The Baker’s Good Girl — Bonus Chapter

The Morning After the Soft Opening — by Aurora North

Set immediately after Chapter Fifteen. The night of Valentine’s Day. Three a.m., upstairs at Vega + Lane.

Contains explicit FF content. 18+. Reader discretion advised.

I woke at three-oh-seven AM to a hand sliding up the inside of my thigh under the duvet, and a low warm voice against the back of my neck saying, very quietly:

“Mija.“

I said, into the pillow, “Marisol.“

She said, “Are you awake.”

I said, “I am now.”

She said, “Good.”

I said, “What time is it.”

She said, “Late.”

I said, “Marisol —”

She said, “We have all of tomorrow off, mija. The shop is dark. Caleb is opening Sunday. Tomás and Julien are not getting up before noon. Your parents are at the Birch. Eli is at Doreen’s. The whole world is asleep. The only people awake in the apartment over the bakery are you and me, and I have been lying here for an hour and a half thinking about what I want to do to my wife.”

She said it with the small stress on wife.

I felt it go through me from my throat to the soles of my feet.

I rolled over.

I rolled onto my back, slow, in the gray T-shirt I had managed to put on at some point in the night, and the cabled sweater I had not, and Marisol was on her side beside me on her elbow with her dark hair falling over one shoulder and the silver at her temples catching the candle on the dresser that she had, at some point in the past hour, gotten up and lit. The medallion was on the dresser. The new gold ring on her left hand caught the light. Oleander was, I noted, in the doorway, having decided in advance to leave the room.

I said, “How long have you been awake.”

She said, “Since two-fifteen.”

I said, “Marisol.”

She said, “I had — mija — I had a thought, and the thought woke me up, and I have been lying here for fifty-two minutes deciding whether or not to wake you, and I have decided. Yes?”

I said, “What was the thought.”

She put her hand flat on my stomach under the T-shirt.

She said, “I want to take a very long time. I want to do something I have not done with you yet. I want to do everything I can think of in one night, mija, because we got married twelve hours ago, and because there is nobody downstairs, and because the apartment is warm, and because there is a small list of things I have been thinking about for forty-nine days, and I would like to do all of them, in order, until you cannot move.”

I closed my eyes.

I said, “Marisol.“

She said, “Yes?”

I said, “Tell me the list.”

She said, “Mm.”

She said, “I am going to make you come, with my mouth, three times before I am inside you the first time.”

I said, “Marisol —”

She said, “I am going to use the strap. The bigger one, this time. The one I have not used with you yet.”

I said, “Oh.“

She said, “I am going to use both my hands. I am going to use a small toy I have not shown you. It is in the bottom drawer. I bought it in early January. I have been waiting.”

I said, “Marisol Vega.“

She said, “I am going to use ice from the walk-in. Not yet. Toward the end. Because I want to. Because I am, mija, a show-off, and because it is our wedding night, and because I have been thinking about it since you told me, on the night of the marathon in the prep counter, that the cold did a thing to you.”

I said, “Oh, my God.“

She said, “And — mija — at the end of the night, I am going to put my mouth on you for the fourth time. After everything else. And I am not going to stop until you cannot make a sound anymore. Yes?”

I said, “Marisol — I — yes —“

She said, “Tell me the word.”

I said, “Burnt.”

She said, “Yellow?”

I said, “Yellow for slow down. Burnt for stop.”

She said, “Good girl.”

I closed my eyes again.

I said, “Marisol.”

She said, “Yes.”

I said, “I want — I want to add one thing to the list.”

She said, “Tell me, mija.“

I said, “I want — I want to do something to you. In the middle. I have been thinking about it for a week. I have a thing I want to try. It is — it is — Marisol, I am not going to be able to say it out loud.”

She said, “Mija.“

She said, “Whisper it.”

I leaned up.

I put my mouth against her ear.

I whispered it.

She went very still for a second on the bed beside me. Then she made a low sound in her throat that was not quite a laugh and not quite a hum, a yes sound, the same sound she made when a dough came out of the oven exactly the way she had meant it to, and she said, against the side of my face:

“Sienna Lane.“

I said, “Yes?”

She said, “Mi mujer. Where did you learn that.”

I said, “I read it in a book.”

She said, “Mija.“

I said, “What.”

She said, “I love you.”

I said, “I love you.”

She said, “Lie back.”

I lay back.

She started.

The first one she did with her mouth, slow, the way she always started — the unhurried mapping of my whole body before she went anywhere specific, the slow reading of my collarbone and my sternum and my ribs and my hips with her mouth, the small careful kisses at the inside of my elbow that always — always, since the second night — undid me in a way I did not understand. She took her time. She kept her left hand flat on my stomach the whole time, the way she always did, anchor and ownership at once.

She got me so wound up that by the time she actually reached the place she was going to land her mouth, I had been begging in two languages for six minutes.

She said, low against my hip, “Mija.“

I said, “Please —“

She said, “I am going to ask you something and I want you to answer in Spanish.”

I said, “Marisol — I cannot — I do not have it like that —”

She said, “Mija. You have been studying. I have seen the notebook. I am going to ask you a question, in Spanish, and I want you to answer.”

I said, “Okay —“

She said: “¿Quién soy?“

I said, on a broken laugh, “Who. Who. Who am I. Marisol. Marisol, you are — eres mi esposa.“

She said, “Mm.“

She said, “Y tú, mi vida — ¿quién eres tú?“

I said, “Soy — soy tu mujer. Soy tu esposa.“

She said, “Mi mujer.“

She said it like a benediction. Then she put her mouth on me.

I came in about two minutes.

I came hard, with my hand fisted in the pillow above my head and my thighs trembling and her mouth pressed exactly where it needed to be pressed, and at the end of the first one she did not stop. She kept going, gentler now, riding me down.

Then she went again.

The second one was longer. She edged me, twice, with the same careful precise patience she used on a sucrée. I begged. She let me beg. She let me go through the whole vocabulary I had — the please, the Marisol, the mi vida, the mi esposa, the small private words I had been practicing for a month to say to her in this exact bed in this exact moment — and she let me say all of them, once, and only when I had said mi mujer did she say, low: “Mija. Come.“

I came.

The second one took longer to come down from. She climbed up beside me, kissed my temple, my mouth, my throat, gentle. I caught my breath.

I said, “Marisol.”

She said, “Mija.“

I said, “The third one —”

She said, “Yes?”

I said, “Use your hand. Save your mouth. I am going to need it later.”

She laughed.

She actually laughed — a low warm wedding-night laugh — and she said: “Mija — that is very good planning.“

She used her hand.

She did it slow. She did it on her side facing me with our foreheads pressed together and our legs tangled, and she worked me slow with two fingers and the heel of her palm, and she watched my face the whole time, and she did not say anything for a long while. Her thumb circled. The strap of memory was in her left hand, and the gold ring caught the candlelight, and she watched me, and watched me, and when I came it was slow and warm and easy, the third one of the night, with a small soft oh, Marisol into her mouth.

She kept her hand there.

She did not pull out.

She said, against my mouth: “Mi vida.“

I said, “Mi vida.“

She said, “Three.”

I said, “Three.”

She said, “Are you ready for the next thing.”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Wait here.”

She got up.

She went to the dresser, naked, in the candlelight, with her hair down across one shoulder, and I lay on the bed and watched her — and I want to put on the record that watching Marisol Vega cross a candlelit bedroom on her wedding night, naked, on a mission, with a slight smile on her face and a small private thing in her hand from the bottom drawer she had not yet shown me, was a thing I am going to remember on my deathbed — and she came back to the bed.

She had two things.

One was the harness, with the bigger toy in it — a careful careful step up from the one we had been using, not enormous, not anywhere close to what she could have chosen, but bigger — and the other was a small pink silicone thing about the size of an egg, which I had not seen before, and which I knew, from approximately one second of looking at it, was a small vibrating clitoral attachment that could clip onto a harness.

She sat on the edge of the bed.

She held them up.

She said, “Yes?”

I said, “Marisol.”

She said, “Mija.“

I said, “Yes.“

She said, “Both?”

I said, “Both, Marisol — yes — please —“

She said, “Good girl.”

She put on the harness. She clipped the small pink thing into place. She got back on the bed. She climbed between my knees. She lifted my hips up onto a folded pillow, the way she had only ever done once before, on the night of the strap in November.

She put her hand flat on my stomach.

She said, “Mija.“

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “I am going to go slow at first. The toy is bigger. Tell me if it is too much. We will stop. Yes?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Word.”

I said, “Burnt.”

She slid in.

Slow. So slow. Just the head first. She watched my face. She said, low, “Breathe, mi vida,” and I breathed, and she eased in another inch, and watched, and another, and watched, and after about twenty seconds — twenty seconds of her watching my face the way you would watch a soufflé — she was all the way in, and I had gone, I am sorry, boneless. My head was back against the pillow. My mouth was open. The medallion-shaped piece of nothing on my throat — I had taken it off for sleep, and I missed it now — was just empty skin where her warmth had been.

She did not move yet.

She turned the small pink thing on.

It hummed.

Low, soft, a controlled vibration with a precise rhythm to it, and she pressed her hips down so the small pink thing made contact exactly where it was supposed to, and I made a sound that I will not transcribe, which was — I want to put on the record — a sound I have not previously made in my life.

She said, “Oh.“

She said, low, into my throat: “There it is.”

She started to move.

She moved slow, with the strap deep, with the small pink thing humming where it was humming, and I lasted — I do not know — two minutes? — three? I had the steady deep slow weight of the strap, and the small precise hum at the front, and Marisol’s mouth on the side of my throat and her low steady voice in my ear saying things in Spanish and English alternating, mi mujer, mi vida, mija, taking it so well, that is your wife inside you, that is right, that is right, that is —

I came so hard I thought I had stopped breathing.

I came in a wave that went through me in three rolling sections — once, then again, then a third, and the third one was deep in a way I was not expecting and had not had before — and I felt myself, against the harness and against her hip, get wet in a way I had never been wet before, and I was, all at once, fully aware that I was making a mess.

I said, on the wave of it, “Marisol — Marisol — I am — I am —”

She said, against my throat, “Mija.“

She said, “Let go.“

I let go.

I felt it — the small specific physical thing, the release I had read about and had never managed and had assumed was something other women got and I did not — and I made a small broken laugh-sob into her shoulder, and she did not stop. She slowed. She rocked against me, gentle, with the strap still inside, with the pink thing still humming, and she said, low, against my ear: “Mi vida. Mija. Yes. Like that. There she is. There is my wife.“

I came twice more on the strap with her hand braced on my hip.

When she finally turned the small pink thing off, and slid out, slow and careful, and undid the harness, and tossed it on the floor with the strap still attached because she could not be bothered, and gathered me up into her chest, I was crying, and I was laughing, and I was utterly wrecked, and the bed under both of us was, frankly, also wrecked, and Marisol Vega was kissing my temple and saying, into my hair: “Sienna Lane.“

I said, “Marisol.“

She said, “I am going to need to change the sheets.”

I started laughing.

I laughed so hard I could not stop. Marisol laughed against my hair. After a minute she sat up, and with the absolute professional efficiency of a woman who had cleaned up worse messes in a kitchen for thirty years, she changed the bottom sheet. She did it without complaint. She rolled me, gently, off one side, slid the wet sheet off, slid a clean one on — and got me settled on the dry side of the bed, and got back in.

She kissed my forehead.

She said, “We are halfway through the list, mija.“

I sat up.

I pushed her, gently, until she was lying on her back with her head on the pillow and her hair across her shoulders, and I climbed up over her, and I straddled her hips, and I leaned down, and I said, against her ear:

“Tell me what to do.”

She made a small sound.

She said, “Sienna —“

I said, “I want — I want you to talk me through it. I want it to be like the first time you taught me, in this kitchen, with your hand over mine. I want the version of you that taught me the fold. Tell me how. Tell me where. Tell me what to do with my hands. I want — Marisol — I want a lesson.”

She closed her eyes.

She opened them.

She said, in a voice that had gone rougher than I had ever heard it: “Sienna Lane.“

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Sit up.”

I sat up.

She said, “Hand on my throat. The way I do it on you. Flat. Thumb on the pulse. Don’t squeeze. Just — hold.”

I put my hand on her throat. I felt the pulse hammer under my thumb.

She said, “Good. Now — your other hand. Between us. Slow. Two fingers. You know the spot. Mija — there — yes, like that —”

I worked her on the bed with my hand on her throat and my other hand inside her, the way she had worked me, slow, careful, with attention, and she narrated the whole thing.

She told me what to do, where to be, how to move, when to slow down, when to pause. She used the same calm flat voice she used to give instructions in the kitchen. She told me, use the heel of your palm here — now thumb — now slow — yes, mija, like that — and I did exactly what she told me, and I watched her face come undone the way I had come undone, and after about six minutes of the steadiest most controlled thing I have ever done in bed in my life, with her whole body trembling under me and her eyes locked on mine, she said:

“Sienna — tell me what comes next.”

I said, “Come for me.“

She did. She came on my hand with my hand still flat on her throat and her pulse under my thumb and her eyes on mine, and she said, all the way through it, in Spanish, the entire time — long and breathy and broken and uncalibrated — and at the end of it, when she had finished, and her hand had come up and fisted in the front of my hair, she said: “Mi mujer.“

I said, “Marisol.“

She said, “That was an A-plus, mija.“

I started laughing on top of my wife at four-eighteen in the morning on the day after our wedding, and I leaned down and I kissed her, salty and warm, and I said: “I have been waiting two months to grade well.”

She laughed. She said, “Get down. Come here. Come up here.”

I crawled up the bed and lay down beside her. She held me. She breathed for a long minute.

She said, “Mija.“

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “We are not done.”

I said, “Marisol — I am, in the technical sense — spent.“

She said, “I know you are. I am going to bring you back.”

I said, “How.“

She said, “Mija — give me ten minutes.”

She got up, naked, and walked out of the bedroom, and I lay on my back on the bed in the candlelight and I listened to her in the kitchen — a glass running, water, the fridge, a small private hum — and after about three minutes she came back. She had a glass of cold water in one hand. She had, in the other hand, a small ceramic bowl. The bowl had ice in it.

She set the bowl on the nightstand. She held the glass of water to my mouth. She said, “Drink, mija.“

I drank all of it.

She picked up a small piece of ice from the bowl. She put it in her own mouth. She held it there. She looked at me, and her eyes did the small slow amused thing, and she leaned down, and she kissed my throat, and the cold of the ice in her mouth went through the kiss, and she dragged her cold mouth down my throat, slow, all the way down to my collarbone, and the whole front of my body — every nerve, every inch — woke up.

I said, “Marisol —”

She said, around the ice, “Mm.“

She kept going. She worked her cold mouth down my chest. Slow. With ice. She moved the ice from her mouth onto my skin, with her tongue, dropping it in small careful places — at the hollow of my throat, between my breasts, at the soft place under my ribs, on the inside of my hipbone — and I felt the small specific shock of the cold against the warm specific aftermath of the previous forty-five minutes, and my whole body decided, against its own better judgment, okay, again, fine.

She got down between my knees. She put the last small piece of ice on her tongue.

She said, “Mija. Yes?“

I said, “Marisol Vega — yes —“

She put her cold mouth on me.

I did not last. I came in maybe forty seconds, with the small specific shock of the cold against the warm of her mouth, and I came hard, and I shook through it, and I came on her ice-cold mouth with my hand fisted in her hair and a small undignified word that has never come out of my mouth in any other context in my life.

She did not come up. She rode me down. She did not let me come down. She kept going. Slower now, gentler now, but with intent, and four minutes later she got me to come again, smaller, sweeter, with my forehead pressed against the back of my own wrist and a small shaking breath.

She came up. She crawled up the bed. She lay on top of me, naked, still cool from the ice, and she pressed her cold mouth to mine, and I tasted me and the ice and the warmth of her tongue, and we kissed, slow, and she said, against my mouth: “Four.”

I said, “Four.”

She said, “Mija.“

I said, “Marisol.“

She said, “I love you.”

I said, “I love you.”

She rolled off me. She gathered me up against her side. She pulled the duvet up over both of us. She blew out the candle. The room went dark.

After a long quiet minute Marisol said, into my hair: “Mija.“

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Mark this date for me.”

I said, “Why.”

She said, “I am going to want to do this again. Same date next year. As an anniversary thing. We are going to take Valentine’s Day off every year, mija, and Caleb is going to open. We are going to spend Valentine’s Day in this bed. Mija — that is my proposal.”

I said, “Done.”

She said, “Sienna.”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Buenas noches, mi mujer.“

I said, “Buenas noches, mi vida.“

I closed my eyes. I slept.

When I woke up at noon, on February the fifteenth, two thousand and twenty-six, in our bed in our apartment in our building, with a magazine cover with my face on it on the coffee table and a slate above a doorway with my name on it across the street and a wedding ring on my left hand and a gold band that had been Marisol’s mother’s on my right and Tomás making coffee in our kitchen, in his bathrobe, at noon, exactly as Marisol had predicted — I rolled onto my side, and I looked at my wife, asleep in the gray afternoon light, and I thought:

This is it. This is the rest. This is what enough feels like.

I closed my eyes again, and I went back to sleep beside her, and it was the best sleep of my entire life.

fin

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