Chapter 14 Elise
ELISE
Elise woke to the sound of the ocean and the weight of another body in her bed.
The morning light was pale and grey-blue, the early kind that came through the curtains before the sun cleared the horizon. It fell across the bed in soft bands, catching the white sheets, the outline of limbs, the dark hair spread across the pillow beside her.
Sienna was asleep.
She was lying on her stomach, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, the other resting between them on the mattress.
The sheet had slipped to her waist and the morning light traced the lines of her back, the ridge of her spine, the smooth skin of her shoulders.
Her dark hair was tangled and loose and her face was turned toward Elise, her lips slightly parted, her breathing slow and deep.
Elise didn't move. She lay on her side and watched Sienna sleep and let the reality of it fill her.
Sienna Park was in her bed.
They'd moved from the sofa sometime in the middle of the night, when the crying had stopped and the blanket wasn't enough and both of them were stiff and cramped from the narrow cushions.
Elise had led her by the hand through the dark apartment and pulled back the covers and Sienna had climbed in without a word and pressed her back against Elise's chest and Elise had held her and they'd fallen asleep with their breathing matched.
Now the apartment was quiet. The digital clock on the nightstand read 6:47.
The air smelled of salt and skin and the faint remnants of the candles that had burned down to nothing two nights ago.
Through the wall, the fridge hummed through the wall.
Outside, a gull called once, sharp and clear, then nothing.
Sienna's skin was golden in the morning light.
The curve of her shoulder blade. The small mole just above her waist on the left side.
The fine muscles of her back, visible even in sleep, built by years of morning swims and professional-level tennis.
Elise's gaze moved down the length of her spine and she remembered how that spine had arched under her mouth last night, how Sienna's body had risen off the sofa when Elise's tongue found the right rhythm, how she'd tasted, salt and sweetness, the most intimate flavour Elise had ever known.
Warmth spread low in her stomach at the memory.
The ghost of Sienna still lingered on her lips, the slickness on her chin, the clench of Sienna's thighs against her ears when the orgasm hit.
Three times. She'd made Sienna come three times, the last so intense that it had broken her open, and the crying afterward had been real and raw and the most vulnerable thing anyone had ever shared with her.
She hoped Sienna didn't regret it.
The thought arrived like a cold draught under a door.
Because last night had been extraordinary and overwhelming and unlike anything Elise had experienced, but it had also involved a woman who'd spent forty-one years keeping people at a distance, a woman who'd said "I thought I was broken" with tears on her face and shame in her voice.
Sienna had crossed every professional boundary she held sacred, and she'd done it in a rush of desire and emotional release, and now it was morning and the candles were out and the gin had faded and reality was grey light through bedroom curtains.
Elise watched Sienna's face. The dark lashes against her cheeks. The slight frown that creased her forehead even in sleep, as if her brain was still running diagnostics. The small twitch of her lower lip.
Please don't regret this.
Please don't wake up and put the mask back on and tell me it was a mistake. Please don't go back to being Dr. Park. Please stay.
Sienna's eyelids fluttered. The frown deepened. Her body shifted under the sheet, shoulders tensing as consciousness returned, and Elise watched the moment it happened, the exact second Sienna truly woke up and knew where she was and who was beside her.
Her eyes opened. Dark brown, unfocused, blinking against the morning light. They swept the unfamiliar ceiling, the curtains, the nightstand with its clock, and then they found Elise and widened.
"Hi," Elise said. She kept her voice soft. Unthreatening. She smiled and hoped it looked reassuring rather than terrified.
"Hi." Sienna's voice was rough with sleep.
She blinked again. Her hand came up to her face as if reaching for glasses that weren't there, and then she stopped, fingers hovering in the air, and her expression changed.
She was remembering. It showed in the slight shift of her focus, her pupils changing, recognition returning piece by piece.
Sienna's cheeks flushed. The colour started at her jaw and spread upward, pink and deep, visible even in the grey morning light.
"How are you feeling?" Elise asked.
"I..." Sienna pushed herself up on one elbow. The sheet slipped further and she caught it against her chest with her free hand, holding it there. The modesty of it, after everything they'd done last night, made Elise ache with tenderness. "I can't believe what happened."
"Which part?"
"All of it. Every part." Sienna's voice was steady but her eyes were not.
They searched Elise's face with an intensity that bordered on frantic, looking for cues, reading the room as she read medical charts, seeking information that would tell her how to proceed.
"I crossed a professional boundary. Several professional boundaries.
I am your physician and I slept with you and that is a serious violation of my ethical obligations. "
"You're a sports medicine physician in a hockey programme, not a neurosurgeon operating on my brain," Elise said. "And we're both adults who chose to be here. Nobody violated anything."
"There are professional standards that exist for very good reasons."
Elise rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand.
"And those standards are about protecting vulnerable patients from predatory doctors.
You're not exploiting me and I'm not vulnerable.
I am, in fact, spectacularly fine." Elise let the word hang there, inflected with just enough suggestion that it carried both meanings, and watched Sienna's blush deepen.
Sienna pulled her knees up beneath the sheet. "That's not how the ethics board would see it."
"Lucky I'm not dating the ethics board."
Sienna stared at her. The colour had reached her collarbones, disappearing beneath the edge of the sheet she was clutching.
Her hair was a mess and her eyes were swollen from last night's crying and there was a pillow crease on her left cheek and she was the most beautiful thing Elise had ever seen in this bed or any bed.
"Was that the best compliment you've ever received from someone holding a sheet over her chest?" Elise asked.
Sienna pressed a hand to her neck. "Stop it."
"You're gorgeous when you blush. Which is convenient because you blush every time I look at you."
"I do not." Sienna pulled the sheet higher, which only made Elise grin wider.
Elise reached over and traced a finger along Sienna's collarbone, just above the sheet's edge. "You're doing it right now. Your neck is red. It's incredibly hot."
Sienna pressed her lips together, fighting a smile and losing. The smile broke through her reserve and transformed her face, softened all the edges, and Elise's chest ached at the sight of it because this was Sienna without armour and she was luminous.
"I need to tell you this," Sienna said. The smile faded, replaced by a seriousness that made Elise's stomach tighten.
She braced for it. The regret speech. The morning-after pullback.
The professional-distance reassertion that would take Sienna back behind her walls and leave Elise standing on the wrong side.
"Okay."
"Last night was the best sex of my entire life."
The sentence filled the quiet bedroom. Elise blinked.
"And I realise that's not saying much," Sienna continued, "because the bar was underground.
But I need you to know that what you did to me last night was not just good.
It was revelatory. I didn't know my body could do that.
I didn't know I could feel that. And I am furious at every woman who touched me before you because they made me think the problem was me. "
"The problem was never you," Elise said. Her voice came out rougher than she intended.
"I know that now." Sienna looked at the sheet in her hand, then back at Elise. "Because of you."
Elise wanted to kiss her. She wanted to cross the six inches of mattress between them and put her mouth on Sienna's and taste the morning on her lips.
But she held back. Not from uncertainty.
From care. This moment was fragile and Sienna was fragile and Elise was not going to be the person who pushed too fast.
"I can do it again," she said instead, and let the offer settle between them in the morning quiet.
Sienna's breath caught. The sound was small, almost inaudible, but Elise heard it because she was listening for it, because she was tuned to every frequency of Sienna's body now, every micro-expression and tiny sound. Sienna's pupils dilated. Her fingers tightened on the sheet.
"I want to do it again," Sienna said. "But I want..." She stopped. Swallowed. Her skin flushed again, darker this time, the heat of a woman forcing words out that she'd never spoken. "I want to do it to you."
Elise's breath left her in a rush. "To me?"
"I want to taste you. I want to give you what you gave me.
" She was looking at the pillow, not at Elise, and her voice had dropped low and unsteady.
"But I need to tell you that I haven't..
. I've never done that. Not properly. Not well.
The times I've been with women it was fast and dark and I didn't know what I was doing and I never stayed long enough to learn.
And I'm worried that I won't be good enough. That you'll have to pretend."