Charlie's POV:

The lock engages with a click so small it shouldn't be audible, but the room has gone that quiet. The kind of quiet that has texture. I can hear the champagne still fizzing somewhere behind my ribs, the distant thrum of the reception two floors down, the sound of Vivi breathing through her nose like she's trying to get herself under control and failing.

Her hands are at her sides. Loose. Useless.

I flatten my palm against the door beside her head. The wood is cold and my hand is damp from the champagne flute I abandoned somewhere—a table, a waiter's tray, I don't remember. I don't care. She's looking at me the way she looked at me in the hallway, which is to say like she's already decided and is furious about it.

"We said once," she says.

"We said a lot of things."

Her jaw works. I watch the muscle move under that pale skin, that perfect face that has spent four years learning how to give nothing away. She's giving something away now. Her breath is coming faster than it should for someone standing still.

"Charlie."

Just my name. Not a warning. Not quite. The way she says it—the second syllable hanging there, unfinished—makes my stomach drop like the floor's been cut out.

I lean in. Not fast. Slow enough that she could turn her head, could duck under my arm, could put a hand on my chest and push. She doesn't. Her eyes track the movement, blue and steady, and then they drop to my mouth and stay there, and that's the permission I was waiting for.

I kiss her.

Hard. The kind of kiss that has been building for weeks in car rides and coffee orders and the two feet of stone between us on the terrace. Her mouth opens under mine and her hands finally, finally, come up—one fisting in the back of my dress, the other sliding into my hair and pulling, sharp enough that I make a sound I'm not proud of.

I pull back just enough to speak against her lips. "We lied."

Her answer is her mouth on mine again, hungrier now, and her hands finding the hem of my dress. Silk catching on her skin. I feel the fabric lift, feel the cooler air of the room hit the backs of my thighs, and my whole body goes tight and hot and stupid with wanting.

This is the part where I should be nervous. Where the champagne should curdle and the reality of what we're doing—stepsisters, as of six hours ago, legally, on paper, in front of two hundred witnesses—should land like a dropped glass.

It doesn't. It makes everything sharper.

Her fingers find the zipper at the back of my dress. She doesn't pull it. She just rests her hand there, palm flat against my spine, and I feel every ridge of her knuckles through the fabric.

"Tell me you want this," she says.

"I walked through the door."

"That's not what I asked."

I pull back and look at her. Really look. Her hair is still perfect—it's always perfect—but her lipstick is smeared at one corner and there's color high on her cheekbones that wasn't there ten minutes ago in the ballroom. She looks wrecked and she looks like she's holding onto composure with both hands.

"I want this," I say. "I've wanted this since you brought me coffee on the porch and pretended it was a chore."

Something moves behind her eyes. Something that's been locked up so long I think she forgot it was there.

"Vivi." I say her name the way she said mine. "Tell me you want it too."

"You know I do."

"I want to hear it."

She closes her eyes. Just for a second. When she opens them, the composure is back in place but it's thinner now, stretched over something that's pushing up against it.

"I want you," she says. "I've been trying not to for weeks and I'm tired of trying."

That's all I need.

I kiss her again and this time I don't stop. Her hands move on the zipper, pulling it down slow, tooth by tooth, and the sound of it in the quiet room is obscene. The dress loosens. She peels it off my shoulders and it pools at my feet and I'm standing in front of her in heels and underwear and nothing else, and her eyes move over me like she's memorizing.

"Fuck," she says, quiet, almost to herself.

"You've seen me before."

"Not like this."

She steps off the door and toward me, and I think for a second she's going to kiss me again, but instead she just looks. Her hand comes up and her thumb traces the strap of my bra, following it down to the cup, and my whole body leans toward the contact without asking me first.

Her thumbs press into my hipbones. Firm. Anchoring.

I laugh. It comes out unsteady, a little breathless, and I don't recognize the sound as mine. "Okay."

The word just sits there.

Vivi doesn't answer it. She's watching my face the way she watches everything—cataloguing, calculating, filing it away—and I realize she's waiting. Giving me the second chance to leave that she gave me in the hallway. It's the same offer, dressed differently.

I put my hands on her waist and pull her in.

"Stop being noble," I say. "It doesn't suit you."

Something cracks in her face. Not a smile—close, but not quite—and her thumbs press harder into my hips and she walks me backward until my shoulders hit the door again. The wood is cold against my bare skin and she's warm all down the front of me and I can feel her heartbeat through her dress, fast and hard against my chest.

"You're impossible," she says.

"You've mentioned."

She kisses me and this one is different. Slower. She's taking her time now, the way she takes her time with everything, and I understand suddenly that the first kiss was for both of us and this one is for her. Her tongue slides against mine and her hands move up my ribs, my shoulders, into my hair, and she holds my head still while she does exactly what she wants to my mouth.

I'm shaking. I don't know when that started.

She notices. Of course she notices. She pulls back just far enough to look at me and her thumb brushes across my bottom lip, catching the wetness there.

"You're trembling."

"It's cold."

"It's not cold."

I don't have an answer for that. She doesn't make me find one. She just kisses the corner of my mouth, then my jaw, then the spot under my ear that makes my knees do something stupid, and her hands are at my bra now, unhooking it with the same efficiency she brings to seating charts and coffee orders.

The strap slides down my arm. The cup follows. She pulls back and looks at me—actually looks—and her eyes go dark in a way I've only seen once before, in this same room, on this same night, and my body remembers what came after.

"You're beautiful," she says, and it doesn't sound like a compliment. It sounds like an accusation.

"So I've been told."

"Not by me."

She ducks her head and takes my nipple in her mouth and I forget every clever thing I was going to say. Her tongue is hot and wet and she's not gentle about it, and I hear myself make a sound that belongs in a different kind of room, and my hands find her shoulders and grip.

She works me slow. Methodical. She switches to the other side and I arch into her mouth and my head falls back against the door and I'm staring at the ceiling, at the seam of light from the hallway bleeding under the door, at anything that isn't the sight of her dark head bent over my chest.

"Vivi."

She hums against my skin. Doesn't stop.

"Vivi, I—"

She pulls back. Her mouth is red and her eyes are darker than I've ever seen them and she looks at me like she's deciding something.

"What do you want?" she asks.

"You know what I want."

"I want to hear you say it."

I could be difficult about this. I usually am. But my dress is on the floor and my bra is somewhere behind me and her hands are on my waist and I've been wanting this for weeks, longer than I've been admitting, and I'm done pretending.

"I want you to touch me," I say. "I want your fingers inside me. I want you to make me come against this door and then I want you to do it again."

Her breath catches. Just a fraction. But I hear it.

"Okay," she says.

And then her hand is between my legs, over my underwear, pressing flat and firm against exactly the right spot, and I moan and my hips jerk and she watches my face the whole time. She watches me like I'm something she's been studying for months and has finally gotten her hands on.

"You're wet," she says. "Through the fabric."

"I've been wet since the elevator."

"Since the elevator."

"Since the toast. Since you looked at me across the ballroom like you wanted to eat me."

She makes a sound—almost a laugh, almost something else—and hooks her fingers into the waistband of my underwear and pulls them down. They catch on my heels and I kick them off and then I'm standing in front of her in nothing but the heels themselves, and she's still fully dressed, and the imbalance of it does something to me I wasn't expecting.

She touches me.

First one finger, sliding through the wetness, spreading it, and my whole body shudders. Then two, circling my clit, slow and deliberate, and I whimper and grab at her shoulders. She's not rushing. She's taking her time, learning me, watching my face for every reaction and adjusting like she's solving a problem.

"Like that?" she asks.

"Don't stop."

"I'm not stopping. I'm asking."

"Yes. Fuck. Yes, like that."

She presses harder. Circles faster. And I'm climbing already, embarrassingly fast, my hips rolling into her hand and my breath coming in short, sharp sounds that I can't control. She watches me the whole time. Doesn't look away once.

"You're close," she says.

"Don't—"

"Don't what?"

"Don't stop to talk about it."

She smiles. It's small and sharp and it's the most Vivi expression I've ever seen on her face. "I like talking about it."

"Of course you do."

She slides two fingers inside me and I gasp and my head hits the door hard enough to hurt and I don't care. She curls them, finds the spot, and my vision goes white at the edges.

"Look at me," she says.

I do. It takes everything I have. She's watching me fall apart with her fingers inside me and her dress still buttoned to the throat and her hair still perfect, and the contrast is so obscene that it pushes me over.

I come against the door with her name in my mouth and my hands fisted in her collar and my thighs shaking around her wrist. She works me through it, slow and steady, until I'm twitching and oversensitive and pushing at her hand.

She pulls out. Lifts her fingers to her mouth. Tastes them while looking at me.

"Okay," she says, echoing the word I gave her at the door. "Now I believe you."

I laugh. It comes out wrecked and breathless and I don't care. My legs are barely holding me up and my dress is a puddle on the carpet and Vivi is still standing there fully dressed, looking at me like she's just finished reading something she's been meaning to get to for months.

"Bed," I say.

"I thought we were staying against the door."

"We were. Now I want to lie down."

She considers this. Then she takes my hand and leads me across the room, and the light from the hallway cuts a thin line along the carpet ahead of us, and I follow her because there was never really a question of doing anything else.