After Dessert

The tart was still on the plate between us - half-eaten, raspberry glaze gone sticky at the edges, three forks abandoned at different angles.

Elise had poured the last of the red. Tomas was talking about their holiday with careful cheer, circling the real subject for twenty minutes while Elise watched his mouth and I watched both of them. I know them through a mutual friend and a run of dinners that used to end at coffee. Tonight the coffee never arrived. Tonight we stayed on wine and dessert and the thing they had clearly invited me over to say.

They’d cooked well. Elise does the kind of roast that makes a small apartment smell expensive, and Tomas had chosen the wine with too much commentary, which I usually find charming and tonight found like a stall. The tart was his contribution - bakery box, raspberry, the glaze catching the kitchen light every time someone moved a glass. We’d finished the main course an hour ago. Nobody had suggested we clear the plates.

“We tried something,” Elise said. She looked at Tomas. He looked at his glass. “In Portugal. With my fingers.”

“He liked it,” she added, flat, like she was reporting a weather change.

Tomas’s mouth twitched. “I liked it a lot.”

He said it without looking up first, then did look up, as if checking whether the sentence had landed the way he’d meant. Elise’s hand was on the table near his. Not holding. Close enough that the choice was visible.

I set my fork down. I already knew where this was going - they know what I do, they’ve asked careful questions before, and I had walked in with a bag that was heavier than a dinner guest usually carries. Still. Hearing it named over raspberry tart hit different than imagining it on the tram. I thought about his knees up, Elise learning the angle, my own harness if they needed a demonstration. I thought about fucking him while she watched. My body answered that thought before I’d finished the wine in my glass.

“We’ve been talking about pegging,” Elise said. “Actually talking. And we know you’re -” She gestured at me with her wine glass, a small circle that meant the whole catalogue. “We were hoping you’d teach us.”

I looked at Tomas. He held the look. He was hard under the table - I could see it in how he sat - and he did not try to hide it once he noticed I’d noticed.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”

That was the decision. I wanted my hands on this - his body, her first strap, the exact moment she understood what she could do to him. I wanted to fuck him myself if the lesson needed it. My body was already interested; the bag by the door held the harness, a midsize curved toy, lube, and the cage I’d thrown in on a hunch.

Elise exhaled like she’d been holding something since Portugal. Tomas nodded once, sharp.

“Bedroom,” I said. “Bring what you bought.”