Open Bar, Closed Circle — Bonus Chapter

The Shower Rotation
by Isla Wilde

This bonus chapter takes place eight months after the events of Open Bar, Closed Circle. Contains spoilers and extremely explicit content.

The renovation was supposed to be finished.

Vesper stood in the doorway of the master bathroom — their bathroom, in their villa, on their property — and stared at the shower.

It was enormous. Walk-in. Double rainfall heads. A bench built into the stone wall. Glass on three sides.

The tile had been laid that morning. The grout was still curing. A hand-lettered sign taped to the glass read DO NOT USE — 24 HOURS.

Vesper looked at Noemi. Noemi looked at Vesper. The look said: rules are suggestions.

“The outdoor shower,” Vesper said. Noemi’s dimple appeared. “The outdoor shower.”

They convened. All four of them stood in the garden in various states of undress and looked at the shower head.

“It fits two comfortably,” Bram said. “Two,” Vesper said. “There are four of us.” “Hence the logistical challenge.”

“I don’t see a challenge,” Noemi said. “I see a rotation.”

“A rotation,” Marek repeated. “Two in the shower, two observing. Then switch.”

“Observing,” Vesper said. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“This is not a professional discussion.” “No,” Marek agreed, and his gray-green eyes held hers. “It is not.”

Vesper turned on the water. “Ladies first,” Bram said.

Vesper stripped. Not with performance — she was past performance with these three. Noemi undressed with her characteristic precision. Each garment folded. Until she was standing in the warm light — dark and long and elegant, the silver-threaded braids falling around her shoulders.

They stepped under the water together. The heat was immediate. Noemi’s hands were on her waist, pulling her backward, and the contact — skin to wet skin, the full-length press of Noemi’s front against Vesper’s back — made her exhale with relief.

Noemi’s mouth found the spot. The neck spot. The place below Vesper’s ear where six years of intimate knowledge had mapped every nerve ending. Her lips were warm and precise and the water ran between them and Vesper’s head fell back against Noemi’s shoulder.

“We have an audience,” Noemi murmured against her neck. “Let them watch,” Vesper said.

Noemi’s hand slid down Vesper’s stomach. Between her thighs. Vesper’s breath caught and Noemi’s fingers found her with the precision that had not diminished in six years and would not diminish in sixty.

“Tell me what you want,” Noemi said. The old instruction. The original demand.

“Your fingers. Inside me. Now.”

Noemi obliged. Two fingers, slipping into her with the ease of a body that was ready and a hand that knew exactly where to go. Her thumb found Vesper’s clit simultaneously and Vesper made a sound that the bougainvillea could not muffle.

“Faster,” Vesper breathed. “No,” Noemi said. “You will wait because I decide when.” Her fingers slowed. “Stand still. Feel it. Stop rushing toward the ending.”

The instruction hit somewhere deeper than the physical. Stop rushing toward the ending. Vesper stood still. Let Noemi’s fingers set the pace. Let the pleasure build without her management.

When Noemi finally let her come, it was slow and enormous and she said Noemi’s name in a voice she didn’t recognize — stripped, honest, the voice that existed beneath every performance.

“Trade,” Bram said, already pulling his shirt over his head.

Bram had Marek against the shower wall. Their bodies were slick with water — Bram’s broad, sun-darkened shoulders against Marek’s leaner olive-skinned frame. They kissed with twenty years of catching up, every kiss containing the echo of every kiss they had denied themselves.

Bram’s hand found Marek and wrapped around him and Marek’s head fell back against the wet stone and the sound he made was quiet and wrecked.

Vesper and Noemi watched. Side by side, fingers interlaced. “God,” Vesper whispered. “Look at them.” “Beautiful,” Noemi said.

Bram dropped to his knees under the water. Marek’s hand found his wet hair. The shower streamed over both of them as Bram’s mouth worked and Marek’s composure dissolved.

Marek came with his hands in Bram’s hair and Bram’s name on his lips and his eyes open, looking at Noemi and Vesper, letting them see, choosing to be seen.

Bram stood. Kissed him. Marek returned the favor — his architect’s hand, precise and knowing, bringing Bram off in quick decisive strokes while the water poured over them and Bram cursed and laughed simultaneously.

The rotation was supposed to end there. Nobody wanted orderly.

The four of them pressed together under a single shower stream, water running between them, hands finding skin without ownership, mouths finding mouths without sequence. The specific, practiced chaos of four people who knew each other well enough that the chaos had its own structure.

Vesper ended up against the wall with Bram inside her and Noemi’s hand between her legs and Marek behind Bram with his mouth on Bram’s shoulder, and the chain of bodies was connected and she came with a cry that scattered birds from the palm trees.

Noemi followed — Bram’s fingers, Vesper’s mouth on her breast, Marek’s hands in her hair. She came in French, as always.

Bram came between Vesper and Marek, surrounded, held, the man who had never been anyone’s permanent thing shaking between three people who were never going to let him go.

Marek came last, because Marek held out longest, and when he broke, he broke completely — the composure dissolving under the water and the hands and the voices of three people who had taught him that desire was not dangerous. Desire was home.

They stood in the aftermath. Four bodies under a lukewarm shower. The garden smelling like wet stone and bougainvillea and jasmine.

“The grout is definitely cured by now,” Bram said. “It has been forty-five minutes,” Marek said. “The curing period is twenty-four hours.” “We live in the Caribbean.” “Fair point.”

Vesper laughed. The real laugh. The sound scattered into the warm night and was joined by Noemi’s rare, surprised laugh and Bram’s bright bark and Marek’s quiet huff and the four sounds together made a chord that had not existed nine months ago and now existed in a garden on a Caribbean island that four people owned together.

Four keys on a hook. Four wardrobes in a shared closet. Four coffee cups on the counter every morning.

They went inside. To their villa. To their home. The compass on Bram’s chest caught the lamplight. Four directions. Four people. One home.

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