The bass pounded my chest at 145 beats per minute. Sweat and expensive perfume mixed with a whiff of weed in the air. Strobe lights cut the club into sharp flashes, turning everyone into a series of freeze frames, arms up, heads back, mouths open, there and gone and there again. I’d been in black all night, skinny jeans, a sheer blouse with black satin underneath that I’d put on more out of habit than hope. Most of a warm gin and tonic in hand that I’d stopped tasting about an hour ago. I hung back near the edge of the dance floor, catching my breath after the last tune. My feet were already killing me. Worth it though. The DJ was on one tonight, locked in, barely looking up, just pulling the room deeper tune by tune like he had somewhere specific he wanted to take us all.
That’s when I spotted her.
Copper hair glowing deep red under one of the overhead bulbs, like something on fire in slow motion. She was near the middle of the floor, dancing with a group of girls I didn’t recognise, not particularly with any of them, just in the vicinity of them, doing her own thing. Small, but she filled the space around her. Wet red curls clung to her neck and forehead. She wore a dark green silky slip dress that hit mid-thigh, with thin straps, clinging where the dancing had made her sweat. Legs bare. Small silver hoops in her ears. And that little silver ring in her nose catching the light with every strobe, flashing like a signal.
I watched her for probably longer than was cool.
She moved well. Not performatively, not the way some people dance when they know they’re being watched, unselfconscious, completely inside the music, hips finding the bassline like it was something personal between her and the speakers. The girls around her were doing the standard thing, phones up half the time, dancing at each other. She wasn’t interested in any of that. She had her eyes half closed and her arms loose, and she was somewhere else entirely. There’s a type of person who goes to clubs actually for the music. You can always spot them; they’re the ones not performing it for anyone, not checking who’s watching, and not narrating the night on their phone. She was one of those. I liked that immediately. Liked it maybe more than I should’ve from twenty feet away, having never spoken a word to her.
I put my gin down on the nearest surface and went in.
The floor was packed. I navigated around a group of lads who were more shoving than dancing, sidestepped a couple locked together in their own world, squeezed past a girl in a silver dress who was absolutely not sober. The bass was louder in the middle; you felt it in your ribs, in your chest cavity. The heat of all those bodies hit immediately.
I came up near her without making a thing of it. Started dancing. Just in her orbit at first, not crowding her, close enough that she’d clock me when she looked. The music shifted into something heavier, and the whole floor moved with it.
She looked.
Her green eyes found mine through the strobe flashes, and something twisted hard in my gut. She held the look, didn’t glance away, didn’t smile yet, just held it with this steady, measuring expression while her body kept moving with the music. Working something out.
I held it back.
We stayed like that through half a tune. Dancing near each other, not touching, not speaking (it was impossible over the noise anyway), the space between us getting smaller by degrees without either of us making an obvious move. Someone bumped me from behind, and I stepped closer. She didn’t step back. Our arms brushed, and I pressed mine against hers deliberately. Hard enough to mean something.
She didn’t pull away. She grabbed my wrist instead. Thumb finding my pulse like she was taking a reading. Yanked me against her.
We danced together properly then. Bodies close, moving with the same bassline, the crowd pressing in from every side, strangers’ elbows and shoulders, the heat of a hundred other people, but the floor had shrunk down to just the two of us and this small charged space between our bodies. Her hips rolled against mine, and I put my hand on her waist, and she let me, and the tune kept building and building.
Her face was close. I could see a bead of sweat at her temple, a damp curl stuck to her cheek. That green dress was dark at the straps with it. Her eyes hadn’t left mine.
I leant in. She met me halfway.
The first kiss came fast and messy. Gin and lipstick taste. Her tongue pushed in bold while the music shook our feet, and someone behind me knocked into my shoulder, and neither of us moved an inch. The beat dropped, and the whole floor went up around us, and we kissed through all of it, her fingers curling into my hip, my hand still at her waist. When we finally broke apart, she was panting, lips all swollen, looking at me like the dare had already been accepted on both sides.
I moved towards her ear. My lips against the warm skin just below it.
“Come back with me?”
She pulled back just enough to look at me. Then leant in, her mouth brushing over my ear.
“Niamh.” A breath more than a word. Like she was handing me something.
“Chloe.” I felt her smile against my cheek.
She grabbed my hand and headed for the door.
*
The cold hit us hard outside. She grabbed my hand on the pavement, and I flagged a cab down fast, both of us still buzzing from the bass, from each other, from that kiss. We bundled into the back, laughing like idiots. The driver glanced in his mirror once, clocked us immediately, said nothing, and pulled out into the night traffic. Eyes front after that. Stiff-necked and professional the whole way.
Niamh was on me before we’d gone a hundred yards, and I met her halfway. Her mouth found mine in the dark back seat, and I tasted gin and lipstick still. My hands went under her dress onto that warm skin, and she made this noise, half surprised, half absolutely not surprised, and arched into me, fingers knotting in my hair. She pulled back just enough to breathe and then came back harder. I felt the driver lean forward and angle his mirror very deliberately away. Good man.
City lights smeared past, yellow, through the window. Her thigh pushed between mine. I bit her lower lip softly, and she made a sound low in her throat, which I felt more than heard. Her hand was flat on my spine under my top, pulling me closer, like letting go even an inch might let the whole thing unravel. It wasn’t going to unravel; neither of us wanted it to.
We barely made it through my door. I shoved her back against the hallway wall, and we stood there laughing and gasping, and neither of us was quite in control of anything. Orange streetlight leaked in through the window and threw everything amber. The flat was small and warm and looked exactly like what it was, a single woman’s place, with books in unstable piles, a coat over the back of every chair and one lamp on in the corner that I’d left on that morning without any particular reason and was now extremely glad about. I pushed a wet curl off her forehead, and my hand stayed on her cheek a second longer than it needed to.
“You’re shaking.” Her chest going hard.
“You too.” That look in her eyes. The dare. “What’s got you so worked up already?”
I kissed her instead of answering. Slower than before. She softened into it in a way that did something stupid to my knees. My hands went up under her top, feeling the warmth of her and the curve at her waist. The green slip dress had one long side zip; I found it without fumbling and drew it down slowly. It slid off her shoulders and hit the floor two steps from the sofa. My shirt went next. She went for my jeans’ buttons and turned it into a whole thing, fingers going deliberately slow, watching my face while she did it. I got her back for that with my teeth on her neck until she swore under her breath and dropped the performance and just pulled.
We made it to the sofa eventually. Stopping against the doorframe. Stopping in the middle of the room because her mouth on my collarbone made concentrating impossible. My shirt ended up near the bookcase. I have no memory of exactly when.
The sofa was an old thing — deep-cushioned, dark grey fabric that had seen better days and was about to see considerably worse ones. I’d been meaning to replace it for two years. Suddenly very glad I hadn’t.
By the time we hit the cushions, we were down to underwear and not much sense.
She was in a pale blush, soft cotton bra with a scallop of lace along the cups, and matching high-cut knickers in the same fabric, nearly sheer in the amber light, sitting high on her hips. I was in black satin. Plain bikini briefs and a push-up that I’d bought for a work night out three weeks ago and not worn since. Funny the things you end up grateful for.
I hooked my leg over hers and pulled our bare thighs together. Heat came off her strongly.
*
The laughter stopped when her mouth found mine again properly. Not like before in the taxi, not the frantic stuff in the hallway. This was slower and deeper and completely deliberate, the kind of kiss that doesn’t have anywhere else to be.
My hands moved over her back, her sides, the soft give of her waist. She arched up into everything I did, like she’d been waiting for it. I unhooked her bra without asking; she let me, shrugged it off, and tossed it somewhere behind the sofa without a backward glance. My palms found her bare breasts warm and full, nipples already tightening under my thumbs before I’d properly started. I rolled them slowly. She bit my lip hard enough to leave a mark, probably.
“Fair’s fair.” With one hand behind me, my bra was gone, straps off my shoulders, the whole thing somewhere on the floor. She looked at me in the amber light coming through the window. “God. You’re gorgeous.”
I pulled her back in before she could say anything else that would completely undo me.
Our mouths and hands were going everywhere then, with no particular plan to any of it. Her lips dragged down my throat, my collarbone, and the curve of my breast. My fingers slid down her stomach, and she tensed, this full-body flinch that she couldn’t quite help, and when I cupped her through the blush lace, I felt it straight away. Warm and damp and darkening already, the thin fabric clinging. Soaked through her knickers, and we’d barely touched each other properly.
“Chloe.” My name in her mouth like that.
“I know.” Rubbing slow circles through the wet lace. She pushed her hips up, hunting for more pressure. I kept it light on purpose. Made her come to me.
Her hand slid between my thighs in revenge, and I felt the heel of her palm through my black satin and nearly bit through my own lip. I was soaked too; I had been since the taxi, probably, maybe since the club if I was being honest with myself, and the pressure of her hand through the wet fabric made me grind down without meaning to. She noticed. Smiled against my mouth. Smug about it. I would’ve been annoyed if I hadn’t been so far gone.
We went like that for a while. Long, slow rolls of hips. Hands pressing and retreating through soaked thin fabric. Her nipples were stiff points against my chest, and I dragged my thumb across one, and she dug her nails into my hip so hard I’d find the marks in the morning. I didn’t care then either.
Her breathing went ragged. Short and catching. Her thighs kept clenching around my hand, releasing, clenching again. The heat through that lace was getting serious, swollen and urgent, and I could feel how close she was getting. Or would have been. Except something else was starting to compete with it. A small shift beneath me. Then another.
She broke the kiss.
“Hey,” tight. Strained at the edges. “Where’s ya bathroom? I need to piss. Now.”
*
I looked at her properly. Her jaw was set, but her eyes were still on me, still warm and open. She wasn’t pulling away; she was waiting to see what I’d do with this.
Something went tight in my chest.
“Stay.” Quiet. “Just a second.”
She held my eyes. Working something out.
“Chloe.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re actually weird, d’you know that?”
“Yeah. Story of my life.” I waited.
Something moved in her face. The dare came back in around the edges. She didn’t go for the door.
I kissed her again. Slow and deliberate this time, not rushing it. Her legs tensed, but she kissed back, hands coming up to my jaw, thumbs pressing in. Then I felt it, that faint involuntary shift in her hips, the small clench she couldn’t help. Her body was starting to override the conversation. She’d been holding this for a long time.
Six months since the split, and I’d forgotten what this felt like. Having someone completely undone in my lap. It wasn’t cruelty, nothing like that; it was hunger, the kind that builds quietly when you go too long without something you didn’t even know you were missing until it’s right there in front of you.
I pulled back just enough to speak. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not messing about, Chloe.” Her voice had dropped. The bravado thinning out. “I’ve been holding it since before we left; the taxi didn’t help. It actually hurts.”
“I know it does.” I ran my palm slow and flat down over her stomach. Felt it right away, firm and tight and round; everything pulled taut just under that soft skin. She sucked in a sharp breath. “Absolutely bursting, aren’t you?”
“Don’t.” Sharp. But she still didn’t move.
“Better idea.” I held her eyes. “Sit on my lap. Right here. Don’t go anywhere.”
“You’ve lost it.” Wide eyes. “I’ll go everywhere. Chloe, let me up, or I swear to God I’m going to make a mess right here.” I saw the flicker in her eyes, though; part of her wanted to see if I’d really keep her there.
“Yeah.” I kissed the corner of her mouth. “You are.”
She stared at me. Breathing in short pulls now. Another involuntary clench, her whole core drawing tight against the pressure. I could see the effort holding on was costing her. I cupped her again through the soaked blush lace, drenched from the makeout, warm and swollen under my palm, and pressed in firm and slow. The noise she made was absolutely wrecked.
“Rock hard, baby,” I pressed again, gently. “You’re about to pop.”
“Please.” Half moan, half something more desperate than that. Hips jerking against my hand, trying to get away from the pressure. “Please, Chloe, if you don’t stop, I’m going to…”
“Gonna what? Say it.”
Her face went dark red. Eyes squeezed shut. “Pee on you.” Barely a whisper. Mortified with it. “I’m going to pee all over you.”
I lifted her by the waist and settled her across my thighs, facing away from me, her back against my chest, the blush lace pressed right against my bare skin. She was trembling head to toe. Every muscle braced.
“Let go.” Into her hair. “Right now. Do it for me.”
She held on for maybe five seconds. Less. One last full-body shudder, and then she gave in.
The heat hit like a wave. Searing and sudden and absolutely relentless, flooding through the thin lace in a fierce, heavy rush, soaking straight through her knickers and flooding over my bare thighs, soaking into my black satin that was already wet with wanting her. Over my skin, between our legs, pooling deep into the sofa cushions beneath us. The blush lace went dark, deep rose, saturated, clinging to every curve, heavy and dripping. It kept coming. She kept going; she couldn’t stop once she’d started, and the long ragged breath that left her was half relief and half something that cracked right open. Her head dropped back against my shoulder.
I held her through all of it. Felt the warmth keep spreading between us. The sofa groaned underneath. Steam rose faintly in the cool room. The sharp, clean smell of it cut right through the perfume and sweat still on both our skins. Under my palm, her stomach softened as the pressure drained away, all that tightness letting go at once.
A small broken sound when the last of it ebbed. Not shame exactly. Rawer than that. That tough girl from the club with her daredevil eyes and her silver nose ring, coming completely apart in my lap like she’d been holding herself together all night with both hands.
“There you go.” I pressed my lips to her temple. Hold on.
She laughed. One short, surprised burst that got out before she could catch it. That sound did more to me than anything else had all night.
*
She sagged heavily against me. Drenched and still shaking, making no move to go anywhere. Good.
I shifted her so she was across my lap, still but facing me now, legs on either side of my thighs. The blush knickers were done for, dark and swollen with wet, warm and dripping slowly onto the cushion under us. I could smell her through the ruined lace. Her. Properly hers, musky and sharp, absolutely nothing polite about it.
I put my whole palm over her first and held it there. Felt the heat coming off the soaked fabric. Felt how swollen she still was underneath, all…
