The hotel was a glass tower in Chicago, the kind where the balconies jutted out over the city like diving boards and the rooms cost more than most people made in a month. Our parents—her mother, my father—had booked it for a “family weekend,” a last-ditch effort to make us bond before the wedding.
I was twenty-four. Sloane was twenty-six. We’d been avoiding each other since the engagement party, since the moment she’d cornered me in the coat check and kissed me until my lipstick was gone and my sanity was fraying.
Tonight was the rehearsal dinner. Our parents were inside the suite, drinking wine, watching a movie on the king-sized bed, pretending that the balcony door was soundproof.
I went outside for air. The balcony was narrow, twenty floors up, the wind whipping my thin white slip dress against my legs. The city was a constellation of lights—gold, white, red—stretching to the horizon. I gripped the glass railing and tried to remember why this was wrong.
Sloane followed me.
She didn’t speak. Just stepped onto the balcony in her black silk robe, the wind catching the fabric, exposing her legs, her throat, her collarbones. She stood behind me. Close. Her hand found the railing on either side of my hips, trapping me between the glass and her body.
“Your mother is inside,” I whispered, my knuckles white on the railing. “She’ll see us through the glass door if she turns around. She’s right there. Twenty feet away. Drinking wine. Planning our future as a family.”
Sloane didn’t answer. She just leaned in closer, her cheek brushing my shoulder, her hand sliding from the railing to my waist, then to my stomach, pulling me back against her. I could feel her heartbeat through the silk, her breath warm against my neck despite the wind.
“The balcony is only hidden from below,” I breathed, my voice trembling. “Anyone in the building across can see us. Anyone with binoculars. Anyone who looks up and sees two women on a railing, one with her hand inside the other’s dress—”
She turned me around.
Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like the wine we’d had at dinner, like the danger of being twenty floors up, like the exact moment when height makes you fearless because falling doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Her tongue slid against mine, her hand sliding up my thigh, under my slip dress, finding me wet and ready and completely exposed to the city below.
The glass door slid open.
“Sloane? Honey?” Her mother’s voice. Sleepy. Relaxed. Completely unaware. “Come watch this movie with us. It’s your father’s favorite.”
Sloane didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed deeper inside me, her thumb circling my clit, her mouth moving to my neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark that the slip dress wouldn’t hide.
“One minute, Mom!” she called out, her voice perfectly steady. “Just getting some air!”
“Okay, but it’s cold out there!”
The door slid shut. Sloane looked at me. The city lights reflected in her eyes, turning them into something wild.
“Let her watch,” she whispered against my lips. “Let the whole city watch. Let every person in every window see exactly what I do to you. Because you’re mine. And I don’t care who knows.”
She made me come against the glass railing. Her fingers inside me, her mouth on mine, the wind carrying my cry out over the city like a siren. I came with my back arched over twenty floors of empty air, my hands gripping her shoulders, my body shaking with the force of an orgasm that felt like falling.
After, she fixed my dress. Kissed my forehead. And whispered: “Tomorrow is the wedding. And after the toast, I’m taking you back up here. And this time, I won’t stop when the door opens.”
She didn’t. The wedding was beautiful. The toast was lovely. And at 11 PM, while our parents danced in the ballroom, Sloane took me to the balcony and showed me exactly what it meant to be claimed above a city that never slept.
