Page 61 of Shifting Gears

Nora blinks.

“You lost your virginity in the woods?” Nora is unsure whether to laugh or be concerned.

“In the dugout at the baseball field, actually,” Dani elaborates, chuckling at Nora’s aghast expression. “It was after dark. But we can go in the house, if you’d rather. Like I said, I’m good either way, babe.”

Dani seems unbothered by the sudden use of a pet name, but it makes Nora’s heart stutter.

Dani has never called herbabe. She’s never called Nora anything besides her shortened name, and something about it softens the anxiety and makes Nora feel a little braver. More adventurous.

With a glance around at the empty woods and quiet water, Nora does what Dani has been giving her the freedom to do ever since they started up this arrangement—she gives in to desire.

“Not in the water,” Nora says quickly. “It’s unsanitary.”

With a grin, Dani lifts Nora out of the river and onto the dock, pulling herself up after. Nora tries and likely fails not to fawn too obviously over the clear, easy strength that Dani shows without even thinking.

“Better?” Dani asks, slowly crawling until she’s hovering over Nora’s body. They press together from thigh to chest, Dani nuzzling into her neck and starting to drift open-mouthed kisses over the sensitive skin.

Nora nods, succumbing to the choice she knows she’ll always make.

Nora’s toes curl into the towels when Dani presses three fingers inside her, the scratch of the wood underneath the fabric grounding her when it feels like her body is on fire. The heat of Dani’s skin, the inferno in Nora’s belly, the sun beating down—it’s all enough to make Nora lose herself. She’s a blazing star. A supernova just waiting to explode.

All other sounds are blotted out by her own whimpers, by Dani’s heavy breathing and whispered encouragement: the wind in the trees, the birds chirping, the gentle lapping of the water against the dock. Anything beyond their bodies is muted. Unimportant.

When Nora gains enough cognizance to raise her thigh up and into Dani’s path, it stokes the flame. Dani groans, bearing down on it with a pleased shudder before she pulls away and refocuses on the rhythm of her own hand.

It’s as if she won’t allow herself pleasure without giving it to Nora first. It’s a quirk Nora has noticed since their first time together, part and parcel with Dani’s general denial of her own needs. Dani hasn’t been opposed to being touched, by any means. She actually seems to deeply crave it, but she usually needs to be encouraged.

Nora slips her hand up to do just that. Her fingers are enveloped in wet heat, and this time Nora slips downwardinstead of up, just enough for her fingertips to sink inside—and Dani tenses.

Nora is nothing if not a fast learner. In all their days and nights together, she’s been taking notes. She’s learned that Dani likes hard pressure on her clit, and quick movements. Up until now, she hasn’t asked for anything else. Clearly that’s intentional.

Nora retracts her fingers, and Dani relaxes again. It makes Nora more curious than ever about what makes Dani tick. Dani’s body and its needs are so unlike Nora’s own, and she wants to learn each and every one of the differences until she can etch it into her mind like a schematic.

“Grind on me?” Nora gasps, clutching at Dani’s hip and pulling her down onto her thigh again. This, she knows, Dani likes. She feels the quick of Dani parting against her, her slick heat and textured hair, and this time Dani bucks down eagerly and nods.

The noise of pure, concentrated desire that Dani makes as she paints the length of Nora’s thigh with wetness is almost enough to make Nora come on the spot.

It has a similar effect on Dani, too, Nora is gratified to notice: she’s bearing down with more and more intent, rubbing herself unabashedly, and it makes the fingers currently inside Nora move faster and harder than before.

It’s a completely new sensory experience, doing this outside. Dani’s wet hair drapes between them, creating a curtain that smells like fresh air and lake water. Through the gaps, Nora can see Dani’s arm flexing; light stretch marks paint the skin on the underside of her bicep, stretched taut with the effort of holding herself above Nora. Inexplicably, Nora wants to bite them. Leave a mark of her own.

She can feel the edge just within her grasp. Dani is close, too, her cries breathy and vulnerable as Nora keeps her thigh as ahard surface for her to press against. And then Nora arches up—she’sclose, so absolutely frantic, and she just needs that little bit more—

It comes with a rustling noise in the woods to their left. The sound of a snapping twig and shifting leaves breaks through the noise. Unbidden, a thought torpedoes into Nora’s mind.

Someone is going to see her like this.

She has a brief vision of whatthismust look like: the two of them naked and tangled together in broad daylight, Nora clinging to Dani like she’s the only anchor left in the world and moaning unabashedly while Dani gets herself off on Nora’s thigh, oblivious.

As Nora imagines some stranger getting a glimpse of their moment, seeing their utter desperation for each other, something inside her releases.

“Fuck,” Nora chokes out. Something tells her that Dani needs to hear more than her usual wordless moans. She can hardly get the words out, her brain ceasing normal functioning as she comes hard on Dani’s hand, but her ineloquence only seems to make it hotter. “God, yes,fuck—”

As she’d hoped, Dani falls apart not long after. It makes Nora pulse all the harder around Dani’s fingers when she realizes that she can feel Dani twitching against her thigh. They stay like that—tightly intertwined, dripping water onto the towels—as their bodies cool down in the breeze.

The rustling turns out to be a rabbit, which darts off into the woods after revealing its position. Nora chuckles at the unintended symbolism.

“Wow,” Dani finally murmurs, withdrawing her face from Nora’s neck and shifting down enough to lay her head on Nora’s chest instead. She withdraws her fingers, too, splaying them still wet over the soft swell of Nora’s stomach. “Sometimes I can’t believe how you make me feel.”

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