Page 41

Elfreda stepped outside and felt breathless.

Georgie came up and stood beside her, silent. By day, the tower roof afforded giddy views of the countryside. She used to dare herself to go up on her tiptoes at the parapet, to lean out, stare straight down, and imagine leaping into space, not because she wanted to fall, because she wanted to fly.

She hadn’t thought of that little ritual for years and years.

By night, the countryside was invisible. The black, black sky swept out in all directions, pierced by the pinpoints of the stars. The moon was thinner than a sickle.

None of that robbed her breath.

It was the thought of Georgie seeing the makeshift bed she’d created, a pile of quilts and pillows, lanterns on either side.

“Elf.” There was amazement in their voice. “What is this?”

“Vauxhall.” She swallowed. “Only, Marsden Hall. It’s silly but—”

They grasped her arm, spun her toward them, and kissed her. She almost stumbled, but they caught her, laughing against her mouth.

“There’s no rope dancer,” she breathed, when they broke the kiss. “But I thought…”

She looked up.

“I thought the stars might do.” She looked back at Georgie.

“Do for what?” The light from the lantern played over their eyes, the blue bright and strange, noon in the dead of night.

“Fireworks.”

Those eyes turned back to the pallet. “This is for stargazing?”

She was suddenly too tense to answer directly.

She looked again at the sky. It was so beautiful, and so ordinary. Taking Georgie up here most likely made them regret Vauxhall even more.

“Stars aren’t thrilling like rockets. Once in a great while, one shoots across the sky, but mostly, they stay in one place and shine.

” She wiped her clammy palm on her skirt, willing a star to shoot.

But the stars were motionless. “They don’t explode.

They don’t make noise. They don’t give off smoke, or the stimulating smell of gunpowder.

Or if they do, they’re so far away you can’t tell.

” All of her second thoughts were knotting together in her stomach, making a heavy ball.

“I should have realized this would seem dull, after the spangles and plumes. We can go back down.”

Georgie had already dropped onto the linens. They were stretching out their long legs and settling their head on a pillow. “How far are the stars, really?”

She set down her lantern, then stood with her arms hanging awkwardly, overwhelmed by hesitation.

“They look impossibly close,” they said. “Come see.”

Heart thundering in her ears, she lay down beside them. Wind streamed over the parapet, gentle and warm. The night was mild, balmy and summer sweet. The knot in her stomach loosened.

“They look close,” she agreed. “But only if they’re truly that small.” She lifted a fanciful finger to touch one of the tiny, twinkling lights.

Georgie trapped her wrist on the way down and brought her knuckles to their lips.

“Thank you,” they said, breath seeping through her fingers.

“I know you’d rather be there,” she whispered. “In Vauxhall. In London.”

“That’s the thing.” They rolled onto their side, propped themself on an elbow, and peered down at her. Their face was shadowed, the lantern light touching one cheekbone with flickering gold. “I’d rather be where I am, with you.”

She almost shook her head. Because she was hearing always . She was hearing anywhere , together . And surely, they meant something more specific. They meant this particular moment. They meant it would do. Country fireworks. The two of them, beneath the stars, for this one birthday night.

She didn’t know the hour. She couldn’t mark midnight with a dazzling show. But she knew what she wanted to do instead.

“My plan,” she said softly, “is to make you smile like Charles Peach was smiling at St. Alcmund’s.”

They’d been smiling. But now their smile faded. The way they looked at her…

Her pulse raced faster.

“I want to do something to you,” she continued, “like Lord Phillip did to him, in the ferns.”

The corner of their mouth tipped up. “What do you think they did?”

“I almost asked Lord Phillip,” she confessed, “as we were leaving, but I couldn’t figure out how to get him alone.”

Georgie’s laugh rang out, and they flopped on their back, hands pressed to their eyes. “My God.”

“I like to gather information.”

“You do.” Georgie’s murmur was richly amused. “I know.”

“I have thought about it. I expect there was thrusting, based on reading, observation, and extrapolation. We could thrust . Fingers must work as well as pricks.”

“I might die,” said Georgie. “You’re killing me.”

She raised up on an elbow. “You don’t like my plan?”

They folded their arms beneath their head. “I love it. I love everything about it. Keep talking.” There was something more than amusement in their voice. “Thrusting, and what else?”

“Kissing. Of course.”

“Of course.”

“It’s so lovely. To kiss.” She was blushing. “I’m sure it’s lovely on places other than the mouth.”

“And on other mouths,” Georgie drawled, and she gave her head a dizzy shake, confused into a resurgence of awkwardness.

“And perhaps licking?” she asked. “They might have licked each other.”

“Very possibly licking,” said Georgie. “Licking and sucking.”

“Have you?” she asked, heart skipping. Imagining Lord Phillip and Charles Peach in the ferns was one thing. Imagining Georgie…it was something else entirely. “Have you…thrust?”

“A few times.”

“Licked?” She got to her knees.

“Also. I’ve engaged, too, in a bit of sucking. And rubbing.”

“And you like doing it? Or having it done to you?”

“Both.”

“May I?” She touched the top button of their coat.

“Please.” They stretched their arms above their head.

She straddled their waist and undid the buttons with trembling fingers. They sat up to shrug out of the sleeves, their face an inch from hers, eyes dark with shadow. The bodice of her gown whispered lacily against their silk waistcoat, and her breath caught.

“Your plan,” they said, hoarsely, “it’s for my sake, my birthday. If you don’t want it for your sake too…we should stop.”

She swallowed. It wasn’t only her fingers trembling.

They were watching her intently.

Deliberately, she set to work on their waistcoat, pushing the cool buttons through the narrow holes. They slid out one arm and, with a jerk of the other, sent it flapping into the dark.

Their braces went next, shoved over their shoulders, and their shirt, which they tugged from their breeches. She lifted up as they wiggled out of those, and when she settled back down, they were naked beneath her.

She was breathing hard.

What now? She wasn’t sure. Sometimes you tried first, though. You tried before you were sure.

“May I lick your nipples?” It was a question she couldn’t have imagined asking last year, last month. Even now, her face burned.

But ever since she’d seen those nipples sparkling with water as Georgie splashed in the fishing pond, she’d wanted them under her tongue.

“Lick anything at all,” they said.

She wanted their nipples between her teeth too—she discovered that soon enough. The soft gasp she elicited from Georgie as she bit at them made moisture gather between her thighs.

“How do you feel about breasts?” she asked, sitting up, stroking their collarbones, trailing her fingers down the center of their chest, over their warm, smooth skin. Their breasts were much smaller than hers, tipped with those tiny, jaunty nipples. Rakish breasts. She’d like to devour them.

“I want to feel yours,” they said.

Their abdomen tightened as they curled to sitting, hair falling over their eyes as they unpinned her stomacher. She wiggled her arms from her sleeves, shivering.

They were unlacing her petticoat, her stays, and then it was only her shift, her drawers, and stockings. She pulled her shift over her head.

Their hands closed on her breasts. “Your breasts feel wonderful,” they told her, and she gave a shaky laugh.

“I meant how do you feel about yours, not mine.”

“Hmm?” They were caressing her, attention trained.

“Your breasts.”

“Oh.” They tossed their head, flicking back their hair, looking at her with a smirk.

“I like them well enough. I liked when you had your mouth on them. Sometimes I’d as soon do without them.

When they’re signifying something to someone that I don’t want them to signify.

That’s the only problem, really, for me.

I like all my bits. Just not the meanings people give to them.

And you?” Their hands stilled, cupping her. “How do you feel about your breasts?”

“The opposite. I’ve never thought about breasts signifying anything. But they get in the way, so I don’t much care for them.”

“Do you mind if I care for them?” Their hands started moving again. They had calluses on their palms, from digging. The calluses scratched at her nipples, and a cry shivered out of her. “I do care for them.” Their lips were at her ears. “Very much.”

She grabbed their head and turned it, fastened her mouth to theirs. Her kiss was greedy, her tongue gliding deep. She locked her hands behind their neck. Her breasts were slippery now as the two of them pressed together, skin to skin. She felt the poke of their nipples, jaunty and taunting.

“I don’t want your nipples to mean anything,” she whispered between kisses. “I just want to bite them again.”

She pushed their shoulders hard, pushed them down, the rush of air tingling over her belly.

She could see the gleam of their smile, and then she was curved over them, curtained by her hair, kissing and licking and sucking and biting, and the noises Georgie made began to throb inside her.

She didn’t realize she was moving her hips, until she felt their hands clamp around them.

Panting, she straightened her spine, looking down at herself, the dark jut of her breasts, her pale, stockinged knees on either side of them.

“Am I doing this right?”

Their thumbs pressed her hip bones, and their fingers dug into the soft flesh of her backside, nudging her back into motion. “Do you like it?”

She was rocking over them, pleasure building with every stroke. Her yes was barely audible, lost between a hitch and a hiss of breath.

She tried again. “Yes.”

“I do too,” they murmured. “So it’s right.

And this? What about this?” Their hand slid forward, down her belly, fingers opening the slit in her drawers, spreading her damp curls.

With their other hand, they were spreading theirs, and then, God , then the slippery center of her sensation was rubbing delicate skin equally slick.

She gasped and arched her back, dragging that needy wet center in slow circles, which only wound her need tighter.

Their flesh was wet and soft beneath her, but also firm, with a tightly budded tip she drove herself onto, again and again.

“Oh God.” Georgie canted their hips, straining upward, and she parted her knees, moaning at the stretch in her inner thighs, sinking down.

Their head tipped back, and they yelled, hoarse and exuberant, shuddering under her, their breath gusting into a moaning laugh.

“You have killed me,” they said, rolling their head from side to side, hands sliding down her legs, the skin of her thighs, the silk of her stocking. “Now prepare to meet your fate.”

Their hands skated back up, one clamping again around her hip, the other…the other…

“Lift up.” It was a dark command. She obeyed, thigh muscles so taut they tremored. Their fingers were rubbing her now, targeting the pulse of tension at the apex of all her slick, swollen, clutching inner flesh. She fell forward, hands slapping down flat on either side of them.

“Georgie,” she gasped, or pleaded. Her body was a vessel for waves of feeling, waves that rolled on and on, from her belly down to her toes, and back, rolling without breaking. “I need you to—”

She wasn’t sure. She wanted to try anything, no, everything. Maybe everything was right. Kiss. Lick. Rub. Suck. Thrust.

Their fingers thrust inside her and began to churn, the rhythm slow and inexorable.

Her heart stuttered to a stop. Her blood wasn’t moving in her veins.

Everything concentrated into a single point.

They thrust higher, and she burst. She burst open, liquid trickling down her thighs, a scream tearing from her throat.

Her eyes were closed. Against the velvet dark, stars shot in all directions.

She rolled off of them and lay on her back, stunned for several ages.

Before she could think again, the candles in the lantern had gone out.

“I can’t see if I’ve achieved the correct smile,” she complained, flinging out a hand, feeling for their face.

“You’ve given me dimples,” they said, yanking her hand from their nose, and guiding it down until…

She shrieked as their teeth closed on her fingertip and whacked them with a pillow.

“Do you think it’s still my birthday?” they asked, tucking her against them.

“You can have until dawn,” she said, head on their shoulder.

“Let’s stay up.” Their arm cradled her closer. “I want to see a shooting star.”

I already did. She almost said it, except she was beyond saying anything. Their heart was beating against her palm, and she was asleep before she understood what was happening.