by Lily Maxton
She looked down at their entwined fingers and wondered who’d been there to take Win’s hand when Sarah wasn’t there. Slowly, she let her thumb trace along Win’s palm, a tentative caress. Win—who’d been surveying the cottage—looked at her and swallowed, an emotion Sarah couldn’t name glittering in her eyes.
She thought back to what Win had said—Maybe you were kissing the wrong person.
And hope fluttered in her stomach, like a bird testing its wings. But hope was such a fragile thing.
“Did you make many friends in London?” Sarah asked, voice rough even to her own ears.
“Gregory was my friend…though we weren’t quite as close at the end. He was always gone. I didn’t realize he’d been gambling until the creditors came.”
“There was no one else?”
“No one close,” Win said.
“Why?”
She made a soft, amused noise. “Why do you think? I compared every one of them to you—she’s not as sensible as Sarah. She’s not as intelligent as Sarah. She doesn’t read as much as Sarah.”
“Doesn’t read as much?” she asked. “That wasn’t really one of your criteria, was it?”
“It was.”
“It’s no wonder no one met it, then.”
“I think that I didn’t want anyone else to meet it.” Win paused. “Don’t assume I was wallowing in loneliness, though. I had friends. They just weren’t dear to me, I suppose. They just weren’t…you.” She shook her head. “I hated your letters,” she said suddenly.
Sarah blinked at her, surprised.
“Because I looked forward to them, every single time. And every single time, like a fool, I was disappointed. You pushed me away,” she said, voice sounding thick. “You wrote about the weather.”
If it was any other conversation, Sarah might have felt like laughing, but now her mouth was dry, and there was a painful lump in her throat. She’d known in an abstract way that in protecting herself she must have hurt Win, but hearing it aloud…the knowledge cut deeply. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was…difficult…for me. It hurt to write to you.”
“Why was it difficult?”
“I didn’t want you to marry Gregory.”
“Why?”
“We were best friends…” Sarah faltered.
But Win wasn’t letting the matter go so easily. “Why? We could have still been friends, Sarah. Why weren’t we?”
And pulse hammering, Sarah told her the truth, a truth she’d realized too late and held on to, silently, all this time. “Because I wanted you. I wanted to be the one to kiss you and take you to bed and wake up beside you in the morning.”
A beat of silence passed. Sarah only had a moment to realize that Win didn’t seem surprised by this revelation. Then, Win said, so low it was almost a whisper, “Do you still?”
Sarah looked at her, at her wide eyes and intent stare. There was something hopeful in her expression, and Sarah’s heart lifted in response. She wasn’t alone in this wanting. Finally, she wasn’t alone.
Her hand tightened around Win’s. Almost reflexively, she pulled and Win stepped closer. The faint scent of roses drifted up from the heat of her skin.
Sarah wasn’t confused this time; she wasn’t frozen in place—she was older, now. She knew what she wanted. And what happened tomorrow didn’t much seem to matter in the space of here and now.
She took it slow. Let her free hand settle on Win’s hip, as gently as a bird perching. Moved infinitesimally closer. Her pulse beat hard against her throat, but it was all right, she thought. It was all right. Win was affected, too—her lips were parted, and Sarah could hear each trembling breath that fell from them. Could see how dark her eyes were.
Until she closed them, and her lashes fluttered delicately against her skin.
“What about Eleanor?” Win whispered, quiet, quiet. There was so little space between them, she barely had to speak to be heard.
“What about her?”
“You like her. I can tell.”
“I do.”
“Then—”
Sarah bent her head to breathe in Win’s scent. Her nose brushed the soft, vulnerable spot just underneath the other woman’s jaw.
“But I was drawn to her in the first place because she reminded me of you.”
Now, Win opened her eyes, looking a bit cross. “We’re nothing alike.”
“You are,” she said teasingly. “Not on the surface, perhaps. It was your passion. You have so many interests that come and go. Eleanor is more focused—”
Win’s eyebrows drew together. “I resent that,” she muttered.
“But the passion is the same.” She nuzzled into Win, lips just ghosting across her jaw, and heard the other woman’s breath hitch, the sound like sweet, sweet music. “She reminded me of you, of the day you looked over the garden wall and asked me what I knew about chemical philosophy.”
“Do you regret it?”
“What?”
“Following me? I was so troublesome.”
“Was?”
Win laughed softly.
“I’ve never regretted it,” Sarah said. “Not once. I like your kind of trouble.”
And then Win turned her head with the faintest sigh, like surrender, and finally, their lips touched.
It was chaste, as far as kisses went; it was tentative, almost a question. They’d been dancing around one another for so many years that this felt like a culmination, a crescendo, a tipping point between silence and all the things left unsaid.
Win’s lips were soft and warm, and Sarah had never tasted anything she liked more.
I missed you, she wanted to say. I shouldn’t have pushed you away. It was so quiet here without you. Too quiet, here without you.
But any words she might have spoken were muffled by the press of Win’s mouth, and then the slip of her tongue, silky and damp. And Sarah thought she probably knew anyway. She must have felt the same.
Sarah pressed her fingers to the small of Win’s back, pressed her closer. Her other hand slipped behind Win’s head, plunging into her hair. Win made a small noise, a whimper deep in her throat, and kissed her harder.
This, Sarah thought, as their teeth clicked together, as Win’s breasts were crushed between them, as Sarah bumped into the wall behind her, barely heeding the sensation under the onslaught of so many other ones. This woman. This kiss.
It was everything she’d wanted, everything she’d missed.
Chapter 9
In the dim glow of the lantern that shone through the carriage window, Sarah could make out a dusting of pink across Win’s cheeks. Sarah had been sensible in the old abandoned hermitage, in the quiet of the woods—they’d done nothing more than kiss, aware that someone might come looking for them if they were gone too long.
But as she stared at Win, at bruised lips and hair that was disheveled from Sarah’s hands, she found it almost impossible to be sensible.
She wanted to run her palms along Win’s ample curves, to find the shape of her underneath her clothes. Feel how they were the same and how they were different.
“I…” Win met her gaze, then glanced out the window, blush deepening, and Sarah felt a tug at her heart.
She hadn’t expected this shyness from the other woman. She reached her hand out, across the space between them, and, after barely a second of hesitation, Win reached out, too.
But instead of taking her hand, Sarah tugged at Win’s glove, finger by finger, fascinated by the slow reveal of skin. It was a bit like unwrapping a gift, waiting with breathless anticipation to see what would be unveiled next. She let the glove fall to the carriage floor, then, overwhelmed by the need to feel the press of skin against skin, removed her own glove. She bent low, tracing her thumb along Win’s fingers, across each bitten nail.
“It’s an ugly habit,” Win said, and Sarah heard the self-consciousness in her voice. There it was again, that heavy sweet pull at her chest.
Didn’t Win realize she was the loveliest t
hing Sarah had ever seen?
“I have worse habits,” she replied.
“Really?” A note of amused skepticism crept into Win’s tone. “Such as?”
“I used to read while I walked…until the day I nearly stepped in front of a carriage because I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
“Sarah!”
“I don’t do it anymore,” she hastened to add. “One instance of almost being flattened was quite enough for me.” It had been a habit she’d picked up in the weeks after Win had moved to London, loathe to tear herself away from fiction and be plummeted back to reality.
“And no part of you could ever be ugly to me.” Sarah told her, surprised by how her own voice emerged, low and intent and reverent.
Win’s eyes widened, and Sarah ducked her head and pressed a lingering kiss to the center of the other woman’s palm. Her nose brushed the fragile skin of her wrist.
Win made a soft, helpless noise at the back of her throat, the same noise she’d made when they’d kissed, and Sarah wanted to lean forward and swallow it whole. She came to a decision in that instant—she had had quite enough of being sensible.
“I’ll be awake late tonight. You can come to my room, if you’d like.”
Win sucked in an audible breath. “Are you…do you mean…”
“I’m inviting you to my bed, yes,” she said, amused despite the coil of tension in her stomach. She might have wondered at the fact that she wasn’t more nervous, but this moment, with this woman, felt like something they’d been building toward for a very long time.
“That’s certainly forward of you.”
“Have I insulted your delicate sensibilities?” she asked with a raised brow.
Win huffed. “You know my sensibilities aren’t that delicate.”
“So—”
“Yes,” Win blurted out, emphatically. Somehow, her blush turned an even deeper shade of red. She glanced out the window again, but she didn’t remove her hand from Sarah’s. “Yes,” she said, softer now. She bit her lip; a half-embarrassed smile still emerged, though, irrepressible.
And Sarah felt like she’d just harnessed the sun.
Closing the distance between the two bedchambers later that night was so easy, so natural, Win was barely even aware of moving. The kiss had been like that, too—natural—as though her mouth had been made for no other purpose than to feel the press of Sarah’s. She remembered when she’d first felt that awareness of the other girl—the instinctive response to fight it, to suppress it.
Now she knew. It wasn’t a thing she could fight. It would be easier to tell herself not to breathe.
There might have been a pit of anxiety in her chest when she lifted her arm and knocked, and a dazed sense of awe at what she was doing, but there was still nowhere else in the world she’d rather be.
“Come in,” Sarah called.
She was wrapped in a silk dressing robe, standing by a bath that was filled with steaming water. The servants had all gone, and their gazes met through the fog of heat. When she breathed in, Win smelled faint notes of lemon. Sarah had always favored clean scents like citrus or mint to floral ones.
She imagined Sarah sinking into the warm water, letting it envelop every inch of her bare skin.
Win ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth, trying to brace herself against a wave of dizziness. “You can still bathe, if you want to.”
Sarah’s hands went to the tie at her waist. Her face was impassive, but her fingers trembled, the only sign that she was a little more overwhelmed than she wanted to appear. It gave Win strength, knowing she might not be the only one with this vice-like grip around her chest.
In one efficient motion, Sarah pushed the silk robe from her shoulders and it fluttered down to pool at her feet. Underneath it, she was naked. Win couldn’t help but stare at her long limbs and elegant throat, the high pale breasts and softly jutting hips, the dark curls between her thighs.
Win felt a hunger roar to life inside her. Sarah was beautiful. Had always been beautiful, but now, with nothing between them, the feeling was so raw that she ached with it.
She watched as Sarah stepped lightly into the porcelain tub, as she sank down beneath the surface, causing water to surge toward the lip.
Win moved forward, drawn by some force too powerful to name. “You haven’t taken your hair down.”
“You could assist me,” Sarah suggested, a hint of mischief in her words. That was the way her humor usually emerged—subtle, restrained, but unmistakably there.
Win lowered to her knees behind Sarah, the rim of the tub hitting her ribcage. When she began to catch each pin between her fingertips, and slide them gently from Sarah’s hair, Sarah closed her eyes. With each inhale, her breasts just barely broke the surface of the water, gleaming, with each exhale, they slipped back under.
Win tried not to get too distracted from her task, though it proved difficult.
She watched as a curtain of shining dark hair fell across her knuckles, slid over them like silk. She shivered at the soft, cool caress of it.
Without being prompted, she cupped her hands in the water, and let trickles of it descend into Sarah’s hair. Some streams of water took a different path, trailing down Sarah’s cheek, slipping down across her neck as lovingly as a kiss.
Win took a ball of soap and worked some lather between her hands. She noticed the empty spot where her wedding ring had been—she’d taken it off the night before, and the lack of jewelry looked both oddly vulnerable and perfectly right.
Then, loathe to not be touching Sarah for even a second longer, she slid her fingers back into her hair.
The other woman sighed deeply, a sound that Win felt to the tips of her toes.
This moment—the soft candlelight, the scent of lemons, the silken feel of Sarah’s hair against her skin—was so achingly intimate that it felt like a dream.
Win painstakingly washed away the soapy lather. Some of it splashed onto her bodice but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Once all of the suds were in the water, Sarah tipped her head back against the tub, and Win looked at her upside down, regretfully letting each tendril of hair fall from her fingers. She’d never been so needy before—her hands, once unoccupied, felt cruelly empty, so she settled them on Sarah’s shoulders, enjoying the feel of her slick skin.
Sarah opened her eyes to watch Win, and there seemed to be something goading in their deep blue depths, something hot and wanting.
Win never had been able to resist a challenge. She leaned forward, still on her knees, to reach down with her hand, slipping across wet skin, finally closing over Sarah’s breast. She smoothed her thumb over the pink tip, watched, fascinated, as it beaded beneath the water.
Sarah’s lips parted, and Win bent her head and sipped from them like a woman dying of thirst.
Her hand swept lower, splayed possessively across Sarah’s velvety-soft stomach.
She wondered if Sarah had ever felt herself like this, during a bath, if she’d ever solved the question of this fierce, insatiable want with her own touch. Win certainly had, when Gregory wasn’t around, never quite sure what it was that she longed for, that her husband couldn’t satisfy.
Her fingertips brushed the black hair between Sarah’s legs and Sarah shifted in the water, thighs falling open, head falling back against Win’s shoulder, a rush of water nearly over spilling the tub.
The anticipation in Win’s stomach was hot and heavy, a coil of tension that begged for release.
She touched her there, lightly at first, and then taking cues from Sarah’s soft gasps, she pressed her hand down more firmly—fingers against her folds, the heel of her hand grinding against the apex.
Sarah’s hips jerked, rising up to meet her, urging her to a rhythm. Water sloshed back and forth before flowing over the rim, drenching Win’s bodice.
She pulled back, laughing.
And Sarah, lips bruised red, cheeks stained pink, looking like she’d just woken from a night of g
lorious lovemaking, blinked at Win’s dripping bodice. “I’m sorry.”
Win helped her out of the tub and handed her a linen towel. “It’s fine.” It was—all of the things she wanted to do couldn’t easily be achieved in water, anyway. She watched as Sarah patted herself dry, nipples prickling in the cool air.
Sarah ran the towel over her hair, and Win was overwhelmed again, by the intimacy of the act—Sarah, bathed in lemons and candlelight, bare and vulnerable, hair damp and dark around her shoulders. She looked like a water nymph, just emerged from a lake, caught unaware by human guests.
And then Sarah looked up, caught her watching. A small smile curled her lips, and the tight ache in Win’s chest began to ease. This was for her. All of it was for her. Sarah could never be so unguarded with anyone else.
Hunger licked at her like fire, spread like flame.
She pulled the towel away from Sarah, letting it fall to the floor, and then, hands on Sarah’s hips, she pushed her back until her knees caught the edge of the bed. Sarah’s eyes widened, a flicker of dark lashes, but she sank back, and Win crawled over her.
Sarah hissed as Win caught her nipple roughly in her mouth, teeth grazing over the tip. Sarah’s hands went to Win’s head, and for a horrible, uncertain moment, she thought she’d been too enthusiastic, but no…she wasn’t pushed away. Instead, Sarah’s fingers dug into her hair, dislodging pins, holding her closer with an almost startling force.
“I want to taste you,” Win whispered, marking Sarah’s delicate collarbone with open-mouthed kisses. She found the spot where a pulse trembled and pressed her tongue to it.
“Yes,” Sarah responded, breathless, and Win felt her whole body clench with need. Her stays were too tight—rasping like rough velvet across her nipples every time she took a breath—but she moved lower, heedless of anything except Sarah’s taste, and touch, and smell.
As she moved, loose tendrils of hair brushed across Sarah’s stomach, making her startle slightly. In apology, she kissed her, above her navel and below it, soft and lingering, and then she settled back, pushing at Sarah’s thighs as she did.