Chapter 21 #3
“Luisa she’s called. Mexican and, I can tell you, hot as fuck.
Here, look.” She tapped on her phone and then held it up to show a campaign photo with a model who was, Ellie could confirm, definitely hot as fuck.
“So,” Kelly continued, “I could tell Colt was into her basically immediately, and she was into him, and I knew when they danced together. So… I guess you could say I arranged a thank you present. She was staying at our hotel and on the way back we stopped for food and I asked her outright.”
“Asked her if she’d sleep with Colt?”
Kelly shook her head. “Asked her if she’d like to come back to our room for a drink and see what happened.” She grinned again. “I’m all about the subtlety.”
Ellie shared her grin. “Then you watched?”
“Half-watched, half-joined in. Colt had a very good night. So did I. So did Luisa for that matter.” Ellie saw her cheeks redden a touch at the memory. “Colt’s not exactly lacking down there, if you follow me. One of the many things I love about him. She seemed to appreciate that.”
Ellie nodded toward Kelly’s phone. “You hook up with models all the time?”
Kelly laughed and shook her head. “First time. Could have been kinda awkward, she’d had a thing with Solana but they called it off fast when they knew they’d be working together. You know, her brand, Luisa the face of it, that could get messy fast.”
She’d had a thing with Solana? “I didn’t realise that Solana was into women. She didn’t have that vibe.”
“Oh, completely. She’s the most lesbian lesbian I know. One hundred percent not interested in guys.” Kelly lowered her voice. “Between you and me, Solana’s still completely gone for Luisa. Don’t tell her I told you that.”
“Noted.”
The shower shut off down the hall. Kelly put her phone face down on the counter and picked up a knife to finish the sandwiches.
Becca appeared from the hallway, damp and a little pink from the shower, pulling her robe tight. She walked straight past Ellie to where Kelly was standing at the counter and wrapped her arms around her from behind, pressing her face into Kelly’s neck, kissing her cheek.
Kelly smiled and leaned back into it, her hand coming up to rest on Becca’s arm, and for a few seconds they just stood like that… Becca holding Kelly from behind, chin on her shoulder, Kelly tilting her head to rest against Becca’s, both of them quiet, comfortable and close.
Ellie watched from the other side of the kitchen and felt the loop flare hard.
Because that was their move, hers and Becca’s.
That was what Becca did with her: came up behind her while she was cooking, wrapped her arms around her, rested her chin on her shoulder and just breathed.
Ellie had felt those arms a thousand times, had leaned back into that exact embrace more nights than she could count, and seeing Becca do it with Kelly, casually, instinctively, as if she belonged there, it hit somewhere deep and complicated.
Becca wasn’t just sleeping with Kelly tonight.
She was playing at being in a relationship with her.
The domesticity of it, the easy physical intimacy, the way she’d walked past her own wife to wrap herself around someone else in the kitchen…
it was a performance of coupledom that went far beyond sex, and it was so hot that Ellie had to grip her wine glass to keep her hand from shaking.
“What are we not telling Solana?” Becca murmured into Kelly’s neck, her eyes on Ellie, having apparently caught the tail end of the conversation from the guest bedroom.
“Nothing,” Kelly and Ellie said simultaneously, and Becca looked between them with the narrow-eyed suspicion of someone who knew she was being excluded but had decided to let it go for now.
Becca let go of Kelly and the three of them stood in the kitchen in their robes, wine glasses in hand, sandwiches on plates. The conversation was relaxed, three women with nothing to hide and nothing to prove, just easy and fun.
But underneath the joy, the current was still running.
Ellie could see it in the way Kelly’s eyes kept drifting to the gap where Becca’s robe crossed at her chest, not hiding it, not trying to be subtle.
Could see it in the way Becca was standing, hip cocked against the counter, glass held loosely, the robe coming looser and barely bothering to tie it again, a length of bare thigh showing where the fabric parted.
Eventually, Becca put her glass down and looked at Kelly with an expression that Ellie knew very, very well…
the look that said this is all well and good, but I want you, and I’ve been wanting you more and more since I last had you, and I can’t stop myself any more.
That look, but given to someone else, sent the jealousy-arousal loop into overdrive.
"You know what I kept thinking while you were going down on me out there?
" Becca said, her voice low, her eyes not leaving Kelly's, all the hotter for how she’d suddenly changed the gear of the conversation.
"I kept thinking about how good the stone felt under my back, and how good your mouth felt, and how what I really wanted was for you to take me inside and fuck me so hard I can't walk tomorrow. "
The kitchen went very still. Ellie looked at her wife in astonishment. Where did that come from?