
Cleats, Sheets & Clean Slates — Bonus: The Wall
An Exclusive Scene Too Hot for Retailers
by Aurora North
⚠️ This bonus chapter contains extremely explicit FF sexual content set after the events of the novel. Readers 18+ who have completed the main book. Spoilers ahead.
The Wall
The apartment is empty.
Not our apartment — our townhouse across the harbour. That apartment is home. This apartment is history.
We’re back in Harbor East to clear out the last of Zinnia’s things. The moving boxes are stacked by the front door. That was ninety minutes ago. The boxes are still by the door. The coffee is cold.
I’m pinned against the wall. Not any wall. The wall. The shared wall between her old apartment and mine — the one I pressed my hand against on the first night, the one that carried her playlist and my silence and six months of palms reaching for each other through plaster.
“We should finish packing,” I say. Zinnia’s mouth is on my neck and her hands are under my shirt.
“Absolutely,” she says against my throat. “Very important. The boxes.”
“The movers—”
“Are coming at two. It’s eleven fifteen. That’s nearly three hours.”
“This wall,” she says. Her palm flat against the plaster beside my head. “Do you know how many nights I lay in bed on the other side of this wall wanting to touch you? Every night. Every single night from the first one.”
“I was.”
“Every night?”
“Every night.”
She drops to her knees. Compact Zinnia on her knees, looking up at six-foot-one Maëlle against the wall that separated them. She hooks her fingers in my waistband and pulls. Down, in one motion — joggers and underwear together. Her hands slide up the backs of my thighs, gripping the muscle with appreciation that is both sexual and athletic.
She presses her mouth against my inner thigh. “Patience,” she murmurs — my word, the goalkeeper’s command — and the laugh that escapes me turns into a gasp when her tongue traces the crease of my thigh from hip to centre.
“We’re in an empty apartment. The door is unlocked.”
“Then be quiet. For once.”
Her mouth finds me. Her tongue flat against me, broad and warm and unhurried. I grip her braids. She works me with the expertise of a year’s study. She knows the rhythm, the pressure, the specific combination of tongue and lips and suction that bypasses every defence I have.
She adds her fingers — two, sliding inside me from below while her mouth stays where it is — and the dual sensation makes my knees buckle. She reaches up with her free hand and covers mine on the wall. Fingers interlocking on the plaster. Holding hands on the wall that separated us while she fucks me with her mouth.
“Good,” I breathe. Our word. The syllable that started everything.
She moans against me. The vibration adds a frequency I wasn’t prepared for. Her fingers curl inside me and I come with our fingers interlocked on the plaster, my body shaking, my voice filling the empty apartment with a sound that carries and echoes off bare walls. Full-throated and unrestrained in a way I never allowed myself when we lived here.
Her mouth is wet. Her eyes are bright. She looks wrecked and triumphant and entirely, fiercely mine.
“Your turn.”
I haul her up and spin her — pressing her face-first against the wall. I step in behind her. My chest against her back. My hips against her ass. My mouth at her ear. I cover her completely.
“Press your hands against the wall. Keep them there.”
I push her joggers down just past her hips, bunching at mid-thigh. Not off. I want her confined. My hand slides between her thighs from behind. She’s soaking — the wetness audible when I push the cotton aside and run my fingers through her folds.
“All those nights you were on the other side. Lying in bed. Thinking about me.”
“Yes. Every night.”
“What did you think about?”
“Your hands. Your voice. The way you said no in the hotel and it made me want to—”
“Made you want to what?”
“Beg.”
I push two fingers inside her and she buckles. Her forehead drops against the wall. Her hands slide down the plaster an inch before she catches herself, obeying. I fuck her from behind — deep, steady strokes, my palm grinding against her clit while my fingers curl on the withdrawal. My other arm wraps around her waist, holding her upright.
“You’re doing so well. You’re keeping your hands on the wall. You’re being so good for me.”
“You listened,” I say. The phrase. The original. “You always listen. You’re so good, Zin. Let go.”
She comes with her hands on the wall and my fingers inside her and my arm holding her up. Her whole body contracts, her hands curl into fists against the plaster, her spine arches back against my chest.
I hold her through it. When the contractions stop and her fists uncurl, I wrap both arms around her from behind and rest my chin on top of her head.
“The bedroom,” she says. “One more time. In the apartment where we started.”
I spread the blanket on the carpet. She pulls me down. We undress each other on the floor. She climbs into my lap. We make love with unhurried confidence. She comes in my lap with her face pressed against my neck. I come with her hand between my legs and the afternoon light warm across my back.
Afterward, she traces the ocean-wave tattoo along my ribs. I trace the stars on her ankle — seven now. The wall is just a wall now.
We finish packing at one forty-five. We carry the last box together.
At the door, Zinnia turns back. “Thank you,” she says. Not to me. To the apartment.
I take her hand. We close the door. We don’t look back.
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