🔥 The Christening 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Scissors Sisters

The Christening

This scene takes place the night of the grand opening, immediately after Chapter 14.

The last guest left at eleven-fourteen.

I know this because Bev lingered on the sidewalk for a full three minutes after Diego physically guided her toward the door, shouting something about exclusive coverage rights and whether we’d considered a tasteful engagement photo shoot in front of the archway. Diego closed the door in her face with the gentle authority of a man who has done this before and will absolutely do it again.

“She’s going to write about this anyway,” he said.

“She already has her phone out,” Maren confirmed from the window.

Diego grabbed his jacket. Maren grabbed her bag. They exchanged a look I pretended not to notice—the kind of look that said they need to be alone now with the subtlety of a neon sign.

Speaking of neon signs.

The THIS WAY sign hummed above the archway, casting the passageway in rose-gold light. Jax was leaning against the curved frame she’d designed—matte black wood, hand-sanded, organic and imperfect in all the ways my old salon never allowed—watching me with an expression I’d spent thirteen years trying to forget and six months learning to read.

Want. Hunger. And underneath both, something so tender it made my chest ache.

“They’re gone,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“The champagne’s gone too.”

“Don’t need champagne.” She pushed off the archway and walked toward me, each step deliberate, her boots echoing on the wooden floor she’d insisted on installing over my marble. “I have something better.”

“If you say ‘you,’ I’m going to—”

“You.” She stopped inches away, close enough that I could smell her—sandalwood and cedar and the faintest trace of matte black paint that never entirely washed out of her skin. “I was going to say you, Sloane. What are you going to do about it?”

The ring caught the neon light when I reached for her collar. Two metals twisted together—silver and gunmetal, bright and dark. Two things becoming one thing. I pulled her forward by the fabric of her flannel shirt and kissed her hard enough to make the answer very, very clear.

Here is something no one tells you about getting engaged to the woman you’ve loved since you were seventeen: the need doesn’t diminish. It compounds. Every look carries the weight of forever now, and forever is a word that tastes different when you’re saying it to someone who once destroyed you.

Better. It tastes better.

Jax kissed me back like she was trying to make up for thirteen years in a single breath. Her hands found my waist, my hips, the hem of the silk blouse I’d chosen specifically because I knew she’d want to take it off. She walked me backward through the passageway—past Ruth’s claw-foot basin on its pedestal, past the brass plaque that read Ruth Anne Miller. Who taught us everything—until my shoulders hit the wall on the Gilded Lily side.

My side. Her side. Our side now.

“We should christen the space,” she murmured against my throat.

“We should christen every room.”

Her laugh vibrated against my pulse point. “That’s a lot of rooms.”

“We have all night.” I tilted my head back and felt her teeth graze the tendon in my neck, not quite biting, not quite gentle. “We have every night.”

“Every night,” she repeated, and the way she said it—low, reverent, like a vow she was already making—turned the heat in my belly into something molten.

Her fingers found the buttons of my blouse. She undid them slowly, one at a time, pressing a kiss to each inch of newly exposed skin. My collarbone. The hollow of my throat. The swell of my breast above the edge of black lace I’d also chosen deliberately.

“You wore this for me,” she said. Not a question.

“I wear everything for you.”

“Liar.” She pulled the blouse off my shoulders and let it fall. “You wear everything for yourself. You just let me enjoy it.”

She was right, of course. She was always right about the things I tried hardest to hide.

The salon cape was Jax’s idea.

She pulled it from the Gilded Lily’s supply closet—midnight blue silk, the expensive ones I ordered from a supplier in Lyon who charged extra for the weight of the fabric—and held it up with an expression that was equal parts mischief and intention.

“We are not—”

“We absolutely are.” She ran the silk through her fingers. “You’ve spent your whole life controlling everything in this salon. Every product. Every angle. Every strand of hair.” She stepped closer, the cape trailing from her hands like something ceremonial. “Tonight, I want you to give that up.”

My breath caught. “Jax.”

“Color?”

I held her gaze. The neon sign hummed behind her. The passageway smelled like champagne and fresh paint and possibility, and the woman I was going to marry was asking permission to undo me in the space we’d built together.

“Green,” I whispered. “So green.”

She kissed me once—soft, almost sweet—then spun me around.

The silk cape went around my wrists first. She tied it with the confident efficiency of someone who’d spent her life working with her hands—tight enough to hold, loose enough that I could escape if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. I wanted her to tighten it.

“Good?” she asked.

“Tighter.”

She pulled, and the silk bit into my wrists, and something inside me cracked open like ice on a spring river.

“There she is,” Jax murmured. “There’s my girl.”

She guided me toward the shampoo station—the restored claw-foot basin, the one we’d salvaged from Ruth’s basement, the one where everything between us had changed six months ago. My thighs hit the edge of the basin and Jax pressed against me from behind, her mouth on the back of my neck, her hands sliding over my bare stomach.

“Do you remember,” she said, her breath warm against my ear, “what happened the first time you sat in my chair?”

“I remember everything.”

“You were so angry.” Her hand traced up my ribs. “So controlled. You sat there with your jaw clenched and your shoulders locked and your hands gripping the armrests like the chair might betray you.”

I shivered. “It did betray me.”

“No.” She unhooked my bra with one practiced motion and let it fall. Her palms found my breasts and I arched into her touch, pulling against the silk restraints. “It set you free.”

She turned me around again, lifting me onto the edge of the basin. The porcelain was cold against the backs of my thighs and I gasped, but Jax was already between my legs, her mouth on my collarbone, her hands working the button of my trousers with an urgency that sent heat flooding through me.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said, dragging the fabric down my legs. “You know that? You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been looking at you since I was fifteen years old.”

“You hated me since you were fifteen—”

“I wanted you since I was fifteen.” She dropped to her knees on the wooden floor. “There’s a difference.”

The first orgasm hit me so hard I saw stars.

Jax’s mouth between my thighs, her tongue slow and deliberate and devastating, working patterns I couldn’t predict and couldn’t escape. My hands were bound behind me, the silk cape pulling taut every time I tried to reach for her, and the helplessness made everything sharper—every sensation amplified, every nerve ending singing.

She held my hips steady against the basin, her fingers pressing bruises I’d find tomorrow and wear like medals. I came with my head thrown back and her name on my lips and the neon sign painting everything rose-gold, and she didn’t stop.

She never stopped.

“Again,” she said, the word vibrating against my most sensitive flesh.

“I can’t—”

“You can.” She slid two fingers inside me, curling forward, finding the spot that made my vision blur. “You’re Sloane fucking Kensington. You can do anything.”

The laugh that escaped me turned into a moan halfway through. She was using my own perfectionism against me and it was working—the challenge lit something competitive in my chest that had nothing to do with the Golden Shears and everything to do with proving her right.

“That’s it,” she murmured, adding a third finger, stretching me, filling me. “That’s my girl. God, you’re gorgeous like this. All that control just—gone. Just for me.”

“Just for you,” I gasped. “Only—fuck—only for you.”

The second orgasm built from the first, deeper, slower, rolling through me in waves that made my thighs shake and my bound wrists strain against the silk. Jax talked me through it—praise and filth woven together in that low, rough voice—and when I finally shattered, the sound I made echoed off the salon walls like something sacred.

She caught me before I could slide off the basin. Untied the cape from my wrists. Pulled me into her arms on the floor between the two salons, in the passageway that used to be a wall, under the sign that said THIS WAY.

“Hi,” she said softly, pressing a kiss to my damp temple.

“Hi.” I was still trembling. “I need to—I want to—”

“You don’t have to—”

“Jax.” I pulled back just enough to look at her. Her eyes were dark, her pupils blown wide, her breathing ragged in a way she was trying very hard to control. “Take off your clothes.”

Something flickered across her expression—vulnerability, hunger, love so raw it looked like it hurt. She pulled her flannel over her head without unbuttoning it. The tank top underneath followed. No bra, because Jax Miller had never believed in unnecessary layers, and the sight of her—tattooed and lean and practically vibrating with want—made my mouth water.

“On Ruth’s chair,” I said.

Her eyebrows rose. “The styling chair?”

“The one in Switchblade. The hydraulic one.” I stood, remarkably steady for someone who’d just had two earth-shattering orgasms on an antique basin. “You put me in your chair six months ago and changed everything. My turn.”

There was something profoundly satisfying about watching Jax Miller lose control.

She sat in her own styling chair—the vintage hydraulic one she’d restored with her own hands—wearing nothing but her jeans and the ring I’d put on her finger three hours ago, and she watched me walk toward her with an expression that said she was already gone.

“You’re still dressed,” she said. Meaning: I was wearing underwear and nothing else.

“I’m aware.”

I climbed into the chair, straddling her, one knee on either side of her hips. The hydraulics sank slightly under our combined weight and she grabbed my waist to steady me, her calloused fingers rough against my bare skin.

“The Ice Queen,” she said, “in a barber chair. Ruth would be scandalized.”

“Ruth would be thrilled and you know it.”

She laughed—that real, full laugh that I’d spent thirteen years missing—and I kissed her, deep and slow and thorough, while my hands worked the button of her jeans. She lifted her hips to help me push them down and I slid my hand between her thighs and found her soaking.

“Jesus, Jax.”

“I’ve been watching you come apart for the last twenty minutes.” Her voice cracked. “What did you expect?”

I stroked through her wetness, slow and exploratory, watching her face change. The bravado dissolved. The cocky barber disappeared. What was left was the girl I’d loved since prom night—open and aching and so desperately, furiously alive.

“Tell me what you want,” I said.

“You. Inside me. Now.”

I slid two fingers into her and she made a sound that would haunt my best dreams for years. Her head fell back against the headrest of her own chair, her throat exposed, her hands gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks that would match the ones she’d left on me.

“Look at me,” I said.

She did. Her eyes were wet.

“I love you,” I said, curling my fingers, finding the angle that made her gasp. “I have loved you since I was seventeen years old and I am going to love you until there is nothing left of me to love with.”

“Sloane—”

“You’re so good.” I pressed deeper, set a rhythm that matched her breathing, watched her unravel. “You’re so brave. You came back. You tore down the wall. You built the arch. You found me.”

“You found me—” Her voice broke on the last word and she buried her face in my neck and I felt her whole body tighten around my fingers, every muscle clenching, every breath ragged.

“Let go,” I whispered. “I’ve got you. Let go.”

She came with a shudder that rocked the chair on its hydraulics, her teeth sinking into my shoulder, her hands pulling me so close there was nothing between us—no wall, no silence, no thirteen years of pretending. Just skin and breath and the kind of surrender that only happens when you trust someone with everything you are.

I held her through it. Stroked her hair. Whispered her name like a prayer, which is what it had always been, even when I called it something else.

Later—much later—we lay on the floor of the passageway wrapped in salon capes, because Jax insisted on symmetry and I was too boneless to argue.

The THIS WAY sign hummed above us, painting our tangled limbs in rose-gold. Ruth’s basin gleamed on its pedestal. Through the archway, I could see the Gilded Lily’s wooden floors on one side and Switchblade’s gallery wall on the other, and for the first time in my life, both views looked exactly right.

“We christened the passageway,” Jax said, tracing lazy circles on my bare hip.

“And the shampoo basin.”

“And my chair.”

“We haven’t done my station yet.” I propped myself up on one elbow. “Or the supply closet. Or the break room. Or—”

“We have the rest of our lives.” She caught my hand and pressed her lips to the ring I wasn’t wearing yet but would be soon. “No rush.”

“Since when don’t you rush?”

“Since I realized rushing means missing the good parts.” She pulled me closer, tucking me against her chest. Her heartbeat was steady under my ear—the same heartbeat I’d feel tonight and tomorrow night and every night for the rest of our lives. “And with you, Sloane Kensington, every part is the good part.”

I closed my eyes. The neon sign hummed. The radiator in our apartment upstairs clanked its haunted greeting. Somewhere outside, Garnet Falls was sleeping, dreaming whatever small towns dream about when their fiercest rivals become their greatest love story.

This way.

This way.

This way home.

💜 THE END 💜