🔥 The Bathtub 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Her Best Friend’s Wedding

Thank You for Reading! 💜

You made it to the bonus content — which means you’ve survived the Cheerios on the kitchen floor, the dock under the absurd moon, the bent fork at the rehearsal dinner, the wine cellar that Lena ruined, the bridal suite where Maya said I choose you while wearing a wedding dress meant for someone else, the cottage where they discovered what sex was supposed to feel like, the pad see ew in bed, the lemon cake at the un-wedding party, the first snowfall on the fire escape, and a love story that took thirteen years and one burst pipe to finish writing.

Thank you for giving Tasha and Maya’s story a chance. They’ve been living in our heads rent-free and we’re so glad they’re living in yours now too.

This bonus chapter takes place approximately two months after the epilogue — a lazy Sunday in February, the clawfoot tub, and the kind of slow, unhurried intimacy that belongs to two people who finally have all the time in the world.

🔥 Heat Level: Off the charts. This scene was too explicit for Amazon. You’ve been warned. 🔥

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The Bathtub

Tasha

The bathtub was Maya’s idea.

Not the bathtub itself — that had been in the apartment since before I moved in, a clawfoot relic from the 1940s with brass fixtures and a persistent drip that sounded like a tiny, judgmental metronome counting the seconds of my life. I’d lived with that bathtub for four years and had used it exclusively for showers, because taking a bath in New York City felt like an act of radical defiance against the concept of productivity, and I was not — historically speaking — a person who defied productivity. I was a person who ran around the lake at 5 a.m. and color-coded binders and ate cereal over the sink because sitting down felt like wasted time.

Maya changed that. Maya changed a lot of things, but the bathtub was the one I didn’t see coming.

“We’re taking a bath,” she announced on a Sunday afternoon in February, appearing in the bathroom doorway with two glasses of wine, a candle (vanilla, obviously, from her collection of nine thousand), and an expression that suggested this was not a negotiation.

“We’re not both fitting in that tub.”

“We fitted in the one at Ashford.”

“The one at Ashford was designed for humans. This one was designed for a very clean child.”

“We’ll make it work. I have a plan.”

“You have a plan for the bathtub.”

“I have a plan for everything now. I’m a changed woman. I make choices. I pursue desires. I alphabetize spice racks and I take baths with my girlfriend on Sunday afternoons because life is short and the hot water bill is already astronomical.”

She set the candle on the edge of the sink. Lit it. The vanilla smell filled the small bathroom, mixing with the steam from the water she’d already run — I could hear it from the couch, the rush of the faucet, the particular acoustic signature of a clawfoot tub filling, and I’d assumed she was taking a solo bath and I was going to continue lying on the couch reading my book and definitely not thinking about Maya naked in the next room.

I was always thinking about Maya naked in the next room. Or in the same room. Or in any room. Five months of sharing a bed and a life and a body with this woman and the novelty had not worn off. Not even slightly. Not even a little. Every time she walked out of the shower in a towel, every time she reached for something on a high shelf and her shirt rode up, every time she crawled into bed beside me and her bare thigh pressed against mine under the covers, my body responded with the full, embarrassing enthusiasm of a system that had been dormant for twenty-nine years and was now making up for lost time with compound interest.

“Coming?” she called from the bathroom.

I set my book down. Walked to the doorway.

She was already in the tub. The water was high — steam rising, the surface catching the candle flame in amber ripples. She’d added something to it — bath oil, or salts, something that smelled like lavender and made the water slightly opaque. Her hair was up in a clip. Her shoulders were bare above the waterline, glistening. She looked at me from the tub with those green eyes — warm, steady, the particular quality of invitation that Maya had learned to extend without performing it, without making it a production, without the careful choreography of a woman who used to plan her desire in advance and now just wanted and said so.

“Take off your clothes,” she said. “And get in.”

I took off my clothes. Slowly — not to tease, although her eyes tracking every newly exposed inch of skin suggested the effect was the same. Shirt first. Sports bra. Sweatpants. Underwear. I stood in the doorway of the bathroom naked, and she looked at me the way she always looked at me — like the first time, every time — and the ache between my legs that had been a low hum all afternoon sharpened into something specific and urgent.

“You’re staring,” I said.

“I’m appreciating. There’s a difference.”

“It feels the same from this end.”

“Get in the tub, Tasha.”

I got in the tub.

The logistics were exactly as complicated as I’d predicted. The clawfoot was not designed for two adult women, and the process of arranging ourselves required the kind of negotiation and spatial reasoning usually reserved for IKEA furniture assembly. We ended up with Maya’s back against one end, me between her legs, my back against her chest, her arms around my waist, our legs overlapping in a tangle of wet skin and bath oil.

It was tight. It was slightly uncomfortable. The faucet was dripping its tiny judgmental drip against my left foot.

It was perfect.

The water was hot. Almost too hot — the kind of temperature that makes your skin flush pink and your muscles go liquid and your brain slow down to a frequency that doesn’t involve to-do lists or spice racks or the existential weight of being a person in the world. Maya’s body was warm behind me — her breasts against my back, her stomach against my lower spine, her thighs alongside mine under the water. Her chin rested on my shoulder. Her breath was warm on my neck.

“This is nice,” she murmured.

“This is a logistical nightmare.”

“This is a nice logistical nightmare.”

Her hands moved. From my waist to my stomach, fingers spread, palms flat against my skin under the water. The touch was casual — intimate but not overtly sexual. The way she touched me when we were on the couch, in bed, walking down the street. The constant, easy physicality of a woman who had spent twenty-nine years not touching the person she wanted and was now making up for it with the relentless determination of someone clearing a decade-long backlog.

Her thumb traced a circle on my stomach. Below my navel. Slow. Lazy.

My breathing changed. She felt it — the shift from relaxed to attentive, from bath-warm to body-warm. Her lips curved against my shoulder.

“Tash?”

“Mm.”

“I want to try something.”

“In the tub?”

“In the tub.”

“We’re going to flood the bathroom.”

“Probably.”

“The downstairs neighbors are going to—”

“The downstairs neighbors are in Jersey for the weekend. I checked.”

“You checked?“

“I told you. I have a plan.”

Her hand slid lower. Below my navel. Through the water, slow, her fingers trailing over the soft skin below my belly button, following the faint line of dark hair down, and the anticipation — the knowing, the feeling her hand moving with intent — made my thighs fall open under the water before she even arrived.

“You’re already ready,” she murmured against my ear. Not a question. She could feel it — the heat, the swelling, the way my body opened for her before her fingers were even close. She’d learned this about me: I started wanting her before she started touching me. The wanting was a standing condition. A permanent state. An ambient frequency that spiked the moment she signaled intent.

Her fingers reached me. Slid through the slick heat between my legs with the ease of water and want, and I exhaled — a shuddering, full-body exhale that made the bathwater ripple.

“There you are,” she whispered.

She stroked me. Slowly. Two fingers, flat, sliding through my folds in long, languid passes, not targeting anything, not working toward anything, just touching. Exploring. The kind of touch that was about sensation, not destination — the kind of touch I’d never experienced before Maya, because every sexual encounter I’d had before her had been goal-oriented, orgasm-focused, a race to the finish line. Maya didn’t race. Maya meandered. Maya touched me like the touching was the point, like the journey was the destination, like she could do this for hours and the pleasure of making me feel good was its own reward.

I leaned my head back against her shoulder. Closed my eyes. Felt her fingers moving through the water — slow, warm, the bath oil making everything slippery, reducing friction, turning every touch into a glide.

“Tell me what feels good,” she said.

“Everything. All of it.”

“Specifics, Tash. I’m collecting data.”

I laughed — a breathless, water-edged laugh that dissolved into a moan as her fingers found my clit and circled it, once, slowly, with a pressure that was exactly right. She’d learned this too — the pressure, the pace, the specific counterclockwise motion that made my hips roll and my toes curl and my hand grip the edge of the tub.

“That,” I gasped. “That, right there.”

She did it again. And again. And again. A slow, steady, maddening rhythm that built the pressure inside me by increments — not a sprint, not a climb, but a tide. Rising. Filling. The water around us was warm and her body behind me was warm and her fingers on me were warm and everything was warmth and pressure and the specific, devastating intimacy of being touched by someone who knew your body as well as their own.

Her other hand moved to my breast. Cupped it under the water, thumb brushing my nipple, and the dual sensation — her hand between my legs and her hand on my breast, both moving in the same slow, synchronized rhythm — made my breath come in short, sharp bursts that echoed off the tile walls.

“Maya,” I whispered. “Baby, I’m—”

“Not yet.”

“What do you mean not yet?“

“I mean I’m not done with you yet.” She kissed my neck. The spot below my ear. The one that made me shiver even in hot water. “I want to take you apart slowly today. I want to make it last.”

“I’m going to drown.”

“You’re not going to drown. You’re going to come so hard the water goes over the side.”

“That is not better than drowning.”

“Agree to disagree.”

She slowed down. Backed off from my clit — moved her fingers lower, teasing, circling the entrance without pushing in, and the denial made me squirm against her, my hips chasing her hand under the water.

“Patience,” she murmured.

“I don’t have patience. I have never had patience. Patience is a virtue I was not assigned.”

“You waited thirteen years for me. You have patience.”

“That wasn’t patience. That was cowardice.”

“Tomato, tomato. Hold still.”

I held still. Or tried to. Maya’s version of “taking her time” was an exquisite torture that involved bringing me to the edge with her fingers — slow, precise circles on my clit, building, building — and then pulling back just before I tipped over, moving her hand to my thigh, my stomach, my breast, letting the urgency recede just enough that when she returned, the sensitivity was doubled.

She did this three times. Three times she brought me to the shaking, gasping, please-baby-please edge and three times she pulled back, and by the third time I was gripping the sides of the tub so hard my knuckles were white and the water was sloshing and the candle flame was dancing wildly and I was making sounds that were less words and more a continuous, low, desperate frequency.

“Maya. Maya. If you don’t let me come I’m going to—”

“You’re going to what?”

“I don’t know. Something drastic. Something involving the shower head and a locked door.”

She laughed against my neck. “I love you.”

“Prove it.”

She proved it.

Her fingers returned to my clit — firm this time, no teasing, no retreat. Consistent, steady, devastating circles with exactly the right pressure, and simultaneously she slid two fingers inside me with her other hand, curling them upward, finding the spot, and the dual stimulation — inside and out, G-spot and clit, both hands working in concert — detonated something inside me that had been building for twenty minutes.

I came. Not gently. Not quietly. The kind of orgasm that exists at the intersection of prolonged edging and deep trust and hot water and the woman you love pressed against your back with her mouth on your neck and her hands inside you and on you and everywhere. My back arched so hard I nearly slid under the water. My thighs clamped around her hand. My mouth opened on a sound that started as her name and ended as something wordless and raw and so loud that the acoustics of the tiled bathroom amplified it into a one-woman chorus of ruined.

The water went over the side.

A lot of water went over the side.

Maya held me through it — her fingers gentle now, easing me down, her lips soft against my temple, her arms solid around me as the aftershocks rolled through my body in decreasing waves. I was shaking. The water was shaking. The candle had gone out from the splash.

“Told you,” she whispered into my hair.

“Told me what?”

“The water went over the side.”

I looked. The bathroom floor was a lake. An actual lake. Water everywhere — pooled around the base of the tub, creeping toward the bathmat, approaching the door with the patient inevitability of a flood that knew it had nowhere to be.

“We’re going to lose the security deposit,” I said.

“Worth it.”

“We don’t even have a security deposit. I’ve lived here four years.”

“Then we have nothing to lose.”

I turned in the tub — a maneuver that required the flexibility of a contortionist and the determination of a woman who wanted to look at her girlfriend’s face. The water sloshed again. More went over the side. We were now operating at maybe sixty percent tub capacity, which was still enough to cover the essential areas.

I faced her. Knees on either side of her hips, hands on her shoulders, looking down at her. She was flushed — from the heat, from the exertion, from the specific glow of a woman who had just made her partner come so hard the bathroom flooded. Her eyes were dark. Her lips were parted. Her breasts were just above the waterline, nipples tight from the temperature change, and I watched a drop of water slide down the slope of one breast and thought, I am never going to get tired of this body.

“My turn,” I said.

“Maya, you don’t have to—”

“Do you remember what I told you the first time? In the cottage?”

She smiled. “‘You cannot experience the first real orgasm of your life and then not reciprocate.'”

“Exact quote. My philosophy has not changed. If anything, it’s become more aggressive.”

“Shut up and let me touch you.”

I kissed her. Tasted bathwater and wine and the warm, familiar, endlessly addictive taste of Maya Anderson’s mouth. Her hands came to my waist under the water — slippery, warm, pulling me closer so our bodies pressed together. Breast to breast. The sensation of our wet skin sliding together, nipples touching, the warmth and the water and the friction — it made us both gasp.

I reached between us. Under the water. Found her — swollen, hot, impossibly slick even in the bath — and she made a sound against my mouth that I caught with my tongue and swallowed.

I touched her the way she’d touched me — slowly. Drawing it out. Two fingers sliding through her folds, circling her clit with the specific, learned, practiced motion that I knew made her eyes roll back. I’d spent five months studying this woman’s body with the academic rigor of someone pursuing a doctorate, and I was not going to waste my education.

She moaned. Her head fell back against the rim of the tub, exposing the long line of her throat, and I leaned forward and pressed my mouth there — kissing, licking, sucking gently at the spot where her pulse hammered. Her hips rolled against my hand under the water. The remaining bathwater lapped at the edges of the tub like a very small, very complicit ocean.

“Inside,” she breathed. “I want you inside me.”

I slid two fingers in. Felt her stretch around me, hot and tight, her muscles clenching as I pushed deeper. Curled. Found the spot. Pressed.

“Fuck,” she gasped. “Right there. Don’t you dare move.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t thrust. Just held — my fingers inside her, pressing that spot with a constant, firm pressure while my thumb circled her clit, and she ground against my hand, setting her own rhythm, using me the way I wanted to be used, chasing her pleasure with a single-mindedness that was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

Her hands gripped my shoulders. Her nails dug in — not painfully, but close, the crescents of pressure that would leave marks I’d find later in the mirror and press with my fingertips, remembering. Her breathing went staccato — short, sharp, punched-out exhales — and her eyes opened, finding mine, and we looked at each other across three inches of steam and bathwater and I thought: I will never get tired of watching you come apart. I will never get tired of being the one who takes you there.

“Come for me,” I whispered. “I want to feel you.”

She came with her eyes on mine. Open. Unblinking. The most intimate thing — more intimate than the orgasm itself, more intimate than my fingers inside her or her nails in my shoulders — was the eye contact. The watching and being watched. The seeing and being seen. Two women in a bathtub in Brooklyn, drowning the bathroom and wrecking each other and looking into each other’s eyes while they did it, because after thirteen years of not seeing, they were done looking away.

She pulsed around my fingers — rhythmic, clenching, her whole body tightening and releasing in waves that I felt in my hand and in my chest and in the deep, resonant space behind my ribs where I kept everything that mattered. She said my name. Once. Quiet. Like a secret she was telling only me.

Then she pulled me forward and kissed me, wet and messy and laughing, and we sank lower in the tub until the water was at our chins and most of the bathwater was on the floor and the candle was out and the faucet was still dripping its tiny, judgmental drip and we were pressed together in a forty-year-old clawfoot tub in a walk-up in Brooklyn and we were happy.

Not performing happy. Not choosing-the-chocolate happy. Not I’m-fine-everything-is-fine happy.

Happy. The real thing.

The lemon.

Want more from Aurora North?

Stay tuned for upcoming releases — including potential spinoff books featuring Jess (the disaster bisexual with the group chat) and Lena (the sweet cousin who keeps accidentally falling in love with her roommate).

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