Page 54 of Windlass

Angie cut in front of her and walked slowly to the door, hips swaying in that way she had, not manufactured or intentionally suggestive, but still sexy as fucking hell. Stevie watched her disappear upstairs.

Stevie made it to her room without breaking her resolve and collapsed to the floor. Down the hall, and damn her for it, she heard Angie’s voice rise as she got off, loudly, finishing with an escalating series of moans that sent Stevie over the edge with her.

Friends with benefits indeed.

“We should talk outside,” said Stevie at the end of the next excruciatingly long day, pulling her work polo off over her head and tossing it toward the laundry room door on the other side of the kitchen. If she was nervous, she didn’t look it. Angie, meanwhile, was experiencing an unpleasant combination of nausea and arousal. She set her water glass down on the counter with a thud. Stevie looked up, pausing with a clean T-shirt halfway to her head.

That shirt belonged on the floor with the others.

“You could leave that off,” Angie suggested. Stevie’s abdominal muscles featured prominently in several of her daydreams.

“What about mosquitos?”

“You don’t like getting bitten?” asked Angie.

Stevie threw her shirt. Angie caught it and held it behind her back.

“Since we knowyoudo,” Stevie’s gaze landed hot on Angie’s skin, “what are you taking off? Fair is fair.”

Angie shrugged. “That’s your choice.”

Stevie grinned and took a step toward her, saying, “Maybe that should be rule number one. My choice.”

“You wish.” Angie took a step back. Stevie pursued, and there was something leonine, almost predatory, about her fluid step forward that made sitting down to talk seem like a waste. She needed Stevie to pounce. Now.

“The problem,” said Stevie, coming closer, “is that if you take anything off, we won’t be talking, even if we are outside.”

“I fail to see how that is a problem.” Angie toyed with the button of her jeans, dragging Stevie’s eyes down, then back up.

“Angie . . .” Stevie was close enough to touch now, and Angie’s back bumped into the kitchen counter. She leaned back, aware that this displayed her assets, and aware, too, of how easy it would be to curl her fingers underneath Stevie’s sports bra and tug her close.

“If we are going to do this, we are going to do this right.” Stevie reached around Angie without touching her, which was somehow sexier than if she’d leaned into her the way she had in the barn, and plucked her shirt from Angie’s hands.

The way Stevie’s abdomen tightened as she shoved her head through the neck of the shirt was distracting.Shewanted to make the muscles between Stevie’s hips clench like that.

“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 fuckingtouchher. 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.

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