Bonus: The Eighth Lesson
An exclusive bonus chapter from A Beginner’s Guide to Bad Decisions by Aurora North
⚠️ This bonus chapter contains explicit sexual content and spoilers for A Beginner’s Guide to Bad Decisions. Read the book first.
The Eighth Lesson
The note is on the kitchen island when Sabine gets home from the gallery.
Cream card stock. Black ink. Her own fountain pen — Tess stole it from the desk three weeks ago and hasn’t returned it, and the theft is so deliberate and so Tess that Sabine hasn’t asked for it back.
Lesson Eight. Tonight. 9 p.m. Wear what makes you feel honest. Rules: there are none.
Sabine reads it twice. Sets it down. Presses her fingertips against the ink and feels the indentations where the pen bore down, and her heart does the thing it’s been doing for six months — the accelerated, ridiculous, utterly ungovernable thing that happens whenever Tess Everly decides to surprise her.
She looks at the clock. Seven-thirty. She has ninety minutes.
She showers. Considers three outfits. Puts on the white linen shirt — the one Tess stole from the bathroom floor on the day of the plumbing emergency, the one that has been washed and returned and stolen and returned so many times it has become a shared object, belonging to neither and both — and tailored black trousers. Bare feet. No perfume. Honest.
At nine o’clock, she walks downstairs.
Tess’s apartment door is ajar. Warm light spills into the corridor. The scent of fig candles — Sabine’s candles, migrated downstairs over months of stolen evenings — drifts through the gap.
She pushes the door open.
The apartment has been transformed. Not dramatically — Tess hasn’t rearranged furniture or draped silk from the ceiling. She’s done something quieter and more devastating: she’s recreated the conditions of every lesson they’ve shared, compressed into a single room.
Candles on every surface — the fig-and-cedar ones from the penthouse. Low music with a pulse, the electronic something that Sabine pretends to dislike. The floor-length mirror from Tess’s bedroom, moved to lean against the living room wall. The green velvet chair, repositioned to face it. And on the side table beside the chair, laid out on dark fabric: the silk scarf from Lesson Three. The vibrator. A bottle of wine, already open.
And Tess.
Tess is sitting in the green velvet chair in a black silk robe that Sabine has never seen. Her legs are crossed. Her honey-blonde hair is loose. She’s wearing the dark red lipstick and the gold hoops and nothing else that Sabine can identify beneath the robe, and she’s holding a glass of wine with the particular composure of a woman who has been rehearsing this moment and is done rehearsing.
“Sit down,” Tess says.
“Where?”
Tess nods to the ottoman she’s placed in front of the mirror. Low, backless, positioned so that whoever sits on it will see themselves in the glass.
Sabine sits. The mirror is behind her. Tess is in front of her. She is, she realises, in the student’s position — the spot where Tess sat during Lesson Two, trembling and bare, while Sabine stood above her and told her to watch.
“Tonight,” Tess says, “you’re going to learn something.”
“I thought we agreed — no more lessons.”
“This isn’t a lesson. It’s a gift.” Tess uncrosses her legs. The robe parts at the thigh and Sabine sees bare skin — smooth, pale, the specific softness of Tess’s inner thigh that Sabine has kissed a hundred times and would kiss a hundred thousand more. “But the structure might feel familiar.”
She stands. Sets the wine down. Walks to Sabine with the deliberate, unhurried pace that Sabine herself used during every lesson — the long approach, the controlled distance, the art of making someone wait.
“First,” Tess says. “Ask.”
She stands in front of the ottoman. Close enough that Sabine could reach for her. The robe is tied at the waist — a single knot, loose, promising.
“Ask me for what you want,” Tess says. “Specifically.”
Sabine looks up at her. Six months ago, Tess couldn’t say the word kiss without three false starts. Now she’s standing above Sabine in a black silk robe using Sabine’s own methodology with the easy authority of a woman who has not just learned the lesson but surpassed the teacher.
“I want to see you,” Sabine says.
“Be specific.”
“I want you to open the robe. Slowly. I want to see what you’re wearing underneath.”
“What if I’m not wearing anything underneath?”
Sabine’s breath catches.
Tess pulls the knot. The silk falls open. She’s not wearing anything underneath.
The candlelight catches every curve — the full breasts Sabine has mapped with her mouth, the waist she’s gripped, the hips she’s praised, the blonde hair between her legs, the scar low on her belly that Sabine has kissed until Tess stopped flinching. She is standing naked in her own apartment in an open black robe with the confidence of a woman who has been seen so thoroughly that visibility has become a form of power.
“Second,” Tess says. “Be seen.”
She takes Sabine’s hands. Places them on her waist. Guides them upward — over her ribs, the sides of her breasts, her shoulders.
“You taught me to look at my own body without hiding,” Tess says. “Now I want you to look at yourself.”
She steps behind the ottoman. Her hands go to Sabine’s shoulders and she turns Sabine gently until she faces the mirror.
Tess’s hands move to the buttons of Sabine’s shirt. She opens them from behind — her arms around Sabine, her chin on Sabine’s shoulder, both of them watching in the mirror as the linen falls open.
“Your collarbones,” Tess says. She traces them. “I spent the entire first night staring at these and telling myself I was interested in the art.”
“Your breasts.” She cups them through the opening — small, bare, the nipples already tight. “The first time I touched you through your shirt during Lesson One, I thought I was going to lose consciousness.”
She pushes the shirt off Sabine’s shoulders. In the mirror, Sabine watches herself be undressed by a woman narrating the undressing with the same devastating praise that Sabine invented.
“Your tattoo.” Tess’s finger traces the three interlocking triangles beneath Sabine’s left breast. “You said it means nothing symbolic. You’re wrong. It means you chose something permanent when you were twenty-six because you liked the geometry, and that’s who you are — a woman who commits to beautiful things and pretends it’s intellectual.”
Sabine’s eyes are burning. In the mirror, she watches Tess’s hands on her body and cannot look away because the lesson was always watch and she is watching.
“Third,” Tess whispers. “Choose.”
She reaches past Sabine to the side table. The silk scarf. The vibrator.
“What do you want tonight?”
“Everything,” Sabine says.
“That’s not specific.”
“I want the scarf on my wrists. I want your mouth on me. I want to come while you’re inside me. And then I want to do the same to you.” She holds Tess’s gaze in the mirror. “Specifically enough?”
Tess’s smile in the mirror is the most beautiful thing Sabine has ever seen.
“Good girl,” Tess says.
The words hit Sabine like a closed fist and an open hand simultaneously. She exhales. Her whole body softens.
Tess ties the scarf. She uses the headboard of the daybed in the corner. Sabine’s wrists above her head, the fabric secure but not tight. The position opens her — chest forward, ribs visible, the tattoo exposed.
Tess kneels over her. The robe is gone now and she’s naked above Sabine, straddling her hips, blonde hair falling around them like a curtain.
She kisses Sabine. Long, deep. Then her mouth moves — jaw, throat, the tendon, the spot below Sabine’s ear that makes her breathing stutter. She lingers there. Sucks gently. Then harder.
“Fourth,” Tess murmurs against Sabine’s neck. “Take.”
She moves down. Mouth on Sabine’s collarbone. Mouth on her sternum. Mouth on her breast — tongue circling the nipple, then closing, the warm wet suction that makes Sabine’s back arch and her hands pull against the silk. She uses her teeth — gentle, scraping, the lightest bite that makes her cry out.
“Tess —” Sabine’s voice is wrecked. “Lower. Please.”
“Ask me properly.”
“I want your mouth between my legs. I want you to make me come with your tongue while my hands are tied and I can’t touch you.”
“Good.”
Tess pulls the trousers down. The underwear. Sabine is naked and bound and the mirror shows her everything — the silver hair against the pillow, the arms extended above, the lean body displayed in candlelight, and Tess settling between her thighs.
Tess puts her mouth on Sabine and the sound Sabine makes fills the apartment.
Tess knows her. Knows the rhythm — the alternating pressure that makes Sabine’s thighs shake. Knows the combination — tongue on her clit, two fingers sliding inside, curling forward, the dual stimulation that dismantles Sabine’s composure.
But tonight Tess doesn’t dismantle. She builds. Slowly. She brings Sabine close and then eases back — a deliberate withdrawal that leaves Sabine trembling and pulling against the silk and begging.
“Fifth,” Tess says against her. “Risk.”
She reaches for the vibrator. Turns it on. Tess replaces her mouth with the vibrator — pressing it against Sabine’s clit while her mouth moves to kiss Sabine’s inner thigh, her hip. Her free hand goes to Sabine’s breast.
Three points of contact. The overload of sensation makes Sabine’s vision blur.
“Let me hear you,” Tess whispers. “Don’t hold anything back.”
Sabine comes. The orgasm erupts from the base of her spine — fast, violent. She cries out with her hands bound and Tess’s name on her lips, and Tess holds the vibrator steady through every wave.
Tess turns off the vibrator. Unties the scarf. Kisses each wrist — the same gesture Sabine performed during Lesson Three.
“Sixth,” Tess says, lying down beside her. “Stay.”
Sabine rolls toward her. Takes Tess’s face in her hands and kisses her — tasting herself on Tess’s mouth — and the kiss becomes urgency becomes Sabine on top, her mouth traveling down Tess’s body with six months of devotion.
She uses her mouth on Tess with patience, precision, worship. She slides two fingers inside Tess and curls them and presses her tongue flat against Tess’s clit and Tess arches and moans and her hands go to Sabine’s silver hair and grip.
Sabine uses the vibrator next — pressing it against Tess while her mouth moves to her breasts, her throat. Tess wraps her legs around Sabine’s hips and the vibrator is trapped between them, buzzing against both of them.
Sabine angles the vibrator so it presses against both of them simultaneously. Their hips rock together and the sounds they make weave together in the warm air.
They come within seconds of each other. Not choreographed — messy, off-rhythm, Tess first and Sabine immediately after from the feeling of Tess clenching against her.
They lie together on the daybed. Breathing. Damp. The candles guttering.
“Seventh,” Tess says, when her voice returns.
“Seventh?”
“Stay. You already learned that one.” She threads her fingers through Sabine’s. “But it bears repeating.”
Sabine pulls Tess against her. Presses her face into the honey-blonde hair.
“There were eight lessons,” Sabine says. “What’s the eighth?”
Tess lifts her head. Looks at Sabine with blue-green eyes in the candlelight.
“The eighth lesson,” she says, “is learning that you don’t need lessons anymore. You just need someone who stays.”
Sabine holds her tighter. The candles are dying and the silk scarf is somewhere on the floor and the mirror reflects two women tangled together on a daybed, and neither of them is performing. Neither of them is hiding. Neither of them is leaving.
“Stay,” Sabine says.
“I’m already staying.”
“I know. I just like saying it.”
Tess laughs against her shoulder, and the laughter echoes in the small apartment the way Sabine’s unguarded laugh once echoed through the ceiling on a Tuesday night and changed a woman’s life.
The candles go out.
They stay.
📨 Never Miss a Release
Get new book alerts, exclusive content, and bonus chapters from Aurora North.