Chapter Fifteen #3
“If I’m not distracted before bed, just thinking of you gets me ready,” Catherine whispers. “I think about that afternoon
and—”
“. . . how I could have gotten on the floor right there, and crawled up your skirts, and pressed my mouth right here?” Rosalie
suggests, rubbing firmly.
Catherine gasps, her body jerking. Her thigh slips in between Rosalie’s legs and Rosalie groans. Which makes Catherine smirk, which forces Rosalie to change the angle of her fingers so Catherine’s jaw goes slack.
She can’t stop herself from rubbing against Catherine’s thigh, and after a moment, Catherine’s mouth crashes onto hers, and
it’s a fast, hot minute until they’re falling apart together, Catherine’s hips pressing Rosalie’s hand into her hip bone,
Rosalie grinding furiously against Catherine’s thigh until they’re messy and spent and laughing against each other again.
They lie there breathing for a long, contented moment before Catherine slips to Rosalie’s side and sprawls on her back, blissful
and so incredibly beautiful. Rosalie turns, wrapping her arm over Catherine’s stomach. She props her chin up on Catherine’s
chest and looks up to meet her flushed, blinking gaze.
“You look incredibly pretty splayed all over my sheets,” Rosalie decides.
Catherine flushes more, if it’s even possible. “Well, you look like a goddess when you come,” she says, tugging on Rosalie
until she shifts, stretching out on top of Catherine, legs tangled.
“I hope this lived up to your imagination from all those nights alone in your bed,” Rosalie says. The moment the words leave
her lips, she realizes just how desperately she wants them to be true. Wants to be sure Catherine enjoyed this—that it was
good for her—that she’ll want to do it again.
Catherine snorts and threads their fingers together on her chest. “My imagination could never have imagined.” She frowns.
“Or something cleverer than that.”
Rosalie feels herself grinning, her chest so light and full and happy.
“And just think, with more practice, and some trips to the more salacious bookstores, we can dream up more imaginative things together,” she says, already wondering if she can get Aunt Genevieve to share where she gets the tawdry novels she never lets Rosalie see, but Rosalie knows live somewhere in her dressing room.
Catherine’s smile dims a little. “That sounds wonderful,” she says softly.
Rosalie’s breath is finally slowing down, but the look on Catherine’s face threatens to make it start up again. “What’s the
matter?”
“It’s nothing. This is magical,” Catherine says quickly, running her fingertips up and down Rosalie’s back.
It would lull her into sleep if she weren’t more in tune with Catherine’s expressions. But she’s spent the last two months
watching the woman, and the last hour cataloguing every minute twitch of her brow, smile, giggle—she can’t let this go, not
now.
“What is it?” Rosalie asks, firmer.
Catherine sighs. “I don’t want to ruin the mood.”
“A little too late for that,” Rosalie says honestly. “We’re already naked, what’s the use in hiding from me?” she adds, trailing
her fingertips down the side of Catherine’s face. “Can’t be that scary when our tits are pressed together.”
Catherine laughs, surprised, and Rosalie can’t help but grin back. She wants to know—needs to know—what’s troubling her . . .
lover? But it doesn’t need to be grim.
“I want to just lie here and catch my breath, and then go another round, or two, and kiss you until dawn,” Catherine says,
shrugging a little. “But I also want to know what happens after dawn.”
“What’s between this and the simple engagement, marriage, husband of it all,” Rosalie surmises.
Catherine nods, lip between her teeth, and Rosalie sighs.
She doesn’t know. Were one of them a man, they’d be having this moment after already committing to a lifetime together.
There would be no questions, no varied outcomes.
Marriage. Children. Forever. They’d get to know each other afterward, and hope they still liked each other.
“Maybe that’s it,” Rosalie mumbles.
“What’s it?” Catherine asks, a hint of panic in her voice.
Rosalie scooches up to plant a firm kiss to her lips, then pulls back to meet her eyes. “We get to know each other.”
“What?”
Rosalie sits up, waiting for Catherine to shift up as well, resting against the pillows with Rosalie in her lap.
“If you were a man, we’d get married before we really knew. Stuck together forever. But us, what we have—maybe it’s lucky?
Maybe it’s beautiful that we get to be together just to be together. Not chess pieces to be traded for a business deal, not
a prize to be won as the season’s catch. I like you, you like me, and that’s enough for now.”
Catherine considers her and Rosalie smiles back, a lightness in her chest she’s never felt before.
“Just . . . kiss in secret, and find ways to be alone together—”
“And very, very naked,” Rosalie adds.
Catherine giggles. “Just kiss, and be naked, and spend time together . . . until what?”
Rosalie shrugs. “Until we know what comes next. Until we’re ready to . . . ask for help with what comes next. Until we have
enough money or power or . . . whatever . . . to decide what comes next for ourselves.”
“You’re okay with not knowing?”
All her life, Rosalie’s been told she’ll marry rich, have a bunch of babies, and then make sure they marry rich. She’s never wanted that future, not ever, not once. This—with Catherine—whatever it is—isn’t nearly the same answer. There’s no finality. No goal to strive for. No race to run.
She feels so free. So incredibly, incandescently free, to be exactly who she is with someone who likes her just as she is.
To be naked and unashamed and happy.
“It’s not not-knowing. It’s choosing to find out together,” she says, a surge of joy coursing through her.
“Choosing to find out together,” Catherine whispers, a smile blooming slowly across her beautiful cheeks. “I like that.”
“I like you,” Rosalie says, her voice light, a giggle bursting forth.
Catherine giggles back, reaching out to draw Rosalie in. “I like you too. So very much,” she whispers, before crashing their
lips together.
And then they do just as Catherine says. They kiss, and they touch, and they choose together to forgo sleep to see the sun
rise out the window, wrapped in each other’s arms. Bare, and free, and together.