Move-In Ready
A Landlady’s Little Secret Bonus Chapter
by Aurora North
This bonus chapter takes place after the events of Landlady’s Little Secret. Nadia and Lena are renovating the duplex they’ve purchased together. It’s late. The building is empty. The paint is wet. And the only thing getting inspected tonight is each other.
Move-In Ready
The duplex smelled like primer and possibility.
Lena stood in the center of what would become the first-floor living room and surveyed the damage they’d done—the good kind. Three walls primed in flat white, the fourth still bare, waiting for the sage green. The hardwood floors were covered in drop cloths. A shop light clamped to a sawhorse threw a hard white beam across the room, turning the bare space into something theatrical—all shadows and angles and the silhouette of the woman on the ladder.
Nadia was cutting in the ceiling line on the third wall, brush in hand. She was in her work clothes—the ancient henley with the sleeves pushed past her elbows, the cutoff shorts she wore for messy jobs, her hair damp at the temples. A streak of primer ran along her forearm like a white vein.
It was eleven o’clock at night. Nobody knew they were here. Nobody was expecting them home.
“You’re staring,” Nadia said, without turning around.
“I’m supervising. I’m the design lead on this project.”
“You painted one wall in three hours. You’re not supervising. You’re watching me bend over in shorts.”
“Both can be true.”
Neither of them moved toward the paint.
Lena crossed the room and kissed her. Not softly. She grabbed the front of Nadia’s henley and pulled, and tugged it over her head. She ran her hands up Nadia’s arms—over the muscles, the tendons, the primer streak.
“This is our building,” Lena said against Nadia’s mouth. “No tenants. No neighbors. No thin walls. Just us.”
“On the wall,” Nadia said. Not a request.
Lena’s back hit the bare drywall. Nadia pressed into her, mouth on her throat, teeth on the tendon from jaw to collarbone. She stripped Lena bare and stepped back to look at her in the harsh shop light with the thorough attention of a building inspection.
“Tell me what you want,” Nadia murmured. “We’ve got the whole building. Every room. All night.”
“Your mouth. Here. Now. And then I want you inside me on that drop cloth, and I want to be loud enough to test the insulation.”
“Acoustic testing. I like your initiative.”
She dropped to her knees. Lifted one of Lena’s legs over her shoulder and put her mouth on her with devastating competence. Lena’s hand hit the wall—she’d leave handprints in the dust and Nadia would see them in the morning. Nadia’s tongue worked slow, deliberate strokes. She added two fingers, curling inside, finding the spot she’d memorized months ago.
“I’m not stopping. You’re mine in this building the way you’re mine in every building. Under every roof I own.”
Lena came with a scream that echoed off every bare surface and proved the insulation needed work. Nadia caught her and lowered her onto the drop cloth.
“The strap is in the truck,” Lena said.
“You brought the strap to a renovation site.”
“I brought the strap to our renovation site. This is relationship maintenance. Preventive. Scheduled.”
“You put fuck at the duplex on the calendar?”
“I put ‘late-night site visit.’ The rest is implied.”
Nadia walked out the front door in her sports bra and came back with the bag. She stepped into the harness, adjusted the straps with the same hands that tightened bolts and replaced washers, and knelt over Lena on the drop cloth.
“How do you want it?”
“Slowly first. Then not slowly. Then I want to ride you on the floor of the building we own together and I want you to tell me I’m good.”
“You’re good. You’re the best thing in every building I’ve ever walked into.” She pressed forward. Slow. Inch by inch. Rolling her hips in deep strokes that built sensation in layers—like paint, like primer, one coat at a time. The pace increased until the drop cloth was bunching and the shop light was swaying.
Lena pushed at her shoulders. “Up. I want to be on top.”
They rolled. Lena sank down and rode her with the full confidence of a woman done being tentative. Nadia’s hands gripped her hips, watching her from below.
“That’s my girl. Look at you. You’re everything. Every goddamn thing.”
Lena came with Nadia’s name ringing off the ceiling. Then she slid down, unclipped the harness, and put her mouth on Nadia with focused, unhurried attention.
“I know. Let go. I’ve got you.”
Nadia came with a sound closer to a sob than a moan, her whole body shuddering on the drop cloth.
“We need to christen every room. It’s tradition.”
“Two buildings, fourteen rooms, and a stairwell. That’s a lot of christening.”
“I love you,” Nadia said. Without the terror that used to live inside the words.
“I love you. And I love that you went to the truck in your sports bra because I told you to.”
“I maintain my equipment and the equipment was in the truck.”
“You called the strap ‘equipment.’”
“All tools are equipment. Proper storage extends service life.”
“I’m going to have that engraved on our headstone.”
Nadia laughed. The real one. The rare one. They lay on the floor of the duplex and laughed together, and the building held the sound the way buildings held everything.
Tonight, the building was theirs. And they had fourteen rooms to go.
Loved this bonus? The full novel has twenty chapters, nine explicit scenes, and a love story that starts with blue painter’s tape.
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