After Hours

A Pumpkin Spice & Bi Panic Bonus Scene
by Blair Lennox

This bonus scene takes place six weeks after the epilogue of Pumpkin Spice & Bi Panic. It contains explicit sexual content and is intended for readers 18+. If you haven’t read the novel yet, this scene contains major spoilers.

Six weeks after the Fall Festival, and Sloane’s hands smelled like paint instead of espresso.

Not that Addie was complaining. She loved what those hands were building—the gutted storefront two blocks from Moth & Maple that was slowly, stubbornly becoming Moth & Moonlight. She loved the way Sloane talked about the stage dimensions with the same intensity she used to describe espresso extraction ratios. She loved that the incubator grant had come through, that Iris was co-signing the lease, that Sloane had cried in the parking lot of the Small Business Development Center and then pretended she hadn’t.

What Addie did not love was that it was 9:47 PM on a Friday and she was alone on the couch in Sloane’s apartment, wearing one of Sloane’s T-shirts that she’d stopped pretending she was going to give back, reading the same paragraph of a client brief for the fourth time because her brain refused to care about Q1 brand positioning when the woman she wanted was three blocks away sanding drywall.

She picked up her phone.

Addie: How’s the wall?

Three dots. Then:

Sloane: Sexy. Really smooth. Great texture. Incredible finish.

Addie: Are you flirting with drywall?

Sloane: The drywall is responding to my touch better than anyone has all week.

Addie stared at the message. Read it again. Felt the slow curl of heat in her abdomen that had become as familiar as breathing over the past year—the one that started low and quiet and then spread until she couldn’t think about anything else.

Sloane had been working every night this week. They’d barely touched since Tuesday, and Tuesday had been a half-asleep kiss goodnight that Addie had been too tired to turn into anything else, which she now regarded as a personal failure of catastrophic proportions.

She set down the client brief. Stood up. Walked to the bedroom and opened the bottom drawer where she kept the things she’d started leaving at Sloane’s over the past six months—a slow colonization that neither of them had formally acknowledged but that now included a toothbrush, three sets of underwear, running shoes, and the black lace set she’d bought in August and worn exactly once, the night of Sloane’s birthday, when Sloane had looked at her for about four seconds before removing it with her teeth.

Addie picked up the black lace. Put it back. Reached for something else instead—a soft cotton bralette, dark green, and matching underwear that sat low on her hips. Nothing performative. Just her body, the way Sloane liked it best.

She pulled on her jeans. Grabbed Sloane’s leather jacket off the back of the chair—it was too big on her and Sloane had told her once, in a voice that left bruises, that seeing Addie wear it made her want to push her against the nearest wall. She pocketed the spare key to Moth & Maple that Sloane had given her in September, the one on the little brass moth keychain.

And then she drove to the café.

Moth & Maple was dark. The CLOSED sign hung in the window, and the streetlights made the rain-wet brick glow amber. Addie let herself in through the back door—the kitchen entrance, past the walk-in cooler and the prep station where Iris’s sourdough starters lived in labeled jars.

The café was empty and still. The espresso machine gleamed in the ambient light from the street. The fairy lights Sloane had strung along the ceiling were still plugged in—she always forgot to unplug them—and they cast the room in a warm, low gold that made the brick walls look like the inside of somewhere secret.

Addie set her bag on the counter. She knew this machine. Sloane had taught her on a rainy Sunday in April, standing behind her with both hands over Addie’s on the portafilter, her mouth against Addie’s ear, talking her through the extraction while Addie’s hands shook for reasons that had nothing to do with the equipment.

She’d practiced since. Not because she needed to—she still ordered her drink every morning like a customer—but because learning Sloane’s machine felt like learning her language. The particular pressure of the tamp. The sound the steam wand made when the milk was right. The way the espresso fell in a slow, dark ribbon when the grind and the timing and the pressure all aligned.

Addie ground the beans. Tamped. Locked the portafilter. Hit the button and watched the espresso pull—rich, even, the color of dark honey at the edges. She steamed oat milk the way Sloane had shown her, keeping the wand just below the surface until it sang, then sinking it deeper for heat. She poured it into one of the mismatched ceramic mugs—the dark blue one Sloane always used for her own drinks—and added a shot of vanilla and a dusting of cinnamon because that was what Sloane drank when she thought no one was watching. Not the elaborate seasonal specials she made for customers. Just a vanilla oat latte with cinnamon on top, simple and warm.

Then she reached for the Sharpie cup on the counter—the one stuffed full of markers in every color. She pulled out the black one. Uncapped it.

And wrote on a paper cup, in her neatest handwriting:

You’re allowed to want things too.

She set the cup next to the mug. Sat down on the counter. And texted Sloane.

Addie: Come to M&M. Back door’s open.

Sloane: I’m covered in joint compound.

Addie: I don’t care.

Sloane: Addie, I look like a construction worker who lost a fight with a wall.

Addie: I know what I said.

A pause. Then:

Sloane: 10 min.

It was eight minutes. Addie heard the back door open, heard boots on the kitchen tile, and then Sloane appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the café, and Addie’s breath caught the same way it had the first morning she’d walked into this room.

Sloane was filthy. White dust in her dark curls, a smear of joint compound across her collarbone, her tank top damp with sweat, arms bare and streaked with grime. The tattoo sleeve on her left arm was half-obscured under a fine layer of white powder. She had a bandana tied around her neck and her boots were untied and she looked like she’d been working for twelve hours straight, which she had.

She looked at Addie—sitting on the counter in her leather jacket, legs dangling, the mug steaming beside her—and went completely still.

"Hi," Addie said.

Sloane didn’t move from the doorway. Her eyes tracked from Addie’s face to the jacket to her bare legs below the hem of her jeans to the mug and then to the paper cup beside it.

"Is that—"

"Your drink. Vanilla oat latte, cinnamon on top."

Sloane crossed the room. She walked the way she always did—unhurried, deliberate, like every step was a decision she’d already made—but Addie could see the tension in her jaw, the way her gaze kept dropping to the V of the leather jacket where Addie hadn’t zipped it all the way.

She picked up the paper cup. Read it.

You’re allowed to want things too.

Sloane’s thumb ran over the words. She looked up at Addie, and her expression did something Addie had only seen a handful of times in the past year—that moment where the composure cracked, where the cool confidence fell away and the raw thing underneath was visible, the wanting that Sloane usually controlled so precisely it looked effortless.

"Addie."

"You’ve been working every night for three weeks," Addie said. She reached out, hooked a finger through one of Sloane’s belt loops, and pulled her closer. Sloane stepped between Addie’s knees, and the heat of her body came through the tank top like a furnace. "You’ve been building something incredible and I am so proud of you, and also I miss you, and also if you don’t kiss me in the next five seconds I’m going to lose my mind."

Sloane kissed her.

Not gently. Not the way she’d kissed her that first time in the rain outside the bookstore, careful and questioning and tasting like hope. This was the kiss of a woman who’d been thinking about this for days—deep and sure and a little rough, one hand in Addie’s hair and the other gripping the edge of the counter beside her thigh, and Addie opened her mouth and pulled her closer and felt the entire week of wanting collapse into this single point of contact.

Sloane tasted like the cinnamon gum she chewed during late-night work sessions. Her hand tightened in Addie’s hair—not pulling, just holding, a pressure that said I have you—and Addie made a sound against her mouth that she would have been embarrassed about a year ago and now didn’t bother hiding.

"I’m filthy," Sloane murmured against her lips.

"I know." Addie unzipped the leather jacket and let it fall open. Sloane’s eyes dropped to the green cotton bralette underneath, the soft fabric against Addie’s pale skin, and her breath audibly caught. "I don’t care."

"You’re wearing my jacket."

"I’m wearing a lot of things that are about to be on your floor."

Sloane pulled back just far enough to look at her—really look, the way she had that first morning, like Addie was something she couldn’t quite believe had walked through her door. "Who are you?" she asked, and it was the same question she’d asked the first time Addie had surprised her, the first time Addie had initiated, the first time Addie had shown up as the full, wanting, uncontrolled version of herself instead of the careful woman who’d spent two decades performing composure.

"I’m the woman who broke into your coffee shop to seduce you," Addie said. "Are you going to let me?"

Sloane’s answer was to slide the jacket off Addie’s shoulders and kiss the curve of her neck where it met her collarbone—an open-mouthed kiss, warm and deliberate, that made Addie’s entire spine light up. Addie tipped her head back, giving her more access, and Sloane took it. She kissed down the line of Addie’s throat, each press of her lips followed by the faint scrape of teeth, and Addie gripped the counter’s edge and let the sounds out.

"Tell me what you want," Sloane said against her skin. The same thing she always said. The question that had terrified Addie the first time and now felt like the safest sentence in any language.

"I want your hands on me." Addie pulled the bralette over her head and dropped it on the counter. "I want your mouth on me. I want you to stop thinking about drywall and start thinking about me."

Sloane laughed—that cracked, sudden sound that she could never suppress in time—and then her hands were on Addie’s bare waist and her mouth was on Addie’s chest and Addie stopped thinking about anything at all.

Sloane’s hands were still dusty. Addie could feel the fine grit of joint compound against her skin as Sloane’s fingers traveled up her ribs, and it should have been gritty and unpleasant and instead it was the most erotic thing she’d ever felt—the texture of it, the proof that Sloane had come straight from building her dream to touch her, hadn’t stopped to wash or change, had just come because Addie asked.

Sloane cupped Addie’s breasts in both hands, thumbs circling, and Addie arched into the touch with a sound that echoed in the empty café. The fairy lights caught the dust on Sloane’s forearms, turned it gold, and Addie watched Sloane’s dark hands against her pale skin and felt the contrast like a live wire—the visual of it, the warmth of those calloused fingers, the way Sloane touched her like she was memorizing a map she already knew by heart but wanted to learn again.

"God, you’re beautiful," Sloane murmured, and bent to take Addie’s nipple in her mouth.

Addie’s hand flew to the back of Sloane’s head. She held her there—fingers tangled in dusty curls—while Sloane’s tongue worked slow, devastating circles, alternating suction and softness until Addie was panting, her hips shifting on the counter, trying to find friction against nothing.

"Sloane—"

"I’m right here." Sloane switched to the other side, and her hand slid down Addie’s stomach to the button of her jeans. "Right here, baby."

That word. Baby. Sloane only used it when Addie was already falling apart, and it hit the same way every time—a detonation in the center of her chest that turned every careful thought to ash. Addie lifted her hips and Sloane pulled her jeans down, and then she was sitting on the counter of Moth & Maple in nothing but green cotton underwear, and Sloane was standing between her legs looking at her like she was the only thing in the room that mattered.

"You made me a latte," Sloane said.

"I did."

"You wrote on my cup."

"I did."

Sloane’s fingers traced the waistband of the green cotton. "You reversed the whole thing. You came to my shop. Made my drink. Wrote the message." Her voice was low and thick and Addie could see what it was doing to her—the flush climbing up her neck, the rapid pulse visible at her throat, the way her pupils had blown so wide her dark eyes were nearly black. "Do you know what that does to me?"

"Show me," Addie said.

Sloane pulled the green cotton down.

The counter was cold against Addie’s bare skin, and then it wasn’t, because Sloane’s hands were under her thighs lifting her closer to the edge and Sloane’s mouth was on her stomach and then her hip and then the inside of her thigh, and the contrast—cold marble under her, warm mouth above her, the fairy lights blurring gold above Sloane’s bowed head—was so overwhelming that Addie had to brace both hands behind her to stay upright.

Sloane knelt on the floor of her own café and looked up at Addie from between her legs, and the image branded itself into Addie’s memory—those dark eyes, that mouth, the streak of white dust across her cheekbone, the absolute certainty in her expression.

"You’re sure?" Sloane asked, the way she always asked, even after a hundred times, even after a year, because consent was not a box she checked once and forgot about, it was a language she spoke fluently every single time.

"Yes." Addie opened her knees wider. "Please, yes."

Sloane pressed her mouth to the inside of Addie’s thigh—a slow, open kiss that made Addie’s muscles tremble—and then moved inward, and Addie stopped bracing herself and let her elbows drop to the counter and let her head fall back and gave herself over to the thing she’d spent thirty-six years not knowing she was allowed to want.

Sloane’s mouth was unhurried. She started slow—long, flat strokes of her tongue that mapped Addie’s entire center, learning her again like it was the first time, finding the spots that made Addie’s breath hitch and returning to them. She used her lips. She used the flat of her tongue, then the tip, then the flat again. She built a rhythm that matched the one Addie’s hips were already finding and then deliberately broke it, pulling back just enough to make Addie gasp and reach for her.

"Don’t stop—"

"I won’t." Sloane’s hands tightened on Addie’s thighs, pulling her closer. "I’ve got you. Tell me how."

"Faster. Right there—right there—"

Sloane obeyed, and Addie heard herself making sounds she didn’t recognize—low, broken, rhythmic sounds that she would have been mortified by a year ago and now couldn’t have stopped if she tried. Her hand found the back of Sloane’s head again, fingers tangling in her curls, and Sloane moaned against her, and the vibration of that sound sent a shockwave through Addie’s entire body.

"You taste—" Sloane pulled back just enough to speak, her breath hot against wet skin. "God, Addie, you always taste so—"

"Don’t talk. Don’t stop."

Sloane didn’t stop. She added her fingers—two, sliding inside with a practiced ease that made Addie’s back arch completely off the counter—and her mouth kept working while her fingers curled, finding the spot that turned the world white at the edges, and Addie felt the orgasm building like a wave she couldn’t outrun, couldn’t organize, couldn’t manage with a timeline and a to-do list, could only surrender to—

She came with Sloane’s name on her lips, both hands in Sloane’s hair, her thighs shaking around Sloane’s ears, and Sloane held her through it—mouth softening, fingers slowing, free hand pressed flat against Addie’s lower belly like an anchor—and didn’t pull away until Addie’s breathing came back and her hands loosened and the trembling subsided into small, warm aftershocks.

Sloane kissed her thigh. Kissed her hip. Stood up slowly, hands sliding up Addie’s sides, and kissed her mouth.

Addie tasted herself and tasted Sloane and pulled her impossibly closer.

"Your turn," Addie whispered.

"You don’t have to—"

"I know I don’t have to." Addie pulled back and held Sloane’s face in both hands, thumbs against her cheekbones, looking into eyes that were wrecked and wanting and trying very hard to pretend they weren’t. "I want to. That’s the whole point, Sloane. I want to."

Addie slid off the counter.

Her legs were unsteady, but she didn’t care. She turned them—walked Sloane backward until Sloane’s back hit the brick wall beside the chalkboard menu, the one where Sloane’s own handwriting listed the seasonal specials in pink chalk. Sloane’s eyes widened—she was used to being the one who guided, the one whose back was against nothing—and the surprise on her face made Addie feel powerful in a way that had nothing to do with boardrooms or client accounts.

"Your turn," Addie repeated, and dropped to her knees on the café floor.

She pulled Sloane’s tank top up and kissed her stomach—flat, warm, dusty with joint compound—while her hands worked the button of Sloane’s jeans. Sloane’s abs contracted under her mouth, a shiver of muscle that Addie traced with her tongue. She kissed the tattoo that wrapped around Sloane’s hip, the small moth that matched the one behind her ear, and felt Sloane’s fingers thread through her hair with a gentleness that contradicted the tension in her body.

Addie pulled Sloane’s jeans and underwear down in one motion. Sloane kicked them off with her boots and stood against the wall in nothing but the tank top and the bandana around her neck, and Addie looked up at her from the floor and felt her chest crack open with wanting.

"You’re so beautiful," Addie said, and she said it the way Sloane always said it to her—like a fact she’d verified, not a compliment she was performing. "Every single time I look at you."

"Addie—" Sloane’s voice cracked. Her hips shifted against the wall, an involuntary roll that told Addie everything she needed to know.

Addie hooked one of Sloane’s legs over her shoulder. Sloane braced herself against the wall—one hand flat on the brick, the other finding the shelf where the mismatched mugs sat—and Addie pressed her mouth against Sloane’s inner thigh and breathed in the scent of her, salt and skin and underneath it the ghost of cocoa butter, and then moved higher.

The sound Sloane made when Addie’s mouth found her was worth every minute of the past three weeks of waiting.

Addie had learned Sloane’s body the way she learned everything—methodically at first, asking questions, taking notes (not literal notes, although she’d considered it), building a mental map of reactions and preferences and the specific sequences of pressure and speed that turned Sloane from composed to desperate. But somewhere in the past six months, the knowledge had moved from her head to her hands, to her mouth, to instinct—and now she didn’t think about technique. She just listened.

She listened to the hitch in Sloane’s breathing when she used the flat of her tongue. Listened to the low moan when she closed her lips and sucked gently. Listened to the sharp, bitten-off curse—fuck, Addie, fuck—when she slid two fingers inside and curled them forward while her tongue kept moving.

Sloane’s thigh tightened on her shoulder. The hand in Addie’s hair pulled—not directing, just holding on—and Addie looked up the length of Sloane’s body and saw her head tipped back against the brick, throat exposed, eyes closed, mouth open, and she’d never seen anything more beautiful or more devastating in her life.

"Don’t stop," Sloane said. The same words Addie had used. "Don’t you dare stop."

Addie didn’t stop. She added pressure with her tongue, curled her fingers deeper, found the rhythm Sloane’s hips were chasing and matched it—and then, because she knew Sloane, because she’d spent a year studying the particular architecture of this woman’s pleasure, she pulled her mouth away just long enough to say:

"You’re so good. You feel so good, Sloane. Let go for me."

Sloane’s hand knocked two mugs off the shelf. They hit the floor and didn’t break—thick ceramic, survivor mugs, the kind that bounced—and Addie barely heard them because Sloane was coming against her mouth, hard and shaking, one hand in Addie’s hair and one braced against the wall and her whole body arching like a bow, and the sound she made was the broken, beautiful sound that Addie had been chasing all week, all month, maybe all her life.

Addie stayed until Sloane’s breathing slowed. Kissed her thigh. Kissed the tattoo on her hip. Stood up and caught Sloane when her knees buckled, and they slid down the wall together until they were sitting on the floor of the café, Sloane’s back against the brick and Addie in her lap, foreheads pressed together.

"You knocked the mugs off," Addie said.

"Your fault."

"I accept full responsibility."

Sloane laughed—that gorgeous, cracked laugh—and wrapped both arms around Addie’s waist and pulled her closer. The grit of joint compound transferred from Sloane’s skin to Addie’s, and they were both filthy now, and the café smelled like espresso and sex and cinnamon, and the fairy lights turned everything warm and gold.

"I love you," Sloane said. She said it the way she’d said Addie’s name that first morning—like the words had a shape she wanted to get right. "I love you and your perfect latte and your cup message and the fact that you broke into my coffee shop in lingerie."

"It’s a cotton bralette."

"It’s on the floor of my café and I don’t care what it’s called." Sloane kissed her jaw, her throat, the spot below her ear that made Addie shiver. "Stay tonight. Stay every night. Move in with me."

Addie pulled back. "What?"

Sloane’s eyes were clear. The post-orgasm haze had burned off and what was left was the steady, sure look that Addie had fallen in love with—the one that said I see you and I want you and I mean what I’m about to say.

"Move in with me. You already have a toothbrush and running shoes and a drawer. Your coffee is better than mine—don’t tell anyone I said that. I want to wake up next to you every morning, not just the mornings you remember to pack a bag." She tucked a strand of Addie’s hair behind her ear. "I want to stop missing you on the nights I’m working late. I want you to be what I come home to."

Addie felt the tears before she understood them—not sadness, not overwhelm, just the specific, acute sensation of being seen so completely that there was nothing left to hide.

"Yes," she said. "Obviously, unequivocally, you-didn’t-even-need-to-ask yes."

"I did need to ask. That’s how it works."

"Then yes. A hundred times."

Sloane kissed her, slow and deep, tasting like vanilla and the future, and Addie kissed her back, and neither of them moved off the floor of Moth & Maple for a very long time.

Later—much later, after they’d picked up the mugs and found Addie’s clothes and finished the latte that had gone cold and Sloane had resteamed it with a disapproving look because you never microwave oat milk, Addie, we’ve discussed this—they walked to Sloane’s apartment in the rain.

Addie wore the leather jacket. Sloane wore the grime of a twelve-hour construction day and a smile she’d stopped trying to hide. They held hands on the sidewalk, under the streetlights, in full view of anyone who might be looking, because that was how they did things now. Out loud. In public. Without apology.

In bed, clean from a shower they’d shared and warm under the mismatched covers, Addie curled into Sloane’s side and pressed her palm flat against Sloane’s heartbeat.

"I’m going to sell my apartment," she said.

"You don’t have to rush."

"I’m not rushing. I’m arriving." She tilted her head up to look at Sloane’s face in the dark. "I spent four years in a relationship that felt like a waiting room. This feels like the place I was waiting for."

Sloane’s arm tightened around her. "That’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to me."

"I’m a senior account director. I’m professionally good at words."

"You’re professionally good at a lot of things." Sloane’s voice dropped into the low register that always preceded either sleep or another round. "Several of which you demonstrated on my café counter tonight."

"The health department would be appalled."

"The health department can mind its own business."

Addie laughed, and Sloane kissed the top of her head, and outside the rain kept falling on the small city where they’d found each other—on the brick building with the moth and the maple leaf, on the counter where a paper cup sat next to two mugs that had survived a fall, on the chalkboard where tomorrow Sloane would write the new seasonal menu in pink chalk, and where, in handwriting Addie would recognize anywhere, a seven-word message sat like a promise:

You’re allowed to want things too.

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