Chapter 6 #2
Giulietta’s coat hit the floor first, half-tossed, half-stripped, silk and wool sliding down her shoulders like a second skin she no longer wanted to wear.
Ivy’s hands were already on her, already beneath the edges of her unbuttoned blouse, already tracing fire against her ribcage and pressing her back against the cold tile wall.
There was no warning kiss.
There was no slow build-up.
Ivy kissed her like she’d been starving for her all week, like the air between them had never mattered and would never be enough again.
Teeth scraped over Giulietta’s lower lip, her tongue slick and insistent.
Ivy drank her like a dare and tasted the moment Giulietta stopped trying to stay in control.
Giulietta moaned into her mouth, low, involuntary, caught between resistance and surrender.
Ivy didn’t let up.
She slipped a hand between Giulietta’s thighs, pushing her leg aside with a knee as her fingers found the heat waiting for her, barely concealed beneath the thin lace Ivy had hoped she was wearing and wasn’t disappointed to find.
Giulietta gasped, her head hitting the wall softly as her blouse fell open, buttons giving way like they were tired of the pretense.
“Keep your eyes open,” Ivy said, voice like gravel dipped in honey, breath hot against Giulietta’s cheek as she pressed two fingers into her, deep, sure, possessive.
Giulietta’s lashes fluttered, then lifted. Not all the way, but enough.
“Don’t make a sound,” Ivy murmured, teeth grazing the tender edge of her throat as her fingers began to move, slow first, deliberate, feeling for the exact give of her, the wet clutch that welcomed and fought the same stroke, then faster. Harder.
Giulietta’s hands scrabbled for anchor and found the wall, palms flat to cool tile. Every thrust rocked through her hips; her mouth opened on a perfect, soundless O, breath snatching at the top of a moan she refused to let loose.
She was half-undressed, blouse gaping, bra shoved aside, nipples peaked hard in the air Ivy still hadn’t let herself touch.
Her pants were open, dragged to her mid-thigh; her stance was wide because Ivy’s thigh was still wedged between her knees.
The mirror caught a smear of them in the frame, and Giulietta caught it too: her own wrecked mouth, Ivy’s dark focus, the muscle in Ivy’s forearm standing out with every drive of her hand.
“Good,” Ivy said, a thread of approval in it that made Giulietta’s knees weaken. “Stay with me.”
Ivy’s free hand flattened at Giulietta’s sternum and slid down over her ribs, the heel of her palm pinning her right where Ivy wanted her while the thrusts settled into a ruthless metronome, press, curl, draw; press, curl, draw, unshowy and exact.
When Giulietta tried to grind for more, Ivy stilled the movement with the barest increase of pressure at her hip and brought her thumbs to bear higher, circling once, tight, sure, over the spot that made Giulietta’s eyes fly open.
“Eyes,” Ivy reminded, head angling so their gazes locked in the glass. “Let me see you.”
The bass from the club bled through the bathroom door, a dull, unhelpful heartbeat.
Tile was slick under Giulietta’s fingertip as she gripped for purchase.
Ivy’s fingers slid deeper; the curl hit that hot, unbearable place on the inside and Giulietta’s breath went ragged, chest heaving against Ivy’s palm.
“Quiet,” Ivy whispered, lips brushing the shell of her ear. “You can take it.”
Giulietta nodded. Her thighs trembled. Ivy’s mouth skated lower on her throat and found a pulse, teeth catching there, and then soothed it with tongue.
Giulietta bit down on her own lip and kept her eyes open like she’d been told, meeting her gaze in the mirror while Ivy worked her apart with two fingers and a thumb, never chasing, only building.
“Please,” Giulietta breathed, barely sound at all.
Ivy’s mouth curved against her skin. “I know.”
She shifted the angle by a fraction, up and in, and it landed.
Giulietta’s hand slammed to the tile with a dull, wet clap she couldn’t help.
Her knees wobbled; Ivy’s body took the weight without losing the rhythm, thigh pinning, forearm barring Giulietta’s hip when she tried to twist away from the intensity.
“That’s it,” Ivy said, low and sure. “Right there. Don’t chase.”
Giulietta didn’t. She let it take her, eyes wide now, glassy, locked to Ivy’s, while the wave gathered mean and bright.
The first tremor shivered through her thighs; the second gripped deep and wouldn’t let go.
Ivy held her through both: thumb unyielding, fingers curling on the pull until the edge snapped clean and sent heat tearing through Giulietta in pulses that broke her silence into breath and nothing else.
Her body clenched around Ivy’s hand, again, again.
A sound escaped anyway—small, wrecked, strangled against the back of her wrist—and Ivy swallowed the rest with a kiss to her jaw, then to the hinge of her mouth, never quite letting the pressure go until the flinch of oversensitivity finally hit.
Only then did she ease, circles shrinking, pace softening, the fierce line of her shoulders loosening as Giulietta trembled down.
“Good girl,” Ivy said at last, the words barely air, reverent instead of patronizing. She slipped her fingers out with care and pressed her palm flat over Giulietta’s lower belly, feeling the aftershocks echo there. “Breathe.”
Giulietta dropped her head forward on Ivy’s shoulder.
Ivy kissed her once, slow, sealing, then set about putting her back together with the same calm precision she’d taken her apart: blouse straightened, bra eased into place, pants tugged up and buttoned.
She licked her fingers clean without breaking eye contact and watched Giulietta’s throat work as she swallowed.
“Look at you,” Ivy murmured, thumb wiping the smear from Giulietta’s bottom lip. “Still quiet. Still open.”
Giulietta found her voice in the cooled air between them, small and raw. “You said not to make a sound.”
Ivy smiled, wicked and affectionate in the same breath. “I did.” She stepped in until their hips met again, until the promise sharpened. “Next time, I won’t.”
Giulietta shook her head once, defiant.
“I think you want it again now,” Ivy growled moving her hand back to where it had been.
Fucking Giulietta and feeling her come was the most exquisite pleasure.
Her fingers moved again, sliding back into Giulietta’s hot wetness easily, three fingers this time.
Ivy built her up thrusting in and out, her thumb sliding against Giulietta’s clitoris.
Giulietta’s breathing quickened and her pussy began to clench tightly around Ivy’s fingers.
“Come again for me sweetheart, I know you want to,” she growled in Giulietta’s ear.
Giulietta right on command, orgasmed hard and Ivy felt a satisfying gush of fluid in her palm.
Oh fuck, yes.
The music outside kept pounding. The walls around them vibrated with bass. Somewhere, someone laughed too loudly.
But in that bathroom, it was quiet.
Except for the sound of Giulietta’s breath as it stuttered back into rhythm, slow and fractured, like the aftermath of a storm that had torn through every cell in her body and left nothing but heat and haze behind.
Her hands were still pressed to the wall, nails dragging slightly against the tile as if anchoring herself to the cold.
Ivy didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t break the spell.
They just stood there, pressed together, the space between them thick with everything unspoken and everything undeniable.
Giulietta’s body was still trembling, not from fear, not from chill, but from the sheer intensity of being undone so completely in a place where nothing was safe except the hold that Ivy kept on her. Her mascara had begun to smudge at the outer corner of her eyes.
Ivy’s fingers had finally stilled, but her palm remained against Giulietta, warm and grounding. Her lips hovered near her ear, not speaking now, just breathing, their exhales tangled like lovers who had no idea how to be soft but were trying anyway.
Giulietta’s voice came out hoarse, thin, almost inaudible over the throb of bass still filtering through the walls. “Don’t let go yet.”
Ivy didn’t.
She rested her forehead against Giulietta’s temple, one hand sliding up to hold her just beneath her ribs, like she knew that the tremble wasn’t physical anymore, that it was emotional, something breaking and reforming all at once inside the woman who had walked in wearing silk and pride and now stood bare except for the truth clinging to her skin.
When Giulietta finally turned around, it wasn’t graceful or composed.
Ivy saw all of her, eyes still wild, mouth parted, spine straighter than it should’ve been after what had just happened.
“I don’t do this,” Giulietta whispered.
Ivy raised a brow, fingers brushing Giulietta’s cheekbone. “You just did.”
A breath. A pause.
Then a flash of something like defiance or maybe fear.
“I needed to not think.”
Ivy nodded slowly, her thumb tracing a slow arc across Giulietta’s jaw. “Then I did my job.”
But neither of them smiled.
Because this wasn’t a victory.
This was a crack.
And even if neither said it, they both felt it.
Giulietta bent to retrieve her coat. Ivy helped her with the buttons, hands steady, lips tight.
They stood in the mirror together for a beat, Giulietta re-fastening her blouse and reapplying lipstick with fingers that still trembled slightly.
Ivy watched silently, the mark of her bite already darkening on Giulietta’s neck.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Ivy said, finally. Giulietta looked at her in the reflection.
“I know.” But she didn’t walk away. They stood there for one last suspended breath, the door still locked behind them, the music waiting on the other side.
The door swung open and the sound swallowed them again, music pulsing like a heartbeat through the bones of the building, bodies pressing close in waves of heat and rhythm, the lights bleeding across the floor in flashes of color that barely registered after the stillness of the bathroom.
Ivy stepped out first, her spine loose, jaw tight, the adrenaline from earlier still humming low beneath her skin.
She glanced over her shoulder and offered her hand.
Giulietta looked at it. She didn’t take the hand, but she didn’t turn away either.
Instead, she walked beside her, matching Ivy’s pace, shoulder barely grazing hers in the crush of the crowd, and that silence between them returned—not cold, not tense, but charged in a way that felt like it had teeth.
Outside, the night hit them like a balm.
Cool air brushed against Ivy’s flushed cheeks, tugging strands of hair from her collar, raising goosebumps across the skin Ivy had already memorised with her hands.
The alley, half-shadowed and forgotten, was quieter now, the pulse of the club behind them muffled by thick walls and the echo of distance.
Somewhere down the block, a car honked lazily.
The city, for once, didn’t feel like it was pressing in.
It just…breathed.
Ivy lit a cigarette with a flick of her thumb, the flame illuminating her face for a fraction of a second before it vanished again, leaving only the red-orange glow at the end of the cigarette and the thin curl of smoke that spiraled up into the night.
Giulietta watched it rise. She didn’t speak for a long time.
And then, Giulietta said, “I don’t belong here.”
Her voice wasn’t bitter. Wasn’t resigned.
It was thoughtful. Curious. Like she was trying the words on for size, testing how they felt in her mouth.
Like she wasn’t quite sure yet if she wanted to leave.
Ivy exhaled slowly, ash crumbling into the gutter. Her shoulders moved once, just a breath of movement under the leather of her jacket. “No one does,” she said, not looking at her. “That’s the point.”
Giulietta didn’t answer. She just stood there, arms folded beneath her coat, her profile clean and sharp against the amber streetlight, and for a second Ivy thought she might stay, might lean into her, might reach for her hand this time, might say something raw and beautiful and ruinous that would change everything.
But she didn’t.
She just lingered.
Long enough to make Ivy want.
And then she walked away, heels tapping a slow, deliberate rhythm against the cracked pavement, her coat fluttering behind her like something that had been shaken loose, her back straight, her pace steady.
And Ivy, cigarette burning down between her fingers, hands deep in her jacket pockets and chest hollow with something that felt too much like hope and too close to ache, let her go.
Not because she wanted to.
But because if Giulietta was going to come back, it had to be a choice.