Page 36 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

“You promised I could feel you,” Stevie said to her breasts. “I’ve tried everything on.”

“Vest. Now.”

Stevie’s grin returned as she pulled away, leaving Angie panting. She undid her simple bra with a practiced snap of her fingers and shrugged into the vest, putting her hat back on. Angie almost scolded her, but the effect of the outfit on Stevie’s appearance shut her up completely.

The vest revealed hints of what lay beneath, the loose fit and cropped hem teasing the viewer, while the silk back narrowed, leaving an inch or two of that addictive line down Stevie’s back available for sight—and touch.

It also showed off her arms and shoulders, both rounded with smooth muscle and, she realized with a thrill of satisfaction, interrupted with several distinctive teeth marks.

Oops. She wasn’t mad about it.

“You’re buying it.” She stepped down from the bench.

“I’ll buy it if you don’t.” She would, too, money problems be damned.

Keeping her lips a safe inch from Stevie’s, she took Stevie’s right hand and slid it past the elastic band of her yoga pants, past the flimsy hem of her underwear, and between her legs.

Stevie’s breath caught. Her lips brushed Angie’s once, again with that instinctive sweetness that would be the death of her, before she presumably remembered the rule. Angie’s lips burned where they’d touched.

It didn’t count. And if it didn’t count, she could cherish it, remembering the sensation, remembering the way Stevie sought her mouth as if it belonged to her. As if they belonged to each other.

This line of thought was too dangerous. Luckily, Stevie erased it.

Angie clapped her hand over her own mouth as Stevie slid inside her, unlocking her knees and softening her spine with a single crook of her fingers.

“Only twice a week,” she managed to say as she wrapped her arms around Stevie’s neck for support. They’d hit that mark already. Five days needed to pass before they were free to fuck again.

“Doesn’t count if you don’t come,” Stevie whispered into her ear, repeating Angie’s earlier words.

“You. Are making. That difficult.”

Stevie proved Angie’s point by sliding a second finger in with terrible slowness; Angie felt her body open, practically begging by the time Stevie was fully inside her.

Her legs gave out fully this time. Stevie walked her backward a step until they came to the wall of discarded outfits. Angie clung to a hook with one hand and Stevie with the other as Stevie drove deeper into her.

“Don’t come,” Stevie repeated in her ear, matching the words to the rhythm.

As if. She whimpered. Stevie placed her hand over the hand Angie had already clapped to her mouth. Angie moved her own hand out of the way so she could bite down on the side of Stevie’s palm to keep quiet. The rustling of the cloth was damning enough.

Stevie kissed her ear in between her recitation of the command. Angie could have told her this alone could bring her to climax, but Stevie could figure that out for herself.

One thing was sure. This definitely counted as fucking. Her body tensed, Stevie’s fingers directly where she needed them.

“Don’t come.”

“Mrhmmm,” she said around Stevie’s hand.

“I didn’t catch that.”

The hook holding her up came free from the drywall with a crunch. Stevie caught her, pulling her hand from Angie’s mouth to do so, though her other hand remained inside her, never breaking its rhythm.

The voices from the other stall went quiet.

“Guess it can’t hold that many clothes,” Stevie said, not an ounce of chagrin in her words.

Angie came quietly, shuddering around Stevie’s fingers with a force entirely inappropriate for the surroundings.

Stevie spent the evening in her new favorite place: Angie’s lap.

Or rather, it had always been her favorite place, but now she was allowed to admit it.

She lay stretched on the couch, cheek on Angie’s thigh and one arm around Angie’s waist while Angie used Stevie’s head and shoulders as a desk.

The scratch of Stevie’s pen against her sketchbook vibrated pleasantly through her skull.

Periodically Angie paused, and occasionally her free hand stroked some part of Stevie absentmindedly.

That was enough to keep her content. For now.

“Hey, remember when you broke the mall?” Stevie shifted a little so she could see Angie’s face.

“I broke one hook .”

“And the rules.”

At this, Angie glanced down, mouth quirking in a smile, unconvincingly contrite. “Oops, still doesn’t count?”

“It’s not that I want to argue with you, but how exactly do you figure that?” How, she also wanted to ask, did Angie always smell so damn good?

“I’m the only one who came so counts as half. Do you think the proportions on this are weird?” Angie held up her sketch for Stevie to examine.

She gave it as critical a look as she could manage for anything created by Angie’s hand. “Maybe a little up at the top, there?”

“By the wing? Good catch.”

Stevie kissed Angie’s thigh. “So you’re saying we still have a half left?”

“Or, I get one orgasm subtracted next week.”

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

Angie stopped sketching. Setting the pad down, she trailed the end of her ballpoint pen across Stevie’s back. “Pretty sure you’d be the one doing it to me.”

“Pretty sure I told you not to come.”

“You set me up to fail.”

“You don’t have any willpower.” Stevie regretted the words immediately. What an absolutely idiotic challenge to issue.

“Don’t I?” Angie tapped the pen. “Try me.”

“I did. You failed.”

“I hardly expected to fall that hard onto my G-spot.”

“You were about to come anyway.” Stevie rolled over fully, looking up at Angie, and nudged her with her head. “These hips don’t lie.”

“Whatever. I won’t break next time.”

“Sure.” Stevie tried not to laugh as Angie’s pen trailed along her ribs in the places Angie knew she was ticklish. “Hey, wouldn’t it be easier to draw in pencil?”

“For the final sketches, yeah. For the drafts, though, I second-guess myself too much with pencil.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Instead of trying to fix mistakes with an eraser a thousand times, I just draw over them. Keeps me from trying to make things perfect the first draft.”

“Ballsy.”

“I live on the wild side.” Angie screwed her brows in concentration and drew a mustache across Stevie’s upper lip. “It’s not like life has an eraser.”

“Deep.”

“That’s what you said last—no, that’s what I said.

” She added a goatee to Stevie’s ink, which tickled, then trailed the butt of the pen lightly across Stevie’s lips, which did other things.

Stevie made no effort to stop her. The gentle touch turned her on, but it also revealed a side of Angie she did not often get to see: soft, introspective, and tender.

“What would you erase?” she asked.

“What wouldn’t I,” said Angie. “You first.”

“Not fair, but okay. Let me think for a moment.” What would Angie say if Stevie’s choice had nothing to do with Stevie’s life, but rather an erasure of the things that had hurt Angie? Would that be too sentimental?

“And you can’t choose this mustache,” Angie added.

“I would never.” The pen continued its metronome walk over her lips. Maybe honesty would backfire, but she could think of nothing else that mattered half as much. “Honestly? I’d erase all the shit that’s happened to you.”

“Why?” Angie sounded genuinely surprised.

“Because it’s terrible?”

“It’s boring. Ordinary. Besides”—tap, tap, tap went the pen—“my uncle’s dead now, anyway.”

“It wasn’t just him, though—”

The pen stopped. Angie’s eyes locked onto hers, full of a hate that startled Stevie even though she knew it was turned inward.

“Do you know the odds of making it through life in a non-cis male body without some form of sexual violence?”

“Ange—”

“It’s ordinary. It’s happened to almost everyone I know.”

Not to Stevie. Not like that. “Ignoring the fact that what happened to you is actually worse than average, that statistic is part of what makes it terrible, Angie.” Angie’s eyes blazed intently as Stevie’s tone shifted into something serious. “You do know that, right?”

“Everyone’s got their thing.”

“Okay, but—”

“I’m not asking you to carry my baggage.” Angie’s voice rose in pitch and intensity.

“Bitch, please,” Stevie said, trying to gentle the mood with a teasing tone. “I’m not offering.”

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.