Page 33 of Windlass

“That’s because you’re wearing clothes.” Stevie flexed her hands, which were no doubt sore from the grip she’d had on the ledge. Angie was prepared to make them even more sore, given the slightest widening of the crack in her own resolve. “Now what?”

Angie tried to think about the other positions she could use a model for, but all she could think about were the positions she wanted Stevie to putherinto.

Angie wasn’t a good person. She’d never made any claims to the contrary. She was absolutely going to take advantage of this situation. Her ability to stop herself was limited only to taking advantage of things aesthetically.

“Lean back,” she said. “I won’t make you hold it for long. Yeah, like that.”

Little truly aggravated her as much as not knowing what Stevie was like in bed. Most of their other friends were open about their preferences or, if they were not open, their partners were. Stevie was the exception. Angie had begged, bribed, and attempted both stealth and trickery to unearth that information, largely unsuccessfully. She knew Stevie’s type. She also knew her own type. Her body might be a traitor, but it had never been wrong on one score: sexual affinity. Somewhere beneath and alongside Stevie’s cheerful clowning was another face, and the glimpses she’d gotten beneath the jester’s mask had kept her up at night for years.

Stevie’s bright exterior was not on display, now. The light shining out of her eyes was considerably darker, and Angie made several deliberate strokes, trying to capture that expression. As if she could forget it. As if she would not be condemned to another sleepless week, wondering if Stevie would knock on her door, willing her to do so even as she screamed at herself to shut this down before she ruined everything. The problem was that it was hard to convince herself she didn’t deserve Stevie when Stevie looked at her like that.

Her grip on her pen grew damp with sweat. It would be so easy to put her sketchbook aside and kneel before the coffee table, putting herself at Stevie’s mercy.

The tip of her pen snagged on the paper, out of ink.

“Ah, fuck.” Wrong word choice. “Give me a second.”

She dug around in her pencil case for another ballpoint and fumbled it, dropping the cheap plastic implement to the ground. She picked it up hastily and uncapped it with shaking hands.

“What character is this pose for?” Stevie asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know. Can you look at me like you’re about to tell me to scrub the floor or something?”

God, she was so transparent it was disgusting. Stevie raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Stevie sat up a little and rested her arm on her bent knee. Her hand hung imperiously. Angie wanted to take those fingers into her mouth and suck until Stevie broke, sliding her lips over and down, and teasing the web between forefinger and middle with her tongue. Her throat was so tight with desire she could barely breathe.

“Has anyone ever told you,” she continued, unable to bring her voice back into normality, “that you’re really fucking hot?”

Stevie’s hand tightened briefly into a fist. Angie wondered if she’d even noticed the reflex.

“It might have come up once or twice.”

“Really?” The thrill of jealousy was better than bondage. “Tell me.”

“My ex. A TA in college. Your mom.”

“A TA?”

Stevie smirked. God, Angie couldn’t take much more of this. “She was a grad student when I was a sophomore. I needed extra help in organic chemistry.”

“I bet you had chemistry.”

“I did fuck her on a lab table,” said Stevie, and Angie was acutely aware of the grammatical structure of that sentence.Ifuckedher. Not the other way around. Not,we fucked.

“Was it good?”

“You’d have to ask her, but yeah, it was all right.”

“I’m genuinely impressed.” Was her pen still moving? No, no it was not. She resumed sketching, spending too much time on Stevie’s eyes and mouth.

“Why?”

“I didn’t take you for an exhibitionist.”

“Yeah? Well, I took her.” Stevie winked.

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