs apart with a confidence that said she had been thinking about this exact moment and exactly what she intended to do with it.
Then her mouth was on her wet folds, and all thought dissolved.