The First Tuesday
A Bonus Chapter from The Maid of Honor Has a Safe Word
by Aurora North
This bonus chapter takes place three weeks after the events of The Maid of Honor Has a Safe Word. Contains spoilers and explicit content. Reader discretion advised.
The First Tuesday
The Thai food arrived at 7:12 PM, which was twelve minutes after Tessa said she’d order it and exactly on time by Tessa Quinn standards, because Tessa Quinn did not operate on approximate timelines even when the operation in question was pad see ew.
I was sitting on her kitchen counter. Not on a stool. On the counter, with my bare feet dangling and my work clothes replaced by one of Tessa’s T-shirts and a pair of cotton shorts I’d started keeping in her second drawer three days after the wedding. The T-shirt was gray and too big and it smelled like her laundry detergent and I wore it with the possessive satisfaction of a woman who had staked a territorial claim through fabric softener.
“You’re on my counter,” Tessa said, unpacking the delivery bag.
“I’m on your counter.”
“That’s where I prep food.”
“You ordered Thai. There’s no prep. I’m not interfering with your culinary operations.”
“You’re interfering with my spatial operations. I need that counter.”
“For what?”
She set the food down. Turned to face me. The kitchen was small—Brooklyn small, the kind of kitchen where two people couldn’t open the refrigerator simultaneously—and she was standing between my knees and her hands were on the counter on either side of my hips and she was looking at me with the particular expression I’d cataloged as I am going to do something and I would like you to know about it in advance.
“For you,” she said.
She kissed me. Slow. The unhurried, Tuesday-evening kiss of a woman who had nowhere to be and nothing to protect and whose only operational objective was my mouth.
“We should eat,” I said against her mouth.
“Eventually.”
She pulled my T-shirt—her T-shirt—over my head. I hadn’t worn a bra since I’d changed out of my work clothes, and the cool kitchen air hit my bare skin and I shivered and her eyes dropped to my chest and her jaw tightened the way it always tightened when the composure was being tested by something it wanted more than dignity.
“Tell me what you want,” she said.
“I want you to take charge. Right here. On this counter.”
“Color?”
“Green. Very, very green.”
Her mouth found my throat. Not gently—with the deliberate pressure of teeth and tongue that she knew made my hands fly to her shoulders. She sucked the spot below my ear and I gasped and my hips rocked forward on the counter and she pressed her palm flat against my stomach, holding me still.
“Don’t move. Hands on the counter edge. Don’t let go until I tell you.”
She hooked her fingers into my shorts. Pulled them down my legs in one smooth motion and tossed them somewhere behind her, and then she dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor.
Tessa Quinn. On her knees. In her own kitchen. On a Tuesday.
There was nothing wrong. Nobody was in danger. Just a woman on her knees on kitchen tile because she wanted to taste me after a long day and the wanting was enough.
She put her mouth on me and the sound I made echoed off the tile backsplash.
She was devastating. The focus, the precision, the methodical attention to detail translated into a tongue that found my clit with unerring accuracy and worked it with a rhythm that built like architecture. Her hands gripped my thighs, holding them apart. I was gripping the counter edge so hard my knuckles ached and my legs were shaking and Tessa was eating me like I was the meal she’d been thinking about all day.
“Tessa—I’m close—”
She pulled back. “Tell me you had a good day.”
“Are you—you’re doing this right now? While I’m—”
“I want to hear about your day and I want to make you come and I see no reason those can’t happen simultaneously. Tell me.”
She resumed. Her tongue on my clit, steady and relentless, while I tried to form coherent sentences and failed spectacularly.
“I—the literacy program got approved—oh God—the full grant, the one I’ve been—Tessa, fuck—working on for six months—it went through—”
She slid two fingers inside me and I lost the sentence entirely. She curled them forward and pressed and her mouth kept working and she pulled back just long enough to say:
“You got the grant. That’s extraordinary. You worked for that. You earned it. And I am very, very proud of you.”
The praise combined with her fingers combined with her mouth—it was too much. The orgasm hit like a wall. I came so hard I nearly fell off the counter, my back arching, my hands leaving the granite despite explicit instructions, my fingers burying in her hair while I shook and gasped and said her name in a voice I didn’t recognize.
“You let go of the counter,” she said.
“You told me you were proud of me while your fingers were inside me. I think the counter rule was forfeit.”
“Fair. New rule: you eat something before I take you to bed and do that again.”
We ate. On the couch. My legs across her lap. She told me about a client’s parrot that had escaped during an event and the twelve-minute chase that followed. I laughed until my ribs hurt.
“I like Tuesday,” she said.
“Every Tuesday.”
She led me to the bedroom and the night was young and nothing was wrong and no one needed saving and we had twelve hours and each other.
Every Tuesday. And every day between.
Violet didn’t mean stop. It meant: I trust you enough to stay.
Loved this bonus? The full novel is available now.
← Back to The Maid of Honor Has a Safe Word
Never Miss a Release
Get new release alerts, exclusive bonus content, and reader-only giveaways.