A happy audience

There wasn't a single thing that Izzy would've refused Mina in that moment. If she asked her to run up the stairs and throw herself off the balcony, she would do it. And more. But again, Izzy wasn't capable of vocalizing those thoughts. "No," she said, her voice very small.

"No, like, you don't mind, or no, like, you don't want an audience?" Mina said. She was staring into Izzy's eyes. The twinkle in her own socket-set diamonds said she knew the answer to the question. But she wouldn't be satisfied until Izzy answered the way she wanted her to.

Izzy made brief eye contact with Paul. He was smiling openly, and took a sip from his beer. Ward, a few feet further back from him, didn't look like he cared either way. They were handsome. And the mystery of them, why they were really here, what kind of relationship they had with the very pretty daughter of their longtime friend, piqued Izzy's interest far more than she could articulate, or far more than she would be willing to say, with so many years of doubt and Catholic guilt built up in her. But in any case, they didn't factor into Izzy's decision. It was all about Mina. "I don't mind if they watch," she said. She wanted to make sure she didn't leave any room to error. That would provoke more questions, and more questions meant more time until she felt Mina's lips on hers again.

There was that beautiful smile. Marilyn Monroe, eat your heart out, Izzy thought. Mina's sharp features, the long, impossibly straight tresses of white, would have made any 50's Hollywood simp forget the name of Joe DiMaggio's wife in an instant. "Okay, yay," Mina said. And she bent lower, her face sliding down toward Izzy's like the first slow tumbles of an avalanche. Her lips were the only point of color in her face. Izzy couldn't remember her friend putting on any lipstick, maybe a touch of gloss, but they were red as blood. Red as her own skin. Mina kissed her again.

"Mmph," Izzy moaned. She felt Mina smile.

Suddenly she was overheated. Her hands flailed at her chest, trying to undo the buttons on the black and white dress she wore every day for work. Then she remembered Mina had hauled her back to her room and made her change into a bodysuit, a leather skirt that was too tight, these awful stockings. Had Mina known at that moment how the night was going to end? But she acted so casually. As easygoing as she ever was. Maybe this sort of thing was always at the back of her friend's head, and she was constantly scanning for possibilities like this one. With a clarity she hadn't known in months, Izzy knew that she would have let Mina kiss her, touch her, anything, at any point, when she was working, alone in some other guest's room, or even in the lobby, on the staircase. Fuck Ivan. Who cared if he saw them doing something wrong? He wasn't going to complain about how the daughter of Trivett Steel did things.

"Need a hand?" Mina murmured.

"Mhm," Izzy grunted.

Mina's hand dropped to the zipper up the side of the skirt. It was her skirt, originally, so no surprise she remembered how it worked better than Izzy. Izzy bit her lip as her friend took the tag delicately between thumb and forefinger, pulled it down in an easy motion. It sat limp now in Izzy's lap. She knew that if she just moved a hair, she would be out from the skirt, left in those stockings and the bodysuit.