Lisa Novak had a complicated relationship with sleep. Once, they’d been the best of friends and spent many hours together every day. But then, their priorities changed. They drifted apart, and only on special occasions did they reconnect.
The reunion of the moment wasn’t going as well as planned.
Having toddler twins had destroyed Lisa’s internal clock, and whenever she could get high-quality rest, she couldn’t nod off. Her brain had convinced her body that her desires didn’t matter, anyway, because either James or Michael would wake up demanding proper fealty, and Lisa would have to go swear her allegiance to them again.
Ugh, why so many growth spurts?
“Have you slept at all?”
Lisa lifted the pillow she’d buried her head beneath and peered across the bed. She could barely make out the other woman’s outlines in the dim light.
Finch Alice was Lisa’s live-in troll. That was what Lisa called her. Everyone was in on the joke, though, including her husband, Joey.
Joey wasn’t there at the moment. He was due back after lunchtime. He’d had to go into the city to deal with some renovation issues on his mother’s house. Bitty Novak was never, ever going to let her children put her into a rest home, but the problem with early twentieth-century brownstones is that they weren’t built with elder accessibility in mind. One challenge had spiraled into another, as home improvement projects tended to do. He’d needed to be there first thing in the morning to discuss plans with the general contractor, so he’d spent the night. He’d be on the road back to Western New York as soon as the guy left.
Despite Finch squirming her way into their notice, Lisa and Joey had gotten married. Technically, she’d been after Lisa and had suggested that Joey step aside, but Joey hadn’t. In fact, Joey liked a bit of a challenge at times, and Finch hadn’t stopped being that. The good thing about living at a corporate retreat camp in the middle of nowhere was that Lisa didn’t have to explain their arrangement to people who needed to be minding their own business.
“I think I got about five minutes between midnight and one o’clock,” Lisa said.
Finch rolled onto her side and tugged the covers up to her armpits. She was constantly freezing. That was why she was sleeping on Joey’s vacated side of the bed rather than snuggled up next to Lisa. Lisa was always hot, and Finch could plug in the space heater on Joey’s side. It wasn’t perfect, but they were comfortable, at least.
“Didn’t want to try the melatonin?”
“Nah. Doctor said it was fine, but I’m just wary since I still nurse on the very rare occasion. I’ll probably pass out on the sofa again today while I’m supposed to be wrapping gifts.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about the boys trying to climb into the fireplace or anything.”
“I bet if they were actually here, I’d sleep better.”
Joey had taken them with him. They’d become pros at highway travel, and his family would have never forgiven Joey if he hadn’t carried the littlest Novaks for a visit.
“Maybe…some exercise would help you rest?” Finch said.
Lisa snorted. “We did a three-mile hike yesterday. Did you forget?”
“No.” Finch scooted closer, shuddering, likely because she’d parked herself on the freezing territory in the center of the king bed. “I was thinking of something a little less aerobic.” She inched over even more until their legs could twine and the ends of their hair touched.
Shit, forgot to wrap my hair again.
Lisa had been in such a hurry to get to bed, and once she got there, she was done with moving. “Oh? I’m listening.”
“We could start with a gentle warmup and maybe switch to some, hmm, strength work?”
Lisa chuckled as Finch disappeared beneath the comforter. “Leave it to a fiction editor to make a story sound more interesting.”
“The story was going to be interesting anyway.” Finch hooked her fingers into the waistband of Lisa’s sleep shorts and wriggled them down.
Lisa helped by withdrawing one leg and then the other.
“You haven’t been paying attention to me lately,” Finch murmured against Lisa’s sex.
Lisa put her head back and let her knees fall to the sides. “I haven’t?”
“No. You didn’t even notice I shaved my legs.”
“I’m sorry. I was wearing pants all week.”
“Joey noticed.”
“You gonna troll me like that?”
She felt Finch’s shrug against her inner thighs.
“What else has Joey noticed?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
It was definitely enough to spark the sense of competitiveness in Lisa. Finch always knew precisely what she was doing.
So, it wasn’t surprising that when she drew Lisa’s clit between her lips, Lisa was already on the fast track to orgasm.
There was just something about daybreak cunnilingus that made her body thrum and sing.
Usually, Lisa wanted to reciprocate, but Finch was just as bad at multitasking as she was. She couldn’t suck and be sucked at the same time. Every prickle of pleasure would make her stop and squirm.
Finch’s tongue found every erogenous crevice and button. It seared high and low, darted in and out, flicked, and fluttered until Lisa was begging for relief.
Finch wasn’t in the business of relief. She edited dark mystery books. Being successful in that job required being a little bit of a sadist.
She slid a finger into Lisa only to slide it right back out and withhold it.
“Troll,” Lisa growled as she squirmed against Finch’s smiling mouth.
“Maybe you’ll pay attention to me now.”
“I am paying attention.”
Fuck.
Lisa’s abs were cramping, and her hips threatened to lock up.
“You didn’t say anything about me dyeing my hair.”
“Because I didn’t like it, sweetie.”
Finch lifted her head from out of the covers and scowled at Lisa.
Lisa pushed her back down two-handed and again ground against Finch. Through clenched teeth, she spat, “Finish what you started.”
Defiant, Finch kept her fingers and tongue to herself.
Lisa growled and let her head fall back onto her pillow. “Okay. Listen. Sweetheart, I don’t like it, okay? I know I heard you say you thought your natural color was flat, but I happened to like your hair the way it was. I was annoyed when you came home with that dark tint. I think it’s monotone and one-dimensional, and that’s not how I think of you. And if you tell me Joey likes it, I swear to God I will sit on your face until my cunt leaves a permanent impression on it.”
The flutter of Finch’s eyelashes preceded her semi-begrudging eating.
“You want me to lie to you?” Lisa asked.
“No.” Finch shoved three fingers into Lisa and twisted them.
Lisa grabbed her hair at the nape and twisted that. “Is this the kind of morning you want to have? Hmm?”
Finch lifted her head once more, ostensibly to relieve the tension on her scalp. There was obstinance in her stare. “Yes, I think that’s exactly the kind of morning I’d like to have.”
She was always so mouthy when Joey wasn’t there. Perhaps she thought she couldn’t compete with his trash talk, but whatever the case, it always made Lisa want to give her exactly the sort of attention she wanted.
“You get on your work calls, barely make a sound, and speak as though every word you say is inconveniencing someone.” Lisa reached beneath the covers, grabbed the fastenings of Finch’s nightgown, and tugged them loose. “Then you get in my bed and try to make up for all that silence with pure nastiness.”
Finch wrapped her arms around Lisa’s thighs and lowered her head once more. “Yes.”
Some people could read futures by studying the tea leaves left in the bottom of mugs. Lisa could read Finch’s mood by how forcefully she planted her tongue against Lisa’s clit. She was an emotionally dysfunctional troll, but she’d come to understand that she was also impossible to quit. It wasn’t only that she gave good head. She was endlessly fascinating, and Lisa needed that sort of constant stimulation. If people didn’t make her curious, she got bored.
The next time Finch notched fingers into Lisa, she was gentler, but she knew she already had Lisa’s attention. There was no need for shock value.
All she needed to do was to keep twisting her fingers in and out of Lisa and keeping that masterful suction at the top of her mound, and then Lisa could reward her for a job well done.
Maybe she’d even turn up the heat.
Like clockwork, the thunderous surge of blood at the place where her thighs joined combined with Finch’s dizzying firm-soft-firm rhythms had Lisa clenching her thighs around the other woman’s head and pounding her fist against the mattress top.
Greedy as she was, Finch didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath. She untangled Lisa’s hand from her hair and crawled up her body. Her nightgown, now open at the chest, framed perky round breasts that each had an odd glint in the light.
Lisa squeezed her eyes shut to clear the fuzz as bare-assed Finch settled onto her thighs.
She opened them.
She hadn’t been seeing things. There were indeed sparkles at the tips of Finch’s breasts, courtesy of the small-gauged rings that hadn’t been there the last time she’d crawled onto Lisa’s lap.
“Finch.”
“Hmm?” Unperturbed, Finch ground herself against Lisa’s thigh.
“Um. What are those?”
“I suppose occasionally, you notice things about me.”
Lisa bit her tongue. Finch was asking for rough. That was her habit when Joey was away, but the Christmas spirit perhaps hadn’t descended upon Lisa in the way she needed to be that cooperative.
Finch was definitely interesting. She reminded herself of that.
“You want to tell me about those, maybe?”
Finch kept grinding, humming a bit as she rocked herself back and forth atop Lisa’s skin.
Lisa grabbed her by the hips, wanting to slow her down, but Finch didn’t need much room to capitalize on a situation. She had a very mobile spine.
“Are you going to tell me you don’t like that, either?” Finch muttered.
“No, I like it. I’m actually thinking about what I’m going to do with them one night soon. What I don’t like is how new they are. I can’t suck you, pinch you, grind against you. Did you think about that when you were getting them?”
Finch pushed up one of Lisa’s knees to better align herself over her heat. She gripped Lisa’s leg as though it were a bulwark in a storm and made friction, grinding her clit against Lisa’s textures.
Fuck.
Lisa forced down a nearly choking swallow. Her tongue had gone thick.
And Finch was so wet.
“I can’t suck you either,” Finch said reasonably. “Did you think about that when you were letting Joey knock you up?”
“That’s hardly the same thing.”
“Well, maybe not, but the results are the same. I get to look and barely touch.”
“I never said you had to avoid my breasts. I assumed you’d want to.”
Finch stopped grinding.
“Don’t stop now.” Lisa grabbed her hips yet again and helped her reestablish the pattern of figure-eights she was making.
If Lisa was going to be useless all day, she wanted sore abs and thighs. That way, she’d at least have something to show for her sleepless night.
“I mean, I get it. That’s a particular sort of fetish,” Lisa teased.
Finch clasped a hand over her mouth.
Lisa pried a couple of her fingers apart and said through them, “It’s okay. Joey’s scared of them, too. Which is too bad, because he used to do this thing where he’d stand in front of me, slide his—”
“I don’t want to hear about what Joey does to your breasts when I’m not watching.”
Lisa clucked her tongue and gave Finch’s ass a staccato smack.
Finch’s head fell forward, and she uttered some rude thing Lisa couldn’t quite make out, but the sentiment was clear. The sentiment was, “Do that again, and I won’t be able to control myself.”
Good.
Lisa did it again.
Finch grabbed the bottom of Lisa’s shirt and tugged it up to her neck.
She made a plaintive whimpering sound as she stared down, balancing clit-to-clit with Lisa.
Sometimes, Lisa was a despicable troll, too. That was why she lifted the bottoms of her breasts and slid her thumbs over the tips.
One day, and probably soon, she’d probably shrink down to the size she’d been before giving birth, but she was enjoying the fullness while she had it.
“Just for educational purposes.” She looked down at one breast and then the other. “This one…” She massaged the underside of her left breast and sighed. So tender. “Doesn’t really do much anymore except lay on my chest and look nice. The other one’s less predictable.”
She didn’t even bother fondling that one. While she certainly wanted to incite Finch in all the best possible ways, she believed in letting sleeping dogs lie.
“So, I guess my point is…” Lisa pushed her breasts together and waited for Finch to meet her gaze. “If someone wanted to resume their old habit of leaving bite marks all over my chest, she could probably start on the left side.”
“You’re taunting me.”
Lisa gestured to Finch’s off-limits nipples. “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Then maybe I’ll find some other things to pierce, too.”
A few weeks prior, Lisa wouldn’t have taken that taunt seriously. Outwardly, Finch was as square as they came. She wore her sleeves down to her wrists, her skirts long, and her hair modest. She had no tattoos. Rarely did she bother with makeup. She could probably be mistaken for a nun on her all-black days.
Lisa would never have bet a dime on Finch piercing her nipples or any other thing, but she supposed the rebellion made sense for Finch. She kept her personality all buttoned up until she was ready to reveal them on her own time. Perhaps she liked to have other secrets other people couldn’t see, too.
“You can pierce whatever you want, but if you’re thinking of going much lower…” Lisa swiveled her hips and arched against Finch’s welcoming wet heat. “You’re going to be sidelined for a while. You’ll have to placate yourself with platonic pats.”
“That’s fine.”
“Okay, fine.”
Sighing miserably, Finch lowered herself gently onto Lisa’s chest. They twined fingers, and Finch nestled her face against Lisa’s neck. “I don’t want to be sidelined.”
“Me neither, sweetheart. Drives me crazy when I can’t love on you. Make it easy for me, will you?”
“Will you still think it’s fun if it’s easy?”
“Always.”
They entangled their legs and found their pleasure in each other.
And finally, Lisa was able to fall asleep.