Page 28 of Windlass

Angie wanted to be topped? Nothing had ever been less of a problem. She imagined ripping the criminally negligent scrap of swimsuit aside, drawing it over Angie’s knee. Biting the inside of that raised thigh. Hooking Angie’s leg over her shoulder. Imagined, too, binding Angie’s hands behind her back—tied with the string that passed for swimsuit bottoms, perhaps—and bending her over the bow until her ass rose level with Stevie’s hips. Easing into the wet heat of her. Making her beg. And—fuck—she could see Angie’s body bucking as Stevie fucked her, first gently, then harder, Angie’s cries deepening the deeper Stevie drove, until she could curl her fingers into a fist inside her.

She rolled onto her stomach, shoving her face into her pillow to quiet the embarrassing animal sounds she was making as she rode her hand roughly, feeling the second orgasm building and wishing she could bury her face between Angie’s breasts instead.

Breaking, Stevie said Angie’s name. Another taboo, shattered. Her own cunt shuddered, and her hand slid deeper than she could remember. The relief, guilty and tangled as it was, raked over her skin like teeth. She said Angie’s name again, and then again.

When she came, gasping, something she’d kept bound securely just behind her breastbone at last came off the leash, and she knew as she lay there in the ruin of her sheets, spent but still aching, unsatisfied, that getting it back on the collar was beyond her—if it could be done at all.

Angie stumbled into the kitchen, her nightshirt slipping off one shoulder—intentional—and her hands smelling of sex despite soap and scented lotion. Oops.

Stevie stood by the coffeepot, her hair down and mussed from sleep and her eyes fixed on the mug in her hands. Angie paused by the island and waited for acknowledgment. The blush that spread over Stevie’s cheeks was all she got, but that was more than enough.

“Good morning.” She pushed off the counter and passed by Stevie to reach the mugs. She saw Stevie’s eyes shut out of her peripheral.

Served her right. Angie had gotten herself off four times before her body calmed enough for sleep, and she’d woken up wet. Her vibrator was going to need a serious charge.

“Morning.”

“Sleep well?” she asked lightly, breaking their usual routine of comfortable morning grumbles.

Stevie shot her a glare so full of frustration she couldn’t help laughing. She turned to make her coffee before any more laughter bubbled out of her, or before she did anything regrettable, like tuck the strand of hair falling across Stevie’s face behind her ear.

“Could you pass me the sugar?” she asked.

Stevie handed it over without meeting her eyes. Her cheeks were a glorious shade of rose, and Angie knew she must hate the blush, and perhaps Angie just a little for witnessing it. She took the sugar. Stevie held on to it a second longer than was necessary. Angie pulled it toward her, holding her breath, wondering if Stevie would come with it. When Stevie released the ceramic bowl, however, Angie breathed in, and the sharp tang of arousal lingered in the air.

It wasn’t hers.

She’d seen Stevie’s thigh after a nasty kick from a horse, once, the imprint of the shoe livid and red against a background of lurid blue. This moment would leave a similar mark on her heart. Stevie could only have fantasized about one thing that would make her blush that deeply, and Angie wasn’t a complete idiot. Well, except over Stevie. God, she wanted to put her fingers into her mouth. If she tasted half as good as she smelled, Angie was fucked.

And she would be fucked. By Stevie. Immediately, too, if she let herself think about this a second longer because fucking Stevie had just outranked oxygen on her list of biological needs.

Lust was the least of her worries. She spooned sugar into her cup with a shaking hand. With her back to Stevie, she set the sugar bowl down and took a sip of coffee, willing her body to calm. Willing her stupid, stupid heart to cease its pounding refrain:Ste-vie. Ste-vie. Ste-vie.

She couldn’t berate herself for long, however, because the scent of Stevie’s arousal was hacking away at her resolve with a chainsaw. She needed to leave the kitchen. Now.

“I get first shower,” she said without turning around. Then, because she wasn’t going to suffer alone, she added, “And Stevie, it’s gonna be a long one.”

Chapter Six

The next few days were blissfully busy. Stevie worked late, and while she and Angie exchanged their usual memes and photos of the animals they worked with, neither of them acknowledged what had happened.

Not that anythinghadhappened, Stevie reminded herself repeatedly. Angie had checked her out. So what? It had happened before. Stevie had been the one to make it weird by getting off, which Angie never needed to know about. Nothing had changed.

But somethinghadchanged. Her skin still felt feverish. Her lungs burned as if she’d run miles. As she watched Morgan cut an abscess out of a pony’s hoof, flakes of hoof wall piling up on the barn floor while Stevie stroked the pony’s cheeks, she wondered if this is what it felt like to be whittled down to nothing but desire.

“You okay?” Morgan asked as they drove home.

“Yeah.” She rubbed one of her shoulders, trying to loosen a persistent knot. “Why?”

“You just seem off.”

Angie, looking up at her out of eyes liquid with want. Angie, wearing next to nothing with the sun kissing her hair and brow. Angie, laughing the morning after, saying in a voice thick with meaning she was going to need a long shower, puttingthatimage into her head.

Yeah—Stevie was just fine.

“I’m good.”

“Uh huh.” Morgan sounded less than convinced. “How’s the house?”

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