***
The next week they went to a friend's birthday drinks at a rooftop bar overlooking the river, over-priced but more than made up for by the spectacular sunset view. They were stood at the railing with drinks, talking to another couple they knew through Ellie's work, when Ellie noticed a woman across the bar looking at Becca.
It wasn't the same as last Friday. The woman wasn't approaching, wasn't flirting, was just... looking. But she was really looking, checking Becca out, the way you look at someone beautiful in a bar when you think no one is watching.
Ellie noticed though, and noticing was stirring up those same feelings as the week before. She didn't say anything. She watched the woman watch Becca for a minute, then the woman looked away, but fifteen minutes later she saw her looking again, and there was something in her expression that told Ellie that the woman was thinking thoughts about Becca that it wasn’t normally considered polite to think about someone else’s wife.
Later, in bed, when they were lying in the dark Ellie said, "There was a woman at the bar tonight. She was checking you out."
Becca was silent for a moment. "Was she cute?"
"Yeah. Very feminine. Hot.”
Another silence. Then Becca rolled over and found Ellie in the dark, her hand on Ellie's stomach, her mouth close to Ellie's ear. "Tell me about her."
And Ellie did. And it wasn't Becca in charge of the narration this time, it was Ellie, describing what she'd imagined while she watched this stranger watch her wife, and it was different from their other night because Ellie was the one in control of the story, she was the one choosing what happened and when and how, and the power of it, of being the one who decided what Becca did in this imaginary encounter, added something new and very hot to the mix.
Ellie came twice while she narrated, Becca between her legs for the first time, the two grinding into each other, Ellie on top as usual, the second. The intensity was off the scale… it was insane.
Afterwards, still breathing hard, Becca said, "That was different."
"Different good?"
"Different very good. You leading the narration instead of me. That was..." She trailed off and Ellie could tell she was smiling in the dark. "I liked you being in control of the story."
Ellie filed that away.In control of the story. She liked the sound of that.
Chapter 4
It happened in little increments, like turning up a dimmer switch very, very slowly so that you don’t notice the room getting brighter until suddenly everything is bathed in light.
Becca started properly flirting.
Not with Ellie, because she’d always flirted with Ellie, they flirted like they breathed, a constant low-level trickle of teasing and touching, of looks that said things that there was no need to vocalise. This was different. This was Becca flirting with other women, and Ellie was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining it.
It was subtle at first. A work happy hour at a bar on West 6thwhere Ellie arrived late and found Becca deep in conversation with one of her colleagues’ friends, a pretty blonde woman who was laughing harder than necessary at whatever Becca was saying. Becca wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was being Becca, funny, engaging, but there was something beneath it now,an edge that was familiar after that Friday night… the flirting ramped up when she saw that Ellie had arrived, a tiny but unmistakable shift in her body language. She leaned in a fraction closer, she touched the blonde’s arm to make a point, and she pushed her hair back behind her ear.
The tell.
Except… was it now? Becca now knew exactly what that gesture did to Ellie, and she was doing it anyway, and when she glanced over at Ellie from across the bar there was a flicker of something in her expression… amusement? Satisfaction? The pleasure of a shared secret?
All of them probably. And did it matter? Because if it was genuine, then Ellie had a name for it now and it was thrilling. And if it wasn’t, then Becca was doing it to flirt with Ellie directly, which was also thrilling.
That night when they got home the sex was outstanding. Neither woman needed to narrate. The image of Becca leaning in towards the blonde, touching her arm, pushing her hair back, that was enough. It was fuel, it was kindling, and they burned through it together.
***
The next time was at a house party thrown by friends. A Saturday night, a sprawling place out in the suburbs with a backyard and broad mix of people from Austin life. Ellie was talking shop near the cooler with a colleague who was there when she looked up to see Becca on the other side of the yard,leaning against the fence, talking to woman that Ellie didn’t recognise.
The woman was straight. Ellie would have bet a lot of money on it… there was something about the way she held herself, the way she laughed at Becca, the slight bewilderment in her expression that said that she wasn’t entirely sure why this conversation felt different from other conversations she’d had that night but wasn’t complaining.
Becca was in a summer dress that Ellie loved, one that showed off her shoulders and fell to just above her knee. She looked effortlessly gorgeous, even though Ellie knew it took twenty minutes and a very expensive moisturiser to keep on looking that way.
She was being charming, Ellie thought, that was the word for it. Not flirting in a way that anyone watching would have identified as flirting, just being more charming than was strictly necessary, giving this woman the full force of her personality. The woman was responding the way that everyone responded to Becca when she turned it on: slightly dazzled, a little off-balance, but not remotely able to look away.
Ellie watched for ten minutes, maybe fifteen. She watched Becca touch the woman's wrist when she laughed at a joke. She watched Becca tilt her head in that listening way she had. She watched the woman lean in closer, unconsciously drawn, the way a plant leans toward the sun.
And Ellie felt it. The same thing she'd felt at the bar that Friday night, the same thing she'd felt at the rooftop, the same heat, the same ache, the same confusing jumble of jealousy and arousal.
