Page 59 of Windlass

“Mandatory karaoke?I would rather swim naked at night with sharks.”

“Maybe we can suggest that as an alternative,” said Morgan. “I can’t sing for shit. I know you can’t either.”

“Guess we’ll have to duet Nickelback.”

Morgan snorted. “They’d pay us to shut up. You have to promise you won’t let Emilia bully me into singing with her.”

“Because she’ssucha bully.” Stevie tried to imagine Emilia bullying anyone, let alone Morgan, and failed.

“She can be persuasive.”

“Well, she’s not going to show you her tits in front of the rest of us.” Why had she said tits? Angie was at home touching her tits, and she was here in a truck talking aboutkaraoke.

“Breasts. They’re breasts, not tits.”

“If the rest of the world knew you were such a prude, they wouldn’t swoon over you half as much.”

“Just don’t call my girlfriend’s breasts ‘tits,’ okay?”

“Emilia won’t show you herbreastsin front of the rest of us.”

“No, and she might not show them tomelater.”

As someone who had very recently been promised access to tits herself, the horror of being denied was overwhelming. And the way Angie had first held her eyes as she teased her, then closed them when her mouth had skimmed over Stevie’s briefs, as if overcome—

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Did you get a chance to restock the gauze yesterday?”

“Yeah.” Angie, leaning back against the counter holding Stevie’s shirt, lips parting—lips Stevie would not be allowed to kiss, which was bullshit, but she’d respect it until Angie changed her mind. “How much farther?”

“Ten minutes?”

“Then let me pull up some bad music so we can practice.”

Mostly she needed to let her mind and body slow the fuck down. Beneath the thrum of her nerves, though, and the nearly blinding pulses of desire that shook her each time another image of Angie appeared in her mind’s eye was a happiness bright and fierce enough to overpower even desire.

Chapter Ten

Stevie did not get home until well after midnight. Angie woke from her doze on the couch with James asleep on her chest to the sounds of Stevie trying to be quiet as she shucked off her coveralls in the mudroom and washed her hands in the laundry room sink.

She stroked James’ regal cheeks in apology. “Hey, big boy. I need to get up.”

His purr cut off as she sat, gently depositing him on the sofa. He’d live. She might not—fitful sleep had not dulled the drumbeat in her blood, and she felt, in a way that was completely unfamiliar, like she might actually die if she could not touch Stevie soon. Not from anything so crass as sexual frustration, but from a self-immolation so complete and devastating there would be no recovering. She’d wanted things before—stability, friendship, belonging, sex. She’d never wanted them all in thesameperson. She’d never wanted someone she truly, hopelessly loved.

She was terrified, but the fear was so outmatched by the strength of the thing pulling her to the mudroom door that it might as well have been white noise. She’d wanted this for so long it had grown into her and through her like the bittersweet vines she periodically cut back from the barn.

Stevie’s back was to her when Angie reached the doorway. Her coveralls lay in a pile on the ground near her boots, and she had tossed her shirt toward the open mouth of the washing machine. Her shoulders were beautifully muscled, almost classically so, which was the inevitable result of working with large animals. More importantly, they were the shoulders of a woman with stamina.

“Nice shot.”

Stevie turned, hands on the last button of her jeans, which she wore beneath her coveralls for some reason. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“I was.” She waved at Stevie’s waist. “Don’t stop there.”

“Did I wake you? There was another emergency after the first one.”

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