twenty-eight: laurel

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Annie's on her best behavior

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Annie's on her best behavior. It's our first shift alone together, a week since Jess left, and she's going out of her way to prove that I have nothing to worry about, that we can work together without our relationship getting in the way. As much as I appreciate her effort, it's torture, the way she isn't even standing near me.

After last night, I want my hands on her. I always want my hands on her, but we have unfinished business. Last night she lay on top of me, pressing me into the mattress like the world's best weighted blanket, squeezing the air out of my lungs as she touched me until I couldn't breathe, and I ache to touch her too.

On the plus side, I can't remember the last time I was so relaxed at work. It's as though Annie's magic hands worked all of the tension out of my body, releasing my stress. I've used orgasms as a form of stress relief ever since I was a teenager, but it works so much better when someone else is involved. Not that it worked so well during my marriage, seeing as Christian was the cause of most of my stress.

I'm standing behind the counter with a blissful smile on my face, thinking about Annie, when she comes out of the stock room and takes one look at me and laughs.

"Looks like someone got laid last night," she jokes, carrying a pile of online orders that are due to be picked up today.

My hand goes to my smiling face. It's not often that it rests in that position. Ruth has told me on multiple occasions that I suffer from resting anxious face – better than resting bitch face, she says, but I probably put customers on edge when they come in and see me looking stressed. My eyebrows like to furrow and my lips like to pinch and I've probably given myself more wrinkles than I should have at my age.

Annie skirts around me to put the orders away in the cupboard behind the register. When I drop my hand to my side and let it graze her elbow as she passes, she jumps.

"Why are you so on edge?" I ask, turning around to face her. "I know I said we need to be professional but there's no-one around, and I don't think anyone would care to see the graze of a hand and an arm."

"You may have got laid last night," Annie says, speaking into the cupboard as she arranges the parcels in alphabetical order, "but I didn't."

"Ah." I rest my hips against the counter and fold my arms. "I was starting to think you were mad at me for something."

"Not in the slightest."

"You're aroused."

She closes the cupboard door and faces me. Her eyes are bright, her face pink, her hair a golden halo. "Painfully so. So I need you to not touch me because I am this close to locking myself in the staff room."

"What would that achieve?"

She rolls her eyes at me and mirrors my pose. "It would afford me the privacy needed to quite literally go fuck myself."

"Oh." It's my turn to blush. Annie flashes me a wicked grin and heads back to the stock room for more orders. "Don't lock yourself away."

"I know, I know, I won't. Unprofessional to masturbate at work and all that," she says, flapping her hand. "I'll be good."

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