Chapter 3: Shared Fruit
The rhythm we found was liquid, a give-and-take that had nothing to do with the man standing above us and everything to do with the magnetic field pulling between Giada and me. Our mouths traveled his skin, our tongues tracing identical paths on opposite sides until they met, slick and warm, at the tip. The taste of him was one thing, salt and skin. The taste of her, mixed with him on my tongue, was something else entirely. It was a revelation.
I’d never kissed a woman before. Not really. Not like this. This wasn't a hesitant peck after too much wine. This was collaboration. Consumption.
Giada took the head into her mouth, her lips forming a perfect ‘O’, her eyes closing in concentration. I watched, mesmerized, before dipping my head to lick the length of the shaft, my cheek brushing against hers. The soft scratch of her curls against my temple. The heat radiating from her skin. A groan from above vibrated through the air, and a hand settled on the crown of my head, fingers threading through my chestnut hair. A moment later, I felt the weight of another hand in Giada’s curls. Anchoring us. Guiding us.
We swapped without a word. I took him into my mouth, and the blunt pressure, the unfamiliar stretch of my jaw, was suddenly secondary. Because Giada was watching me. Her amber eyes were dark, dilated, fixed on my lips. She leaned in, not to take her turn, but to lick the exposed base where my mouth couldn’t reach. Her tongue was a stripe of fire against sensitive skin, a counterpoint to my own slow suction. Our breath fogged the air between us.
“You look good like that,” she murmured, her voice a low thrum that I felt in my bones. “Natural.”
I released him with a soft pop, turning my face toward hers. Our noses were inches apart. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”
A slow, wicked smile touched her lips. The hand in my hair tightened, not painfully, but insistently, urging me back. I obeyed, but my world had tilted. He was just a instrument now, a focal point for this dizzying new energy arcing between Giada and me.
As I worked, my eyes locked on hers, something changed. Her expression shifted from shared pleasure to something more deliberate, more possessive. Her gaze dropped from my face, trailing down my neck, over the swell of my breast barely contained by the silk robe, down to where I knelt on the rug.
Then her hand moved.
It wasn’t an abrupt invasion. It was a deliberate descent. Her fingers, warm and surprisingly sure, skated over my inner thigh, pushing aside the delicate fabric of my robe and underwear. I froze, a jolt of pure lightning shooting up my spine. My mouth stilled.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. It was an instruction. Her voice had lost its softness, gaining an edge of gravel that was utterly captivating.
I forced myself to continue, the motion becoming mechanical as all my awareness narrowed to that single point of contact. Her fingertips found me, already slick with an arousal that had nothing to do with the man in front of me and everything to do with the woman beside me. She traced a slow, maddening circle.
A broken sound escaped my throat, muffled against skin.
“See?” she whispered, leaning in so her lips were against my ear. Her breath was hot. “You’re so wet for this. For us. You love being watched. You love being good.”
Her words were a catalyst. They shattered the last pretense that this was just an audition. Heat flooded my cheeks, a mix of shame and exhilarating exposure. She saw me. She saw the parts of me I thought were hidden, the hungry, performative core, and she wasn’t recoiling. She was commanding it.
“You don’t know what I love,” I managed to gasp, pulling away for a second to breathe, to challenge her. It was a reflex, the old Valentina clinging to a shred of control.
Giada’s fingers pressed deeper, a firm, undeniable pressure. Her other hand came up and cupped my chin, forcing my eyes to hers. “I think I do,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You love the power of it. You love the dare. You walked in here to prove something. So prove it. Don’t just take it. Show me you want it.”
The challenge was a spark to tinder. That old fear of being “too much” evaporated, burned away by the sheer certainty in her eyes. She wanted too much. And she was offering me a mirror.
I held her gaze, my own turning defiant. I took him back into my mouth, deeper this time, letting my throat relax, a move I’d only read about. The groan from above was guttural, rewarding. But my triumph was for Giada. See? my eyes said over the obscene connection of our bodies. See what I can do?
Her answering smile was radiant, triumphant. “Good,” she breathed, her finger finding a rhythm that matched mine, a relentless, building cadence. “That’s so good, Valentina.”
The room dissolved into sensation—the ache in my knees on the wool rug, the weight on my tongue, the sweet, sharp friction of her touch, the smell of us and him and dust and candle wax. The projector’s hum was the sound of my own blood in my ears. I was unmoored, a vessel of pure response. The director’s hands tightened in our hair, his hips stuttering, but he was a distant storm. The center of the universe was the amber fire in Giada’s eyes and the knowing stroke of her hand.
I was close. Teetering on an edge I hadn’t seen coming. And as my body tensed, rushing toward a climax forged entirely by her command, one clear, lucid thought arrowed through the haze: This wasn’t an ending. It was a door swinging wildly open, and she was pulling me through.