Karolina Waits for Open

The last two students had taken their paper cups and gone, leaving the neighborhood cafe on a quiet Warsaw street to the hiss of the machine and the spring rain that had started just after ten. I wiped the counter in slow circles and watched Karolina Nowak at her usual table by the window, twenty-two and still here after the dorm had emptied, paying for the same coffee as if ordinary might hold if she sat still long enough. She had her chin in her hand. The lights over the pastry case made a soft gold of her hair. I already knew her order. I had known it for weeks, the way I knew she would stay until I turned the sign, and that she would not be the one to say why.

I am twenty-five and I work the late shift because the mornings belong to people who sleep beside someone. Karolina had been coming since March, always the same table, always watching my hands instead of her phone until the last of the regulars left. Tonight the rain silvered the glass and the street outside was almost empty. She lifted her cup and did not drink. When I came around to collect the saucer she looked at my mouth and not at the cup.

“You can lock it,” she said, as if she were talking about the weather. “I am not going anywhere.”

I felt that land in my stomach, low and certain. I went to the door with the keys already warm in my palm.

---

The lock turned with a sound that seemed too loud for the room. I killed the front lights and left the case glowing, a low gold that would not carry far into the street. Karolina came behind the counter without being asked, her shoes quiet on the rubber mat, and the playfulness in her face had gone serious in a way that made my throat tight. She put her hands on my hips and turned me so my back found the edge of the sink. Then she went to her knees on the closed shop floor as if she had been thinking about it through every last customer.

I had worn a skirt for the shift because I had hoped she would. She pushed it up with both palms, unhurried, and hooked my underwear aside with her thumb. The first press of her mouth was open and wet against my cunt, and I had to set my hands on the steel rim behind me to stay standing. She licked me in long, patient strokes, from the entrance up to my clit and back again, and she made a small sound when she tasted me, not for show, just honest. I looked down and saw her eyes closed, her lashes dark against her cheek, and the wanting in me went sharp enough to hurt.

“Karolina,” I said, and her name came out wrecked. She did not stop. She sucked my clit between her lips and worked her tongue against it in a rhythm that had nothing of performance in it, only hunger, and I could feel how wet I was getting on her chin. The rain ticked at the windows. Someone could have walked past and seen the glow and wondered, and the thought of that made my hips push forward into her mouth. She took it. She slid two fingers into me while she licked, curling them up, and I heard myself swear in a voice I barely used on the floor. She fucked me with her hand and ate me like she had all night, and when I came it was sudden and hard, my cunt clenching on her fingers, my come on her tongue. I held the sink and shook through it while she stayed there, licking me through the last of it until I had to pull her hair gently to make her look up.

Her mouth was shining. She looked pleased with herself in that private way she had, as if the rest of what she felt might arrive later if I asked.

---

I pulled her up by the elbows and kissed her, tasting myself, and she made that small sound again against my teeth. I turned her toward the pastry case and bent her over the glass, her palms flattening on the cool surface above the last of the morning’s tarts. Her skirt came up easily. I dragged her underwear down her thighs and left it stretched there, and when I slid two fingers along her cunt I found her soaked, open, ready in a way that made my own pulse kick again.

“You were wet the whole last hour,” I said into the back of her neck. “I could see it in how you sat.”

“I know,” she said. “I wanted you to.”

I pushed my fingers into her, slow at first, then deeper, and she dropped her forehead toward the glass and breathed out hard. I fucked her like that over the case, my other hand on the small of her back, feeling how she pushed back onto me every time I drew out. The gold light made her thighs look warm. I added a third finger because she could take it and because she asked for it without words, rocking her hips, and the wet sound of it filled the quiet shop. She was tight around my knuckles and getting tighter. I found the place inside her that made her gasp and stayed on it, rubbing, while my thumb circled her clit from the front.

“Tessa,” she said, not the model voice, just my name like a fact. “Do not stop.”

I did not stop. I worked her until her arms shook and her cunt fluttered around my fingers, and I talked into her hair about how she looked bent over my case, how anyone left on the street might see the shape of her if I lifted the lights, how I wanted that and I thought she did too. She came on my hand with a broken sound, her body locking, and I kept my fingers in her through it so she had something to hold onto. When she eased I kissed her shoulder and left my hand where it was a moment longer, feeling her pulse there.

---

I went to the back only long enough to get the harness from my bag. I had brought it because I had been thinking about her all week, about the way she stayed later each night, about the counter and the lock. When I came back she was still over the case, underwear at her knees, looking at me over her shoulder with her mouth a little open. I stepped into the straps and settled the cock against my cunt, already sensitive from her mouth, and the base kissed my clit when I moved.

I stood behind her and ran the head of it along her wetness until she pushed back. Then I pressed in, slow because I wanted to feel every inch of her taking it, and she took it, her cunt stretching around the shaft until I was flush against her ass. I held her hips and started to fuck her in long strokes, the counter creaking faintly, the cock sliding easy with how wet she was. Each thrust rolled the base against me and I had to bite my lip. She reached back and found my wrist and kept it there, wanting the grip.

“Harder,” she said, and then, after a breath, “the window is right there.”

I gave her harder. I fucked her against the counter until the sound of our bodies was the loudest thing in the shop, skin and the wet catch of the strap leaving her and driving in again. She came with her mouth open against her own arm, a full-body shake that pulled her onto the cock and held her there, and I did not pull out. I stayed buried in her while she trembled through it, my hands stroking the backs of her thighs, and she did not ask me to stop. She stayed on it, breathing, her cunt still clutching, and I rocked in tiny movements that made her whimper.

“Again,” I said, not quite a question.

She nodded against the glass. “Again.”

---

I eased out of her only to turn her and lift her so she sat on the pastry case, the glass cold under her bare ass, her underwear finally kicked away. I went to my knees this time. I spread her with my thumbs and looked at her cunt, flushed and used and still dripping, and then I put my mouth on her. She tasted like her own come and like the silicone, and I licked her clit in tight circles while she braced her hands behind her on the case. Her thighs closed on my ears. I did not mind.

I sucked her slowly and let my tongue go flat, then pointed, learning in the moment what made her hips jump. She watched me do it. When I glanced up her eyes were dark and unguarded, and she put one hand in my hair not to steer me but to keep contact. I slid two fingers back into her while I licked, gentle now, and she let her head fall back. The rain had thinned. A bus sighed past on the wet street and neither of us moved to hide. I ate her through the oversensitive start of it until the oversensitive became hunger again, and she came on my tongue with her heels against my back, a long, shaking finish that left her laughing once, breathless, sweet with it.

I stood and kissed her knee. She pulled me in by the shirt and kissed my mouth as if we had time.

---

We did not go to the back. Karolina slid off the case and took my hand and walked me around to the customer side of the glass, where the low light made twins of us in the dark window and the street beyond was a smear of spring wet and empty pavement. She wanted the risk. I wanted it with her. I sat in the corner chair that faced the door and she climbed into my lap, the harness still on, the cock slick between us, and she ground down on it with the window at her back.

Anyone walking home late would have seen the outline of a woman in a man’s lap, except there was no man, only us, her skirt around her waist and my hands on her ass, guiding her as she rubbed her cunt along the shaft. She did not put it inside this time. She used it, rolling her clit against the length, her breath on my cheek, and I watched the street over her shoulder because watching was part of what we had chosen. A cyclist went by in a yellow jacket and did not look. Karolina laughed into my neck, that tease arriving late, like an afterthought she had not planned to give me.

“If they look, they look,” she said. “I am not getting off you.”

I held her tighter and let her use me. The base ground against my clit with every roll of her hips and I was close again without warning, the public dark of the glass making it sharper. She felt me tense and did not slow down. She kissed me while she ground, filthy and tender at once, and when I came I bit her lower lip to keep the sound in, my hands bruising her hips in a way we both liked. She followed a minute later, shaking in my lap, her cunt sliding wet along the cock until she had to stop and rest her forehead on mine.

We stayed like that with the lights low, two women in a locked cafe at the edge of being seen, and neither of us moved to make it safer.

---

After, I cleaned us up with the towels from the back and we put the chairs right because the morning would come whether we were ready or not. Karolina hummed something under her breath while she washed her hands at the sink, a village song I had heard her use on other late nights when she wanted to be asked to stay and would not ask in words. I listened. I hung the last cloth and looked at her, at the ordinary wreck of her hair and the way she belonged in this kitchen more than she belonged in any campaign I had ever seen on her phone.

“Sleep in the back,” I said. “Open with me at dawn. I am asking.”

She turned off the tap and dried her fingers on her skirt. For a moment I thought she would reach for the voice she used when people paid her to be a certain kind of easy. She did not. She looked at me the way she looked at weather, as if the answer were already in what I had done.

“Yes,” she said. “I will open.”

I felt that yes go through me like heat. We went to the little room behind the stock where the extra coats hung, and she took a photograph of the locked door from the inside before she lay down, the sign reversed, the rain still on the glass. She did not post it. I saw her thumb hover and then lock the screen. Later, when she thought I had already closed my eyes, the phone lit again with the agency name at the top of an email that asked, from what I could glimpse, for more of this, more of the shop, more of the girl who stayed. She turned it face down on the floorboards. She did not tell me. Staying would make her mine in a way a morning shift could hold, and becoming content would end that first morning before the lock even turned, and I lay beside her in the dark and did not yet know which she would choose when the sun came up over Warsaw and we had to open the door.