“It already had the candle in it,” Sawyer clarified. “I didn’t plan ahead.”
Nellie smiled placatingly, as if she knew Sawyer wasn’t used to making this much effort and was currently trying to minimize the result. “I don’t really need to blow out another one. I already told you my wish.”
“You did.” Sawyer laced her fingers together on the table. “I’ve already been working on it. For what it’s worth.”
Nellie’s eyes snapped up at that.
There was an entire conversation in the look she gave Sawyer: something hesitant and earnest and a little searching. Sawyer held her gaze and let it ask what it was asking.
Then Nellie said, very softly, “Happy birthday to me.”
Sawyer rose from her chair and rounded the table to take Nellie’s face in her hands. “Happy birthday,” she whispered against her lips.
They made it further than the couch, this time. Barely.
Sawyer’s only focus when she tugged Nellie to her feet and pushed her back toward where she knew the bedroom was located, without breaking contact with her mouth the entire time, was that there was a bed in the immediate vicinity which she intended to make full use of. She made no assessment of her surroundings beyond that and couldn’t have told anyone what said bedroom looked like should she have found herself in an interrogation room.
All that mattered was Nellie, and the way she gazed up at her once Sawyer had successfully planted her on that bed she was seeking. The hungover, tentative version of her from the doorstep had been completely superseded by something else: clear-eyed and flushed, with her braid coming apart and her shirt now completely unfastened, and she was the most beautiful thing Sawyer had ever stood in front of.
“So, about that voicemail…” Sawyer said, pushing the shirt off Nellie’s shoulders. “You mentioned a vibrator.”
Nellie’s eyes went half-lidded. “Did I?”
“Mmm… you were quite specific about your orgasm-less regret.”
“I was probably rambling.”
“You were.” Sawyer kissed her jaw, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth. “Tell me where it is, Nellie.”
“Nightstand. Bottom drawer.”
Sawyer made quick work of locating it.
“So, uh, it has three settings and the middle one is?—”
“I’ll manage,” Sawyer cut her off.
Nellie bit her lip against a grin. “I’m sure you will.”
They worked through the rest of the clothing together, the clumsy choreography of it already easier than before—less negotiation, more fluency. Sawyer had spent a significant portion of the drive out cataloguing what she’d learned on the couch: the specific catch in Nellie’s breath at certain pressures, the way her whole body arched when Sawyer’s mouth found the curve of her shoulder. She applied this knowledge now, working her way down Nellie’s throat to her collarbone, and Nellie’s head dropped back with a sound that went straight to Sawyer’s clit.
Once she had peeled off almost all of Nellie’s clothing, Sawyer stepped back a fraction and looked at her properly in the low lamplight. The pale glow of her skin, the curve of her breasts,the flush working its way up from her chest. She was nothing short of extraordinary.
“You’re staring,” Nellie murmured.
“Sue me.”
Dropping her fists onto the mattress either side of Nellie’s waist, she grazed her teeth over each of her nipples, then the curve of her ribs, easing her back onto the mattress as she went. She hooked her thumbs into Nellie’s underwear and drew them down, and Nellie lifted her hips without being asked. Sawyer ran her hands up the inside of Nellie’s thighs, slowly, feeling the warmth of her, not arriving anywhere yet, just mapping.
Just like before, Nellie was already deliciously wet.
“You’re teasing me,” she breathed, dropping her head back on a low moan.
Sawyer smirked. She hadn’t intended to tease; she simply wanted this to last as long as humanly possible. “I’ve barely started.”
“Sawyer,please.”
Please. That particular word from Nellie, who always stood up for what she believed in and conceded ground to no one, was something Sawyer intended to hear again.
