She pushes open a door, glances inside, then tugs me in behind her.
The door shuts behind us, and I hear the lock click in place. The next second, she’s kissing me.
There’s no hesitation, no buildup—just the impact of it, her cold hands on my face, my shoulders, pulling me in like she’s been holding this back longer than I have. I meet her there without thinking, my hands finding her waist, the line of her back, grounding myself in something that feels immediate and real after a few weeks of not being able to touch her, not being able to exist in the same space as her.
“I missed you,” I say against her mouth, and it comes out quieter than I expect, like something I’ve been holding on to without realizing.
“I know,” she breathes, and then she kisses me again, slower this time, like she’s not trying to catch up anymore but stay exactly where we are.
I let out a small breath that almost turns into a laugh, my forehead resting briefly against her as I try to gather my thoughts, to remember what I was doing before she found me across the lobby and everything shifted.
“Ireland was…” I start, and I can feel my brain trying to organize something coherent and useful, but it doesn’t quite get there. I shake my head slightly. “You would have hated it. The rink is just a temporary one they have a few times a year, shared with the recreational skaters, and no one there understands structure or training cadence, but the kid?—”
“Respectfully, Princess,” Cecilia murmurs, one hand tightening at my waist as her mouth moves down the line of my neck, warm and distracting and entirely too effective. She turns me with a firmness that makes something in my chest catch, pressing me back against the lockers as she shoves my heavy coat off my shoulders and lets it fall with a thud at my feet. “I do not give a single fuck about this right now.”
“Okay, but?—”
“No.”
I huff out a breath that’s half protest, half laughter, my hands landing at her hips as she crowds closer, her mouth finding that spot just below my ear that makes it very difficult to form complete thoughts.
“I think you’ll love him,” I insist anyway, because apparently I have no self-preservation instinct when it comes to this. “He’s?—”
“Isabella,” she says, and this time she pulls back just enough to look at me, her mouth pink and swollen and so close to mine. “Are we seriously talking about work right now?”
I see it then—the way she’s smiling, the way she’s not actually annoyed, just… here. Fully here and inside this bubble with me, and everything else outside of this immediacy is distant and unimportant.
“I’m just saying,” I reply, softer now, my hands sliding up her arms, slower this time, tracing instead of holding. “You’d be a good fit for him.”
Her eyes flicker at that, then she tilts her head down and kisses my shoulder, moving the strap of my dress down with her teeth.
“Would I?” she asks, the words sliding out warm and teasing.
I nod once, my fingers tangling in her hair almost absently, like I’m not thinking too hard about what I’m implying. “Yeah. You would.”
Cecilia’s gaze lingers on me, the way it does when she’strying to determine if something means more than it sounds like it does.
She doesn’t say anything, so I fill the space by letting my hand settle at the back of her neck and pull her towards me, closing the space before it turns into something heavier than I intended.
“I only have an hour,” she says against my skin, and I feel her tongue as she slides it slowly from my collarbone to the top of my breast. “You can tell me everything later.”
“Later,” I repeat, but it comes out softer, mixed in with a whimper as her warm mouth hovers over my nipples.
Cecilia’s hand tightens at my waist, fingers pressing in just enough to pull me closer, and I let her, my body shifting forward without resistance, without the instinct to recalibrate or slow this down the way I normally would.
There’s no space left between us.
I can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of my dress, the steady rise and fall of her breath, the way she moves like she’s already mapped out exactly what she’s going to do with me and is expecting this exact reaction.
Her hand lowers down to the hem of my dress and immediately she drags it up my inner thighs, her fingertips sliding slowly until she’s brushing over my clit, right over my underwear. I haven’t been here for fifteen minutes and she already has me arching into her, pressed against the cold metal of a locker, trying and failing to stay quiet in this dirty locker room.
“Ceci—” I start, but the word sounds breathy and barely above a whisper.
“Shh,” she says against my mouth now, her hands doing something insane. “You absolutely have to be quiet, Princess.”
I nod enthusiastically and start moving my hands, unbuttoning her silky shirt as I go.
“What the fuck,” I whisper, staring at the icy blue lace stretched across her skin. “Did you wear this just for me?”
