The Sixth Drink
A No Repeat Customers Bonus Chapter
by Aurora North
⚠️ This bonus chapter takes place six months after the epilogue and contains explicit sexual content (graphic FF scenes) that was too steamy for retailers. Read the full novel first to avoid spoilers.
Six months after the new bar opened, Della finally named the fifth drink.
She did it on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays were theirs—the one night neither of them worked, the night they’d claimed from the calendar the way Della had claimed the end barstool and Corinne had claimed the left side of the bed. Tuesdays belonged to them, and on this particular Tuesday, Della stood behind the walnut bar of Second Pour after closing with a bottle of cognac and a look on her face that Corinne had learned to read as trouble.
The good kind.
“Sit,” Della said.
Corinne sat. Her seat. The curved one. The napkin placed.
Della built a drink. Not the gala version, not The Return, not any of the numbered variations she’d served over the months. Something new. Something that smelled like blood orange and smoked cinnamon and the particular combination of warmth and complexity that Corinne had come to associate with Della’s most personal work.
She slid it across the bar.
“This is the fifth drink,” Della said. “The one I made you during the tasting. The one I said I’d name when I found the word.”
Corinne looked at the glass. Amber-gold, a rose edge, the sage sprig on the rim.
“What is it called?”
“Repeatedly.”
Corinne lifted the glass. Tasted it. Her eyes closed for the half-second—the tell, the involuntary surrender to flavor.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
“I know.” Della leaned on the bar. “And I made a sixth.”
“A sixth?”
“The tasting was five drinks. Your life in five chapters. But there are six chapters now.” She reached beneath the bar and produced a second glass—darker, richer, the garnish a twist of orange peel studded with a single clove. “The sixth chapter. The one we’re living in.”
Corinne reached for it. Della caught her wrist.
“Not yet.”
“What are the terms?” Corinne asked, because she had learned that Della’s terms were her love language, and negotiating them was foreplay.
“You drink the sixth drink. Then you come around the bar.”
“And then?”
“And then I take you upstairs and we do everything we’ve learned how to do in the past year, except tonight I’m going to take my time, and you’re not going to plan a single second of it.”
“I am a planner,” Corinne said.
“I know. Tonight you’re going to lie there and let me be the plan.”
“Give me the drink.”
She tasted it. The flavor was everything the fifth was, plus something underneath—darker, warmer, a slow burn that started at the back of her tongue and moved forward.
“What’s in this one that wasn’t in the fifth?”
“Ancho chili tincture. Three drops. Enough to build heat without announcing it.”
“You made me a cocktail that gets hotter as I drink it.”
“I made you a cocktail that reflects the experience of being with me.”
Corinne set the glass down. Stood. Walked around the bar—the long way, past the speed rail and the ice well, stepping into Della’s space.
“Take me upstairs,” Corinne said.
Della locked the door. Turned. Looked at Corinne in the low light.
“Arms at your sides,” Della said.
She unbuttoned Corinne’s blouse one button at a time, pushed it off her shoulders and let it hang at her elbows—arms loosely pinned by fabric. The same principle as the suspenders. The suggestion that for the next hour, Corinne’s hands were not required.
“Keep them there,” Della said.
She unclasped Corinne’s bra through the open blouse. Drew it forward without disturbing the fabric at her elbows. Put her mouth on Corinne’s throat. Kissed the scar at its base. Kissed down to the notch between her collarbones. Her tongue traced the bone. Corinne’s head fell back.
She moved lower. Mouth on the swell of Corinne’s left breast, tongue circling, lips closing around the nipple, and Corinne’s bound arms strained against the blouse. Her hands opened and closed behind her back, grasping nothing.
Della dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor. Unfastened Corinne’s trousers. Drew them down. Corinne stood in nothing but an unbuttoned blouse caught at her elbows, bare from throat to ankles.
She kissed Corinne’s hip—the left one, the hidden tattoo, the hotel key Marianne drew on a napkin. Then she moved inward.
Corinne cried out. Della’s tongue worked in long, slow strokes, building pressure without rushing. Her hands gripped Corinne’s hips, anchoring her against the doorframe. Corinne’s thighs shook. Her voice fractured into French—plus fort, ne t’arrête pas, mon dieu, Della—the composure cracking along its familiar fault lines.
Della slid two fingers inside her while her tongue continued. She curled them upward and Corinne’s head fell back against the doorframe. Her bound arms struggled against the blouse—she could pull free any time, and she didn’t, because the agreement was that tonight she would not plan.
She came with Della’s name in French and English, her body shuddering, her hands finally pulling free and finding Della’s hair and gripping hard enough to hurt. Della held her through every wave until Corinne’s legs buckled and they both sank to the kitchen floor.
“Kitchen,” Corinne managed.
“On linoleum.”
“Do not apologize. Take me to bed and do that again.”
In the bed—the queen, still on the old frame—Della stripped her own clothes off. Corinne lay on the sheets watching her undress with a focus that felt like a touch.
Della crawled over her. Straddled her thighs. Bent and kissed her mouth—tasting herself on Corinne’s tongue. She kissed down Corinne’s throat, her sternum, took Corinne’s right hand and kissed the finger where the ring used to sit.
Then she guided Corinne’s hand between her own thighs.
“Feel me,” she said.
Corinne’s fingers slid through wet heat. “You’re—”
“I’ve been like this since I made the sixth drink.”
Corinne’s fingers entered her—two, then three at Della’s gasped instruction—and Della’s spine curved, her hips pressing down. She rode Corinne’s hand with the open, unapologetic hunger of a woman who had spent a year learning that receiving is not surrender.
“I love you,” Della said. Like a drink order. Like a fact.
“Je t’aime,” Corinne said, looking up at her with an expression that was simultaneously hungry and reverent.
Della came on Corinne’s fingers with her head thrown back and her hands gripping the headboard—the old headboard, the one that had held her suspenders and her wrists and every version of herself she’d ever been in this bed.
Corinne wrapped both arms around her and held her. The bed creaked. Outside, the hotel glowed. The bar slept. The city hummed.
Inside, two women lay tangled in a bed that was still too small and still too loud and was, by every measure that mattered, exactly the right size for the life they were building—not from blueprints, but from the simple, repeated act of showing up and choosing each other and staying for breakfast.
Repeatedly.