Chapter 3: Private Encore
The burger joint was all chrome and laughter, the air thick with the smell of grease and fried onions. They’d claimed a sticky booth in the back, a fortress of crumpled wrappers and shared fries. Rose and Jisoo were engaged in a heated, giggling debate about the merits of various condiments.
“Mayonnaise is a vehicle for flavor, not a flavor itself,” Jisoo insisted, stealing a fry from Rose’s tray.
“You take that back,” Rose said, swatting her hand.
Lisa watched them, a soft smile on her face, her knee bouncing under the table. The high from the stage was fading, leaving a pleasant exhaustion in her muscles, but a different, quieter energy was coiling in her stomach. Every time Somi’s thigh pressed against hers, or her hand casually brushed Lisa’s arm as she reached for a napkin, the coil tightened.
Somi was quiet, but her eyes weren’t. They kept tracking over Lisa’s face, her neck, the strip of toned stomach visible where her crop top had ridden up a little. It was a look that promised a continuation, a private encore.
“You okay?” Somi murmured, her voice low enough that the other two, now arguing about pickle integrity, didn’t hear. “You’re quiet.”
“Just thinking,” Lisa said.
“About?”
“The way you look at me.” Lisa picked at the label on her soda bottle. “Like you’re still deciding what to do with me.”
Somi’s smile was a slow, deliberate thing. She leaned in, her breath warm against Lisa’s ear. “I decided hours ago, baby. I’m just being polite in public.”
The ride back to Somi’s apartment was a blur of streetlights and tangled fingers in the back of Jisoo’s car. Rose kept turning up the radio, singing off-key, and Jisoo complained but smiled the whole time. Lisa stared out the window, feeling Somi’s thumb tracing circles on her palm, a silent, relentless code.
Somi’s apartment always smelled like her—cinnamon from the candles she never lit, the faint, clean scent of her linen spray, and underneath it all, the specific warmth of her skin. The door clicked shut behind them, locking out the world, and the cozy clutter of the living room—the velvet chairs, the leaning towers of books, the records scattered by the player—seemed to hold its breath.
They didn’t make it past the entryway.
Somi turned and pushed Lisa back against the front door. The wood was cool and solid through the thin fabric of her top. Somi’s hands came up to cradle her face, but the kiss wasn’t like the one in the dark storage room. This was hungry, open-mouthed, and deep, a release of all the pent-up, watching energy from the evening. Lisa groaned into it, her hands fisting in the soft material of Somi’s sweater.
“You,” Somi breathed between kisses, her voice ragged, “drove me insane tonight.” She kissed down Lisa’s jaw, her throat. “Every single person in that room was looking at you.”
“They were looking at the routine,” Lisa managed, tilting her head back with a gasp as Somi’s teeth grazed her collarbone.
“No.” Somi’s hands slid down, fingers digging into the hem of the crop top. “They were looking at you. At this.” With a sudden, sharp tug, the delicate fabric tore at the side seam. The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet apartment. Cool air hit Lisa’s skin, followed immediately by the heat of Somi’s mouth descending on the exposed plane of her abdomen.
Lisa gasped, her back arching off the door. Somi’s tongue traced the defined line of her muscle, her kisses alternating between soft and biting as she moved across Lisa’s stomach. It was claiming, devotional, and fiercely possessive all at once.
“Nobody else,” Somi growled against her skin, her words vibrating into Lisa’s core. “Nobody else gets to see you move like that again. Not like that.” She looked up, her eyes glittering in the dim light from the streetlamp outside the window. “You understand? That’s mine.”
Lisa could only nod, her breath coming in short bursts. The admission, the raw need in it, unspooled something in her. It wasn’t about control. It was about being wanted with a specificity that felt like being known.
In one fluid motion, Somi hooked her arms under Lisa’s thighs and lifted her. Lisa yelped, locking her ankles around Somi’s waist, her arms around her neck as Somi carried her through the living room, down the short hall, and into the bedroom. She dropped Lisa onto the unmade bed, the comforter smelling like sleep and Somi’s shampoo.
Then Somi was on her, a welcome weight, her hands and mouth everywhere. The torn crop top was peeled away completely. Everywhere Somi’s lips touched felt branded. Lisa’s own hands were frantic, pushing Somi’s sweater up, wanting to feel skin, to reciprocate, to get closer than physics should allow.
“Slow down,” Somi whispered, catching her wrists, pinning them gently above her head on the pillow. “My turn.”
What followed wasn’t a performance. It was an excavation. Somi took her apart with a painstaking focus that left Lisa trembling. She mapped every tremor, learned every gasp, until Lisa was a raw nerve, suspended in the dim room, aware of nothing but the pressure of Somi’s hands, the taste of her mouth, the devastating, precise rhythm she set. The world narrowed to the catch of fabric, the slide of skin, the stifled cries swallowed by pillows and each other’s mouths.
It was hours later, or maybe minutes—time had dissolved—when Lisa floated back to herself. They were a tangled mess of limbs, slick with sweat, the cool air from the open window raising goosebumps on their skin. Somi’s head was on her chest, her breathing slowly deepening.
Lisa’s fingers traced idle patterns on the sharp line of Somi’s shoulder blade. The possessive ferocity was gone, replaced by a spent, tender quiet.
“You’re crazy,” Lisa whispered, her voice hoarse.
Somi smiled against her skin. “For you.”
Outside, a car passed, its headlights painting a slow arc across the ceiling. The distant, familiar sounds of the apartment building—a toilet flushing, a door closing—began to filter back in. They were back in the world, but differently. The glitter and the stage lights felt a lifetime away, sealed in a past that belonged to everyone. This, the salt on their skin and the steady beat of Somi’s heart under her palm, belonged only to them.
Lisa closed her eyes. The last thing she felt, as sleep pulled her under, was the press of Somi’s lips to her sternum, soft as a signature. A final, quiet claim in the dark.