Watching Florence undress had been Shelby’s biggest fantasy for the entire hot, sweaty Texas summer. Even better would have been helping her strip off these layers of tight tailoring and crisp fashion. But watching…
Yes, watching Florence tug carefully at each sleeve as she pulled off her jacket was hotter than watching most girls fuck.
“You could turn your back, you know.” The grumpy words made Shelby grin. She stroked a hand down the soft weave of the heathered wool jacket.
“Honey, I’m supposed to be the shy one and you don’t see me worrying about having my tits out, do you?” she asked.
“Yeah, well, your tits are distracting as hell,” Florence muttered as she ducked her head and worked at the button on her tight-fitting Oxford.
Just liked Shelby had suspected, Florence wore a tight sports bra under her shirt. Not quite a binder, it pressed her small, exquisite breasts flat against her chest, giving her that perfect drape when she wore her coats and ties.
Shelby, who would only risk a buttondown shirt in the direst of circumstances—that gap between the third and fourth button was always a killer for a big-busted girl—took a moment to sigh in envy. Even if she could manage to wriggle into Florence’s clothes, they were never going to look as elegant on her as they did on the lean, dark-haired woman.
“Do you think of yourself as a boy?” she asked. For Shelby, it was all about the clothes, but maybe there was more to it than that for Florence.
“Because I strap down my tits?” Florence flashed her a look, settling in to their new normal, which apparently included hanging out half-naked in empty classrooms.
Shelby was highly in favor of this new normal.
“Yes.”
“Nope. Just don’t like how it fucks up the line of my clothes.”
Be still, my heart. I’m so fucking in love with her. If only she was remotely attracted to me.
Shelby strolled over to the music stand on which Florence was draping her clothes as she removed them. That close, it was hard to pull her eyes away from the smooth olive skin stretching in a clean line from the bottom of the black sports bra to the low waistband of her trousers. Even Florence’s belly button was perfect, a tiny dip in a flat expanse of skin that looked like it would be warm under her tongue.
Warm, but not sweet. Nothing about Florence Truong said sweet. Sharp, tangy, powerful. Just like Shelby felt powerful when she rolled over a woman in bed and pushed her lover’s cries higher and higher, using fingers and mouth and all the wetness she could call out to drive them both to the edge.
Heat fired in Florence’s gaze as Shelby stood next to her, their naked arms brushing.
“There’s no way you’re going to fit those into this,” Florence said matter-of-factly and waved and Shelby’s tits and then her own bra.
“Doesn’t have to be comfortable,” Shelby argued, even though she knew Florence was right. “Just has to let me get your shirt on.”
Because she wasn’t an asshole, Shelby turned her back slightly, giving Florence the opportunity to get the rest of the way naked without an audience. Just because Shelby was getting a personal thrill out of naked proximity didn’t mean Florence was.
She stuck out her hand and waited or the sports bra to land on it. As soon as Shelby attempted to wrestle her way into that elastic contraption, it was immediately clear that she was outmatched by the garment’s engineering.
“Holy sweet baby Jesus, I’m dying.” She wrestled with the sports bra of death, pretty sure she was going to be found strangled in the corner by the night custodian, a wasted pile of flesh and bones and perfectly curled strawberry blond hair, because even in death her hair would be beautiful, damn it.
“Wait. Stop moving. Christ.”
Slim hands pressed on her shoulders and Shelby froze. The bra was half smothering her face, her elbows still trapped up by her ears, which meant her breasts must be thrust forward on display. She took a deep breath, a miracle in this deathtrap, and her nipples, pebbling now, brushed against something smooth and slippery that slid between her chest and Florence’s breasts.
God, Florence had already put on her silk tank top?
Kill me now, Jesus. Let’s just wave the suicide as a sin thing for today, okay? Because that’s silk on her skin. My silk, on her skin, and I can’t see it because I’m being suffocated by the Marquis de Sade’s torture instrument.
“Hold still.”
Florence’s voice was husky, thrumming like a low violin string vibrating between Shelby’s thighs. Her pulse kicked up seven notches, a sweet flush slipping over her skin until Shelby wondered if she glowed pink in the light.
Hands pushed her arms up straight into the air, sliding up her triceps, past her ticklish elbows, to press her wrists together over her head. Those same hands pulled the sports bra up over her head. Before she could protest, which was a slow thought process, what with Florence’s serious face right in front of her, that full lower lip pinched between her front teeth, Florence was untwisting the stretchy fabric until it hung loosely around Shelby’s wrists again.
“Hang on.”
Don’t bother was what Shelby wanted to say. She wanted to lean back against something, anything, her wrists tangled up and her body open to anything Florence wanted to do to her. And wasn’t that a helluva a thing, because Shelby was always the one who made the move. Was always the aggressor in bed.
She’d learned she had to be, those long ago summers when she knew girls at camp were going off to practice kissing each other, or more. But no one even looked twice at the girl who slept in sponge rollers because she loved the big, fat curls that bounced down to her shoulders in the morning. She’d had to chase down girls, who all assumed she’d be spending her camp nights sneaking off with some musclebound cowboy from the boy’s bunk.
Shelby Summerfield had gotten very good at the chase.
Wrestling the sports bra over her breasts took far too little time once Florence was in charge. Mere minutes later, Shelby was—mostly—contained by what was clearly the strongest elastic known to humankind. She grabbed Florence’s buttondown, pulled it on, and then tugged on Florence’s skinny pants, which zipped up almost all the way.
Even with the sports bra mashing Shelby’s tits as flat as possible, no one with a chance to look her over would possible confuse her with Florence.
Shelby didn’t plan on giving those boys much of a chance.
She grabbed Florence’s pork pie hat from where it hung rakishly off the corner of another music stand and sighed.
“You couldn’t wear a nice big hat with a wide brim, now, could you?” she muttered as she twisted up the bulk of her hair and shoved it into the crown of the narrow-brimmed hat.
“Aww, it’s cute how your ears stick out,” Florence said, grinning now as she flicked a nail against one of Shelby’s exposed ear lobes.
Clapping her hands over her ears, Shelby groaned. “I know. My ears are the absolute worst. My momma used to call me Jughead when I was a little girl with short hair.”
“Hey, that’s not nice.”
“Unflattering nicknames are a family tradition.” And it could have been worse. Shelby had a cousin with an unfortunately pitched name who’d spent her entire life answering to Squeaky and she’d gone to elementary school with more than one Sissy. In the grand scheme of things, Jughead wasn’t bad. “I grew my hair long in fifth grade and never looked back since.”
“Is that why you wear it so…” Florence waved a hand in a circle that encompasses all of Shelby above the shoulders.
“So what?”
“So gloriously Southern belle,” Florence said with a sharp grin.
Shelby sniffed. Loudly. Close enough. This was far more discussion of her jug handle ears than she wanted to have with a woman whose pants she was starting to contemplate getting into again. And not in the literal way, because Shelby could hardly breathe in these skinny trousers “Well, at least you think I’m glorious.”
They were such exquisitely
tailored pants, too.
“What’s your deal, anyway? Why were you trying to hook up with our trivia team that first night?”
Before she could grit her teeth together and scream—would no lesbian ever believe she was hitting on them until Shelby had a tongue down her throat?—a movement outside the building caught Shelby’s eye.
“Shoot. The natives are getting restless.” At Florence’s raised eyebrow, Shelby pointed out the window. “Those boys are done waiting. They’re gonna come in and get us.”
“Fuck.” Florence yanked on Shelby’s skirt and pulled her own shoes back on under the long fall of floral fabric. “What do we do?”
“Execute the plan, darlin’.” Shelby grinned, adrenaline pumping high in her veins.
Before Florence could ask another question, Shelby grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the classroom and into the lobby, pausing only long enough for Florence to grab her leather messenger bag.
“Remember, follow me after a minute. Go right and head to Lower Lake. I’ll find you there.”
Not waiting for any of the quizzing she knew would follow, Shelby yanked Florence close enough to mash a kiss on her full lips because why the hell not and raced for the door, bursting through it just as the black guy with the flat top was coming up the steps.
She ducked her head to the side and sprinted past him, startling a shout from his throat as she brushed him back with an elbow and a muttered, “Sorry.”
Sprinting for the library, running a slight zigzag pattern, was simple enough, but her pursuit fell off way too soon. Before Shelby had gone more than twenty yards, the noise of the chase behind her dropped away to nothing and she risked a glance behind her.
Only to spot Florence—who should have waited for longer than ten seconds, damn it—drawing a crowd as she tripped down the steps of Chapin in Shelby’s skirt and tank top. Florence’s assassin, who should have been dogging Shelby’s ass all the way had already turned back and spotted his real target heading around the corner of Chapin with a lumbering giant in slow pursuit.
“Goddamn it,” Shelby snapped and juked back toward the building she’d just left.
By the time she circled the opposite side and sprinted up on Florence’s heels, both boys were in hot pursuit and gaining ground.
With a rebel yell, Shelby threw caution to the wind.
“Hey, y’all!”
Her shout turned every head within a hundred yards, including Florence’s, as Shelby screeched to a halt and planted herself in a solid shooting stance, opening fire. She had to aim low at this distance, not willing to risk getting anywhere near her targets’ faces, but she managed to splatter purple paint all over the bellies of both boys, shouting at Florence to run, run, run! the entire time.
Florence, finally, did.
The two assassins were thrown off guard long enough for Shelby to take off again, running the long way around even more campus buildings as she headed toward the dock where she’d told Florence they would meet up.
She overtook Florence, who was moving at a ridiculously slow jog, less than halfway there.
Smokers suck at this game.
The hand she clapped on Florence’s shoulder might have been a serial killer’s for the shriek it dragged out of Florence, before Shelby hushed her and pulled her to crouch behind a row of bushes leading up to the music building.
They ducked and hid for long, long minutes and the two boys and several other students who must have been working with one of the other of them ran back and forth, calling out to each other.
“Did you see her?”
“Over here!”
“No way. She didn’t get past me.”
Shelby lost track of who was searching for whom as she wrapped an arm around Florence’s heaving shoulders, rubbing her palm against the linked bumps of Florence’s spine as the woman gasped for breath.
Florence had barely recovered when Shelby spotted a break in the action and dragged her up to make forward progress, eyes on the alert as the jogged from cover to cover.
“Oh my God, who are you, Annie Oakley?” Florence huffed out as they sprinted behind the unfortunately named Clapp Hall.
They hit the corner of the building and Shelby barred the way with a stiff arm and a hand on Florence’s far wrist before the reckless woman could go barreling out from behind the brick monstrosity’s cover. “Wait.”
The soft skin under her palm was warm. She shifted her hand and felt across the underside of Florence’s wrist with her thumb. The rapid beat of Florence’s pulse fluttered like a hummingbird, and then started to slow as Shelby made her wait.
“Take a breath, honey. I’m not trying to kill you. Yet.” The snort behind her left shoulder was a little more lively and less dear-God-I’m-gonna-puke.
“Seriously. How did you do that?”
Shelby turned back around. Florence was hunched over, breathing hard with her hands on her thighs.
“I’m from Texas. I’ve been shooting my daddy’s guns since I was ten years old.”
“Yeah, but these aren’t real guns. I tried to shoot someone yesterday and I missed the entire building they were standing in front of.” The frown on Florence’s face said the memory was unexpectedly embarrassing. Shelby suspected Florence hadn’t found herself lacking in skills at any activity she’d attempted in far too long.
“I recalibrated my aim,” she admitted, expecting the response she got.
“You what?” Florence jerked her head back, staring hard. It was as if a cartoon kitty cat had suddenly morphed into a Scar from The Lion King in front of her. “When?”
Shelby shrugged. “The day they handed out the paint guns I went to the far side of Lower Lake and shot through two boxes of ammo I bought off a freshman. My gun shoots high and to the left. It’s not a hard adjustment.”
“I don’t believe you.” Florence narrowed her eyes to slits.
“I don’t care.” But somehow she did, it turned out, because a moment later she was talking again. “There’s a tree near where the turtles hang out on that rock that’s a damn sight more purple than anything else in those woods, though.”
Florence’s bark of laughter was loud. Too loud. Without thinking, Shelby pushed up on her and clapped a hand over her mouth, shoving Florence into the rough brick wall.
“Shhh,” she whispered, ignoring the press of lips against her fingers. She was just slightly taller than Florence, who had narrower shoulders and hips, narrower everything. Made Shelby want to push her down to the ground and climb on top of her.
Stop lusting after the woman, damn it, and figure out how you’re going to keep her alive long enough to kill her.
Easy words. Harder to stop the pulse of liquid heat that thumped in her belly as their eyes locked over Shelby’s fingers. Her stomach was pressed against Florence’s, her breasts aching in the fantastically tight sports bra she’d probably need a crow bar—or an assistant—to remove.
“I swear in Jesus’s name, if you get yourself killed by some dumbass freshman before I can take you out myself, I will make your life a living hell,” she breathed out, because someone had to remember how to keep their voices down, damn it.
After a minute, she lifted her hand off Florence’s mouth, which immediately started moving again.
“So, is this military ops strategy stuff another Texas thing, too?” Florence demanded.
Shelby raised one eyebrow. She’d practiced that particular facial muscle twitch in the mirror when she was thirteen and had never regretted those summer vacation hours as ill-spent.
“All that distraction and flanking or whatever the hell you called it.”
“My strategy is to keep you alive long enough for me to be the one to take you out and win this stupid game. What you’re talking about are tactics. And no, that’s not a Texas thing.” At least, she was pretty sure it wasn’t.
“Then where’d you learn it?”
“Didn’t you ever spend your summer nights playing Fugitive in the dark?” Lat
e night games of field-roaming tag weren’t the real source of Shelby’s skills, but that image would have to do. She didn’t feel like going into detail about her daddy’s hobby of building miniature displays of Civil War battlefields, maneuvering troops through the woods and over the grassy fields. Analyzing the various generals’ tactics and strategies had been a Sunday afternoon tradition, after church of course. Shelby’s daddy had a fondness for the cavalry and Nathan Bedford Forrest that suited his old-fashioned soul, but Shelby had been a William T. Sherman fangirl ever since the day she’d learned about the Union general’s “total war” strategy.
Her daddy still mourned her favoring a Union general, but Shelby believed firmly in going for the best, no matter where she found it. Besides, multitasking with an army and pursuing a scorched earth policy suited Shelby down to her bloodthirsty bones.
Florence was still frowning at her, which might just have been because Shelby was about to bust open Florence’s shirt. Or pants. Take your pick. “You don’t look like an outside games kind of girl.”
“And you do? Darlin’, your shoes are shiny.” She stared at Florence’s patent leather lace up loafers, and then at the slim ankles that rose from the expensive footwear exposed by the hem of Shelby’s skirt, which hung several inches higher off the ground on Florence’s taller frame than it did on Shelby’s.
“At least I wear pants.” Florence stared at Shelby’s legs, which would have flattering under other circumstances.
Shelby eyed Florence’s tailored suit on her own curvier body. Her collar was open, which meant she’d maybe forgotten to snatch Florence’s polka dot tie off one of the music stands as they’d sprinted out of the classroom. She dragged her mind back to the subject at hand.
Pants. Right. That’s what everyone wearing a five hundred dollar suit—if she knew her designers, which she surely did—called them.
In an instant, the surge of adrenaline driving Shelby’s energetic escape strategy faltered. What did it matter, really, whether or not Florence approved of what Shelby wore or didn’t wear? Florence had already made it clear—more than once—that Shelby wasn’t her kind of girl.
'90s Playlist (Romance Rewind Book 1) Page 28
