Page 57 of Windlass

Stevie’s phone buzzed. Her hands closed tightly around Angie’s hair, tight enough to hurt, which focused all her attention on the control, the trust, she’d placed in Stevie’s hands.

“Morgan?” Angie asked, dread rising. “You’re not on call, are you?”

Stevie nodded, extracting one hand from Angie’s hair to pull out her cell. When she looked up from her phone, however, the despair in her face shifted back to hunger. Angie reached for her waist.

“Before you go, tell me how you’d fuck me?” she asked.

Stevie grabbed Angie’s wrist, stopping her.

“You’re making it impossible for me to leave.”

“Maybe you won’t have to. You won’t know if you don’t answer the phone.”

The phone had started buzzing again.

“Fuck.” Stevie picked her phone up. “Hey, what’s up?”

Angie took advantage of Stevie’s preoccupation. Biting back a sound as Stevie’s fingers curled deeper into her hair, she tugged Stevie’s shirt out of her way and slid out of the chair to kneel. She saw the stricken look flash over Stevie’s face as she licked the curve of her hip just above her belt. The plane of muscle hardened beneath her mouth. Angie couldn’t help herself. A breathy moan escaped her as she tasted Stevie’s skin for the first time.

“I can be there in twenty, yeah,” she heard Stevie say in a poor approximation of normality. “What? I’m fine. Just doing stuff in the barn. See you in a few.”

Yes, they certainly had done stuff in the barn. She slipped her tongue beneath Stevie’s belt as Stevie hung up on Morgan. Stevie’s hand pulled her closer, demanding now, and she obliged—she licked the line of Stevie’s belt like she would her cunt, and Stevie knew it. When Angie slid a hand up Stevie’s inner thigh, she was wet through her jeans.

“Are you sure you have to go?” Angie paused as she tugged Stevie’s belt lower, then, thinking better of it, unbuckled it entirely. Stevie didn’t stop her or answer. Her body held itself rigidly. The hand still wrapped in Angie’s hair twisted, which she took as answer enough. Watching Stevie watch her, Angie unbuttoned Stevie’s jeans and slid down the zipper.

Stevie wore patterned briefs as a rule. Today’s featured beavers with monocles. Angie stroked the front with light fingers. The shudder that took Stevie’s whole body ended in her hand, which pulled Angie’s head against her, roughly, just long enough for Angie to taste her through her underwear before Stevie ripped her away with a sound of such immense frustration that Angie, shaking herself now, almost laughed. She licked her lips instead.

“I have to go, and it’s going to kill me.”

“I’ll be thinking of you,” Angie said suggestively.

“Don’t you dare.” Stevie released her hair slowly, clearly taking care not to pull any strands, which was ironic, all things considered. Angie appreciated the gentleness anyway. “The next time you come better be for me.”

“Super-fucking-inconvenient timing as ever,” said Stevie as she slid into the Seal Cove equine clinic ambulatory pickup. The inside of the cab smelled as usual: horses, manure, fly spray, and the faint, non-specific funk that arose from one-too-many to-go cups spilling one-too-many coffees over the years.

“Tell me about it. I’d just sat down to eat.”

“I was hoping to,” said Stevie, thinking of Angie’s mouth.

“You didn’t get dinner?”

“It’s fine. I’ll eat out later.” A pity that joke would go unappreciated.

“You want to pick something up?” asked Morgan. “And don’t say—”

“Your mom,” Stevie finished for her. She tucked her hands beneath her thighs and hoped they stopped shaking before they got to wherever Morgan had told her they were going. She hadn’t taken in a word. Angie’s mouth had thoroughly melted her brain stem.

Angie. Angie’s mouth on her hip, on her clit. Was there some way to get out of her job that would let her return home? She felt the ghost of Angie’s tongue against her with every breath, the way she’d managed in those two seconds of contact to erase everyone else who’d ever touched her. There was the way Angie had looked, kneeling before her: trusting, vulnerable, and so very fucking hot. She so rarely saw trust or vulnerability in Angie’s eyes. If someone had made her choose between that look and the sensation of Angie’s lips and tongue sweeping over her, she’d be hard-pressed. She leaned her head back against the seat.

“I thought you missed dinner?” said Morgan, a question in the phrase.

“Huh?” Stevie looked at Morgan, who was looking at the road.

“Your face . . .” Morgan started. “Hangry Stevie doesn’t smile. How are things at the house? Better?”

“You have no idea,” said Stevie, several seconds before it occurred to her this was not, in fact, the sort of thing someone would say if they were pretending they were not thinking about fucking their roommate.

“Uh huh.”

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