Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Then Morag gave over the keys with a secret smile, and as they ran to the car park, all of Edie’s new old people clapped and cheered, and she and Cosima laughed as Cosima attempted to jog in stilettos.
Edie ground the gears of Morag’s van getting out of the car park.
She pushed its limits through the roundabout and down the road to Harlaxton to the front door of the inn, which barely got closed before Cosima was pulling at Edie’s jacket and kissing her.
“Take off all your clothes,” Cosima demanded between kisses.
“I’m not taking off my clothes in the lounge.” Edie grabbed Cosima by the waist to pull her toward the stairs. “I don’t want to scandalize the ghosts.”
They tripped their way up, Cosima disregarding the prudish feelings of the ghosts by stripping her clothes off as she went and dropping them on the stairs.
“I sanded these down,” Edie pointed out. “Took the runner up to do it.”
“You’re a marvel. The wood is glowing. Take off your jacket.”
Edie did, but she carried it with her, her eyes on Cosima’s delicate blouse as it dropped to the floor, followed by her shoes on the landing.
Edie hung her jacket over the railing, memorizing the shape of Cosima’s back, her waist, her silken shoulder, the slight flare of her hips as she smoothed her tweedy trousers down her legs.
She wore a phantasm of a bra, panties that barely deserved the name. Nothing else.
“Where are my things?” Cosima asked, turning to look at Edie over her shoulder. “Why are you still wearing that?” She gestured at Edie’s apparently offensive clothes.
Edie began unbuttoning her mouse shirt from the bottom. “In your room. I didn’t touch anything.”
“You didn’t. That’s interesting.” She lifted her arms and began pulling the pins out of her hair, letting them fall to the carpet as she ambled down the hallway.
“Considering how confident you were in my return, and the security of our love, I might have thought you would have packed the room up. Put it to service, since I would be sleeping with you when I returned.”
Edie had considered moving her own things to Cosima’s room so she could sleep among the shades of her lost love, but she’d thought better of it.
“No, lucky for you, I didn’t doubt you in any way, and I haven’t had time to start ripping out the pink wallpaper yet.
Morag doesn’t have another guest booked until May. ”
Cosima flung the door open and sat on the edge of the bed, smoothly crossing her legs. Edie picked up the last of the hairpins from the carpet and fanned them out between her fingers. “You dropped these,” she said.
“And you picked them up.” Cosima held out her palm.
She settled the hairpins into Cosima’s hand. “Now what?”
“Now we settle out the game. I tallied up our points on the plane. We have an equal number.” She put the hairpins down on the table beside the bed.
Edie smiled. “What a twist of fate. Do we do a tiebreaker round now?”
“We do not. I’ve decided to divest myself of my points and whatever glory I could potentially lay claim to. Even if my life were worse than yours, everything I won a point for was an experience that led me to you.”
“That’s unbearably romantic.” She meant it. Her heart ached. “I divest, too. Consider the game renounced.”
“I will.” Cosima smiled. “Take off your shirt.”
Edie shrugged out of the shirt she had unbuttoned. Because she’d been in the middle of racing halfway across the globe in a romantic gesture, she had her best bra on, a black, strappy number that visibly strained against the weight of her breasts, but in a sexy way.
Cosima cleared her throat. “Um.”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve run out of bossy. It’s—” She gestured at Edie’s rack.
“That’s good, because the way I have to shimmy out of these pants didn’t really go with the atmosphere you were trying to create.” Edie unbuttoned her very tight, very stretchy jeans and wiggled out of them while she tried not to pant, taking her socks with them.
Cosima looked at her and let out a long, happy sigh. “I’m so glad to be here. I’m so glad to be here with you. I never want to miss you again. Let’s be the kind of couple who only ever does everything together.”
“I’m not sure they have other kinds in Harlaxton. Morag and Agatha have been a lot to behold. I keep beholding them by accident, which is a lot to bear up against without you here.”
“Poor Edie,” Cosima said. “Get the pink bag from my closet. Then I’ll make you forget you’ve ever felt anything but blissful and satisfied.” She bit her fingernail and flopped back on the bed.
Laughing, Edie found the bag easily, locked the bedroom door, and crawled onto the coverlet beside Cosima.
“Your mattress is more comfortable than mine. Tell me how long you’re really staying so I can brace my heart up against disappointment.
I’m not going to admit I lost faith for one week and five and three-quarters days, but I will say that I’ve had a hard time stringing together coherent thoughts, and I’m still shaky.
And tell me if everything is okay back home.
Are you and Duncan good? Did you save the company, or will I have to boycott PFS movies and merchandise for the rest of my life?
That could be difficult. My niece is really into the new animated series of Ship of the Cosmos.
” She curled against Cosima’s side and stroked her fingertips across her bare stomach. “I have a lot of questions.”
“I feel confident that Duncan and I saved the company. He and I are good, really good. I think you may meet him soon. There is a long road I’ll tell you about when I don’t want to lick every inch of your body, but I don’t believe it will take me back to California for a while, and definitely not without a few days’ warning. ”
Edie played her fingertips over Cosima’s skin, watching her expression. Her eyes were half-mast—not sleepy, but loved and aroused. Every part of her was soft. Every part of her was here, right here.
She kissed her favorite place behind Cosima’s ear, taking her fingers under the waistband of her panties, then back out again, then a little lower.
Every time Cosima’s breathing got deeper, or she moved restlessly, or her hips rolled, Edie slowed down.
Had it ever been this way? Had she ever felt, with a partner, with a lover, like she had all the time she needed and nothing to prove?
That the goal of pleasure was achieved just by being together, and there was no beginning and no end to it?
She had not.
But that was how it was with Cosima.
“Tell me what you want.” Edie kissed under her chin.
“I want to try my strap set. I’m glad we forgot about it in favor of other things in Barcelona, because now we’ll remember this forever.”
Edie reached over her body and opened the bag, pulling out the harness and the dildo, testing the shiny rose-gold bullet that fit into the harness for Cosima and peeling the seal off the little bottle of lube. “Can I put it on you?”
“You can.”
Cosima watched as Edie slid her panties down and fitted the dildo and bullet into the harness.
She was glad for her own experience with this so she could share it with Cosima and make this first time—this experiment with a fantasy—go easy.
The harness slid up and over her legs, then her waist, and tightened from there.
Edie spent time fastening every buckle, drawing it out, turning herself on, listening to Cosima breathe and watching her skin flush.
“How does it feel?” Edie asked. “Because it looks like I’m going to die six kinds of erotic deaths.”
Cosima came up on her elbows, then reached down and traced the straps. She ran a finger down the dildo and under its base, her eyes fluttering. “Turn on the bullet.”
Edie leaned over and kissed Cosima’s thigh and pressed the base of the bullet, tight in its pocket. Cosima’s knees came up, and she rolled her hips.
Well, that looked good.
“Yeah?” Edie reached behind her and unhooked her bra, pushed her panties down. Her focus on how Cosima looked in the strap set, her hair spilling over her bare breasts, had made it difficult for her to pay attention to anything else.
“God, yeah.” Cosima’s eyes were looking everywhere.
At Edie, at the strap-on, and them together.
Edie leaned over and kissed up Cosima’s thigh, demanding eye contact, until she got to the dildo.
Then, she grabbed it at the base and licked her way up it in one long stripe, never letting her eyes leave Cosima’s, swirling her tongue at the end.
Cosima’s rapid breathing hollowed the dip at the base of her throat. Her nipples were tight beneath the fabric of her bra, her pupils blown. “What do you want?” Edie reached down and felt how wet she was, forced to tease herself to take the edge off.
Cosima let out a long, shuddering breath. “Can you straddle me and take it? I want to see.”
“Jesus, Cosima.” But Edie smiled, coming up on her knees, then putting a leg over Cosima’s middle, leaning down and kissing her until they were both starting to get impatient.
The bullet probably had Cosima dangerously close.
Edie’s chest was tight, her throat tighter, her eyes burning and threatening soppy tears, but that seemed correct. Everything felt right.
She sat up, running her hands over Cosima’s breasts in their filmy bra, and reached for the lube. She filled her hand with it and then rose up, slicking her hand down the dildo and pressing its tip along where she was wet before directing it at her entrance.
She slowly moved her hips down, down, taking it in, feeling how everything was slippery, how she and Cosima were connected, how the dildo inside her hummed a little from the bullet and made her full, very full, just as Cosima’s hands reached up to cover her breasts.
Edie leaned forward, and Cosima shifted, finding an angle that pressed the bullet against her and made Edie reach down to touch her clit.
This wasn’t going to be a very long experiment.
“Are you okay?” Cosima’s wide eyes were on Edie’s face, even as her hips found a rolling pulse that made her eyes roll back. “Is this okay?”
Edie pushed down, meeting Cosima’s rising hips. “It’s okay, it’s so okay.”
“Kiss me, Edie.” Cosima used her hair to pull her close—such a demanding move that it made Edie’s scalp burn, which made her eyes burn worse, and that was when the angle changed again, their hips discovering a better rhythm with every sliding, sloppy, welcoming kiss until one of them sent Cosima over, pressing her face into Edie’s neck, and Edie right behind her.
“I love you, I love you,” Edie breathed, letting herself fall into something that she couldn’t feel the beginning or end of. It was pleasure, it was love, it was just the right amount of new and forever.
“I love you.” Cosima kissed Edie’s forehead, something she had grown to love so much, how this difficult woman poured tenderness through her and made whatever was happening easy.
Edie slowly rose up, coming to Cosima’s side, then helping her with the buckles so they could pull off the harness and press themselves together, face-to-face.
“Was that like your fantasy?” Edie rubbed her thumb over Cosima’s mouth.
“No. That was much more romantic than what I’d thought of.
I didn’t think about the mutuality of it.
I didn’t imagine how all the love would get in there.
But I didn’t know about love yet, how it specializes in what should be impossible.
Very sneaky.” Her cheeks were pink, her lips swollen.
The tension was gone from her eyebrows, and the contrast to the first time Edie had seen Cosima at the door of this very room was more than stark.
“So in your fantasy you’re strapped in, very hot, and fucking me to the mattress?”
Cosima closed her eyes. “Sometimes into the wall. Or over a chaise.”
Edie laughed. “Plenty of time to see those through. I’ve already sent a chaise I found in the attic to the upholsterer.”
“Edie,” Cosima slurred. “Here’s the thing. Two weeks of near twenty-hour days. Lots of suits. Late-night conversations with Duncan when we should have been sleeping. Too many feelings. No you.”
“You’re falling asleep.” Edie slid her arms under Cosima’s shoulders to lift her up and grab the top of the duvet, bringing it down and then over them both.
“Oh, that’s good.” Cosima settled into the spot she’d claimed, the nook of Edie’s shoulder, her leg over both of Edie’s.
“Don’t move even a little. No, scratch that, you can Edie-wiggle.
But make sure one part of you is always touching me.
Wake me up in ninety minutes and make me Morag’s carrot bread.
I assume you’ve managed to steal, test, and improve the recipe by now. ”
Edie had. She kissed into the curly mass of Cosima’s hair.
When she adjusted to fit her cheek against the top of her head, she noticed the place on the wall where Cosima had cut her mother’s letter from beneath the wallpaper—the first one of fifty years of letters that brought them here. Right here.
And most of what they found hadn’t been on the map.