Page 79 of Windlass

Angie looked away.Dammit. Never call Angie out. Stevie knew better. Angie might want to pretend the only rules on the table were the ones they’d laid out, but she had a stack of unspoken ones chest high.

Don’t try to get too close.

Don’t ask anything deeply personal.

Don’t expect the same treatment in return.

That last wasn’t fair, she supposed. It wasn’t Angie’s fault she couldn’t reciprocate what she could ask of others.

“Then I’d erase that,” she said, reaching up despite the warning voice in her mind and touching the downturn of Angie’s mouth, prodding it upward. The smolder of rage dimmed, and the Angie she loved returned, lips curling up in a smile. “Your turn.”

“I dunno. Maybe your clothes.” Angie’s lips closed over Stevie’s finger. This, as Angie had clearly figured out, was the fastest way to short-circuit her brain. She yelled inwardly at the baser parts of her incapable of recognizing a distraction. Angie was good at those. Too good. Much better than Stevie at deflection, despite Ivy’s assessment.

But god, her mouth. Her eyes. Whatever the hell she was doing with her tongue.

Was that what dating her in reality would be like? A series of deflections, which, no matter how hot, were still walls Angie wouldn’t let Stevie behind?

Not that she’d ever get to find out. She absolutely could not afford to hope things between them might change. Angie’s need to lie to herself was too strong, and Stevie still retained a small shred of self-preservation. Angie would never be hers entirely. Not while she hated herself more than she loved anyone else.

For the first time since she’d left Angie tied up in the barn, Stevie wondered in earnest if she’d made a serious mistake.

She pulled her fingers out from between Angie’s lips, which took considerable force of will, and pushed herself into a sitting position. Several parts of her anatomy complained.

Angie shrank from her. Her shoulders curled inward ever so slightly, hardly noticeable unless one had made a comprehensive study of her body language over the years. Angie looking small was intolerable.

“Let me braid your hair,” Stevie said on an impulse.

Angie’s eyes jerked up in surprise. “What?”

“Let me braid your hair.”

“It’s tangled.”

“I’ll deal. Have you seen Olive’s mane?”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“And how do you think it stays that way?” She patted the couch before her, encouraging Angie to present Stevie with her back. Angie did better when she could look away from the difficult thing.

Angie obliged with a shrug, but Stevie caught the relief in the single tremor that passed over her mouth. She took Angie’s hair out of its messy bun with practiced fingers.

“Tell me about the comic you’re working on.” She gathered the long, thick tresses into a single plait. Angie hadn’t been kidding about the tangles. She fished into her back pocket and emerged victorious. She usually kept a mane comb somewhere on her person, which might have been why they kept walking out of the clinic supply cart. Carefully, she eased the comb through the ends of Angie’s hair.

“Don’t let Stormy see these split ends.” She rubbed several strands between her fingers when Angie did not speak.

“Stormy is the face of her business. The dogs at work don’t care what my hair looks like.”

Stevie smoothed another hank of hair before beginning to tackle the tangles.

“Do you not want to talk about the comic?” Thunder rolled softly outside. The breeze shifting through the open windows brought the smell of summer rain and window screens, two smells that had always been linked in Stevie’s mind. She hoped the tarp on the roof held up.

“I’m stuck,” Angie admitted.

“Where?”

“They’ve made it back upriver to the cliff batgirl fell from, and her wings are strong enough to fly her up, but not her human lover. I don’t know what she chooses.”

“And she can’t just fly back and forth because it’s too dangerous, yeah?”

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