Chapter 6: Breakfast and Departure
The silence after the promise felt different. It wasn’t empty; it was full, charged with the decision hanging between them. They had fallen asleep tangled, Lisa’s face buried in the curve of Nelissa’s neck, but sometime in the deep, starless hours before dawn, they had shifted.
Nelissa woke to weight and warmth. Lisa was curled into her, her cheek pressed soft against Nelissa’s breast, one arm flung possessively across her stomach. In sleep, the laser-sharp confidence was gone. Her lips were slightly parted, her long lashes fanned dark against her skin. She looked young, unguarded. Like a kid. The sight punched through Nelissa’s ribs, leaving a tender, aching hollow.
She lay still, committing it to memory—the rhythm of Lisa’s breath, the perfect weight of her. The city below was a silent, glittering model. This was hers. For now. The thought was terrifying. Gently, careful not to wake her, Nelissa extracted herself. Lisa made a small, discontented sound and curled into the vacated warmth. Nelissa pulled the duvet up over her bare shoulder and slipped out of the bed.
The penthouse in the pre-dawn gloom felt like a museum. She moved through it quietly, finding a discarded t-shirt of Lisa’s to pull on. It smelled like her—jasmine and something spicier, an expensive cologne now mingled with sleep and sex. In the vast, minimalist kitchen, she felt suddenly, absurdly young. Twenty-one. What did she know? She rummaged, finding eggs, bread, butter. A simple breakfast. It felt like an anchor, a normal thing to do in this utterly abnormal place.
She scrambled eggs, toasted bread. The mundane sounds were loud in the silence. The kettle hissed. She set two places at the island, the simple ceramic plates stark against the marble.
When she turned, Lisa was there.
She stood leaning in the bedroom doorway, wearing nothing, watching her. Her eyes were clear, awake, unreadable.
“You cooked,” Lisa said, her voice morning-rough.
“I tried.”
Lisa padded over, her gaze sweeping the simple setup. She didn’t sit. She stepped into Nelissa’s space, her hands coming to rest on the cool marble counter on either side of Nelissa’s hips, caging her in. “My decorator makes good eggs.”
Nelissa’s breath hitched. “Shut up.”
Lisa smiled, but it was a thin thing. The reality of the day, of the flight waiting, was already creeping back into her eyes. She leaned in and kissed Nelissa, a slow, deep, tasting kiss. “Thank you.”
They ate standing up at the island. Lisa devoured the food with a starved, focused intensity. Nelissa picked at hers, the knot in her stomach tightening with every minute that passed. The sky began to bleed pale orange at the edges of the windows.
“Car’s coming in an hour,” Lisa said, placing her fork down with a definitive click.
An hour. Sixty minutes. The number tolled in Nelissa’s head like a death knell. Her eyes dropped, tracing the line of Lisa’s body, the powerful thighs, the shadow between them. A sudden, fierce curiosity seized her, sharp and desperate. They had done so much, but she had never… Lisa had given, had taken, had commanded. Nelissa had received, had followed. There was one frontier she hadn’t crossed, one intimacy she had only wondered about in the dark, alone, with the glow of her laptop screen her only tutor.
She had watched videos. Clinical, frantic, amateur. She had wondered what it would be like. The taste. The texture. The sound Lisa would make.
“Come here,” Nelissa said, her own voice sounding strange to her.
Lisa raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have time for—”
“Now.” The word left no room for argument. It was an echo of Lisa’s own past commands, flung back at her.
A flicker of surprise, then intrigue, passed over Lisa’s face. She let Nelissa take her hand and lead her back toward the bedroom. Not to the bed. Nelissa pushed her gently until the back of Lisa’s knees hit the edge of the mattress and she sat down.
Nelissa didn’t kneel. She simply pushed Lisa onto her back, hands firm on her shoulders, and followed her down, settling between her legs. The morning light was clearer now, painting every detail in sharp relief. Lisa was already wet, a glistening evidence of their kiss, of the impending goodbye.
“Nelissa,” Lisa started, a question in her tone.
Nelissa didn’t answer. She bent her head.
The first touch of her tongue was a revelation. It wasn’t clinical. It was lush, complex, a taste entirely Lisa—musky, sweet, salty, clean. It was the most intimate flavor she’d ever known. A soft, shuddering sigh left Lisa’s lips above her.
Emboldened, Nelissa dove in. She licked a slow, broad stripe from bottom to top, circling the tight bundle of nerves at the peak. Lisa’s hips jerked. Nelissa remembered a thing she’d seen, a specific flick and twist of the tongue. She tried it.
“Fuck!” Lisa’s hand fisted in Nelissa’s hair, not pushing, just anchoring. “Where did you learn that twist with your—oh GOD!”
The praise was gasoline. Nelissa became relentless. She licked and sucked, fucking Lisa with her tongue, delving deep, then circling back to torture her clit. She was inexperienced but fiercely observant, listening to every catch of breath, every stifled moan, adjusting her pressure, her rhythm. She was mapping her with her mouth.
Lisa came apart quickly, violently. Her thighs clamped around Nelissa’s head, trembling with the force of it. A broken, sobbing cry tore from her throat. Nelissa didn’t let up. She licked her through the shudders, gentler now, until Lisa was pushing at her shoulders, oversensitive.
“Stop, stop, please, I can’t—”
Nelissa ignored her. She moved back in, sucking hard, her tongue a relentless piston. She wanted to break her. She wanted to ruin her for the day, for the flight, for New York. A second orgasm, tighter, sharper, was ripped from Lisa mere moments after the first. This time her scream was raw, unfiltered, echoing off the glass. Her body bowed off the bed, back arching in a strained curve before collapsing into the sheets, utterly spent.
Nelissa finally lifted her head, her chin slick. She crawled up Lisa’s body, watching her. Lisa’s eyes were screwed shut, tears leaking from the corners. Her chest heaved. She looked utterly destroyed.
“Remember that,” Nelissa whispered, her voice hoarse. “In New York. Remember the taste of me on your skin when you’re in hair and makeup. Remember how I just made you scream.”
Lisa’s eyes opened. They were blurred, dazed. She reached up, her thumb wiping at the wetness on Nelissa’s chin. She brought her thumb to her own mouth and sucked it clean, her gaze locked on Nelissa’s. The gesture was obscene. It was an answer.
“I have to shower,” Lisa breathed, her voice shattered. “I’m late.”
“We’ll shower.”
In the glass-walled enclosure, under the pounding hot water, Nelissa turned Lisa around, bending her over the teak bench. Her fingers, slippery with soap, found her again. Lisa was swollen, hypersensitive, but she pushed back against Nelissa’s hand with a needy whimper.
“Please,” was all she said.
Nelissa pushed three fingers inside her in one smooth, brutal thrust. Lisa cried out, her forehead thudding against the cool glass. Nelissa fucked her with her hand, a steady, deep, punishing rhythm, her other arm wrapped around Lisa’s waist, holding her upright. The water sluiced over them, mixing with the sounds of skin and strained breath.
“This is what you take with you,” Nelissa growled into the wet skin of her shoulder blade. “Not a toy. This. My fingers in you. My taste in your mouth. You belong to me here, and I’m here, in your home, waiting.”
Lisa couldn’t form words. She nodded, a frantic jerking of her head, her body convulsing around Nelissa’s thrusting fingers in a third, devastating climax that seemed less about pleasure and more about pure, physiological surrender.
They dried off in silence. Dressed in silence. Lisa’s professional mask was back, but it was fragile, hairline cracks visible in the way her hands shook slightly as she zipped her suitcase. The car was downstairs.
At the elevator, Lisa turned. She didn’t kiss her. She just looked at her, her eyes red-rimmed but fierce. “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
The doors closed.
The silence that followed was absolute. Nelissa walked back into the bedroom. The sheets were a twisted testament. The air still smelled of sex and eggs. She sat on the edge of the bed, on Lisa’s side, and placed her hand on the indent left by her head.
She was living a secret in a glass box. But for the first time, the secret was hers, too. It was in the taste still on her tongue, in the echo of a scream against glass, in the promise thrumming in the empty space. She was the decorator. She was the ghost. She was the anchor.
And she was waiting.