“Oh,” Kristin moaned.
Sheryl allowed Kristin to push herself up a little by lowering the intensity of her thrusts. As if she’d only seen Kristin do it yesterday instead of too long ago, she predicted her partner’s next move. She caught Sheryl’s deep strokes on one arm and brought the other one between her legs to touch her clit.
She was close. Sheryl knew what to do. She changed her pace to a controlled, steady thrust and, with her right hand, slapped Kristin’s ass on the exact spot where a deep red blush had formed.
Kristin groaned harder. Her hips bucked wildly. Sheryl let her hand come down again. Hard enough to tip Kristin over the edge, but not too hard to leave any more marks. Sheryl had left enough of those already.
Kristin let out a prolonged, syncopated half yell, then collapsed onto the bed. The dildo slipped out of her, and as Sheryl stepped out of the panties as swiftly as she could, she noticed her legs were trembling. This had taken more out of her than she remembered it doing, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the sight of Kristin, crawling onto the bed to have her full weight supported—her knees must be sore and marked as well—her ass cheeks striped red, her body language projecting utter satisfaction.
Sheryl composed herself and flanked Kristin on the bed. “Do you like our new toys?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
It was the first time she got a good look at Kristin’s face and she found it wet with tears. Kristin nodded. “Though my brain is muddled by an unbelievable climax, I can see everything so clearly.” She huddled up a little closer to Sheryl. “I’m going to open a coffee shop,” she whispered. Her words barely audible. “We’re going to do it together.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
They had moved fast. After that first walk in Darlinghurst, Kristin had gone back several times in the following weeks and contacted all the real estate agents in the area. Perhaps she’d been as lucky as Pat, the agent, had told her she’d been, though Kristin suspected that much of her proclaimed luck was really sales talk. They’d found a perfect space only a few weeks after Kristin had laid out all her plans to Sheryl, including the suggestion to sell the house and move to a different neighborhood.
Sheryl had been living near the university her entire adult life, from when she was a first-year student at the tender age of eighteen. Kristin knew it would be a hard sell, but her enthusiasm and the utter suitability of the property for their purposes had quickly won her over.
Sheryl would have to commute to work from then on, and she wouldn’t be able to pop home in between classes when she needed a break from colleagues and students at the university. But Kristin hadn’t even needed that much power of persuasion.
“You battled traffic for almost twenty years,” Sheryl had said. “Now it’s my turn. And I’ll get a damn good cup of coffee to help me through.”
Kristin had been surprised by how easy it had been to convince Sheryl of all the changes she proposed. Starting a business from scratch, moving to a new neighborhood, living in an apartment above the coffee shop instead of their house.
“I stood in the way of your dream once before,” Sheryl had said. “I have no intention of keeping this one from coming true for you.”
When they’d had that conversation, Kristin had seen all the reasons she’d fallen in love with Sheryl shine through so clearly. Her convictions, her confidence, her trust in Kristin.
“For all we know, if you hadn’t stopped my burning ambitions then, we wouldn’t be here now,” Kristin said. At the time, giving up on moving to Hong Kong had been a bitter pill to swallow, but in hindsight, it had been the best decision. Perhaps not for her career, but most certainly for her relationship and her life in general.
Now they stood in their very own coffee shop: The Pink Bean. Kristin had thought long and hard about the opening party. Daytime or evening? Alcohol or coffee only? For the longest time, she had leaned toward coffee only, out of consideration for Sheryl, until she realized it wouldn’t be consideration at all, just a means of controlling her alcohol intake.
Almost every other time they sat down for a glass of wine, Sheryl still proclaimed she ought to stop drinking, but she never did. Right then, she stood with an empty glass of champagne in her hand, talking to one of their new neighbors, who had all received an invite for the opening.
The woman Sheryl was talking to had long curly auburn hair and the clearest green eyes. From where Kristin was standing, it could have looked like Sheryl was flirting with her, though Kristin was sure she was only imagining that and was more worried about where that sudden bout of insecurity had come from.