EPILOGUE – SAWYER #2
Sawyer thrusted her fingers slowly, in and out, and Nellie bit down softly on her shoulder, dragging her hand between Sawyer’s thighs in return.
It was not the most romantic or teasing moment they’d shared together over the years.
This was pure instinct, the human desire to share body heat while also making the other come.
Far happier to admit that she was just a simple human than she would have been three years ago, Sawyer chased that animalistic urge to make Nellie scream. She lowered her head to catch Nellie’s nipple between her teeth, all the while fucking her with her fingers.
The shower was doing a great deal of work in the heat department but could not account for all of it.
Boiling water hit them both in shifting angles as they moved, not quite gracefully.
Sawyer’s elbow connected with the tile. Nellie’s foot slipped, fractionally, and she gripped Sawyer’s arm to correct herself.
“I’ve got you, baby.” Sawyer laughed.
“Thank you.” Nellie kissed her cheek. “I slipped.”
The conditions were not ideal. Sawyer’s wrist was at an angle she would feel tomorrow.
She was also, she reflected, actively not caring because Nellie was rubbing her clit with exactly the right speed and pressure to drive her wild.
No deal was put on the table, but Sawyer soon felt a creeping competitive spirit in her bid to make Nellie come first.
She increased the speed of her own fingers, changed the angle fractionally, and Nellie’s whole body responded, her hips pressing into Sawyer’s hand, a keening sound escaping her lips.
“Fuck, Sawyer.”
“That’s right, baby.” Sawyer smirked.
Three years was a good working knowledge of someone’s body—its rhythms, its particular vocabulary of sound and movement. She could read Nellie the way she read a well-annotated balance sheet: with attention, with certainty, and with an appreciation for what the data was telling her.
What the data was currently telling her was that Nellie was close.
She kissed her way back up to Nellie’s jaw, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
Nellie turned and caught her lips, kissed her urgently.
And then she came, hot and sudden and unmistakable against Sawyer’s hand, her whole body shuddering, a cry tearing out of her that the tile caught and returned with excellent acoustics.
Sawyer held her upright through it. Kept the pressure steady and even as Nellie twitched against her palm, as the sound dissolved into a long exhale, as her grip on Sawyer’s arm went gradually slack.
By some miracle or feat of pure willpower, her attention on Sawyer’s pussy didn’t recede.
Sawyer’s legs were shaking dangerously, and she was desperately trying to calculate how she would keep them both standing if Nellie didn’t recover the stability in her own legs quickly enough.
She gripped Nellie’s shoulder and dropped her forehead into the wet crook of her neck.
The soothing water hit her spine. Steam filled her lungs.
All it took was the brush of Nellie’s thumb over her nipple and Sawyer came apart, respectably, she thought, managing to hold the situation together until the last possible moment before the situation was beyond holding.
Her hands slapped flat against the tile, seeking purchase she didn’t find but mercifully didn’t need.
Nellie provided a stable base for her to cling to as Sawyer’s orgasm radiated to the tips of her toes.
They held each other close for as long as they could, until the water was no longer as hot as it had been. They both registered it at roughly the same moment—Sawyer first, by a fraction, because her back was now in the direct line of what had become a considerably colder stream.
She reached back and turned the shower off.
They stood in the dripping quiet, lips still roaming over each other’s skin.
Then, from the other side of the bathroom door, came a whine, low and pointed. Then a scratch, one deliberate drag of a paw on the wood, not aggressive, more conversational. Then another whine, pitched slightly higher this time, which was Norman’s way of announcing he was lonely.
Nellie tucked her forehead into Sawyer’s collarbone and shook with laughter.
“He’s misses us,” she said.
“He’s been alone for less than twenty minutes.”
“He’s dramatic.” Nellie lifted her head, still grinning. “Like someone else I know.”
“I’m not dramatic.”
Nellie rolled her eyes at that, and stepped out of the shower to find a towel.
Norman’s whining stopped the instant the door opened.
He sat in the hallway patiently, as if he had been waiting a perfectly reasonable amount of time and harbored no grievances whatsoever about the matter.
His tail swept the floor twice. He looked between them with enormous, solemn eyes, stood, turned in a precise half-circle, and walked back toward the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder to confirm they were following.
Sawyer wrapped her towel tighter and padded after him, her wet hair cold on her neck, the flagstone cold under her feet.
The kitchen had mercifully held onto the heat of the stove.
Norman went directly to his bed beside the radiator, turned around twice, and settled with a long sigh that implied the entire enterprise had been extremely taxing.
Nellie’s mug of chamomile sat cold on the counter.
Heaving a sigh, Sawyer filled the kettle again.
She stood at the window while it boiled. The beach was empty now, the dark sand ribbed with tide-wrack, the water going pewter in the failing light.
Nellie came to stand beside her. She’d found dry clothes somewhere in the vicinity of her suitcase, a truly extraordinary mess that Sawyer had long since stopped commenting on, and her hair was up in the approximate shape of a bun. She draped herself against Sawyer’s side, one arm around her waist.
The kettle clicked off.
“There’s a tree on this archipelago,” Sawyer murmured, “somewhere on Unst—the northern island. The northernmost naturally growing tree in Britain. It’s been there for centuries, battered into a shape that accounts completely for the wind.
” As Nellie hummed her interest against her shoulder, Sawyer looked at the window, at the dark reflection of the kitchen in the glass.
“I thought we might drive up tomorrow, if the weather allows.”
For a moment, Nellie didn’t say anything at all. Then she turned, rose up on her tiptoes, and kissed the side of Sawyer’s jaw.
“I’d like that,” she said, quietly.