Full Disclosure

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Internal Affairs
by Blair Lennox

The vows were at four-fifteen. The reception ran late. And Margot turned down a sixth-floor suite with a hot tub so she could have Room 412 back, because the suite didn’t have the heron.

Full Disclosure

LENA

The wedding was at four. By eleven, the Larkspur had stopped pretending it didn’t know who they were.

The bartender, the woman who made the paloma right, had sent up a bottle of champagne with a note on a cocktail napkin that said Congratulations, Room 412, and the night manager had upgraded them to a suite on the sixth floor without being asked, and Margot had thanked him very politely and asked for 412 back.

“It has a hot tub,” the night manager had said, bewildered.

“It doesn’t have the heron,” Margot had said.

So here they were. The radiator ticking. The ice machine down the hall dropping its load like a car crash every forty minutes. The heron over the bed, worried as ever, still waiting for its verdict. Lena’s wedding dress, which was not white, because she’d said she’d look like a cake, was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. It was dark red silk and it had a zipper all the way down the back, and Margot had already spent most of the reception looking at that zipper like it owed her money.

Lena was on the bed in her slip with her shoes off and her ring catching the lamplight, watching her wife take off her cufflinks.

Her wife.

She’d been saying it in her head all day like a word in another language she’d just figured out she was fluent in. Wife. Teo had cried at the ceremony. Dana had cried at the ceremony and then blamed it on Sen’s perfume. Sen did not wear perfume. Mami had danced with Margot to Celia Cruz and told her, loud enough for the whole ballroom to hear, that she was too skinny and that if she ever broke her daughter’s heart she would find out what Puerto Rican women did with a wooden spoon. Margot had said, Yes, ma’am, with total sincerity, and Mami had decided right then that she loved her.

Now Margot set the cufflinks on the dresser. Side by side. Square. She rolled her shirtsleeves to the elbow, the way she did when she was about to do something with her hands, and then she reached up and loosened her tie.

Navy silk. The same one. It had been on Lena’s wrists, and on Margot’s, and around Margot’s throat at the altar this afternoon, because Lena had insisted. Something old, she’d said. Something blue. Something borrowed from my wrists.

Margot slid it out from under her collar in one long whisper of silk and wound it once around her own hand.

Lena’s whole body went hot.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, we’re doing that.”

“We’re doing that.” Margot came and stood at the foot of the bed. Her hair was coming loose from whatever she’d done to it for the ceremony. The silver at her temples caught the lamp. Her eyes were very dark. “I’ve been thinking about it since about four-fifteen.”

“The vows were at four-fifteen.”

“I’m aware.”

“You were thinking about tying me up during your vows?”

“I was thinking about it during yours.” Margot’s mouth tipped. “You said I promise to always tell you the truth, even when it’s terrible. And I thought, Then she’ll tell me exactly how she wants it tonight.“

Lena laughed, breathless. “That’s not what that vow was about.”

“Every vow is about this, eventually.” Margot put one knee on the bed. “Arms up, Mrs. Voss-Ortiz.”

“We said we’d fight about the hyphen later.”

“Later,” Margot agreed. “Arms.”

Lena put her arms up.

The tie went on the way it had the very first time. Around her wrists, around the slat of the headboard, back again. Snug. Neat. Nowhere near tight enough to hurt. Margot checked it with one finger between the silk and Lena’s pulse, and Lena’s breath caught at the care of it.

“Pull,” Margot said.

Lena pulled. The silk held.

“If you want out—”

“Red,” Lena said. “I know. And you untie me and we don’t talk about it unless I want to.”

“Good.” Margot sat back on her heels and looked at her. Her eyes went over Lena’s body slowly, the way they always did, like she was reading something she intended to remember. The slip was black. Lena had nothing on under it. Margot’s gaze stopped at the place where the silk had ridden up over her thighs, and stayed there, and Lena felt it like a hand.

“You wore nothing under your wedding dress,” Margot said.

“I wore nothing under my wedding dress.”

“All day.”

“All day. Through the vows. Through the toasts. Through my mother asking Dana if Sen was single.” Lena tipped her chin up. “Through the first dance, Lieutenant. When you had your hand on the small of my back.”

Margot was very quiet for a moment.

“I could have found that out at the reception,” she said, low, “and I would have had to leave my own wedding.”

“I know. That was the point.”

Margot leaned over her, braced on one hand by Lena’s head, and kissed her. Slow. Deep. Her free hand found the strap of the slip and drew it down Lena’s shoulder, and then the other, and then she drew the whole thing down Lena’s body inch by inch, kissing each new inch of skin as it appeared. Collarbone. Sternum. The soft underside of one breast. Her mouth closed over Lena’s nipple and sucked, hard, and Lena arched off the mattress and yanked at the tie and the headboard knocked the wall.

“There it is,” Margot murmured against her skin. “I’ve been waiting all day to hear that.”

She did the other one. Then she went back to the first. She was thorough, the way she was always thorough, and by the time the slip was a puddle of black silk at the foot of the bed, Lena was panting and her thighs were slick and she hadn’t been touched anywhere that counted.

“Now,” Margot said.

Lena knew what was coming. She’d known it for a year and a half. It still went through her like a current every single time.

“Tell me what you want,” Margot said. “Say it. All of it.”

“I want your mouth,” Lena said. “On my tits, and then lower. I want you to eat me until I’m begging. I want your fingers in me. Three. I want you to fuck me slow until I can’t stand it and then I want you to keep going.”

Margot waited.

“And I want the strap,” Lena said, and her face went hot. “The purple one. It’s in your bag. I saw you pack it. I want you to put it on and fuck me with my hands tied and I want to watch you do it in that mirror.”

Margot’s eyes went to the mirror over the dresser. Then back to Lena.

“That’s not all of it,” she said softly.

It never was. Lena had stopped expecting it to be. That was the whole point of the question, and they both knew it. Margot didn’t ask it to get the filth. She asked it to get the thing under the filth.

“I want you to tell me I’m yours,” Lena said. “Out loud. While you’re doing it. I’ve been your wife for seven hours and I want to hear you say it while you’re inside me.”

Something moved across Margot’s face. Not composed at all.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “I can do that.”

She started with her mouth.

She slid down the bed and settled between Lena’s thighs, still in her suit trousers and her white shirt with the sleeves rolled, and she spread Lena open with her thumbs and just looked. Long enough that Lena squirmed. Long enough that Lena said “Margot,” in a voice that cracked on both syllables.

“You’re soaked,” Margot said. “You’ve been like this all day, haven’t you? Under that dress.”

“Since the vows.”

“Since mine or since yours?”

“Since you said I take you, and everything you’ve done, and everything you’ll do, and you looked at me like—” Lena’s breath shuddered. “Since then.”

Margot put her mouth on her.

One long, flat stroke, from her entrance to her clit, slow enough to be cruel. Lena cried out. Margot did it again. And again. And then she found Lena’s clit with the tip of her tongue and circled it, light, teasing, never quite giving her the pressure she needed, while Lena twisted against the silk and swore at the heron.

“Please,” Lena gasped. “Please, harder, Margot—”

Margot sealed her lips around her clit and sucked.

Lena’s back came off the bed. The sound she made was loud enough that the people in 410, if there were people in 410, were going to have a story to tell. Margot didn’t let up. She sucked and flicked her tongue and sucked again, and then she slid two fingers into Lena, deep, curling, and Lena’s whole body seized.

“Oh, God, I’m—I’m going to—”

Margot stopped.

Fingers buried. Mouth gone. She lifted her head and rested her chin on Lena’s hipbone and looked up at her with her mouth wet and her eyes black, and waited.

“No,” Lena wailed. “No, no, no, you married me, you don’t get to do this on our wedding night—”

“I married you,” Margot agreed, “and I promised to be thorough.” She pressed a kiss to the inside of Lena’s thigh. “Breathe.”

Lena breathed. It came out as a sob.

Margot did it twice more. Brought her up to the edge with her mouth and her fingers, until Lena was babbling and crying and her heels were scrabbling at the duvet, and then went still. The third time, she added a third finger, and Lena was so close and so wrecked that she heard herself start to beg the way she’d begged on the very first night in this room, long and helpless and completely without shame.

“Please, please, let me, I’ll be so good, I’ll be so good for you, please let me come, wife, please—”

Margot made a sound against her that Lena felt all the way up her spine.

“Say it again,” Margot said hoarsely.

“Wife. Wife. Please.”

Margot put her mouth back on her and fucked her with three fingers and didn’t stop.

Lena came so hard the headboard slammed the wall. It ripped through her in long, shaking waves, her thighs clamped around Margot’s head, her wrists straining against the silk, Margot’s free arm pinning her hips to the bed while she bucked. Margot licked her through all of it. Kept her fingers moving, slow and deep, wringing it out of her, until Lena was sobbing Margot’s name into the ceiling and couldn’t tell anymore where one wave stopped and the next one started.

When it finally eased, Margot didn’t pull away. She stayed there with her cheek on Lena’s thigh and her fingers still inside her, very gently, and Lena felt her smile against her skin.

“That’s one,” Margot said.

The strap was in Margot’s overnight bag, in the side pocket, wrapped in a hotel washcloth from the last time they’d stayed here, which Lena found almost unbearably funny until she watched Margot put it on.

She did it standing at the foot of the bed with her back to the mirror. Shirt off. Trousers off. Nothing but the harness, black leather against her pale hips, buckled with the same unhurried care she used on everything, and the curved purple length of it jutting heavy and obscene from between her thighs. She poured lube into her palm and stroked it down the shaft once, slow, looking at Lena the whole time.

Lena’s mouth went dry.

“Look at you,” she said. “Lieutenant.”

“Off duty.” Margot climbed onto the bed. “Do you want your hands?”

Lena thought about it. She tugged once at the tie. Her wrists were warm and a little sore and she liked it.

“No,” she said. “Leave them. I want you to have all of me.”

Margot knelt between her legs, and lifted Lena’s hips onto her thighs, and set the blunt head of the toy against her. Didn’t push. Just rested it there, at her entrance, slick and hard, while Lena breathed.

“Look,” Margot said, and nodded toward the mirror.

Lena turned her head on the pillow.

In the glass over the dresser she could see all of it. Herself spread out on the white duvet with her arms bound over her head and her curls everywhere and her lipstick long gone. Margot kneeling over her, long and pale and lean in the lamplight, the black straps across her hips, her short dark hair a mess, her face completely unguarded. The purple shaft between them, the head of it just barely parting her.

“Watch,” Margot said. “Don’t look away. I want you to see what it looks like when I take my wife.”

She pushed in.

Slow. So slow. Inch by inch, the thick curved length opening her, stretching her, filling her, and Lena watched it disappear into her body in the mirror and moaned so loud she heard it come back off the walls. Margot didn’t stop until her hips were flush against Lena’s ass. Then she held there. Buried. Watching Lena’s face.

“Okay?” she asked.

“Yes. God. Move. Please move.”

Margot moved.

Long, deep strokes. All the way out until only the tip was left, and then all the way back in, the curve dragging against that place inside Lena that made her see white. The bed creaked. The headboard knocked. Lena’s eyes kept trying to close and she kept forcing them open, watching in the mirror as Margot’s hips rolled and Margot’s hands gripped her thighs and the purple length slid in and out of her, slick and shining, every stroke.

“Look at you,” Margot said. Her voice had gone rough. “Look at you taking it. You’re so beautiful. You’re so good. You’re mine, Lena. You’re my wife. You’re mine.”

Lena sobbed.

“Again,” she begged. “Say it again.”

“Mine.” A deep, grinding thrust that made Lena’s toes curl. “Mine.” Another. “You came into my unit on a complaint and you walked out with my name. You’re mine. I’ll say it in front of anyone. I’ll say it under oath. I’ll put it in writing.”

“You already—fuck—you already did, you put it in a proposal—”

“I’ll put it in another one.” Margot leaned down over her, braced on one arm by Lena’s head, and the angle changed, and Lena cried out. Margot’s face was right over hers now, their foreheads almost touching, Margot’s breath on her lips. Her hips were snapping faster. Harder. Not slow at all anymore. “Look at me now. Not the mirror. Me.”

Lena looked at her.

“I love you,” Margot said. “I have loved you since a terrible drink in that bar downstairs. I am going to love you until I’m a very old woman correcting your count. Come for me. Come for me, sweetheart. Let me feel it.”

Lena came.

It broke over her like a dam going. Her back bowed off the bed, her wrists yanked at the silk so hard the slat groaned, her thighs locked around Margot’s waist and pulled her deeper, and she screamed. Actually screamed. The whole fourth floor of the Larkspur was going to know exactly what had happened in Room 412 on the night of the Voss-Ortiz wedding, hyphen pending. She didn’t care. She came clenching and clenching around the toy with Margot’s mouth on hers swallowing the noise and Margot’s hips still moving, slower, gentler, dragging it out, until Lena was shaking and wrung out and crying with her face pressed into Margot’s neck.

Margot held still inside her.

“Okay?” she whispered.

Lena laughed. It came out wet and wrecked. “I’m going to need a minute,” she said. “Possibly a week.”

“The week is extra,” said Margot, and kissed her temple.

She untied the tie with a few quick tugs. Rubbed Lena’s wrists, one at a time, checking the skin. Eased the toy out of her so carefully, and unbuckled the harness, and lay down on her back beside Lena, naked and flushed and breathing hard, with one arm thrown over her eyes.

Lena lay there for about forty seconds.

Then she rolled over, and climbed on top of her wife, and picked up the navy silk tie from where Margot had dropped it on the pillow.

Margot lifted her arm off her eyes.

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh,” Lena agreed. “We’re doing that.”

“I thought you needed a week.”

“I lied. I’m a terrible witness.” Lena wound the tie once around her own hand, exactly the way Margot did. “Arms up, Mrs. Voss-Ortiz.”

Margot looked up at her for a long moment. And then, slowly, with an expression on her face that Lena had only seen a few times in her life, the expression of a woman who had spent forty-seven years in control of every room she walked into and had finally found the one person she wanted to give the room to, she lifted her arms over her head and crossed her wrists.

Lena tied them.

She did it the way Margot had taught her. Around, around the slat, back again. Snug. Neat. One finger between the silk and Margot’s pulse.

“Pull,” Lena said.

Margot pulled. The silk held. Her breath caught, just barely, the sound Lena had spent six weeks chasing in this exact room, a lifetime ago.

“If you want out,” Lena said.

“Red.”

“Good.” Lena sat back on Margot’s hips and looked down at her. Her wife. Long and pale on the white duvet, her small breasts rising and falling fast, her nipples tight, her wrists bound over her head in her own tie, the ring Lena had put on her finger at four-fifteen catching the lamplight against the dark wood. The bite mark Lena had left on her hipbone at the reception, in a coat closet, during the cake, already starting to bloom.

“Now,” Lena said. “Tell me what you want. Say it. All of it.”

Margot’s eyes closed.

“I want your mouth,” she said. Her voice was low and steady and only a little shaky at the edges. “I want you to sit on my face. I want to taste you while my hands are tied and I can’t do anything but take it. And then I want you to fuck me. With your fingers. Hard. I don’t want you to be gentle. I’ve been gentle all day. I’ve been a bride all day. I want—” She stopped.

“That’s not all of it,” Lena said.

Margot opened her eyes.

“I want you to make me loud,” she said. “I want everyone on this floor to know my wife is fucking me. I want the night manager to hear it. I want you to make me say your name until I can’t say anything else.”

Lena’s whole body went molten.

“Oh, Lieutenant,” she breathed. “I can do that.”

She climbed up the bed and put one knee on either side of Margot’s head and took hold of the headboard, right above Margot’s bound wrists, and lowered herself onto her wife’s mouth.

Margot moaned into her. Lena felt it everywhere. Margot couldn’t use her hands, couldn’t grip Lena’s thighs or pull her down, so she used everything else. Her tongue, long flat strokes and then deep, pushing inside, then circling her clit. Her lips. The angle of her jaw. Lena rode her slow at first, rocking her hips, watching Margot’s face beneath her, eyes closed, completely absorbed, devoted, like a woman at prayer. Then not slow. Lena ground down and Margot moaned again, louder, and the vibration went straight through Lena’s clit, and she gasped.

“You like that,” Lena panted. “You like having your hands tied and your mouth full of me.”

Margot made a noise that was absolutely a yes.

“Say it.”

Margot pulled back an inch, just enough, her mouth and chin glistening. “I love it. I love it. Don’t stop. Lena—”

Lena didn’t stop. She rode Margot’s mouth until the headboard was knocking the wall in rhythm and the heron was rattling in its frame and Margot was moaning steadily under her, high and helpless, and then Lena came on her face. Hard. Shaking. Her hands white on the headboard and her head thrown back, Margot’s tongue still moving under her, licking her through it.

She didn’t give Margot time to breathe.

She slid down Margot’s body, and pushed her thighs apart with her knee, and found her soaking, slick all the way down her inner thighs, and pushed three fingers into her without any warning at all.

Margot’s back came off the bed.

The sound she made was not contained. It was not careful. It was not filed away. It was loud and raw and it had Lena’s name in the middle of it, and it went up into the ceiling of Room 412 and probably through it.

“There you go,” Lena said. “There’s my wife.”

She fucked her hard. The way she’d asked. Three fingers driving in and curling, the heel of her palm grinding against Margot’s clit on every thrust, her other hand braced flat on Margot’s stomach to feel her muscles jump. Margot pulled against the tie. The slat creaked. Her heels dug into the mattress. She was saying Lena, Lena, Lena now, over and over, her voice climbing, her thighs starting to shake.

“Louder,” Lena said.

“Lena—”

“Louder, Margot. You wanted the night manager to hear. Let him hear.”

“LENA—”

Margot came screaming her name.

Not a crack in her composure. Not a single sound with an edge on it. A scream, full-throated and shameless, her whole body bowing up off the bed, her thighs clamping around Lena’s wrist, her inner muscles clenching so hard around Lena’s fingers that Lena gasped. It went on and on. Lena kept moving through it, slower, gentler, and Margot came again, smaller and deeper, sobbing, her head turned against her own bound arm, tears running into her hair.

Then it was quiet.

The radiator ticked. Somewhere down the hall, the ice machine dropped its load with a crash. Somewhere on the fourth floor of the Larkspur, Lena was absolutely certain, someone was lying awake in a very bad mood.

She eased her fingers out and untied the silk and rubbed Margot’s wrists, one at a time, checking the skin, the way she’d been taught. Then she lay down on top of her, chin on Margot’s sternum, and looked at her.

Margot’s hair was a disaster. Her face was wet. Her mouth was swollen. She looked younger and older and more beautiful than Lena had ever seen her, and she was smiling at the ceiling with her eyes closed, a slow, private, wrecked smile that Lena had married.

“Mrs. Voss-Ortiz,” Lena said.

“We’re fighting about the hyphen later.”

“Later,” Lena agreed. “How do you feel?”

Margot thought about it. Really thought about it. She always did.

“Complete,” she said finally. “And consistent.”

Lena laughed so hard she had to put her face in Margot’s neck.

They lay tangled for a long time. Lena watched the clock on the nightstand go from 11:39 to 11:40, and felt Margot feel her watch it, and neither of them said anything at all.

At 11:41, Margot pulled the duvet up over both of them, and turned out the lamp, and stayed.

Haven’t read the book yet? Start in Room 412.

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