Nellie laughed. It burst out of her, short and startled, because Sawyer had delivered that line with the very particular conviction that this was a genuinely mitigating factor, which somehow made it funnier and also, inexplicably, made the storm in Nellie’s chest a great deal worse.
Sawyer was watching her laugh. There was something unguarded in her expression, something almost soft, and Nellie recognized it because she’d seen its edges before—in the forest, on the ridge—but this was the whole thing. No professional armor over the top of it, no careful distance, just Sawyer’s face and what it actually looked like when it wasn’t performing.
“Nellie.” She breathed.
She reached up and took Nellie’s face in both hands. Gently, like she was asking. Her thumbs traced the line of Nellie’s jaw, and her eyes were direct, earnest.
When she kissed her, Nellie didn’t push her away.
Sawyer made a small sound that might have been relief and pulled her closer. The tentative part of the kiss dissolved fairly rapidly after that. They made short work of the last of the distance between them, Nellie’s hands finding the lapels of Sawyer’s wet jacket, and then both of them equally occupied with removing said jacket, which had the full weight of a soaking garment and did not cooperate without negotiation. Nellie laughed again—she couldn’t help it—and Sawyer said, with some exasperation, “You’re supposed to help, not—” then her watch caught on the inside of her mostly inside-out sleeve, and they had to pause operations entirely while Sawyer wrestled it free.
“Got it,” she eventually announced, with more triumph than was warranted.
“My hero.” Nellie giggled.
“Thank you.”
Sawyer was smiling. Actually smiling, with her teeth, and her hair half-dried at all the wrong angles from the towel. Nellie looked at her and decided, comprehensively, that this was the version she liked best. She reached up and pushed a damp strand of hair back from Sawyer’s face.
Then they were kissing again, and the jacket was over the arm of the couch, and Nellie’s fleece was joining it, and the storm continued to conduct itself with great energy as if the moment warranted a crescendo.
Sawyer reached for the hem of Nellie’s shirt. Her hands were warm despite the rain and moved up Nellie’s ribs with a teasing slowness that produced an involuntary inhale. The shirt came off. Sawyer’s followed quickly after. The bra clasp was managed in a single attempt, which Nellie declined to comment upon but mentally catalogued as anotherof course she’s efficientmoment.
Refusing to be outperformed, Nellie managed to peel off Sawyer’s damp bralette just as efficiently, flinging it to the floor. There wasn’t a spare second to feel smug. Sawyer kissed her jaw, her neck, the curve of her shoulder. Then lower. Her mouth closed over Nellie’s nipple and Nellie’s breath went in sharply. She felt the warmth of Sawyer’s tongue, the slow, agonizing pressure of it, the way she moved between one and the other with the same focused thoroughness she apparently applied to everything, and Nellie’s hand found the back of her head and stayed there. She was managing the wanton sounds she was making with decreasing success.
Mercifully, Sawyer moved back up to kiss her lips, and Nellie took the opportunity to get her hands on Sawyer’s breasts, full and warm, the nipples hardening immediately under her thumbs, and Sawyer made a low sound against her mouth that went straight to between Nellie’s thighs. She filed this responsefor future use, working her thumbs slowly and feeling Sawyer’s breathing change.
Sawyer pulled back with visible effort. She looked at Nellie questioningly and reached for the waistband of her pants. Nellie lifted her hips in response, and they sorted out the logistics together with some mutual efficiency until the sweatpants and underwear were on the floor and Nellie was lying on the ancient magnificent couch entirely naked. Sawyer sat back for a moment and simply looked at her, and Nellie felt her gaze the way she felt the fire: blazing on the surface of her skin, everywhere at once.
“Don’t stop,” Nellie said. Sawyer didn’t need to be told twice.
Her hand moved between Nellie’s thighs—not tentative, not rushing, just finding its way—and the first contact of her fingers against Nellie’s pussy made Nellie’s whole body shift toward her. She was already wet, and Sawyer registered this with a sharp inhale and a fractional close of her eyes that Nellie found significantly more affecting than was sensible. Her fingers moved slowly, parting, exploring, and then finding the focus of it—her thumb against Nellie’s clit, circling, and two fingers working inward—and Nellie’s hips rolled instinctively to meet her.
The rhythm Sawyer established was thorough. She attended to both at once with the particular concentration of a woman who had decided this was the puzzle she was solving right now, to the exclusion of all other questions. Her thumb moved achingly slowly while her fingers curled inside Nellie, learning the depth of her, the pace that made her breath catch and the one that made it stop altogether.
Soon enough, Nellie’s hands were in Sawyer’s hair because she needed something to hold. Her senses were being overwhelmed from every input, and she didn’t know how to process the competing sensations. The crackling fire in the grate sizzled across her skin. The rain hammering at the roof pressedagainst her eardrums. The building, relentless accumulation of pressure and warmth and Sawyer’s lustful gaze as she watched Nellie fall apart at her own hand.
She came with her forehead pressed to Sawyer’s shoulder, her fingers tight in Sawyer’s hair, the long, shaking arrival of it moving through her in waves while Sawyer held the rhythm steady until the end and then gentled it into something slower and eventually still.
There was a brief interval involving breathing.
Sawyer pushed her back against the corner of the couch and looked down at her with an expression Nellie assessed immediately.
“Don’t,” Nellie said.
“What?”
“Look like that.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Sawyer smirked.
“You don’t have to remind everyone you’re the boss every second of the day, you know.” Nellie scoffed, which was only met with an even more self-satisfied smirk.
Nellie decided it was high time for a repositioning, which is when the elbow happened—hers, catching Sawyer wrong above the ribs, and Sawyer garbled something brief and possibly not English, until Nellie said “alright?” and she said “fine, yep, carry on” in a tone that precluded follow-up. The throw cushions required some creative management. There was the moment involving the side table, both of them freezing, listening for breakage, which fortunately did not come.
The negotiation came next, which was Sawyer, in full, composed possession of her direct manner, explaining with clinical precision what she preferred and where, and this should, by rights, have been odd. It wasn’t. It was, Nelliethought, genuinely the most Sawyer Alburn thing that had ever happened, and she absorbed the information with gratitude and applied it.
She pressed Sawyer down into the cushions and kissed her lips, her throat, the curve of her collarbone, the full warmth of her breasts. She sucked one nipple into her mouth and Sawyer made a sharp, cut-off sound, her head dropping back. Nellie spent time here, more than was strictly efficient, because efficiency was no longer the immediate goal, and because the sounds Sawyer was making with her armor stripped away were something Nellie was inclined to collect. She moved between Sawyer’s breasts with her tongue and felt the tension accumulating in the long body beneath her before she moved lower.
