Chapter 13 Sienna #2
When Elise's mouth reached her again, Sienna was so aroused that the first broad stroke of her tongue made her cry out. Not a gasp, not a moan. A cry that echoed in the dark apartment and bounced off the walls and ceiling, loud and raw and not a sound she'd ever made before in her life.
"There you are," Elise murmured against her, and the words vibrated through Sienna's clit and she moaned.
Elise's tongue was insistent now, faster, more focused, flicking and circling with a rhythm that was building toward a crest. She used her fingers again, two pressing deep inside, and the angle was different this time, her fingertips curling upward with a firm, steady pressure that hit a spot that made Sienna's vision go white at the edges.
The combination of tongue and fingers was relentless, perfectly synchronised, and the orgasm was approaching like a train, unstoppable.
"Oh god," Sienna gasped. Her hand was in Elise's hair, holding on, and her other hand was gripping the armrest and her back was arched and her whole body was coiled with tension. "Elise, I'm going to..."
"Let go," Elise breathed against her. "I've got you. Let go."
Sienna let go.
The third orgasm broke through her with a force that made the others pale.
Her entire body shook, her muscles locking and releasing in rhythmic waves, and the pleasure was so intense it crossed into territory that bordered on pain, a cresting, overwhelming flood that tore through every defence and every wall and every careful, composed layer she'd ever built.
She felt it everywhere. In her chest, in her throat, in the backs of her eyes.
She came hard, her hips bucking against Elise's mouth, her voice breaking on a sound that was half-scream, half-sob.
The orgasm tore through her in violent, pulsing waves and she felt the rush of wetness, more than before, flooding Elise's mouth and her chin and the sofa cushion beneath her.
The release was enormous. Elise didn't pull away.
She pressed closer, her mouth working through it, drinking her in, and the sensation extended the orgasm until Sienna's body was shaking so hard the sofa frame creaked beneath them.
The wave finally broke. And kept breaking.
Smaller waves, aftershocks, each one making her body jerk and her breath catch.
Sienna collapsed against the sofa, boneless, her breath coming in ragged gasps that were half-sobs.
Her chest was heaving. Her skin was slick with sweat.
Her muscles felt liquid. The tears were real now.
They ran down her temples and into her hair and she couldn't stop them and she didn't try.
The release was more than physical. It was everything she'd been holding for years, the loneliness and the control and the careful, disciplined silence of a woman who had never let anyone close enough to see her like this.
She was crying and she couldn't stop.
The tears came from somewhere deep and old, a reservoir she'd been filling for decades without knowing it had a bottom. They were not tears of sadness, not exactly. They were tears of release, of the last wall finally coming down, everything she'd been holding for years flooding out at once.
Every moment of control, every swallowed feeling, every time she'd said "I'm fine" when she wasn't: the dinners at her parents' table where emotion was a foreign language, the nights she'd lain awake in her San Diego apartment at twenty-three knowing she was gay and knowing their silence was not acceptance but avoidance, every woman she'd wanted and kept at arm's length because wanting was dangerous.
Every night alone in Phoenix Ridge with her oat milk and her medical journals and the ocean through the window.
The absence of someone who would hold her and tell her she was enough.
Elise moved up beside her on the sofa. She pulled a throw blanket from the armrest and wrapped it around Sienna's shoulders, and then she gathered Sienna into her arms. Sienna pressed her face against Elise's neck and cried.
Not quietly. Not with restraint. She cried as she imagined her father's rigid posture had never allowed, as her mother's Steinway had cried through Rachmaninov, full-voiced and without apology.
The sobs shook her whole body and her tears soaked through the collar of Elise's shirt and she couldn't stop and she didn't want to stop.
Elise held her. She didn't say "it's okay" or "don't cry" or any of the things people said when someone else's pain made them uncomfortable.
She didn't ask what was wrong. She didn't pull back to see Sienna's face.
She just held her, her good arm wrapped around Sienna's back, her lips pressed against Sienna's temple, her fingers stroking through Sienna's damp hair in slow, steady rhythms. She held her the way Sienna had held Elise on the bench twenty minutes or an hour or a lifetime ago, with patience and stillness and the quiet, unshakeable certainty that the storm would pass.
"I've got you," Elise murmured against her hair. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
The words were simple and Elise said them without drama and they broke a part of Sienna that was already broken and rebuilt it at the same time.
I'm not going anywhere. Four words. The four words she'd been waiting to hear her entire life, from her parents, from her lovers, from anyone, and no one had ever said them until now.
Sienna pressed closer. Elise's heartbeat was steady against her cheek, a slow, grounding rhythm that anchored her through the last of the storm. The apartment was dark and quiet. The world was the same. Only Sienna was different.
The crying slowed. The sobs became hiccups, then deep breaths, then stillness.
Sienna lay against Elise's chest, wrapped in the blanket and Elise's arm, and let herself be held.
Her body was exhausted, her muscles liquid, her skin sensitive to every shift of fabric and air.
Elise's breath was warm against the top of her head, slow and even, and her body's heat came through the thin blanket, the solid, real weight of her arm across Sienna's back.
The sofa was too small for both of them and neither of them moved.
Elise's fingers continued their slow rhythm through her hair, tracing patterns she couldn't see.
"Stay," Sienna whispered. The word slipped out, past the part of her that was still Dr. Park, past every objection she might have raised.
"I'm staying," Elise said. Her lips moved against Sienna's forehead. "I'm right here."
Sienna closed her eyes. Elise's heartbeat was steady beneath her ear. The blanket was warm around her shoulders. Somewhere outside, a car passed, its headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling before the darkness returned.
She held on.