Page 14 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

Maybe the wind would obscure the breathless note to her voice.

Angie tightened her hold on the railing.

Stevie gleamed beneath the July afternoon sky.

There was a golden hue to her that had to be natural unless Stevie tanned on the sly, which Angie knew wasn’t the case.

She had the tightly wound build of a boxer, the muscles of her shoulders bunched to support her weight, and the soft rise of her breasts—fuck her for that —surprisingly lush beneath the sporty bikini top.

She’d seen Stevie in a towel on many occasions, but Stevie always knotted the towel high on her chest, instead of wherever the towel happened to fall, as Angie did.

She had not, therefore, had the warning she might have had otherwise, though warning would have helped her little.

She’d seen Stevie’s collarbones, but drenched in sunlight they became something else entirely: a bridge to a country she’d never been, and from which she was terribly afraid she’d never return.

And then there was the rest of her. She did not, could not, stop herself from looking.

Stevie’s stomach. Stevie’s hips. Stevie’s legs and ankles and ass.

Her eyes lingered helplessly on the latter until they were drawn by the dip of her hips and the solid muscle of her thighs.

Ivy had legs like that: absolutely devastating.

Fucking equestrians . Legs that strong could pin her down easily, and she fell into the daydream of Stevie’s thighs around her hips, hands at her wrists while Angie begged—

She jerked her eyes away and laughed, or at least made a sound that might have been a laugh, if laughter could go through a woodchipper. She needed to backpedal fast.

“Damn,” she said. Might as well state the truth. “You clean up well.”

Teasing was fine. Teasing was safe. Normal. Except the skin of Stevie’s ankle just below the bone, which she’d seen before and should not have been any different now, suddenly looked irresistible. She needed to trace that hollow with her tongue more than she could remember wanting anyone.

“Uh, thanks.”

She snapped her gaze back to Stevie’s face.

Stevie’s cheeks were pinker than they’d been a moment ago, and if they’d been alone Angie would have slid across the bow and drawn those glasses off slowly, revealing the blue of her eyes a little bit at a time, while she straddled that smooth expanse of sun-warmed skin.

The feel of that heat against her—the idea of that heat alone—forced her to shift her seat.

Each gentle impact of the hull against the surf was an infuriating reminder that no one had ever gotten her as wet as Stevie Ward.

Stevie had been good. She had been so, so good for so, so long. Not once in the years she’d been in love with Angie had she allowed herself to imagine fully what it might be like to fuck her blind.

Tonight, though, as midnight came and went and she could think only of the look on Angie’s face when she’d checked Stevie out more thoroughly than she’d ever been checked out before, her resolve broke.

She’d watched as Angie’s eyes had covered every inch of her skin, feeling their passage like the ghost of a touch.

She’d watched, too, as Angie bit her lip, eyes dark with the unspoken thing between them.

And she’d watched Angie shift her seat, had seen the way her legs pressed together, and that had been too much .

Angie wanted her. She could not be respectful, not with that knowledge burned forever into her brain. The way Angie had gazed up at her, asking for it—

Angie in a swimsuit had always been exquisite torture, but today had been a hell of its very own. She wanted to burn there forever.

She tossed once more, kicking off her blankets, and stared at the ceiling. Her whole body ached with the effort of keeping herself from slipping out of bed and down the hall to Angie’s door.

And if she did? Would Angie turn her away? Or would she pull her inside, lips parting, her waist curving beneath Stevie’s hands?

She flung an arm over her forehead. Stop , she tried to tell herself, but she could barely form the word even in her mind. Fever bloomed across her skin. The faint friction of her sleep shorts against her when she shifted, slight as it was, made her want to scream.

Did Angie have any idea? Did she have any fucking idea what she’d done? Or was she sleeping, peacefully ignorant of the purgatory into which she’d plunged her friend?

Again and again, she saw Angie looking up at her, lashes lowering, her lower lip full and slightly indented from her teeth. Stevie knew with devastating certainty how that lip would feel between her own teeth.

She bit her lip—it wasn’t Angie’s, but her body let her pretend otherwise—and at last gave in to the temptation of years.

The whimper that escaped her as her hand slid beneath the waistband of her shorts was pathetic.

Thank god Angie couldn’t see her, hear her— fuck.

Her clit was hard and slick beneath her fingers, and she closed her eyes, imagining it was Angie she was touching, Angie she was bringing to climax before Stevie even had a chance to think her name.

The orgasm ripped through her, satisfying nothing.

It wasn’t enough. Once unlocked, the door behind which she’d barricaded every thought about Angie she’d never allowed herself to complete would not stay shut.

Eyes closed or open didn’t matter—the visions waited for her in lethal detail.

Angie, pinned to the deck of Morgan’s stupid boat, her chin tilted by the hand Stevie would tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck.

Angie, breath coming too quickly, light olive skin glimmering where the sunlight fell on her cheeks, throat, and the cruel curve of her breasts.

Angie, prone beneath her, hips rising to meet Stevie’s hand.

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.”