Rule Four of the Lease Said No Overnight Guests novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Count Me Again

The next night at 2 a.m. Mina is alone and asks Lena to count again; Lena's fingers make her come, and Lena leaves without taking anything for herself.

Jo left at noon with a pizza crust in her hand and a look that said she would be asking questions later.

I spent the afternoon unpacking, and I spent the evening pretending I wasn't listening for the stairs.

At 1:55 I turned off the lamp and lay down on my bed in my sleep shirt and nothing else.

The knock came at 2:00 exactly.

I opened the door without a word.

Lena stood there with the flashlight and the typed page, and her eyes went over me once, quickly.

"One," she said.

"I told you. Jo went home."

"Rule Four is every night."

"Then count again." I stepped back and held the door open. "Check the bedroom."

She did not move.

The hallway light fell across her face, and I could see a muscle working in her jaw.

"Miss Harlan."

"Mina."

"Mina." She said it like she was testing the weight of it. "What are you doing?"

"Asking my landlord to inspect."

"This isn't in the lease."

"The discretion clause is. You said so yourself."

She looked at me for a long, quiet moment.

Then she came inside and closed the door behind her, and the lock clicked under her fingers.

I walked backward down the little hall, and she followed me, slow and level, her boots silent on the floorboards.

In my bedroom there was only the streetlight through the window.

I stopped beside the bed, and she stopped in front of me, close enough that I felt the warmth of her.

"One," she said again, very low.

"Count me properly."

"Take your shirt off."

My breath caught.

I pulled the sleep shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor.

I stood there naked in front of her, fully dressed in flannel and boots and belt, and I did not cover myself.

Lena looked at me, and I watched her swallow.

"Sit on the bed."

I sat.

She set the flashlight on the dresser, and she sat beside me, and she put one hand flat on my thigh.

"Lie back," she said.

I lay back, and Lena turned toward me, one knee up on the mattress.

Her hand slid up my thigh, slowly, across the soft inside skin, and I opened my legs for her without being asked.

"Look at you," she said, and her voice had gone rough. "You were waiting for me."

"All night."

"You've been wet since I knocked."

"Since yesterday."

Her fingers reached me and slid through the wet, and we both made a sound.

She stroked me once, slowly, from my entrance all the way up to my clit, and my hips came off the bed.

"Lena."

"Quiet hours," she said, "start at ten. So be careful."

She circled my clit with two fingers, light and slow, and I grabbed the sheet.

I could see her face above me in the half dark.

She was watching me the way she had watched the pulse in my wrist, with total attention, as if every sound I made was a measurement.

She pushed one finger inside me, and I clenched around it.

"Oh, fuck."

"Good," Lena said. "Say that again."

"Fuck. Lena, fuck."

She added a second finger, thick and deep, and she curled them forward until they found the place that made my toes curl.

Her thumb stayed on my clit, and she began to move.

It was slow at first and then steady, her wrist working, her hand wet and sure.

I was so wet that the sound of it filled the room.

I put my hand over my mouth.

"No," she said, and she pulled it away and pinned it to the mattress by my head. "I want to hear you."

"The quiet hours."

"It's two in the morning. I'm the owner. I decide."

Her fingers drove into me again, harder, and I cried out into the dark.

"That's it," she said. "That's a good girl."

The words went through me.

I had never been called that by anyone, and I came a little closer to the edge just from hearing it.

"Please."

"Please what?"

"Don't stop. Please don't stop."

"I won't." She leaned down until her mouth was by my ear and her short hair brushed my cheek. "You're going to come on my hand, Mina. Right now. Do it."

I came with a shout, my back arching off the bed, my pussy clamping down on her fingers in long hard pulses.

She kept her fingers deep and her thumb moving, working me through it, until I was shaking and gasping and my eyes were wet.

When I finally went limp, she slowed her hand and stopped, and she stayed inside me for another moment.

Then she eased her fingers out, and I felt the loss of her all through my body.

I lay there, boneless, breathing.

Lena sat up and looked at her hand, glistening in the streetlight.

She put her two fingers in her mouth, one at a time, and closed her eyes.

I thought I might die.

"Lena," I whispered. "Let me touch you."

She opened her eyes.

For one second she looked almost frightened.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Not tonight." She stood and picked up the flashlight, and she straightened her flannel shirt as if nothing had happened.

Her hand was not quite steady on the switch.

"I have counted you," she said. "One tenant, one guest, no violations."

"That wasn't a violation?"

"That wasn't in the lease."

She walked to the bedroom door and stopped with her back to me.

"Rule Five is Sunday," she said. "Be on the landing at nine, with a watering can."

"For the fern?"

"For the fern."

She was gone before I could say anything else.

I lay there naked and wrecked and grinning at the ceiling, and I listened to her boots go down four flights.

She had not let me touch her, and she had not come herself.

I counted that as an open question.

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