2.

"I give you another week," Sophia says. "Tops."

"Yeah. Probably." Kalinda snorts, and Sophia likes it, the slightly repulsive sound in Kalinda's delicate face. She kisses her, and goddamn, the woman is delicious.

"You don't even care?"

"I'll be fine." Kalinda rolls on top of her and traces her collarbone with a finger, stopping occasionally to kiss spots she seems to have chosen at random. "You should worry about yourself, anyway. This new firm." She palms one of Sophia's breasts and gently tongues the other nipple, making Sophia sigh. "No one from his staff is getting out unscathed."

Sophia lets her eyes drift shut and her words fade for a few minutes, wriggling and whispering with pleasure as Kalinda slowly works her way down her torso. When she can't feel the other woman's lips anymore, she lifts her eyelids to find Kalinda gently resting her chin just above Sophia's pelvis, obviously expecting some kind of answer. "I'm not an ASA," Sophia says. "I won't get tarred with the same brush. It'll be fine."

Kalinda nods, thinking about this. "I just want—You shouldn't have to go down with him. You'll do good work. You deserve success."

It's the most affection she's ever heard from Kalinda, less the occasional endearment she chokes out right before she comes. Sophia smiles like she's won. "At least I'm leaving on my own terms."

Kalinda raises an eyebrow. "Who says these aren't my terms?"

"God, Kali. Who knows what your termmmmmmm …" The rest of Sophia's sentence is lost on a moan as Kalinda continues to kiss and lick and suckle her way down. Sophia tangles her hand in Kalinda's already-mussed updo, strands of hair silky around her fingers, but she feels too much pleasure to even know where to urge Kalinda's head. There is nothing, nothing, that this woman's mouth cannot do. Kalinda glances up and then goes back to lapping and suckling at her, even the brush of her hair across Sophia's inner thigh electric. Sophia whimpers, the rest of her body trembling as fiercely as her inner walls are. The two fingers Kalinda thrusts and curls into her are barely necessary to finish the job.

When Sophia opens her eyes, Kalinda has sidled up the mattress, leaning an elbow on the adjacent pillow. She licks her own fingers with a sly smile, and Sophia rolls onto her side so that Kalinda can spoon her.

Kalinda's tenderness after sex is one of the loveliest and most surprising facets of having her as a lover. She keeps a light arm wrapped around Sophia's waist and applies soft kiss after kiss to the back of her neck, the space between her shoulder blades, while her breathing calms and the delicious drunken sleepiness takes over. After the first couple of times Sophia was startled by the gestures, but they've started to seem almost natural, almost as if this were what Kalinda was really like. Sophia puts her own pale hand on Kalinda's and kisses the woman's knuckles.

"You know," says Sophia as if it's just occurred to her, as if it hasn't been on her mind since Kalinda told her the truth about Florrick, "you should come with me."

"Come with you …?"

"My new firm. It'd be nice to have someone I could trust, someone I wouldn't have to train."

"I don't think so," Kalinda says, so quickly that Sophia rolls out from under her embrace to look at her face. Kalinda's eyes are lowered.

"Why not?"

"Well. Can you see me going corporate?"

Sophia runs her eyes down Kalinda's beautiful body and grins. "I can see you all over."

Kalinda smiles back, but it looks distant. "Anyway, I got a job."

"You got a what?"

"Stern, Lockhart, and Gardner. I'll be their in-house." Kalinda rolls onto her back. "I start in three weeks. You know, give Florrick a little time for public shaming and then give myself a week off."

"Legal? It doesn't pay like this is gonna pay."

Kalinda shrugs, and Sophia is suddenly annoyed with her.

"You won't last long."

"I might."

"I give you six months. Then you'll figure out you can't cut the kind of corners you need to cut. You'll change your mind."

"I won't change my mind." Kalinda's gaze shifts away from Sophia's, her eyes tracing patterns on the walls.

"What's up?" Sophia asks.

"Nothing really," says Kalinda. "Just … I think I have to try monogamy for a little while."

Sophia snorts herself. "Good luck with that."

"Yeah, I know." Kalinda rolls her eyes halfheartedly. "But … she asked. I figure I should at least … you know."

"She?"

"Yeah." Kalinda says it lightly, as if she doesn't understand why Sophia's even asking, why it even matters.

Really, Sophia doesn't understand it herself. She certainly can't make any claim to monogamy. But she's never expected it of Kalinda—really, the idea's almost laughable. She can't imagine Kalinda with the sort of woman who would ask for commitment. Still, she's jolted. She expected her nights with Kalinda to see her through the dissolution of the State's Attorney's staff, to carry her through the founding of her own firm. Sophia certainly couldn't say why—really, it seems illogical—but Kalinda's presence makes things easier. "You couldn't have told me before?"

"Before what?"

"Before we got started."

Kalinda looks a little startled. "Ever?"

"Tonight."

"Yeah," Kalinda says. "I didn't want to. It's … Why waste our time?" Sophia can't think of anything to say, and it's strange, since Kalinda is obviously waiting for a response of some kind. When it's not forthcoming, she continues, "It's been fun."

And it has. Really, there's no excuse for Sophia's frustration now. Who could say she hasn't gotten everything she needed? She sits up, swings her legs off the side of the bed, reaches for the bra draped over the lampshade. But it's Kalinda's, not hers, and she sighs.

"Hey," Kalinda says softly, slipping up beside her, pressing her lips to Sophia's shoulder. "Come on."

"Come on what?" says Sophia stiffly.

Kalinda smiles, crooks an arm around her neck, kisses her once, twice, lets her other hand slide down her ass. "Come on, I still have another couple hours before I have to pick her up."

/

"You've got to be kidding me. His wife?"

Five months in, and Kalinda's surprised by how much she enjoys Stern Lockhart. It's a big, bustling firm, full of overeducated people overly worried about the economic downturn; nobody even notices Kalinda unless she wants them to. They look the other way when she cuts legal corners, and she's become, somehow, a confidante to the younger name partners. Jonas Stern isn't wild about her, but he's barely around and rarely gives his seal of approval to anybody. She's managing. She's more than managing.

"I didn't know she was even a lawyer."

She's managing with Donna, too, to her surprise. Work keeps them both busy, and Kalinda's managed to limit the inevitable dalliances to men at a decent distance from Donna's circles.

"Yeah. Apparently she had a thing with Will back in the day."

Now this sounds interesting. Kalinda pauses to consult her notes a reasonable distance from Fitzgerald and Ryan, two white third-year associates in their late twenties wearing identical suits, who are clustered by the coffeemaker.

"Really? I wouldn't think Will would go for …"

"Maybe she was different back then."

"I mean that kind of nepotism. It seems like he's … you know. He wouldn't risk the firm for that."

"Everybody has a weak spot."

Kalinda agrees.

"It's going to be weird." Fitzgerald stirs a third packet of Equal into his coffee. Kalinda leans up against the wall. "For the junior associate to be so much older."

"There's another one, too," Ryan says. "Some Harvard kid."

"Yeah. Agos. My sister knew him there."

"Like, knew knew?"

Fitzgerald ignores him. "I kind of feel sorry for her, you know? I mean, no one's going to be able to talk about anything else when she's around. Her husband's in jail. And if she only got the job because Will—imagine what Diane's going to be like."

Kalinda manages to round the corner and slip into a ladies' room before she bursts into laughter. She tries to remember the woman's name—Julia, maybe. Alice. Peter Florrick's wife. It's as if the man is determined to follow her everywhere.