The Straight Girl Tax — Bonus Chapter

The Move-In Audit
by Blair Lennox

⚠️ Spoiler warning: This scene takes place one month after the epilogue of The Straight Girl Tax. Read the book first for maximum impact. This scene is explicit, graphic, and significantly hotter than the main book. You have been warned.

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The Move-In Audit

A Straight Girl Tax Bonus Scene. Set one month after the epilogue. Fia has moved in.

The last box was labeled MISCELLANEOUS (SUSPICIOUS) in Aster’s handwriting.

I set it on the kitchen island of what was now—as of forty-five minutes ago, when I’d surrendered my cottage keys to the new tenant and driven across Port Argent with my car packed like a tetris game—our condominium. Not Aster’s condominium with a drawer for me. Ours. With closet space negotiated by square footage and a shared grocery list maintained in a spreadsheet that had its own tab structure and a bathroom arrangement so precisely documented that it included designated shelf zones, a toothbrush holder assignment chart, and—because this was Aster—a rotation schedule for who restocked the hand soap.

I loved her so much it was probably a medical condition.

“Suspicious how?” I asked, peeling the tape on the box.

Aster appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing joggers and a black tank top, her glasses on, her hair pulled back in the low ponytail that meant she’d been organizing at speed.

“Suspicious because the contents don’t correspond to any labeled category,” she said. “I found swimwear samples mixed with tax documents mixed with a bottle of wine I’m fairly certain is from 2019 mixed with what appears to be a very creative use of a measuring tape.”

“That’s my emergency kit.”

“Your emergency kit contains a measuring tape and a 2019 Merlot.”

“The measuring tape has sentimental value. It’s from our first trade show booth.”

“And the wine?”

“Was supposed to be a gift for your birthday three years ago. I chickened out because giving you wine felt too romantic and I wasn’t ready to explain why I’d memorized your preferred vintage.”

She took the bottle from the box. Read the label. “This is a 2019 Willamette Valley Pinot. Not a Merlot.”

“I know the difference between Pinot and Merlot.”

“You labeled the box wrong.”

“I labeled the box suspicious. The wine’s identity was not the suspicious part.”

She set the bottle on the counter and said, “I need to show you something.” She took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

The drawer was gone.

Not the physical drawer—it was still there, cedar-lined, third from the top. But it was empty. My toothbrush, my face wash, the antihistamines, the charger—all redistributed. The toothbrush was in the holder next to hers. The face wash was on my designated bathroom shelf. The charger was plugged in on my nightstand—my nightstand, the right side, officially mine.

“You emptied the drawer,” I said.

“You don’t need a guest drawer anymore. You live here.”

“What’s in it now?”

I pulled it open. Inside: the original damp receipt from the summer market. A photograph of us at the first trade show. The gold stud earrings. A copy of the seventeen-clause contract. And a note in her handwriting: This drawer used to hold the things you left behind. Now it holds the things we keep.

“Aster—”

“Don’t cry. I have an agenda.”

“You have an agenda for my emotional response to a drawer?”

“I have an agenda for this evening, and your emotional response is approximately four minutes ahead of the schedule. If you cry now, we lose the window between the unpacking phase and the phase where I planned to—” She stopped. Took off her glasses. Cleaned them.

“Where you planned to what?”

“Conduct a comprehensive audit of every surface in this apartment to determine which ones are structurally suitable for the activities I’ve been imagining since you signed the lease transfer.”

“You want to christen the apartment.”

“I want to conduct a systematic review of our shared living space. The methodology involves removing your clothes, testing load-bearing capacity, and generating data on acoustic properties across multiple rooms.”

“That is the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Starting here.” She stepped forward. Put both hands on my waist. Her thumbs settled on the strip of bare skin between my shirt and jeans. “Room one. Bedroom. Baseline assessment.”

She pulled my shirt over my head. Unclasped my bra one-handed—because Aster Bly did not fumble with hardware—and it fell. She looked at my breasts the way she looked at financial statements containing favorable data: with focused appreciation and the intensity of someone who intended to conduct a thorough analysis.

“Lie down,” she said.

I lay back on our bed. The sheets were new—high thread count, the kind of investment she made in things she intended to use frequently. She didn’t undress herself. Not yet. She straddled my hips fully clothed, and the weight of her—lean, warm, dense cycling muscle—settled over me while I lay bare beneath her.

She kissed me deep and slow. Her mouth moved to my neck—the pulse point below my ear, the spot that made my hips roll—and my hips rolled, pressing up against her weight, seeking friction the position wasn’t designed to provide.

“Patience,” she murmured. “The audit requires a thorough baseline.”

Her hand slid down my stomach and pressed her palm flat against me through the denim. Over my clit, through two layers of fabric, firm and steady and maddeningly insufficient. I ground against her hand. She held the pressure constant—not increasing, not decreasing—while I tried to find the angle that would give me what I needed.

“Tell me what you want,” she said.

“Take my jeans off.”

“Ask properly.”

“Aster, please take my jeans off. I need your hands on me. I need—” My voice fractured because she’d increased the pressure, her thumb circling over the seam. “I need you to touch me. Not through fabric. Skin. Please.”

She undid the button. Drew the zipper down—the sound of metal teeth parting obscenely loud—and pulled my jeans off with deliberate slowness. My underwear was black, cotton, unremarkable. She didn’t remove it immediately. She lowered her mouth to my stomach, trailed her lips along the waistband, then pressed her mouth over me through the cotton and breathed. Hot breath through thin fabric, directly against my clit.

My hips bucked off the mattress.

“Response noted,” she said against me. “Elevated sensitivity. Proceed to direct assessment.”

She pulled my underwear off. I was naked on our bed, and Aster was fully clothed and kneeling between my legs with the focused attention of a woman who intended to take me apart systematically.

She spread my thighs wider. Ran her hands up the inside of my legs—slowly, her thumbs tracing the sensitive inner skin, converging toward where I was wet and swollen and aching.

“You’re soaked,” she said—clinical and reverent simultaneously. She ran one finger along my slit, barely touching, collecting the wetness, and I watched her bring the finger to her mouth and taste me with evaluative attention.

“Baseline flavor profile confirmed.”

If I’d been capable of coherent thought I would have hit her with a pillow, but she’d replaced her finger with her tongue.

She licked me slowly. One long, flat stroke from my entrance to my clit, and my hands grabbed the sheets and my head fell back. She did it again—slower, firmer—then shifted to my clit and focused. She knew what I liked. She’d spent a year learning it. She circled my clit with the tip of her tongue, steady rhythm, building heat. Her hands gripped my hips, holding me in place when I tried to grind against her mouth.

“Aster—more—I need—”

She slid two fingers inside me. Slowly, curling upward, finding the spot with the precision of a woman who had mapped it months ago and never forgot the coordinates. Her tongue on my clit, her fingers inside me, the steady relentless rhythm—the orgasm built faster than I expected.

“I’m close. Don’t stop—right there—please—”

She increased the speed of her tongue—not the pressure, just the speed, tiny adjustments calibrated through a year of meticulous observation.

I came. Hard. My hips lifting off the mattress despite her hands pinning them, my thighs clamping around her head, her name ripped from my throat in a sound the new sheets absorbed and the new walls contained and the new neighbors were going to have to accept as a feature of their shared living situation.

She worked me through it. Eased gradually, softened her tongue, gentled her fingers until I was lying boneless staring at the ceiling.

“Baseline established,” she said from between my legs, mouth wet, eyes bright. “Acoustic assessment: excellent. The walls absorb mid-range frequencies. Your neighbors will hear the high notes.”

“I hate you.”

“You love me. It’s in the lease.”

I grabbed her tank top and pulled it off because if she was auditing me room by room, she was doing it naked. I undressed her with urgency—tank top, joggers, no bra, underwear joining the pile on the floor. Aster naked was a landscape I’d never finish exploring. Lean. Defined. The freckle constellation over her hip that had rearranged my understanding of my own desires.

“Room two,” she said, pulling me to the hallway. “Transit corridor. Load-bearing assessment.”

She pressed me against the wall. Cool surface against my back, warm body against my front. She kissed me standing—her thigh between my legs, my wetness slicking her skin.

She dropped to her knees on the hardwood. The sound of her knees hitting wood was sharp and real, and the visual—Aster Bly naked on her knees in our hallway—was something I’d carry forever.

“Hands on the walls,” she said.

I braced my palms against both walls and she lifted my right thigh over her shoulder. The position opened me completely—exposed, pinned, my weight balanced between the wall and her body.

“Tell me if it’s too much.”

“It’s not enough. It’s never enough with you.”

She put her mouth on me and the angle was devastating. Standing, one leg over her shoulder, her tongue reached deeper, accessed me from angles that bed positions couldn’t match. Her hands worked simultaneously—one gripping my hip, the other reaching between my legs from behind, fingers sliding inside me while her mouth worked my clit. The dual access made my vision blur.

I grabbed her hair with one hand, keeping the other braced against the wall. Her ponytail was loose—I pulled it free, let her dark-blonde hair fall around her face. The sight of her—hair down, mouth on me, fingers inside me, kneeling naked on hardwood in our hallway—was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen.

“Aster—I can’t—my legs—”

“You can. I’ve got you.”

Her arm tightened around my hip. Her fingers curled inside me. Her tongue did something precise and devastating and I came standing up—my knees buckling, my hand fisting in her hair, a sound the hallway amplified and returned. She held me through it, held my weight upright while the orgasm tore through me and my legs stopped functioning.

She caught me as I slid down the wall. Gathered me against her on the hardwood floor—both naked, both breathing hard.

“Structural integrity confirmed,” she murmured. “The walls hold. Your knees do not.”

“Kitchen,” I said. “Now.”

The audit continues. Every surface. Every room.

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