Save Point
A Rage Quit Bonus Chapter
by Aurora North
⚠️ This bonus chapter contains spoilers for Rage Quit and explicit sexual content. Read the novel first.
Save Point
Three months after Aurora, Sloane drove them back to the cabin.
Not for work. Mara had been very specific about that when she suggested the trip: no laptops, no builds, no debug logs, no board calls. Sloane had agreed with the enthusiasm of a woman who’d spent twelve weeks shipping two games simultaneously and whose concept of “vacation” had previously been defined as “sleeping six hours instead of four.” She’d packed a bag that contained exactly zero hard drives and one zip case that contained exactly zero hard drives and was not, technically, work equipment.
The cabin looked different in early spring. The snow was mostly gone, replaced by wet earth and the first tentative green pushing through brown. The frozen lake was liquid again, dark and still, reflecting the pines like a mirror somebody had breathed on. The porch light was on when they arrived, because Mara had called ahead to have the caretaker turn it on, and the domesticity of that — calling ahead, preparing, treating this place like somewhere they returned to rather than somewhere they’d been trapped — made Sloane’s chest do the thing.
The thing where it expanded. Where the careful, guarded architecture she’d built around her heart over thirty-two years of independence and self-preservation shifted to accommodate the woman walking beside her, carrying both their bags because Sloane had mentioned once, three weeks ago, that her shoulder was sore from a long capture session, and Mara had apparently filed this under Critical Infrastructure and was now managing it with the same focused intensity she managed everything.
“I can carry my own bag,” Sloane said.
“Your shoulder is sore.”
“My shoulder was sore three weeks ago.”
“I’m being thorough.”
“You’re being a control freak.”
“Those are the same thing, and you love it.”
Sloane did love it. She loved it the way she loved Mara’s uneven hair and her dry humor and the way she forgot to eat lunch unless someone put food in front of her. She loved it in a way that no longer frightened her, which was its own small miracle.
Inside, the cabin was warm. The caretaker had lit the wood stove. Both bedrooms were functional now — the pipe was fixed, the mold was gone, the second room clean and bright and utterly unnecessary. They went straight to the main bedroom and dropped their bags on the same side of the bed.
Their side. Because it had a side now.
Sloane unpacked. Mara opened a bottle of wine she’d brought from Brooklyn — a good one, the kind she’d never have bought for herself, purchased because Sloane had mentioned liking it once and Mara had apparently memorized her taste in wine along with her taste in code architecture and the exact spot behind her ear that made her knees unreliable.
They sat on the rug. Their rug. The one in front of the wood stove where they’d first had sex three months ago, after Sloane told Mara about playing Tidewake forty-three times and Mara had crossed the room and taken the sketchbook from her hands and kissed her like the world was ending.
“No board meetings,” Sloane said, handing Mara a glass.
“No board meetings.”
“No deadlines.”
“No deadlines.”
“No pillow wall.”
Mara’s mouth did the thing — the almost-smile, the cracked-open one. “There was never going to be a pillow wall.”
“There was absolutely a pillow wall. I built it. It was architectural.”
“It lasted four hours.”
“It was a symbolic pillow wall.”
Mara took a sip of wine and looked at her, and the look was the one Sloane had spent three months cataloging and still couldn’t fully decode — warm and steady and full of the specific, devastating attention of a woman who had learned to want things without managing them.
“Come here,” Mara said.
Sloane set down her glass. Crawled across the rug. Settled into Mara’s lap, knees on either side of her hips, and kissed her with the unhurried confidence of a woman who knew exactly what was about to happen and intended to enjoy every second of the approach.
Mara’s hands found her waist. Thumbs tracing the dip of her hip bones through her shirt. A gesture Sloane knew by heart now — Mara’s opening move, the first point of contact, the signal that said I want you and I’m going to take my time about it.
“I have a request,” Mara murmured against her mouth.
“Name it.”
“Slowly. I want us to go slowly. We have all weekend. No urgency. No crisis. I want to take —” She kissed Sloane’s jaw, the corner of her mouth, the pulse point beneath her ear. “— my time.”
“You want to torture me.”
“I want to worship you. There’s a difference.”
Sloane’s breath stuttered. Three months together and Mara could still do that — deliver a line so direct, so unguarded, so completely stripped of the dry humor she used as armor, that it landed in Sloane’s chest like a thrown stone.
“Then worship me, Ellison.”
Mara did.
She undressed Sloane by the fire. Slowly, as promised — each piece of clothing removed with the deliberate attention of a woman who was not in a hurry, who had nowhere to be, who was treating Sloane’s body like something sacred and specific and worth every minute. Sweater over her head. Tank top, peeled up from the hem, Mara’s mouth following the fabric, kissing the skin as it appeared — stomach, ribs, the underside of her breasts.
Sloane sat on the rug in her bra and jeans and watched Mara look at her, and the looking itself was almost enough. Mara’s eyes moved across her body with the focused, comprehensive attention she brought to code reviews and sound design and the thousand small details of building something beautiful — and Sloane felt every inch of that gaze on her skin like a touch.
“You’re staring,” Sloane said.
“I’m studying.”
“There will not be an exam.”
“There’s always an exam.” Mara reached behind Sloane and unhooked her bra with one hand — a skill she’d acquired approximately six weeks ago and had been deploying with smug frequency ever since. “The exam is whether I can make you say my name before I’ve taken your jeans off.”
“That’s an ambitious timeline.”
“I’m known for ambitious timelines.”
She lowered her mouth to Sloane’s breast. Tongue circling, lips closing, the unhurried, devastating precision that Sloane had learned was Mara’s native register when she stopped performing efficiency and started performing devotion. Sloane’s hands found Mara’s hair — the back was straight now, trimmed by Sloane’s own hands, and the feel of it between her fingers was an intimacy she hadn’t expected to love as much as she did.
Mara’s mouth moved to the other breast. Her hand found the button of Sloane’s jeans and undid it without looking, fingers sliding beneath the waistband, and Sloane’s hips lifted involuntarily because Mara’s fingers were right there, tracing the line of her hip through cotton, not quite touching where Sloane wanted them.
“Mara —”
Mara smiled against her skin. “Jeans are still on. I win.”
“You are insufferable.”
“You love it.”
“Take my jeans off.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Take my jeans off or I swear to God I will finish this myself and make you watch.”
Mara’s eyes went dark. “That’s not the threat you think it is.”
She stripped Sloane’s jeans and underwear in one fluid motion and settled between her thighs, and the first touch of Mara’s mouth made Sloane’s back arch off the rug and her hand grip the edge of the couch behind her.
Mara took her time. Agonizing, gorgeous, devastating time — her tongue moving with the lazy, confident rhythm of a woman who knew exactly what Sloane liked and was choosing to give it to her in slow, measured increments designed to build the orgasm from the ground up. She used her fingers alongside her mouth — two, curling, finding the angle that made Sloane’s thighs shake — and she talked, because she’d learned that talking wrecked Sloane faster than any physical technique.
“You feel incredible,” Mara said against her. “Every time. I’ll never get used to how you feel when you’re close.”
“Mara — God — right there, don’t stop —”
“I’m not stopping. I’m not going anywhere.”
She came on the rug in front of the wood stove, Mara’s fingers inside her and Mara’s mouth on her and the fire warm against her bare skin, and the orgasm was a slow, rolling wave that started deep and radiated outward and left her boneless and gasping and gripping Mara’s hair with both hands.
Then Sloane flipped her.
Mara landed on her back on the rug with a breathless laugh that turned into a gasp when Sloane pulled her shirt over her head and pressed her down and kissed her with the full force of three months of love and the specific, competitive energy of a woman who did not lose gracefully.
“My turn,” Sloane said. “And I am not going slowly.”
She wasn’t. She stripped Mara bare in thirty seconds and put her mouth between Mara’s legs and Mara’s hands slammed against the floor and her voice broke open — loud, uncontrolled, the voice of a woman who had spent ten years in silence and was never going back.
Sloane used everything she’d learned. The spot that made Mara’s hips roll. The pressure that made her breath fracture into short, sharp pulls. The moment — she could feel it, could read Mara’s body like code she’d written herself — when the wave crested and Mara went rigid and silent for one held breath before the sound broke through, and it was Sloane’s name, said like it was the only word left in any language.
They lay on the rug afterward, sticky and flushed and grinning, the fire painting them amber. Sloane’s head on Mara’s stomach. Mara’s hand in Sloane’s hair, tracing the silver streak.
“We should get the vibrator,” Sloane said conversationally.
“You packed it.”
“I always pack it. Hard drives, charging cables, vibrator. The holy trinity.”
“Go get it, then.”
“You go get it. I’m dead. You killed me.”
“You don’t look dead.”
“I’m dead on the inside. My legs don’t work.”
Mara got up. Sloane watched her walk to the bedroom naked — lean, strong, the body of a woman who’d finally started eating regular meals and sleeping seven hours a night, and the visual was so good that by the time Mara came back with the zip case, Sloane was sitting up with her wine glass and a smile that communicated very specific intentions.
“Give me that,” Sloane said, taking the case.
“I thought your legs didn’t work.”
“My legs don’t. My hands are fine.”
What followed was the kind of sex that could only happen between two people who knew each other’s bodies completely — who had mapped every response, memorized every sound, learned the exact combination of touch and pressure and voice that turned the other person inside out. The vibrator between them, Sloane’s mouth on Mara’s throat, Mara’s fingers inside Sloane, both of them building toward it together, the synchronized urgency of two women who were done performing and were simply, finally, completely present.
They came within seconds of each other. Sloane first — head thrown back, Mara’s name on her lips — and the sight of it, the sound of it, tipped Mara over the edge, and she followed with her face pressed against Sloane’s shoulder and her body shaking and the specific, devastating vulnerability of a woman who had let someone in and was choosing to stay open.
Afterward: the rug, the fire, the quiet. Sloane lying on Mara’s chest, tracing the scar on her palm.
“Mara.”
“Mm.”
“I love this cabin.”
“You hated this cabin.”
“I hated you in this cabin. Now I love you in this cabin. Significant upgrade.”
Mara’s arm tightened around her. The fire crackled. Outside, the spring dark was full of sounds the winter had hidden — frogs, wind in new leaves, the lake lapping at its thawed shoreline.
“We should come back every month,” Sloane said.
“We should.”
“Bring Checkpoint.”
“He’ll eat the rug.”
“Then we’ll get a new rug. But this rug gets retired with honors. This rug has seen things.”
Mara laughed. The real laugh — warm, unguarded, the sound that Sloane had first heard in a bed after the first time they made love and had been collecting ever since, hoarding each one like a save file she never wanted to overwrite.
“Come to bed,” Mara said.
“In a minute. I’m saving my progress.”
“That’s not how save points work.”
“It is now. This —” Sloane gestured at the rug, the fire, the two of them naked and tangled and ridiculous. “— is a save point. If anything goes wrong, we come back here. This is where the game reloads.”
Mara kissed the top of her head. “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“Probably not. But if it does — save point.” Sloane pressed her ear against Mara’s chest and listened to her heartbeat. Steady. Certain. A signal broadcasting on a frequency she’d finally learned to receive. “Right here. Always.”
They fell asleep on the rug, which was uncomfortable and scratchy and perfect, and the fire burned down to embers, and the cabin held them the way it always had — patiently, quietly, like a room that had been waiting for them to come back.
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