Chapter 8: Breaking Point
The steam coiled between them, a fragrant veil. Lila’s thumb had stopped its absent tracing on Victoria’s knee. The confession hovered, unnamed but understood. It wasn’t for them.
The words were a key turning in a lock deep inside Lila’s chest. All the performance, the practiced touches at the dinner table, the sharp glances in the elevator—they had been for an audience. This silence, this shared water, this trembling in Victoria’s usually steady hands—this was a private, terrifying broadcast on a frequency only the two of them could hear.
Without thinking, driven by a impulse she couldn’t name—defiance, curiosity, a need to seize some control—Lila moved. The water offered gentle resistance as she turned within the circle of Victoria’s legs. She rose onto her knees, the water sluicing off her shoulders, the warm air raising goosebumps on her wet skin. She looked down at Victoria, who stared back, utterly still, her blue eyes wide and unguarded.
Lila didn’t speak. She simply leaned down and covered Victoria’s mouth with her own.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a collision. A claiming. Victoria made a sound low in her throat, a shock of a gasp, and then her hands were on Lila’s hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs, pressing into the tender, bruised places from earlier. The pain was sharp and bright, a counterpoint to the sudden, overwhelming heat flooding Lila’s system. She kissed her with a desperate intensity, all her confusion and anger and terrible, unwanted fascination pouring into it. She tasted bergamot from the bath oil, and underneath it, the faint, metallic tang of blood—her own, from where she’d bitten her lip to keep from crying out before.
Victoria’s response was instantaneous, voracious. She took control of the kiss, her tongue sweeping into Lila’s mouth, one hand sliding up to tangle in her wet, fiery hair, pulling just enough to tilt her head back. It was a move of pure dominance, but her other hand smoothed over Lila’s hip, a gesture almost apologetic in its tenderness. The contradiction was dizzying.
They broke apart, gasping for air, foreheads resting together. Steam wreathed their faces.
“What are you doing?” Victoria breathed, her voice ragged.
“I don’t know,” Lila panted, her own heart hammering against her ribs. “Shutting you up. Proving a point. I don’t know.” She kissed her again, shorter, biting Victoria’s lower lip gently. “You don’t get to be the only one who’s messy.”
A harsh, startled laugh escaped Victoria. It was a raw, unfiltered sound Lila had never heard from her. Victoria’s hands came up to cradle Lila’s face, her thumbs stroking over the high bones of her cheeks. She searched Lila’s eyes, her own gaze a turbulent sea.
“You’re going to be the ruin of me,” Victoria whispered, and it didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded like a prophecy she was willingly embracing.
“Good,” Lila murmured, and lowered her mouth to the column of Victoria’s throat, tasting the salt of her skin, feeling the frantic pulse beneath her lips.
Later, much later, they lay tangled in the center of Victoria’s vast bed, shrouded in the dark. The city lights bled around the edges of the blackout curtains, painting faint stripes across the rumpled sheets. Lila was on her stomach, her face buried in a pillow that smelled like Victoria’s expensive shampoo and, now, like both of them. Every muscle in her body felt liquefied, warm and heavy.
Victoria lay beside her, on her back, one arm thrown over her eyes. Her breathing had finally evened out.
“You should stay,” Victoria said into the darkness. The words were quiet, devoid of her usual imperative tone. They hung there, an offering.
Lila turned her head, peering through a curtain of her own messy hair. “It’s a school night,” she mumbled, the joke automatic, a shield. “I have to open the cafe at five.”
“Call in sick.”
“I can’t afford to.”
“I’ll pay you for the day.” Victoria said it flatly, a transaction. Then she winced, lowering her arm. “No. That’s not what I meant. Forget I said that.”
The quick correction, the flash of frustration at herself, was more revealing than any grand gesture. Lila pushed herself up on her elbows. “You can’t just buy my time, Victoria. Not… not for this.”
“I know.” Victoria turned onto her side, propping her head on her hand. In the dim light, she looked younger, stripped of her armor. “I’m trying to say I don’t want you to go. Is that allowed?”
Lila looked at her—the ice-blonde hair tangled on the pillow, the smudged eyeliner, the perfect, composed billionaire looking utterly wrecked. By her. A weird, protective warmth spread through Lila’s chest.
“It’s allowed,” Lila said softly. She lay back down, shifting closer until her back was pressed against Victoria’s front. Victoria’s arm came around her waist, pulling her in, their bodies slotting together with an unsettling ease.
“Your family,” Lila whispered into the pillow. “The deal…”
Victoria’s breath was warm against the nape of Lila’s neck. “The deal was for a performance. This isn’t that.”
“So what is it?”
A long silence. Lila felt Victoria’s lips press softly against her shoulder blade, a ghost of a kiss.
“I don’t know that either,” Victoria murmured, her voice thick with exhaustion. “But it’s mine. Ours. Not theirs.”
The possessive word should have set off alarms. Instead, it felt like a blanket in the dark. Lila closed her eyes. She thought of her tiny, drafty apartment, her silent, lonely bed, the endless grey grind of the next day. Here, in this ludicrously expensive fortress, in the arms of a woman who was equal parts terrifying and mesmerizing, she felt, for the first time in a long time, viscerally present. She was sore, confused, and in way over her head.
She was also, against all logic and self-preservation, already drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep. The last thing she felt was Victoria’s hand splayed across her stomach, holding her there, as if afraid she’d vanish with the dawn.