“I was going to say you’ve been in charge all evening.” Nellie’s grip tightened. “I can do more for you.”
“You’re exactly where I want you.” Sawyer panted. The pressure built exactly where she needed it, her clit gliding over Nellie’s soft skin through her own slickness. Her breath came ragged. Nellie was watching her with those gold-flecked eyes and pulling her in—steadying, guiding—and the combination of that gaze and that pressure and the warmth of her stripped everything back to what it actually was, which was Sawyer Alburn wanting this woman in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with the managed, categorized, board-approved version of her life. She let it happen.
When she came, she came gasping with her forehead dropped to Nellie’s and Nellie’s arms around her, holding on.
There was no telling how much time had passed before the room settled back into its ordinary dimensions around them, only that they were both sweating and panting and barely going ten seconds before their lips found each other again.
“Thirty-five, you said,” Nellie giggled, wrapping her legs around Sawyer’s waist. “We’ll be here for days.”
“I’ll clear my calendar,” Sawyer managed.
Nellie’s chest moved with laughter. It rumbled under Sawyer’s cheek.
She felt no urge to leave this time. She stayed where she was, and Nellie’s arms didn’t shift, and neither of them said anything else for a long while. Outside, the dark had come down fully over the trees.
When Sawyer finally moved, it was only to pull the quilt up around them both.
Morning arrived gradually, through the gap in the curtains.
Sawyer had slept through the night without interruption for the first time in two weeks. She’d woken once, briefly, at some early hour, found Nellie a couple of inches too far away, rectified the situation with a gentle tug and a kiss to her shoulder, and promptly fallen back to sleep.
As a creature of habit, however, she was dressed and in the kitchen before seven. She poured two mugs of coffee and was sitting at the table with her work email on her phone when she heard Nellie’s footsteps.
Nellie appeared in the bedroom doorway in an oversized sleep shirt and mismatched socks, her hair down and her face clear—the hangover fully metabolized, the birthday conclusively celebrated. She grinned sleepily at Sawyer and at the two mugs on the table.
“You made coffee,” she croaked.
“I figured you’d need a reason to stay upright today.”
Huffing a quiet laugh, Nellie sat down in the opposite chair and wrapped both hands around the mug. The morning light came at a low angle through the east-facing window and turned everything in the kitchen slightly golden: the scattered papers on the table, the stacked notebooks, the survey map weighted downby an empty mug on one corner. Nellie looked it all over as she brought her coffee to her still-swollen lips.
“I’m almost done,” she said, nodding at the map.
Sawyer followed her line of sight. “The report?”
“Yep.” Nellie leaned forward and traced a wiggly line with her index finger. “I’ve got everything I need.” She took another long sip of coffee. “It’s a good report, if I do say so myself. I really think it’s going to—” She stopped herself, and her shoulders curled in a little as she winced. “Sorry. That’s— You know.”
“I know. It’s okay.” Sawyer set her phone down. “It should be a good report. It’s a good forest.”
Nellie’s mouth curved. She looked down at her coffee mug and turned it in a slow rotation. “I’ve been thinking. Once the report’s submitted, that’s probably it for formal site visits, right?” She looked up again, tentatively. “I won’t be on your official company schedule anymore. You won’t have any—” She made a small gesture at the cottage around them. “You know, any professional reason to come and see me.”
Sawyer frowned. “Is there a question in there somewhere?”
Nellie turned the coffee mug again, the trace of a smile at the edge of her mouth. “If you hear one, I suppose.”
Sawyer pushed back her chair, and walked the three steps around the table. She took the mug out of Nellie’s hands, set it aside, and tipped Nellie’s chin up. “I can think of a hundred reasons,” she said firmly, “to see you every day. Not one of them has anything to do with Alburn Systems.”
Nellie grinned up at her like the cat who got the cream. Then she reached out and took her coffee back.
19
CHAPTER 19 – NELLIE
The submit button was a blue rectangle so ordinary that Nellie had clicked a thousand of its identical twins without ceremony: online grocery orders, grant applications, the online form she filled out when she thought she’d lost her library card, which she’d found in her sports bra twenty minutes later. This one was an entirely different beast. She clicked it anyway. The screen blinked once, replaced by a green confirmation banner that read, “Your submission has been received,” and Nellie stared at it for so long that her eyes started to sting.
Seven days ahead of the deadline.
She pushed back from the kitchen table—which was also her desk, also the survey map depository, also the surface upon which she’d eaten probably more than a hundred meals since moving into the cottage—and let out a long, slow breath that had been building in her rib cage for the better part of seven weeks. Then she picked up her coffee, found it cold, and drank it anyway. She was celebrating. Cold coffee was celebratory.
