14. Lucy #2
Lucy shut the door and turned the lock. She had never had a reason to during the day, and the sound it made was enormous.
Then she took Carrington's face in both hands and kissed her in the middle of her own front room with the sun streaming through the window.
They were both entirely visible. Carrington kissed her back with one hand flat between her shoulder blades and the other in her hair, and her breathing changed against Lucy's mouth.
She wanted to look at her. She wanted to see what Carrington looked like coming undone by her fingers and mouth in the light of day. Lucy pulled the jacket off Carrington's shoulders and put her mouth under her ear and wanted, absurdly, to stop and turn her around and look at her.
"Sit down," Lucy said.
"On what?" Carrington asked.
Lucy took her by the wrist and walked her backward into the sectional. She got a knee up onto the cushion beside her and then the other one. Carrington's hands came up her back under her shirt, and Lucy opened two buttons and then three.
The two halves of the sectional came apart down the seam. Lucy fell backward into the gap with Carrington's hand still in her shirt, and Carrington came after her. One of the cushions crashed down on top of them, and the leg of the far section screeched six inches across the boards and stopped.
Lucy lay in the gap between two pieces of furniture with a cushion over her face and Carrington's elbow in her ribs, and she pushed the cushion off onto the boards.
Carrington had pushed up onto one arm. Her hair had come half down on one side and her shirt was open to the third button. She leaned over and looked down into the gap at the frame.
"The clips underneath have come apart," Carrington said.
"You bought this couch," Lucy said.
Carrington started to say something else about the clips. Then she stopped, and she laughed.
It was loud and she did not stop. She put a hand down on the boards to hold herself up. Her shoulders shook, and she made no attempt to be quiet. Carrington kept laughing long enough that Lucy quit waiting for her to stop and instead lay there in the gap and listened.
Then Lucy started laughing too, and hers lasted longer.
By the time she stopped, she was lying flat on the boards with a hand jammed under her ribs trying to get a breath in.
She looked up at Carrington, still laughing on the floor of a broken couch with her hair coming down, and she did not say it.
"Don't stop," Lucy said instead, and took a fistful of the open shirt and pulled her down.
Carrington came down, both hands catching the floor on either side of Lucy's head, and the impact rapped her palms against the boards and she laughed again.
The sound rippled through Lucy, low and electric.
It was the same sound Carrington made when the couch had groaned, buckled, and dumped them both sideways.
It had made Lucy roll over and look at her in the full April sun coming through the window and think, I want you here where I can see all of you.
She pulled the shirt tighter in her fist and dragged Carrington's mouth down to hers. The kiss was angled wrong, but neither of them fixed it. Lucy bit down on Carrington’s lip, and Carrington made a sound into her mouth that was half gasp and half something else, something that vibrated through Lucy's jaw and down through her chest, settling warm and urgent between her legs. She wanted more.
"Off," Lucy said against her mouth, yanking at the shirt. "Get this off."
Carrington pushed herself up on one arm and fumbled the buttons with her free hand. She got the last two open and shrugged the shirt off one shoulder, and it caught on the other arm and she yanked and the sleeve turned inside out. She made a frustrated noise that was almost a growl.
"Here." Lucy sat up and grabbed the cuff and peeled it off her wrist, inside out, and flung it behind her. It landed on the fallen cushion.
The blouse underneath was white, thin, clinging to the slope of Carrington's shoulders with a sheen of sweat.
Lucy could see the outline of her bra and the long line of Carrington's throat, bare now.
She put her mouth on it, and Carrington's head dropped back and she lifted her hands then stopped. Lucy felt her hesitation, Carrington’s fingers hovering near her shoulders, not quite landing.
"Your rings," Lucy said.
"I— Yes." Carrington pulled back just enough to look around.
She reached over to the edge of the broken couch half that still stood, the arm where her coat was draped, and she lined her rings up on the wooden armrest. Three of them, gold and thin, placed in a neat row with the kind of precision that made Lucy want to laugh and also made her chest ache.
Lucy grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down.
Carrington's mouth was open and her hands landed on Lucy's waist and gripped hard enough to shift the fabric of her shirt.
Lucy was on top, half in her lap, one knee between Carrington's legs, and she could feel the heat of her through the fabric of her tailored slacks.
She rocked forward once, and Carrington's hips came up off the floor to meet her.
"God…"
"No," Lucy said, grinning. "Just me."
Carrington stared up at her. Her hair was coming down; two pins were already lost somewhere in the couch wreckage, and the sleek weight of it was sliding free on one side, a heavy lock falling across her cheekbone. She looked wrecked.
"I want to see you," Lucy said. “I want all of this off and I want you in this light."
"You're very direct."
"I learned from the best." Lucy grabbed the hem of her own shirt and pulled it over her head in one motion, dropping it on the floor beside them. The air hit her skin, and she watched Carrington's eyes move down, her lips parted and her breathing audible.
Carrington reached up and touched her collarbone with two fingers, tracing the line of it like she was checking whether something was real.
Her fingers were warm and slightly unsteady.
Lucy took her hand and moved it down to her breast and held it there.
Carrington's breath caught. Her thumb moved in a slow circle on her nipple, pressing just enough to make Lucy's stomach clench.
"More," Lucy said.
"You're bossy."
"You like it."
Carrington's mouth twitched, then broke open into a wide and crooked smile.
Lucy leaned down and kissed it right off her face.
She pulled at the blouse buttons. They were small and fiddly, the kind that needed patience and both hands; Lucy had neither.
She got two open and ripped the third, the button pinging off into the room somewhere.
Carrington snorted against her mouth. "I liked that blouse."
"You have forty blouses."
"I have eleven."
"Now you have ten." Lucy shoved the fabric open and off and the bra was next.
She popped it one-handed and Carrington's breasts spilled out.
Lucy just looked for a second. She had never seen all of this skin in full light.
The sun showed everything—the faint lines, the color, the way her breathing moved through her ribs—and Lucy wanted to put her mouth on every inch of it.
She bent down and took her nipple in her mouth, and Carrington arched up off the boards with a sound that was loud and unfiltered.
Before, she had been quiet, had bitten down on everything, and made almost no noise at all.
Now the sound bounced off the low ceiling and echoed.
Carrington went still for a second, blinking, like an animal hearing its own voice for the first time.
"Don't you dare get quiet on me," Lucy said, lifting her head. "There's nobody here. Nobody's coming back for hours. I want to hear you. I want to hear everything."
She went back to it, her mouth on one breast, hand on the other.
Carrington got louder, and the sounds were broken and uneven, gasped out between breaths that came too fast. Lucy's knee was still between her legs and she could feel Carrington grinding against it, could feel the heat and the damp through the wool of her pants, and she wanted more. She wanted her mouth there.
She sat up. Carrington made a noise of protest that was almost a whine and Lucy said, "Pants off."
Carrington's hands went to her waistband and she shoved the pants down over her hips and they caught on her heel.
Lucy grabbed her ankle and yanked the shoe off, dropping it on the floor, and the other shoe and pants came off.
Underneath was plain underwear, already wet enough that the fabric clung.
Lucy yanked them off and dropped them on the pile of clothes and then she sat back on her heels and looked.
Carrington Cole was naked on her floor. Her hair was still half down, and she was breathing hard.
Her skin was flushed from her throat down to her stomach.
Her legs were slightly apart. Lucy desperately wanted to put her mouth on her and taste her.
She wanted to feel her come apart on this floor with the sun on both of them and nothing hidden.
She pushed Carrington's knees apart and lay down on the boards between them—the wood was hard and splintery, but she didn't care, and put her mouth on her.
The sound Carrington made was almost a shout.
Her hips bucked up and her hand came down on the back of Lucy's head. Lucy held her legs open with both hands and licked into her pussy, slow at first, finding the rhythm that made the sounds louder. Carrington’s core was slick and hot, and she trembled under Lucy's mouth.
Each stroke of Lucy's tongue dragged a sound out from her that came out raw. Lucy drank them in.
"Lucy—"
Lucy kept going. Carrington's thigh clenched against her ear, and Lucy worked her tongue in tight circles. Carrington's hand tightened in her hair, and her hips rocked in a rhythm that was getting faster and less controlled, the sounds getting higher, on the edge of her orgasm.