Page 27 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

“You know that sensory deprivation is a form of torture, right?” Angie pouted. “I’ve been cruelly deprived.”

“I think you’ll find a way to live.” Stevie lingered, shirt rucked slightly over one of the hipbones Angie wished she could lick, her eyes fixed on Angie’s lips. Angie smiled knowingly.

Stevie wanted to kiss her. The rise of color in Stevie’s cheeks was immensely satisfying to watch.

She’d known Stevie wanted her. Well, more like suspected and hoped, but knowing hadn’t prepared her for the nearly ecstatic rush of joy it brought.

Angie tilted her head to one side in invitation.

She’d allow it once if Stevie would fucking touch her.

She’d allow Stevie anything, the rules they had yet to set be damned.

Which was precisely why they needed rules. Angie could not let herself start depending on Stevie any more than she already did.

“Outside with you,” Stevie added, her blush intensifying. Her eyes didn’t leave Angie’s mouth.

Would Stevie kiss her languidly or hungrily?

“If you insist.” Angie pushed off the counter lazily, pausing with her lips inches away from Stevie’s to ask, “Do you insist?”

Stevie’s pupils nearly eclipsed her irises. She didn’t answer. Angie’s resolve wavered further.

“Stevie?” She skimmed her thumb over that exposed strip of hip. Stevie’s shiver rewarded her. God, she wanted her mouth there. Stevie would do more than shiver then. “I asked you a question.”

“Did you?” Stevie’s eyes fluttered shut. When they opened, they’d sharpened with hunger. Angie ran her thumbnail along the waist of Stevie’s jeans; the results had been so promising last time.

“Girl . . .”

Angie really liked it when Stevie said “girl” like that, a growl roughening the single syllable into two. There was a threat in that sound, or maybe a promise. Continue, that word said, and I won’t be able to control myself.

That was fine with Angie. Stevie, however, recalled herself with a jerk of her head, as if she’d needed the violence of the motion to break Angie’s spell.

Was she losing her touch? She pouted again.

Stevie hooked a finger into the waistband of Angie’s shorts and tugged.

The pout vanished, and Angie gasped. Instead of falling into Stevie, however, Angie was pulled toward the door.

The feeling of Stevie’s fingers against her skin was probably fair, considering she’d done the same, but fuck, if Stevie didn’t touch her—

“Thatta girl.” Stevie’s smirk roused her from her fog of lust. It took her a moment to remember what they were supposed to be doing. Complete distraction—Angie very carefully did not think about how rarely that had happened, despite how much she sought it. Even pain didn’t consume her like this.

“Outside.”

The patio faced west, and though it was shaded a bit by the old oak tree in the backyard, the day’s heat lingered. Stevie would probably regret putting her shirt back on. Maybe Angie would take hers off. That usually stopped Stevie’s brain.

She slumped into a chair instead. Stevie was right, unfortunately—they did need to talk. Angie’s avoidance wouldn’t change that, only postpone it, which she’d normally be fine with, but Stevie did not seem to share the sentiment, which meant this talk stood between her and what she wanted.

She ran through the rules she had come up with in her head. Would Stevie actually stick to them? Did Angie want her to stick to them? She wished she had called Stormy or Lilian last night and asked for advice, but the first rule on her list made that option impossible.

“You first,” Angie said. The wooden chair was hot against the backs of her thighs, but that was the risk one took when wearing shorts in the summer. If she was lucky, red stripes from the chair slats would not be the only marks she bore by the end of the night.

“You’re the one with the experience,” said Stevie. “What rules did you have with Lana?” The name clearly soured her mouth.

“Let’s not bring her into this.” She didn’t want to think about Lana.

“Good, because my first rule is no other people.”

“Monogamy?” The word hung in the air. Stevie’s blush deepened, but so did the stubborn set of her eyebrows, an expression that Angie could not help but find horrendously adorable.

“We’re not dating,” Angie said. “So why no other people?”

“If you find someone else you want to date or fuck, that’s fine. I’m just not into sharing.”

The possessive certainty in Stevie’s voice raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck and arms. She was glad, in retrospect, that Stevie had not suggested Angie take off her shirt. Stevie did not need to see the strength of her body’s reaction. Her nipples ached with it.

Angie did not like possessiveness. She did not like being possessed or trapped, or any of the other words people used to describe the feeling that usually built in her chest: like panic, but thicker and sweet. Molten caramel. Tempting, but not safe to touch or eat.

And yet . . . An image of Stevie taking her organic chemistry TA on a lab table clouded her vision. The thick curling syrup hardened and broke. She did not want to share either.

“Okay,” Angie said, “no other people. My first rule: we don’t tell our friends.”

“I haven’t said anything,” said Stevie. If this bothered her, she hid it well. “Why don’t you want them to know?”

“My second rule is that you don’t get to question the rules,” said Angie.

She would not think about what it might feel like to walk beside Stevie, hand in hand, with their friends around them.

She would not think about texts from Lilian or Emilia saying double date?

And she would absolutely not think about dancing with Stevie openly, letting her body communicate her feelings in the clearest way she knew.

“Mostly kidding. Can you imagine what they would say?”

She watched Stevie’s expression change, and wondered if she, too, was hearing their friends’ voices in her head.

The warnings. The litany of “I told you so’s.

” The disappointment and anger they would feel toward Angie when she fucked it all up.

Angie could not cope with any of that, on top of how she felt about Stevie.

“Okay,” said Stevie. “We keep it under wraps.”

“What’s your second rule?” asked Angie.

“We have to decide how many times a week I can fuck you.”

That soaked Angie instantly. She could happily listen to Stevie say those words over and over.

She also understood Stevie’s reasoning. She knew—just as she was sure Stevie knew—that if they let themselves play house too fully, there would be no more pretending this wasn’t what it was, and she wasn’t ready to look at that yet.

“Are we talking multiple orgasms?” asked Angie. “Or, like, a full session?”

“Session obviously,” said Stevie in horror. “I’m not a monster.”

“Do you think you could do once a week?” asked Angie, pitching her voice as innocently as possible.

“Absolutely fucking not,” said Stevie. “At least three times.”

“Twice then,” said Angie, already delighting in the sweet agony of waiting and teasing and breaking that rule. “Make the most of it.”

Stevie groaned. “You are a monster. Do you have another rule, or can we go inside now?”

“I do,” said Angie, “and you’re not going to like it.” She expected Stevie to have a quick comeback, probably that’s not what she said , but Stevie waited patiently. “Are you ready?”

“Somehow I don’t think so,” said Stevie.

“No kissing on the mouth.”

“Oh, come on .” Horror flooded Stevie’s face. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Maybe.”

“You at least have to tell me why,” said Stevie.

“I have to, do I?”

“You do. That’s my last rule.”

“Well,” said Angie, trying not to smile at the despair on Stevie’s face, “one, it’s hot when you’re frustrated.”

“Asshole.”

“You asked me what my rules were with Lana,” said Angie. “That was one of them. That is always one of them.”

Stevie’s eyes flew to Angie’s mouth, and Angie could see the realization and the relief in her face at the knowledge that Angie’s lips were something Lana had rarely touched.

Kissing was too intimate, too much like opening herself up fully.

A cunt was a cunt; hers had been misused most of her life. Her mouth, though, was still hers.

She looked at Stevie’s lips. They were deceptively perfect, like the rest of her: understated until one looked closely and noted the perfect bow of her upper lip and the subtle fullness of the lower.

She knew she would kiss that mouth one day, and when she did, it would be either a promise or goodbye.

“You’re right,” Stevie said. “I hate it. Question.”

“Answer,” said Angie out of habit.

“Sleepovers.”

The answer she’d given most of her previous partners would be no, but Stevie was different.

She wanted to wake beside Stevie every morning when the soft, gray light first touched her cheeks.

She wanted to stretch and feel Stevie’s body next to hers, warm and languid, and ideally naked.

She wanted to be able to sleep in the comfort of the lies she told herself, believing that one day she might have this for real.

Trying to sound casual, she said, “Well, my mattress might be ruined.”

“That’s true. You really should let it air out for like a year or something. Pretty sure I heard an expert say that once.”

“Well, if an expert says so . . .” Angie trailed off, and the smile they exchanged placed another plank over the void in her chest.

“And on the nights I can’t fuck you?”

“You have hands,” said Angie, smirking, “and if you need instructions, I can show you how to use them.”

“Good to know that watching you get off doesn’t count as sex,” said Stevie. Angie shut her eyes against that vivid image.

“Say more about that.” She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped together, accentuating her cleavage with the motion.