Lizzie
Sarah's hotel room was on the eighth floor. They rode the elevator in silence, hands clasped. Lizzie watched the numbers climb and tried to remember how to breathe normally.
The door clicked shut behind them. Sarah set her purse on the desk and turned around. They looked at each other across the small space.
“I don't know where to start,” Sarah said.
“Neither do I.”
Sarah crossed the room and stopped a foot away. “I’m sorry. I blamed you when none of this was your fault. I pushed you away when you were trying to help.”
“I should have told you about the reporter right away. I texted that everything was fine when it wasn’t.”
“We both screwed up.”
“Yeah.” Lizzie reached up and touched Sarah’s face. “But I’m here now.”
Sarah kissed her. Tentative at first, like she was afraid Lizzie might pull away. Lizzie didn’t. She wrapped her arms around Sarah’s neck and kissed her back with four weeks of want behind it.
Sarah’s hands found her waist and pulled her closer. The kiss deepened and something unlocked in Lizzie’s chest, thattight, heavy thing she’d been carrying since the night everything fell apart. She groaned against Sarah’s mouth that she couldn’t have held back if she’d tried.
“I missed you,” Sarah whispered against her lips. “God, I missed you.”
“Show me.”
They moved toward the bed without breaking apart. Sarah’s blazer hit the floor. Lizzie pulled at her own shirt and got it tangled in her hair, and Sarah laughed—low, warm—and helped her free. The small clumsiness of it cracked something open between them. This wasn’t a performance. This was just them.
They fell onto the mattress together and Sarah’s weight settled over her, familiar and grounding. Lizzie had missed this—not just the want, but the specific feel of Sarah. Her hair falling forward. The way she braced herself on one arm. The careful way she watched Lizzie’s face like she was reading a language only they spoke.
Sarah kissed down her throat, slow and open-mouthed. Her hand slid under Lizzie’s bra and Lizzie arched into the touch.
“Take it off.”
Sarah reached around and unhooked it. Her mouth went to Lizzie’s breast and Lizzie’s back left the bed. She grabbed a fistful of the sheets and let her eyes close. When Sarah’s teeth grazed her nipple, Lizzie’s hips jerked up against nothing and the ache of that empty contact made her groan.
“I can feel how much you want this,” Sarah murmured against her skin.
“Then stop making me wait.”
Sarah’s mouth trailed down her stomach, unhurried, tasting as she went. She unbuttoned Lizzie’s jeans and pulled them off along with her underwear, and then she was between Lizzie’s legs, her lips pressed to the inside of her thigh. Lizzie could feel Sarah’s breath, warm and close, and the anticipation was almost worse than the four weeks of distance had been.
“I’ve been thinking about this for weeks,” Sarah said against her skin.
“Then stop thinking.”
Sarah looked up at her and smiled. Then she lowered her mouth and Lizzie forgot every coherent thought she’d ever had.
Sarah was unhurried and deliberate, her tongue tracing long, teasing strokes that circled close to Lizzie’s clit without quite landing. Lizzie’s thighs were already shaking.
“Sarah. Please.”
Sarah’s tongue found her clit and stayed. She worked slowly at first, reading Lizzie’s body, learning what made her gasp, what made her hips lift off the bed. Then she sucked gently and Lizzie cried out before she could stop herself.
“The walls are thin,” Sarah murmured.
“Then don’t tease me.”
Sarah laughed against her and the vibration of it sent a jolt straight through Lizzie’s center. She went back with more purpose now, her mouth building a steady rhythm while her hands gripped Lizzie’s thighs. Then her hand was between Lizzie’s legs too, and the added fullness on top of everything else made Lizzie’s whole body clench. Sarah’s mouth and her handworked together, finding the angle that turned Lizzie’s breathing ragged and holding her there, not speeding up, not slowing down, just keeping Lizzie exactly where she needed to be until the tension wound so tight that Lizzie couldn’t tell where one sensation ended and the other began.
