Chapter Sixteen #2
“You want me to sit on the table.” Edie put the heels of her palms behind her, on the smooth wood, ready to hop up. “Then what’s going to happen?”
“Maybe I’m just going to make your tea and feed you bourbon creams.”
Edie hopped up on the table, her eyes right on Cosima’s. Seawater blue. Risk the ocean. “You can feed me if that’s what you want.”
Cosima rolled her eyes, but she smiled, and then Edie heard the underwater whoosh of Cosima’s hands holding both sides of her head, covering her ears, before her palms slid down to either side of her neck.
She opened her legs so Cosima could step as close as possible, and she did, her hips fitting between Edie’s legs so well that Edie wrapped her thighs around Cosima’s hips, her arms over her shoulders.
Her entire body sighed in relief.
“Call me princess,” Cosima breathed against Edie’s mouth.
Edie used her tongue to pull the bow of Cosima’s upper lip into her mouth, and when she sucked it against her teeth and Cosima made a rough noise, Edie slid her hands over Cosima’s front and unzipped her coveralls to the waist, revealing Edie’s familiar Green Bay Packers T-shirt. “You stole my shirt.”
Cosima kissed Edie’s lower lip. “You left it in the bathroom. It smelled like you. Call me princess.”
She didn’t. She snuck her hands into the coveralls and onto Cosima’s waist, pulling up the hem of the tee until she felt her bare skin, soft, so soft, and hot. “I like that you stole my shirt. You should know that I’m not wearing a shirt under my coveralls.”
Cosima kissed Edie’s lower lip again, and Edie used her legs and hands on Cosima’s waist to pull her closer and deepen the kiss, and then, impossibly, the kiss slowed—impossible because it was clear neither one of them could get enough of each other, enough closeness, enough touch, enough breath, and this should’ve meant a kiss that was heated, frantic.
But this was a kiss with an iron anchor, pulling them both under, reassuring them of the perfect vastness of their want.
Edie felt the melting sensation again, her pulse a naked throb, and as if she had said out loud, I want you, Cosima’s hips pressed into her, and they found a rhythm of their bodies against each other that echoed their kiss.
Cosima slowly bit her way over Edie’s jaw, her earlobe, her neck. It was preposterous that they hadn’t been doing this since they came back from France. They could’ve been doing this while they argued about going to Spain.
“Cosima.”
“Hmm.” She softly bit her way back up again, stopping to pull Edie’s earlobe into her mouth.
“Fuck.” Cosima sighed with pleasure.
“What are you wearing under this?” Cosima tugged down Edie’s zipper as Edie kissed her forehead, her temple.
She ran her hands up Cosima’s sides under the Packers tee, and there wasn’t a bra, but Edie edged herself with the velvety bare skin of Cosima’s sides, her armpits, letting herself fully fantasize about her breasts.
“Ah, god.” Edie pushed her hips forward as Cosima pulled down one of the cups of her bra, which was the one printed with apples housing smiling green worms.
“Edie,” Cosima whispered.
She opened her eyes. Cosima was brushing her fingertips over one of Edie’s breasts.
Edie had big breasts, something that had never not been a very mixed experience, and revealing them could be vulnerable for her.
She tried to see the same thing Cosima did—her heavy breast spilled over the shoved-down cup, the bunched nipple almost disappearing among the freckles, pure eroticism—but it was hard not to notice the red welts from her bra, how her breast hung from her chest, and she felt herself stiffen involuntarily.
Cosima eased her hand away. “Not okay?”
Edie took a deep breath, turned on and shy at once. “It’s okay. I’m self-conscious about them, but you feel good.”
Cosima pulled back a little, and Edie had to move her hands to give her room.
She grabbed the hem of the green and gold T-shirt and yanked it up to her neck, exposing her entire naked torso to Edie’s delighted inspection.
“I feel that way, too. They’re so small, except for the one that is trying to be bigger than the other.
One of my nipples is inverted.” She touched the nipple, its edges tight, its tip pulled inward.
Edie was so wet, it was hard to focus on how sexy Cosima was with the shirt ruched under her chin, her naked tits as flushed as her chest, their asymmetry somehow making her seem more naked, more exquisitely fuckable, which then turned her own self-consciousness on itself and made Edie want to strip her clothes off in front of this woman and let her examine every part of her, put her mouth on every part of her, and then return the privilege.
“Okay, fuck,” Cosima said with a wet kiss to the side of Edie’s mouth, “you’re so hot, can we—”
“We can, princess,” Edie whispered into Cosima’s smile, finally giving her what she wanted.
They could. They pressed their breasts together, moaned into a sloppy kiss, and then their hands were everywhere, their mouths.
They were going to fuck right on this five-thousand-year-old table with the Aga looking on, and it was going to be the best sex of Edie’s life when she had already had the best sex of her life with this woman in France, but that was how it was with them, wasn’t it?
That was why they were in so much trouble.
Cosima had Edie’s coveralls partway off one shoulder and Edie had just placed a kiss that would leave a mark on one of Cosima’s breasts when the kitchen door banged open, making both of them yelp and grab at their coveralls.
Edie nearly fell off the table in her haste to leap off it.
Their zippers were hardly up before Morag burst in, a hulking man behind her who had to be seven feet tall.
“Jesus Christ, Morag! I only have the one heart! You have a phone! I’ve seen you text!”
Morag hung up her handbag on the hook by the door and shrugged out of her coat. “Doesn’t look like you would’ve paid any attention to a text, does it?”
Edie checked her zipper, died a little, and zipped it up the last three inches. “You didn’t say you were coming back from your sister’s!”
Morag crossed her arms. “And why would I have to? This is my inn, isn’t it?
Better question is what the two of you are doing here when you should be on a plane to Barcelona already.
You take a lot of tea breaks clearing out a single room?
Were you too busy making my inn look like a boot sale with the furniture spread out under a tent in the front garden? ”
The heat of Edie’s lust transformed into anger at this string of uncalled-for criticism.
“What is your deal? Ever since we’ve come back from France, you’ve grown more spikes than a hedgehog.
You wanted me to redo the lounge. You gave me free rein.
We told you we hit a snag in France. Do you want us to find the treasure or not?
Do you want to update this inn or not?” Her ears were hot. Never a good sign.
“I’m just looking for a bit of follow-through!
Who’s young with all their wits about them, rich”—she tossed her head in Cosima’s direction—“and at least partly clever”—she flicked her wrist at Edie—“and gives up a treasure hunt across Europe because of an old letter? I thought Americans were supposed to be tough, but you’re both soft as trifle.
Come back here pitching and mooning over each other and not talking, knowing there’s more in Spain, and instead Cosima’s making a mess of the garden and you’re throwing away quality furniture! ”
Morag’s voice didn’t shake, but there was more than anger in it. What was going on here? What didn’t Edie know?
They stared at each other, and the tension meant Edie couldn’t decide if she should offer Morag a chair and a cup of tea or if she should scream.
Her inclination was to scream. She felt like it might get them somewhere faster.
“Ma’am.” The giant who’d come in with Morag cleared his throat. “If you could just point me to the lounge, I’ll get on.”
“Who are you?” Edie demanded.
Morag hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “He’s come for the plaster. Did you even phone around? Everyone knows the Whippledurn brothers charge a king’s ransom for a slap of patch.”
The man looked at the ceiling. “If I should go on, then—”
“No,” Edie said. St. John Whippledurn was who she’d called to fix the plaster. Morag’s list didn’t have a name for plaster repair on it. “Follow me to the lounge, and I’ll get you started.”
She shot Morag one last look that made her scowl, and then the man followed Edie into the lounge, where he seemed relieved to be surrounded by cracked plaster and relative silence.
“You know my granddad plastered this place. Back in the sixties, it would’ve been.
Since he did the job, I doubt there’s anything needed more than a few repairs and a smoothin’ out to get ready for paint.
” He looked around appreciatively. “He always said it would be satisfying to see this inn back to bones. Never understood why Morag put in wallpaper and wall-to-wall. Shame, that. Looks a treat now.”
“Morag was the one who made the shrine to mauve?”
“That’s right.”
Edie considered the room—now so much brighter, objectively more beautiful, and, what’s more, definitely more to Morag’s taste, given her preference for sturdy linen aprons, good leather boots, and her walnut rocker.
Morag had spent a lot of money to make this room pink, so she must have thought it would bring in many more modern guests. Based on the guest book, she hadn’t been wrong. What was strange was how long it had taken her to remodel once the look became tired.
“Listen, I know you came in today to do an estimate and give me your opinion,” Edie said. “But since you’re familiar, if you’re able, I think you could get started.”
St. John rubbed his hands together. “Right. Good. I’ll just prop open the lounge door then and load in my gear.”
He disappeared as Morag came in.