Bonus Chapter · Aurora North

The Stratton Garden

A Bonus Chapter from Her Rules Only

SETTING: Eight months after the wedding. Late August. Vivienne and Rowan after dinner at Stratton, twelve seventeen on a Thursday night.

⚠️ Explicit sapphic content. Three on-page orgasms. Outdoors. Dynamic switch. If you have already read Her Rules Only, you know what you signed up for.

The garden behind the brownstone is not, on most nights, a place anyone goes.

It is a strip of dirt with two ornamental trees in it. It is the small private rectangle of green I have been looking at through my office window for eight years, and which Bea has, in eight years, watered exactly three times, and which has, by every available measure, not been a part of the studio’s working footprint.

It is, however — at twelve seventeen on a Thursday night in the dead heat of late August — the place my wife has decided to bring me.

She walks me through the foyer with the building locked behind us.

She walks me past Bea’s empty desk and through the small back door of the foyer that opens onto the alley. She walks me down the small iron staircase that drops to the garden. She does not turn on the garden lights. She has, on the way through the foyer, gathered something out of her own bag that I have not yet seen, and is carrying it folded under her arm.

The garden, in the late August dark, smells of jasmine. There is a small line of jasmine planted along the back wall of the brownstone that Dahlia, four years ago, evidently put in, and which I have been ignoring out my office window for four years, and which is, this evening, blooming.

Rowan stops in the middle of the garden.

She turns to me.

She is in a soft white sundress. She is in nothing under it; I have, on the cab ride down, confirmed. Her hair is up. Her face is — and this is the inventory; the inventory still operates, even at midnight, in a garden, with my wife, in a sundress — playful.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“I have been thinking.”

“All right.”

“There is one room of this building you have not, in eight years, ever used for a session.”

I tilt my head.

“The garden.”

“Rowan, the garden is — it is six feet from the window of the wine importer.”

“The wine importer is closed.”

“It is — Rowan, it is overlooked by the back wall of the brownstone next door.”

“That is a brick wall with no windows on this floor.”

“You — “

“I checked. Last Saturday. From the office.”

“You — “

“I have been planning this, Vivienne, for two months.”

She — slowly — smiles.

“Are you — “

“I am asking you,” she says, “to use the garden of your own studio, with me, for the first time in eight years.”

I — for one count — do not move.

Then I — and the inventory has, by now, eighteen months of practice in this — I laugh.

I laugh at the small specific image of my wife having, last Saturday, in the office, leaned out the back window with a pair of opera glasses to confirm that no one in the surrounding buildings can see down into this strip of dirt.

She, evidently, has been preparing.

“Rowan.”

“Yes.”

“Show me what you brought.”

She unfolds, from under her arm, the cashmere throw.

Of course she has the cashmere throw.

She lays it on the flagstones, in the small flat space between the two ornamental trees, in the small private rectangle that is, evidently, the only piece of New York real estate that has, at twelve seventeen on a Thursday night in late August, no other human being looking at it.

She — without ceremony — takes off the sundress.

She lays it on the small iron bench beside the back door.

She is — as I had, on the cab ride, confirmed — in nothing under it.

She is in nothing under it, and her body is, in the soft amber glow of the streetlight from the alley two doors down, the most undone version of itself I have ever seen, and the jasmine is, behind her, a wall of small white stars.

She turns to me.

“Your turn.”

I — slowly — laugh.

I take off my dress.

I take off my dress in my own garden, behind my own building, on a Thursday night in late August at twelve eighteen, and I lay it on the bench beside hers, and I am — and the inventory will say so — naked, in the warm dark, in a strip of dirt I have been looking at out my office window for eight years.

She crosses to me.

She does not, immediately, touch me.

She stops a foot in front of me.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“I am going to do something tonight that we have not — that we have not, in eighteen months, done.”

“All right.”

“I am going to take you here. On the throw. Outside. With the jasmine. With no rope, no collar, no script. I am going to — Vivienne, I am going to fuck you in your own garden until you cannot tell what time it is, and I am going to do it with no instruction and no pre-negotiated kink list, because I am, this evening, a woman who has been thinking about you all day and who is, evidently, no longer interested in waiting.”

I close my eyes.

I open them.

“All right, Rowan.”

“All right?”

“All right.”

She — slowly — reaches up, and rests her hand at the side of my throat, where the collar would, on another night, be.

The collar is not, tonight, in the bag.

She has, this evening, not brought it.

I notice — and I will say this; the inventory will say so — I notice that it is not here, and I notice that I do not need it to be here.

She runs her thumb, slowly, along the line of my jaw.

She brings her mouth to mine.

She kisses me — slow, open, with one hand at the side of my throat and the other sliding, unhurried, down my back to rest at the small of it — and the kiss goes on for a long time, because we are, tonight, in no hurry.

She walks me, kissing me, backward, to the throw.

She lowers me onto it.

She follows me down.

She is, tonight, going to take her time.

I know it within the first thirty seconds of her body being on top of mine. She is in no rush. She kisses me on the mouth, on the throat, on the underside of my jaw. She kisses me on the place at my collarbone where her own mouth lives every morning. She kisses each of my breasts, slowly, and closes her mouth around one nipple, and sucks, and the small wet sound of her mouth is — in the warm dark of the garden, with the jasmine three feet from us, with the stars finally visible because there is no lamp on — the only sound for a count of about six seconds.

I make a sound under her.

She lifts her head.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“I am going to take a long time.”

“All right.”

“You are going to come, tonight, more than once.”

“All right.”

“And I am going to — Vivienne — “

“Yes.”

“I am going to do something I have, in eighteen months, never done.”

“What.”

She — slowly, with the small specific tilt of her head she has, in eighteen months, only used three times — smiles.

“I am going to fuck you,” she says, “out here, with my mouth on you for as long as it takes you to forget where you are.”

I close my eyes.

I open them.

“Specific, Rowan.”

She, with her face two inches from mine, in the dark of the garden, on the cashmere throw, with her hand sliding, slowly, down my stomach toward the place we have, in eighteen months, both stopped pretending isn’t where everything she does to me leads — laughs.

“Specific.”

She lowers her body.

She kisses, one at a time, every rib I have. Not in any order I can predict. She kisses the small soft curve where my waist comes in. She kisses my hipbone. She kisses the place just below my navel, with her open mouth, and her tongue, and the small steady warmth of her face, and I — and I am being honest; I am being honest in the dark of a garden behind a building I have owned for eight years; the inventory will be honest — I am, by the time her mouth gets to the inside of my thigh, dripping.

I am dripping onto the cashmere throw.

I am not, tonight, going to apologize for it.

Rowan brings her mouth, slowly, to the soft inside of my left thigh, just below the crease where my thigh meets my body, and she kisses there. She drags her open mouth slowly upward. She stops, with her mouth two inches from my cunt. She breathes.

I feel her breath.

I — under her — make a small, embarrassing, low sound.

She lifts her face.

She — in the soft amber dark, with my own thighs open against the cashmere throw, with the jasmine on the wall behind her — looks at me.

“Tell me what you want, Vivienne.”

“Rowan.”

“Tell me.”

“You. Your mouth. Please.”

“Specific.”

I — I almost laugh.

“Your mouth on me. Your tongue. The way you do it on Friday nights. With the small slow thing you do at the start. With the — with the vibration you do, against my clit, when I am close. With your hand on my stomach. With — Rowan — “

“Yes.”

“I want you to use your fingers, too. While your mouth is there. I want — I want both.”

She — slowly — smiles.

“All right, Vivienne.”

She lowers her mouth.

She fucks me with her mouth in my garden for what I am, in real time, going to call forever.

She fucks me with her mouth the way she has, in eighteen months of practice, learned to fuck me with her mouth — slow, deliberate, with small varying pressures that she has, by now, mapped against the small variations of the sounds I make. She fucks me with her mouth with the small specific patience of a woman who has, this evening, decided that my whole body is the room she is in, and that she has the rest of her life to be in it, and that we are — in this garden, with the jasmine, with the warm August air on my throat — not on the clock.

I come, the first time, on her mouth and her two fingers, with my hands fisted in the cashmere throw and my back arched off the flagstones and my throat — I am, I will admit it, loud — making a sound that the wine importer two floors below would, if they were open, almost certainly hear.

The wine importer is closed.

I am loud.

She does not, when I come, lift her mouth.

She works me through the aftershocks. She keeps her fingers inside me. She presses her thumb, slowly, against my clit, and I — under her — come down, slowly, with my thighs trembling against her shoulders.

She lifts her face.

Her mouth is wet.

She climbs, in the small unforced way she has been climbing on top of me for eighteen months in our bed, up my body, and she kisses me on the mouth, and I taste myself on her, and she — with her mouth still wet — laughs.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“You have been very loud.”

“Rowan.”

“In your own garden.”

“Rowan.”

“I am noting it for the record.”

I — under her, in the warm dark, in the cashmere throw, with the jasmine on the wall and her hand still between my legs — laugh.

“It is, evidently, my garden.”

“It is.”

“I am, evidently, going to use it.”

“Yes.”

“And — Rowan.”

“Yes.”

“You — you are not, evidently, finished with me.”

She — and the inventory will note this; the inventory has been waiting — slides her hand, slowly, back inside me.

“No, Vivienne.”

“All right.”

“I am going to do this again.”

“All right.”

“Twice.”

“All right.”

“And then, Vivienne — “

“Yes.”

She — leaning down, with her mouth at my ear, in the dark of my own garden, with the jasmine three feet from us — whispers:

“And then, my wife, I want you on top of me.“

I close my eyes.

I open them.

“All right, Rowan.”

She — slowly — smiles.

She lowers her mouth, for the second time.

I am not, in this section, going to be tidy about the inventory.

I am going to say what is true.

I come, the second time, with her mouth on me and her fingers curled inside me, the way she has, eighteen months in our bed, learned to curl them. I come with my hand fisted in her hair. I come with my face turned to the side, against the cashmere throw, with one cheek pressed to the warmth of the wool and the small piney smell of the small herb she has — and I will, tomorrow, ask her about this — apparently planted in the small terra-cotta pot beside the bench, three weeks ago, when she was apparently planning all of this and I, in the apartment, was apparently not paying attention.

Of course she has been planting.

She has — for eighteen months — been planting.

I come, the second time, saying her name, in the warm dark, on a cashmere throw, in the garden of the building I have owned for eight years.

She does not, this time, work me down slowly.

She climbs, immediately, up my body.

She kisses me.

She kisses me with the wet of me on her mouth and the small unforced press of her body against mine, and I — under her — feel her own body, by now, doing the small specific thing it does when she has been working on me for the better part of an hour and is, herself, in some small private way, ready.

I lift my hand.

I find her hip.

I push her, gently, off me.

I roll us — the small unforced gesture I have, in eighteen months, learned to make in our bed — until she is, on the throw, on her back. I climb on top of her. I take her face in one hand. I kiss her.

She — under me — laughs.

It is the small unforced laugh of a woman who has, this evening, planned every part of this except for the small last part where her wife reverses the dynamic in the dirt of her own garden, and who has, evidently, anticipated — and is, evidently, delighted by — having the dynamic reversed.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“You — “

“Yes.”

“You are going to take me on the throw.”

“Yes.”

“In your own garden.”

“Yes.”

“With the jasmine.”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

I — leaning down — kiss her, slowly.

I kiss her on the mouth. I kiss her on the throat, where the small chain she always wears at the line of her jaw is. I kiss her on the soft of her shoulder. I kiss her on the place between her breasts. I kiss each of her breasts. I kiss the soft of her stomach.

I lower my body, slowly, between her thighs.

She — under me, in the warm dark, with her hand sliding into my hair — lets out one long unsteady breath.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“I have been wet for an hour.”

“I know.”

“I have been wet — Vivienne — since we got out of the cab.”

“I know.”

“I am — “

“Yes.”

I lower my mouth.

I work her, in the warm dark, with the cashmere throw under her, with the jasmine three feet from us, with the small herb pot at the corner of the bench, with the soft August air on the back of my neck, with my own hand splayed on her stomach the way she has been splaying her own hand on mine.

I work her cleanly.

I work her cleanly, with the small unforced patience of a woman who has, in eighteen months of mornings, learned the small specific map of her wife’s body, and who is, this evening, in her own garden, with no time pressure and no audience and no script, going to take her time.

Rowan, under my mouth, makes the small specific sounds I have been waiting eighteen months to hear in this kind of unguarded register. She makes the sound she makes when I work the edge of her clit with the flat of my tongue. She makes the sound she makes when I curl two of my fingers up against the front wall of her, in the small precise way she taught me. She makes the sound she makes — and this one is the rarest one; this one she has only ever made on three occasions in our marriage; this one I have been quietly waiting, all month, for — when she is, beyond the small unforced register of her body, gone.

She is — and the inventory has, by now, all the data it needs — gone in the dark of my own garden, on a cashmere throw, with the jasmine on the wall behind her, with my mouth between her legs, with her hand fisted in my hair, with her thighs trembling against my shoulders.

She comes — and I will say so; the inventory will say so — saying my name.

She comes saying it, in a small wrecked voice, three times in a row, the way she has, for eighteen months, taught me she is going to come when she is gone like this.

I work her through it.

I keep my mouth on her until her thighs ease.

I keep my hand on her stomach until her breath finds the small I am here rhythm I have, by now, eighteen months of practice in recognizing.

I climb up her body.

I kiss her on the mouth, with the wet of her on me, and she — for one small unforced count — kisses me back, and I taste both of us on her mouth, and the kiss goes on, in the dark of the garden, for a long time.

After a long time I lift my face.

I rest my forehead against hers.

“Rowan.”

“Yes.”

“I — am going to need you to take me, again, before we go inside.”

She — under me, in the warm dark, with her hand in my hair — laughs.

“All right, my wife.”

She rolls us.

She — and the inventory will say so — takes me, the third time, on the cashmere throw, in the garden of the building I have owned for eight years, with the jasmine three feet from us, with the warm August air on my throat, with her hand spread flat between my breasts, with her mouth on me, with my own hands fisted in the back of her hair, in the small private rectangle of dirt I have been looking at out my office window for eight years and which I have, this evening, finally, used.

I come — the third time — saying her name.

I come saying it like a prayer.

I come with my back off the flagstones and my throat exposed to the warm August dark and my mouth open against the inside of her wrist where she has, somehow, in the last thirty seconds, moved her hand up to cover.

She works me through it.

She does not stop until I have stopped shaking.

When the aftershocks have ended she — slowly — lifts her face. She crawls, the way I have crawled up her body, up mine. She lays her body, full, on top of mine. She pulls the cashmere throw up over both of us — yes, even in late August, in a garden, with the warm air on us, the throw is over us, because the throw is the throw, the throw is, by now, the small specific symbol of every night of the last eighteen months — and she rests her cheek on my chest.

She, with her ear on the place where my heart is, listens.

I — for a long count — let her.

After a long time she lifts her head.

She looks at me.

In the small amber glow from the alley two doors down, with her face two inches from mine, with the jasmine three feet from us, with the warm August air on our skin and the cashmere throw across both of us, she — slowly — says, in the small quiet voice she has, in eighteen months, only used a handful of times:

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“I am — I am extraordinarily happy.”

I close my eyes.

I open them.

“I know, Rowan.”

She — almost laughs — kisses me.

After a long moment she lifts her face.

“Take me upstairs.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t put on the dress.”

“Rowan.”

“Take me upstairs in nothing, in your own building, with the cashmere throw around us, like a woman who, evidently, owns her own building.”

I — at thirty-nine, in the dark of my own garden, with my wife on top of me, with the jasmine three feet from us, with my own marriage in its second year — laugh.

“All right, Rowan.”

We get up.

We do not put the dresses on.

We carry them, folded, with the small soft drawstring bag with the throw, up the small iron staircase. We let ourselves back into the foyer of the locked brownstone. We climb, naked, in the soft amber dark of the building’s stairwell, three flights to the studio.

I unlock the studio.

The studio — the chandelier, the matte black walls, the bench, the cabinet, the small specific rectangle of my own life I have run for eight years — is, in the dark, exactly as we left it three hours ago.

She — naked, in the amber light of the chandelier — turns to me.

“One more time.”

“Rowan.”

“In our studio. The way we always do. With me on the bench.”

“Rowan, it is one in the morning.”

“I know.”

“All right.”

I — laughing — cross to the cabinet.

I take out the rope.

I work my wife on the bench in our studio, at one in the morning in late August, after she has just made me come, three times, on a cashmere throw, in the garden behind my building.

I work her until she comes, on the bench, in the rope, in the amber light of the chandelier, saying my name.

I take her down.

I wrap her in the throw and we sit on the bench, the way we have sat on it for eighteen months of Friday nights, with three inches of space between us, except that tonight there is, evidently, no space at all.

She — eventually — lifts her face.

“Vivienne.”

“Yes.”

“Take me home.”

“Yes.”

She kisses me.

She kisses me with her face wet and her body warm and the cashmere throw around us, and she — in the amber light of the chandelier I have, this evening, finally, decided is ours — whispers, against my mouth:

“My wife.”

I close my eyes.

I open them.

“My wife.”

We dress.

We lock the building.

We go.

— End of Bonus Chapter —

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