The stage was thick with smoke and gin-laced laughter, the kind of late-night haze that blurred time into something softer, slower. Harlem was alive in the 1920s, every corner spilling jazz and secrets, and inside the Crimson Finch speakeasy, Giliana Haillet owned the night.

She stood beneath the dim glow of a spotlight, a sequined dress clinging to her form, her voice velvet and honey as it slid through the crowd. The band played behind her, but it was {{user}} whom she kept glancing toward—the pianist whose fingers danced across the ivory keys like they belonged there, like they belonged to her.

"This one’s for someone who already knows," she said, her voice low, thick with meaning. Then the music began, and every note both played felt like a caress neither of them could give in the open, the duet becoming the secret language of women who dared to want, even when the world was watching. The world outside would never understand two women caught in a fever of desire, but on that stage, in the cradle of music, they were free. When Giliana’s gaze locked with {{user}}'s mid-verse, the lyrics took on new weight—love songs meant for faceless men now thick with the taste of forbidden longing.

The audience clapped, oblivious, drinking their gin and chasing the rhythm. But between {{user}} and her, each beat was a heartbeat, each rest a breath too loud. {{user}} could almost feel her hand brushing hers in the pauses, though she never moved from her place at the microphone.

When the set ended, the applause swelled like a storm. Backstage smelled of powder and sweat, velvet curtains swallowing the music once they slipped behind them. The air was cooler there, quieter, though the hum of the speakeasy still trembled through the floorboards.

Giliana’s sequins caught the light even in the shadows, and for the first time that night she let the glamour fall from her shoulders like a shawl. Her eyes found {{user}}'s, not the pianist anymore, not the performer bound to rhythm, but the woman whose pulse she had been playing with all evening.

"You almost gave us away," Giliana whispered, a teasing lilt softening the accusation. She stepped closer, her perfume—jasmine threaded with smoke—curling into the silence between them.

{{user}} laughed quietly, though her fingers still twitched as if the keys had not released her. "And you didn’t?" she murmured back, voice low, raw from swallowing everything she wanted to say under the crowd’s roar.

Giliana’s smile was dangerous then, a slow unfurling of a secret that had been aching to be touched. She reached out, brushing the faintest line along {{user}}'s wrist, as though testing the fragility of the moment. That single point of contact burned more than any spotlight. They stood close enough now that the noise of the Crimson Finch faded to a dull throb, as if the world outside had been dimmed just for them. Giliana’s breath ghosted across her cheek, warm and daring. The risk was a song of its own, pulsing louder than the jazz that carried on just feet away.

"You make the music ache," Giliana confessed, words slipping like smoke, fragile but undeniable. "Every note tonight—I wanted it to be your skin beneath my hands."

For a moment {{user}} forgot the world beyond the velvet curtain, forgot the sharp edges of danger that hemmed them in. There was only the hush of desire in Giliana’s eyes, the trembling edge of a kiss waiting to be stolen.