steady
A hand brushes against Dani’s ribs beneath the covers, warm as it skins down her side to rest on her hip. The bed bounces a little as Jamie shuffles closer. Presses her nose into the back of Dani’s head. Kisses her ear.
“You smell really good,” she says softly and Dani laughs with her eyes closed, pressing back into her.
“Thanks. I bathe regularly.”
“You don’t say?”
Another kiss to her ear and then the fingers at her waist come up to wiggle into her side. Dani squirms and giggles at the sensation, trying to pull away from her girlfriend unsuccessfully.
“Stop,” she says, breathless.
Jamie does. Wraps her arms around Dani’s middle and pulls her back against her chest.
“You’re mean,” Dani says next.
“No, you’re just cute when you laugh like that. Your nose does this...thing. It’s becoming a bit of a problem, really.”
Dani hums. “Explain.”
Voice dropped to a whisper. Lips tickling the shell of her ear. “You’re criminally adorable. I hate it.”
“Wow, you know just what to say to a girl, huh?”
Jamie kisses her bare shoulder, then her neck again. Pulls her back and holds her tighter. Dani shifts a little, pressing her backside into Jamie’s pelvis and smiling when Jamie makes this contented noise in the back of her throat at the pressure. Teeth graze against her pulse point, then the underside of her jaw, and Dani can’t help the gasp that escapes at the touch.
One arm bent beneath her pillow, she grips the sheets and presses back even further. “Jamie,” she says, “Owen’s right outside.”
She imagines him lying out there on their pull-out sofa, jet-lagged and snoring softly, fast asleep. But she’s not exactly certain how thin their walls are and they’ve never had an occasion to test them out. Owen is the only person who's ever come to stay with them since they moved in. Plus, it’s not as if she’s quiet when her and Jamie are together. She’s not quite sure if she’s capable of it.
The thought of Owen hearing them is mortifying at best and she knows that she’d never be able to make eye contact with him again. But Jamie’s touch has a way of making her feel starved within moments. Her hands have found their way beneath Dani’s shirt, the palm of her right hand brushing up and down, stopping just beneath her breasts and right above the hem of her underwear.
“Do you want me to stop?” Jamie asks, not a teasing line, but a genuine question. Always seeking permission first.
“God, no ,” Dani says, pushing back again.
Jamie’s hips buck against her and she groans when Dani bends her right arm, reaching back to curl her fingers into messy brown hair. “Then you’re going to have to be quiet.” She nips at the skin of Dani’s shoulder and Dani curses under her breath. “Can you do that for me?”
Biting her lip, Dani nods, not trusting herself to speak. A moment later, Jamie’s fingers are slipping into her underwear and stroking her, long and soft. She gasps, slamming her eyes shut again as Jamie cradles her into her chest, sinking two of her fingers into her.
Jamie shushes her softly, sounding amused by the whole thing. With the way she’s spooning Dani from behind, she’s able to maneuver the arm she’s laying on beneath the other woman and get it into a good enough position. A second hand slips into Dani’s underwear and then there’s a finger slowly circling her clit.
The unhurried tempo Jamie is fucking her to makes Dani want to scream for more reasons than just one. Her right leg shakes as she lifts it up and crooks it awkwardly to give Jamie more room to work. She moans and Jamie shushes her again, shaking her head with a little laugh.
“You like this, don’t you? Trying to stay quiet. Knowing Owen's right out there. That he could hear you if you lose control for just one second,” she whispers, and Dani’s biting her lip so hard that she’s fairly certain she can taste blood. “Poppins, you naughty girl. Who knew?”
Dani wants to elbow her or hit her or say something to scold her because it's true, but Dani doesn't exactly want to admit to it. But if she does that, Jamie might stop. And if Jamie stops now, she thinks she might actually explode. So she just swallows down another moan and bucks her hips against Jamie’s hands, silently begging for more. And faster.
Jamie slips another finger into her, but doesn’t speed up and Dani grips her hair tighter, making the other woman hiss. Making her whisper, “Fuck,” and then finally, blessedly, fuck Dani harder.
Dani can feel her muscles as they start to tighten and the bed squeaks a little with their movements—she’s too far gone to feel even the slightest bit embarrassed that she’s practically humping Jamie’s hand. She just tugs her hair harder and turns her head to muffle her cries in her pillow as she comes.
She feels a hiss that sounds like her own name as it blazes across her skin, and Jamie keeps moving her hands, keeps pumping her fingers, until Dani finally stops shaking. Dotting kisses across Dani’s arm and shoulder—the side of her head and her ear—Jamie slowly pulls her hands out, wiping them on the sheets as she goes, laughing a little.
Once she regains the ability to move, Dani rolls in her arms and fixes her with a harsh look. “You’re evil,” she says, keeping her voice pitched low.
Jamie grins. “You love it.”
She does. Dani kisses her to prove it, then rests their foreheads together, listening carefully for any signs of movement from their living room. There aren't any. Just the distant sound of the fan they set up for Owen in there, clicking back and forth as it oscillates.
“I’m getting you back for that, you know,” Dani says.
“Yeah? How you gonna do that?”
It’s strange how brave Jamie has always made Dani feel. If she were to try and compare the person she was three years ago with the person she is now, she doesn’t think she’d find very many similarities. There are thousands of things she could thank Jamie for, but she’s not sure she’d be able to name them all in this or any lifetime.
So she settles for kissing her, knotting her fingers into her curls, pressing her down into the mattress and tugging at the ridiculous pair of men’s boxers Jamie insists on wearing to bed. Dani pushes her legs open and settles between them.
“Can you be quiet?” she asks, an echo of Jamie’s earlier words.
Gone is the smirking and confident woman from before. In her arms is Jamie half-melted, quivering and terrifying, really, because Dani has never loved anything so much in her life and she’s nodding and– “Please, Dani, please just—”
Dani kisses her. Lifts her shirt and presses her mouth to Jamie’s breasts, to the dip of her ribs. Breathes, “Steady,” against Jamie’s skin as she pulls those boxers down, then the underwear beneath them.
“Dani, just—”
Tongue between Jamie’s thighs, Dani can’t help but smile a little at the fact that Jamie is the one, apparently, who can’t keep quiet. Hands fist in her hair and so she flicks her tongue faster. Brings a hand up to slip her fingers into Jamie with a steady and far more gracious speed than she’d been allowed.
It’s over fast—incredibly so—and then it’s Dani’s turn to be proud and cocky.
Jamie comes with a gasp of, “Christ, Dani, yes, I’m—” and she arches so much into it that, when she falls back down, the bed thumps onto the floor and against the wall.
It’s not terribly loud, but it does a lot to break up the heavy silence in their apartment. If it weren’t so incredibly hot, Dani might already be worrying about the repercussions.
“Shit,” Jamie says as Dani kisses her way back up her body. “ Shit . He definitely heard that.”
Dani chuckles against her collarbone, kissing her there. “Probably.”
“Tomorrow’s going to be terrible, isn’t it?”
Lifting her head up, Dani nods. “Probably.”
A sharp tug at her hips and then Dani is lying on the bed, Jamie curled into her arms. Jamie is always so tactile and grasping after she comes, and Dani is always eager to fall into it.
She presses a kiss to Jamie’s sweaty head. “Worth it?”
Jamie nods against her chest, still trying to catch her breath. “Absolutely,” she huffs and Dani laughs and pulls her closer.
__________
Owen is already up and making breakfast when Dani gets up the next morning. She’d done her best to cover any marks Jamie might have left with makeup, but it hadn’t been easy and, since all of her turtlenecks need washed, she knows they’re visible.
“Morning,” she says, already treading carefully, and Owen isn’t facing her, but she can see the way he stiffens at her voice.
It takes him forever to turn and actually look at her and, even then, it’s nothing more than a glance. “Morning,” he says. “Got eggs on.”
“You’re a saint,” Dani sighs. She sits down at the island counter as the bedroom door opens again and Jamie comes out.
“I smell food,” she calls, coming over to where Dani is sitting. She rests her arm around her girlfriend’s shoulders and leans into her. “Sleep okay?”
And Dani knows what she’s doing. She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
Owen nods. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. Then, “Loads better than you did, I reckon.”
Jamie frowns. “What?”
For the first time since Dani came out, Owen turns around, his eyes glimmering playfully in the early morning light. “Just sounded like you were up pretty late.”
Dani glances from him to Jamie, mouth dropped open in surprise. She can feel the urge to laugh building up in her chest, her shoulders shaking from the effort of pushing it down.
For a moment, there’s nothing but a stare down between Owen and Jamie, each of them on the verge of laughter but waiting to see who will break first. The eggs on the skillet sizzle and pop, but Owen doesn’t turn around. Jamie’s arm tightens around Dani’s shoulders.
“Don’t worry about us,” Jamie finally says. “We’re pretty used to late night slumber parties, aren’t we, Dani?”
The eggs end up burning.
..