Page 64 of Ladies in Hating
She could hear the smile in Cat’s voice as Cat touched the side of Georgiana’s hip, very lightly. “So do you.”
It took a moment for Cat’s meaning to dawn. More than a moment—it took the slow slide of Cat’s fingers across her lower belly, and another throb of need between her thighs before Georgiana realized what Cat had meant.
So she was blushing when Cat laughed and rolled her over in the bed. When Cat kissed away the heat in her cheeks and throat.
“Georgie mine,” Cat whispered against her skin, “let me taste you again.”
And Georgiana did.
Chapter 21
The vampyress was not a creature of the night at all, it seemed, but a human woman, made of fire and sinew and heart.
—from Lady Darling’s manuscript in progress
It was just past dawn when Georgiana roused herself. She always woke early, to see to Bacon.
But this time, when she woke, her arm was splayed across Cat’s chest, and their legs were intertwined. Cat’s fingers loosely braceleted Georgiana’s wrist, somewhere at the level of Cat’s heart.
They were both naked. At some point in the night, Cat had laughed and strewn her wet chemise across the back of a chair beside the stove before she’d stumbled back to the bed.
The sheets were still a little damp, tangled round their feet, and Georgiana looked for so long at their intertwined fingers that her eyes started to burn. Cat’s skin was more gold than her own. Cat’s whole body seemed gilt-edged in the faint morning light, and she smelled of rose soap and, beneath that, the sweet warm scent that clung to her skin. Georgiana breathed her in and felt—
She scarcely knew what she felt. It seemed dangerous to feel so happy. It seemed impossible that Cat could be here—some fey caprice that could be withdrawn in an instant.
Fear—a familiar companion—made itself known in the tightness of her chest, but she tried to fight it back. She had promised. She had promised Cat that she would not run away.
She slipped out of the bed, dressed quietly in the shadows, and took Bacon and her purse downstairs to arrange for breakfast and a conveyance back to London. She suspected Cat would have chosen the mail coach for herself, but Georgiana could afford the post-chaise and so she secured it for an hour hence and decided to let Cat argue with her later. By the time she made it back upstairs with hot fruit tarts to break their fast, Cat was already awake, dressed, and stirring the coals to bring them back to life.
Cat paused and looked up when Georgiana came back into the chamber, and Georgiana could’ve spent a lifetime staring at Cat’s morning-scrubbed cheeks, the sweet curve to her lips—the way happiness settled itself upon her face and lingered there.
“Good morning,” Georgiana said. She felt hideously awkward—she was blushing—God’s teeth, how was this morning-after meant to go? “I’ve hired us a carriage. We leave in an hour.”
That had come out too abruptly. She knew it had. Some inward part of herself watched in horror as she trampled upon the fragile trust that had blossomed between them the previous night.
But to Georgiana’s surprise, Cat did not seem put off. The corner of her mouth tipped up, lopsided and impudent. “Did you now?”
She crossed the room in two long strides, closed the door firmly behind Georgiana, and then went up on her toes to put her mouth very close to Georgiana’s ear. Her breath tickled, and Georgiana shivered, just a little, as the sensation coasted over her skin. “I shan’t waste a moment, then.”
They were late to the appointment with the post-chaise.
Inside the carriage—after a vigorous argument about payment that Georgiana won by an appeal to Bacon’s poor nerves—Cat proposed that they review the papers she had purloined from the corpse. She brought them out of her jacket and passed them to Georgiana, then promptly shocked Georgiana speechless by lifting Georgiana’s ankle, unlacing her boot, and putting her thumbs into the arch of Georgiana’s stockinged foot.
Georgiana stared mutely at her from above the unintelligible writing.
“Don’t mind me,” Cat said. “I’m merely trying to get another look at your ankles.” Her grin was so wonderfully, terribly familiar—saucy and vibrant and shamelessly flirtatious.
Georgiana felt her cheeks go hotter and hotter, and she buried her face in the papers and tried not to make eye contact while Cat did marvelous things with her competent hands.
“I have no idea what these are meant to indicate,” Georgiana said when her face cooled and her brain resumed more or less typical functioning.
“Do you see the little moons? I thought the papers might have something to do with Luna Renwick, but I cannot imagine what they might mean, or why that fellow had them on his person. Did you say his name was Rogers?”
“Rogers, yes.” Georgiana considered the papers. “We might go to Belvoir’s and talk to Selina about him. See if she knows where he went after she put him out. And, if we are going to Belvoir’s, we ought to invite Iris as well.”
Cat’s mouth quirked, and she moved on to Georgiana’s un-massaged foot, even though Georgiana wascertainshe had not looked at it mournfully. “That’s your friend from the shrubbery?”
“Indeed.” Ah yes, there was all the blood rushing to her faceagain. She’d missed it, in the sixty seconds or so that it had gone. “Iris works with translations of ancient languages. If anyone can make sense of whatever code this has been written in, it’s certainly Iris.”
