Page 115 of Paradigm

“I know. But we’ve lived together for almost two months here, and it’s a pretty small apartment. I know we can be okay living together now.”

“If you’re ready, I’m ready,” she said.

“You’ll talk to Enya?”

“She won’t care, but yeah, I’ll talk to her,” she replied. “I can talk to her right now, if you want. I have no idea what time it is there, but she’s probably awake.”

“No!” Eline exclaimed and moved her hands to Arlowe’s ass, which she pressed down into her. “I wouldn’t want to take the chance and wake her up.”

Arlowe smirked down and said, “Oh, that’s what you’re worried about? Waking Enya?”

“Yes, I’m a very considerate person, Arlowe. You should know that.”

“So considerate that you’re going to let me touch you because you know how good it makes me feel to make you come?” she asked.

“I am just that considerate, yes,” Eline teased.

Arlowe rolled down into her and asked, “So, do I need to get you going a little, or–”

“No,” Eline interjected. “I got ready the moment you took your bra off.”

Arlowe laughed softly, leaned down, and kissed her. A few minutes later, she slipped her hand between Eline’s legs and felt how wet she was for her. She would miss this in their upcoming time apart. She knew that Eline would be okay with phone or video sex because they’d talked about it, but that would in no way be the same as how good it felt to push inside Eline’s warmth and feel how turned on she was for her touch. It also could never compare to how good it felt to kiss her through an orgasm, feeling Eline arch and twitch beneath her as she came, watch her mouth open and remain that way until she came down, and then press herself to Eline’s body and listen to her breathing return to normal.

Nothing on earth could compare to any of that, and Arlowe tried not to focus on that thought and instead, remain in the moment, where Eline was coming down from her orgasm, rubbing her hands over Arlowe’s back and still pulsing inside. Arlowe knew that because she hadn’t yet removed her fingers, and if she didn’t want to be able to do this again in the next few minutes, she would’ve kept her cramping wrist in the same position, but she did, so she waited for Eline’s tremors to subside and pulled out of her, resting her hand on Eline’s thigh, which was still dangling over the edge of the sofa.

“Arlowe?”

“Hmm…” she mumbled against Eline’s neck.

“You know how we could solve this whole sofa problem?”

“How?”

“We could go to the bedroom, where we have a bed.”

Arlowe laughed and kissed her on the neck.

“I always knew you were smart,” she teased.

Then, she got up, pulled Eline with her, and with their clothes still on the floor, they walked into their bedroom that would soon only be Eline’s bedroom. Eline wanted her to lie back, so she did, and she waited for her girlfriend to climb on top of her, but Eline moved to lie next to her instead. Eline’s hand slipped into her folds, though, and she began stroking.

“I want to watch you,” she said.

Arlowe nodded and let Eline’s touch take her over the edge for the first time that night.

CHAPTER 36

“Are you ready?” Arlowe asked.

“They’d send an email if it was approved or denied,” she replied. “I don’t know why I check every day.”

“Because you know the email will hit after the approval, and you want to know as soon as possible, so open the page and check, babe,” Arlowe said.

Arlowe had been home for a month now, and it had been hard for them. The time difference already made things difficult, but Arlowe was also incredibly busy at work as they’d pushed a major feature release during the past month and had issued the initial smart glasses to a school district, so they’d been gathering performance data and working on improving things in their next updates. On top of that, Arlowe had told her that a company had been interested in possibly acquiring the business, which they hadn’t been expecting. It turned out, they were a large education tech company, and they wanted to buy the app and hardware technology.

Arlowe and her friends hadn’t been interested at all, but they were still doing their due diligence since their investors wanted to get paid, so the four of them, as well as Gabi and even Stella, who had her own employer, had been hard at work trying to prove out why this company buying them at this stage wasn’t wise unless they more than tripled their offer, which Arlowe had explained they hadn’t been willing to do. Eline had been happy to hear that because she knew that if the company got acquired, she likely wouldn’t have a job for very long, even if her work visa got approved, since the acquiring company typically started letting people go pretty quickly after signing on the dotted line. She’d kept her opinion to herself, though, while they worked through it because it was important that Arlowe and her friends make their own decisions on any acquisition.

Eline had been working, too, if she could even call it that, but she hadn’t been very happy about it. The professor-turned-entrepreneur told her repeatedly that she was doing a great job and that he was impressed with her work, but he still had her reporting in every day so that he could review it, and, in the end, she wasn’t all that passionate about encryption software. She’d thought it would be different, working for him and building something like this, but so far, she’d only been happy with the paycheck and not much else. In addition, the woman from whom she was subleasing the apartment had gotten sick and ended up in the hospital, so she planned to return early and wanted her apartment back, and since there had been no official lease document with Eline’s name on it, she didn’t have much of a choice but to move out before the woman returned to Amsterdam. Nothing seemed to be going her way, and she missed Arlowe.