“The attendant—”
“She’s on the phone.” A pause. “It’ll take thirty seconds.”
Rose looked at the heavy fabric of the curtain. “Fine,” she said.
Lizanne stepped in. The room was tiny, the dress took up three-quarters of it, and they were closer than any apology could fix. Lizanne found the top button and started working her way down—efficient, businesslike, her fingers moving with that same focused competence she brought to every contract she signed.
Six buttons. Seven. The dress loosened across her spine, the sudden draft hitting her skin as the silk parted. Rose felt every button give, felt the heat of Lizanne’s knuckles brushing her back, and forced herself to stay still.
Then Lizanne’s hands slowed.
It wasn’t a stop. It was a deliberate deceleration, and Rose felt her own breath hitch—short, shallow, trapped high in her lungs. She didn’t move. Neither did Lizanne.
Rose turned.
She hadn’t planned it. Her body just moved, and then Lizanne was right there, so close Rose could see the exact, sharp line where her lipstick ended. Neither of them said aword. Lizanne’s arm hooked around her waist, pulling her flush against her, and then they were kissing.
It wasn’t tentative. There was no asking in it. Lizanne kissed her the way she occupied a room—like the space already belonged to her, like the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Rose’s hand went to Lizanne’s shoulder to push back, but then Lizanne angled into her, and the thought just... dissolved.
Lizanne walked her back one step until Rose’s shoulders hit the wall. The wedding dress slipped from Rose’s grip and pooled at her feet, and neither of them looked at it.
The air in the room felt cold against her chest until Lizanne’s mouth moved from her lips to her jaw, then her neck, taking her time at the pulse point there — she could feel Lizanne’s lips curve slightly against her skin, and the fact that Lizanne wassmilingmade Rose’s knees go soft. Then lower. When Lizanne took Rose’s nipple between her lips, Rose’s head cracked back against the wall and a jagged sound left her throat — something she hadn’t given herself permission to make.
Lizanne’s hands moved to her waist, then her hips, pinning her there while her mouth worked with a slow, agonizing deliberation that Rose was starting to suspect was intentional cruelty. Her tongue traced a wet circle and Rose’s hips rolled forward of their own accord. Lizanne made a low, vibrating sound against her skin that Rose felt directly between her legs.
“You don’t have to—” Rose started.
Lizanne’s teeth closed gently and Rose forgot what she’d been about to say.
Then Lizanne’s hand slid to the inside of her thigh.
Rose’s breath cut out completely. Lizanne’s fingers moved higher, unhurried, tracing up the inside of her thigh with a patience that was genuinely obscene, until they found her, pressing against the fabric first, just enough pressure that Rose actually whimpered, before they slipped beneath it. Stroking along her slowly.
Rose was wet and Lizanne paused for one full heartbeat before she pushed the fabric aside entirely.
The first direct touch dragged a sound out of Rose that she would be ashamed of later.
Lizanne stroked through her slowly, spreading her wetness, her fingers moving with that same maddening deliberation she brought to everything. Long strokes that avoided where Rose needed her most, circling close and then retreating, until Rose’s hips were chasing her hand without any input from Rose’s brain whatsoever.
“Lizanne.” It came out less like a word and more like a plea.
Lizanne finally settled at her clit, two fingers moving in slow, steady circles, and Rose’s grip tightened in her hair, her other hand pressing flat against the wall behind her. The pressure built fast. Rose could hear herself breathing, ragged and too loud in the small room, and she couldn’t make herself care. Lizanne’s mouth returned to her breast, tongue and lips working in a rhythm that matched her fingers, and Rose’s hips fell into it, grinding forward, chasing the contact, her whole body narrowing down to Lizanne’s hands and mouth and the slow, inexorable build of it.
Then Lizanne’s fingers slid lower and pressed inside.
Rose’s mouth fell open on a sound that wasn’t quite a word. Fingers, slow and deep, curling slightly, and the heel of Lizanne’s hand pressing against her clit with every measured thrust. Rose felt herself clenching tight around her, felt how wet she was, felt the slick slide of Lizanne moving inside her with that same composed, deliberate patience like she had nowhere else to be, like she had thought about exactly this, like she knew precisely what she was doing to Rose and had decided to do it anyway.
“God—” Rose gasped. “God, Lizanne—”
Lizanne’s fingers curled and Rose’s vision went briefly white at the edges.
She was going to come. Against a fitting room wall, with Lizanne’s fingers inside her and her wedding dress on the floor between them. She was going to come and she was going to be completely undone. Lizanne was going to watch it happen with that expression she always wore, composed and unreadable and intent, and Rose was actually going to—
“No… I can’t…”
She got no further. The orgasm steamrolled her and her eyes closed. Colors exploded before them and her breathing grew ragged as she let it consume her.
When it was over, she could not make herself look at Lizanne.
