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“There, baby. Take every drop for me,” she whispered as Leo licked every last drop of her pleasure from her vulva.
Vivienne, with her hands in the wet of Leo's hair and her head tipped back against the cool of the night air finally let out the breath she had been holding for a week. Everything felt right again.
She slid back into the water and into Leo’s arms.
She moved her mouth to Leo’s face and kissed and licked gently, Leo’s lips, inside her mouth, over her chin, tasting and smelling her own sex on Leo’s skin and it felt like home.
24
Leo woke on the Monday morning in Vivienne Strauss's bed.
Vivienne was asleep against her.
She was asleep on her left side, the dark hair down, one arm folded under the pillow, the other across Leo's chest, the small flat of her palm against the place above Leo's sternum. Vivienne's breath was slow at Leo's neck.
Leo did not move.
She listened to Vivienne breathing. She felt calm here. Something huge had shifted between them and everything felt different.
Her body was more relaxed than maybe it ever had been. And so was Vivienne’s. The sex they had had the previous night replayed in Leo’s head. The exquisite pleasure of Vivienne coming and squirting in her mouth on the side of the pool was something she would never forget. The hand on Leo's sternum lifted by half an inch and lowered. The arm against Leo's ribs pulled in by a quarter. The breath at Leo's neck did the small change a breath did when the woman behind it had moved, in her own house, from sleep to half-sleep.
Vivienne opened her eyes.
Grey-blue. On Leo's collarbone first. Then on Leo's mouth. Then on Leo's eyes.
"Leo."
"Vivienne."
"You are awake."
Vivienne's hand on Leo's sternum settled flatter.
A beat.
"Were you watching me?”
“Always,” Leo smiled.
Vivienne did not, at that, move her hand.
She let it stay on Leo's sternum. She put her chin on Leo's shoulder. She closed her eyes again, briefly, then opened them.
"I am not working today."
"No."
"Will you stay with me?”
"In bed."
"In this house. In this bed. In the kitchen at lunch. By the pool again, if you would like. In any of the rooms today. Will you stay?”
A beat.
"Yes."
"Good."
