Page 86 of Ladies in Hating
It was easy. God, it was so easy to fall into the shape and texture of Cat’s mouth, the dip of her lower back and the flare of her buttocks. She could taste the hint of salt on Cat’s lips, and she let herself give in to a long-held fantasy. She ran her tongue along the top, the bottom, then lingered luxuriously at the corner. Cat gasped and pressed their bodies together harder.
The library was dim. Cat smelled of ink and soap and pastry. Georgiana’s fingers toyed with the edges of Cat’s hair and then, determinedly, plucked out a handful of pins and let them fall, clinking, to the floor.
Cat’s hair fell down in a heavy lopsided mass, and she pulled back to laugh and shake it out of her face.
That laugh. Georgiana felt her heart beat hard at the sound, familiar and beloved andnotgone, not even a little bit. Her throat was tight with emotion, with relief she could not quite let herself feel.
She held fast to Cat’s shoulders to keep her back when Cat might have closed the space between them again. “You forgive me?” she asked hoarsely.
“Yes.” Cat’s eyes were dark, and Georgiana could see the candle’s flame reflected there like a star. “There was nothing to forgive. I was too hard on you. My expectations were—”
“No,” Georgiana said, and she gripped Cat’s shoulders tighter, her fingers digging in.Too hard,she thought, but couldn’t quite make herself let go. “I want you to have expectations of me. Expectations mean that this matters to you. ThatImatter. That you want what I do.”
Cat’s voice was very gentle. Her fingers soothed the nape of Georgiana’s neck. “And what do you want?”
“To keep on loving you, Catriona Lacey, for as long as you’ll have me.” She ran her thumb across Cat’s full lower lip. “To spend the night with you again. And”—somehow it was almost harder to say the next part—“to wake with you. To wake with you and not to go.”
“I never want you to go.”
It almost hurt, how much she’d craved those words. How much she wanted to believe it could be so. “If I disappoint you,” she said hoarsely, “you will tell me. You will let me make thingsright. Because itwillhappen, again and again, and I… I haven’t done this before. I’ve neverfeltthis way, and I—”
Cat came up on her toes and neatly silenced Georgiana’s anxious babble with her mouth. “I forgive you,” she mumbled in between kisses. Her fingers did something wicked to Georgiana’s throat, to the place beneath her ear. “Already. In advance.” Her mouth grew hungrier, heated and fervent against Georgiana’s jaw. “A thousand times, if necessary.”
“That number seems”—Georgiana gasped a little as Cat sucked harder—“exceptionally high. Perhaps you might expect better of—”
Cat’s mouth was on hers again, laughing, ineffably sweet.
Pleasure came in waves, then, waves that stole through her body, weighted her limbs, and swept her anxieties away. The world was dark and soft, and she was surrounded by the velvet press of Cat’s body and the rough-tender brush of Cat’s palm against her skin.
She touched Cat back, almost wonderingly. Her fingers found buttons, found heavy winter wool, and she pressed hard enough to discern the precise shape of Cat’s body beneath.
Cat made a tiny sound, almost a whine, as Georgiana’s grasping hands dragged her even closer. “I want you,” she muttered into Georgiana’s neck. “I want you naked. Come home with me?”
“Too far,” Georgiana said. “Too long a walk. Stay here.”
Cat drew back a trifle. “Here? At Belvoir’s?”
She was so damned beautiful that Georgiana felt lightheaded. Her mouth looked like the inside of a plum, flushed and glistening. Georgiana felt heat pool between her thighs, and she shifted against the bookshelves. “Selina said we could stay the night.”
“Selina said we could—” Cat’s brows shot upward. “You asked Selina if we could sleep together at Belvoir’s?”
“Not in quite so many words.”
Cat was laughing again, and it was as erotic as her parted lips had been. More. “You scoundrel. You absolute minx.”
“I would not say—”
Cat kissed her again, harder. “I’ve never been so thoroughly and deliberately seduced in my life.”
“That was not precisely my intention.”
“Wasn’t it?” Cat’s mouth curled irrepressibly into a grin, flirtatious and impudent and precisely the way that Georgiana pictured her every time she closed her eyes. “A declaration. An apology. A private room filled with licentious novels.”
Heat rose inexorably to Georgiana’s face and chest, and if she had not already wanted to unfasten the top few buttons of her frock, she certainly did now. “I shall note down the critical elements to your seduction then.”
Cat’s hands roamed from her waist to the underside of her breasts, and Georgiana sucked in a breath. “I appreciate a woman who keeps detailed records.” She set her mouth to Georgiana’s neck, but slower this time. Softer. “Georgie.” She breathed it like a sigh, and Georgiana shivered. “I adore you.”
“Do you?”
