Page 26 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Thus did Augusta set out to cross the chasm: empty-handed and yet driven on by hope.

— from ORPHAN OF MIDNIGHT by Geneva Desrosiers

Georgiana heard the words as they crossed her lips and wondered if she’d gone mad.

She couldn’t stop talking. She couldn’t stop rubbing her thumb across Cat’s lush mouth, savoring the damp heat she found there.

She wanted to breathe Cat in. She wanted to slide her tongue down the valley between Cat’s breasts. She wanted to taste Cat again, drown herself in the heady spiced flavor of Cat’s lips and tongue. She wanted to devour Cat.

But first she wanted to make Cat understand.

She’d waited downstairs for as long as the innkeeper had permitted her to remain in the kitchen.

Her mind had been thick and dazzled by fantasies of Cat in the bedchamber, Cat wet and naked in the bath.

But she could not go up—she could not let herself get close to Cat again.

She wanted Cat fervently—ferociously—but she had to stay away from her.

She tried to remember what her father had done to Cat’s family. She tried to remember the way she herself had wronged Cat—the way she had, inadvertently, hurt Cat herself.

She’d expected to come into the room and find Cat curled up in the bed, her back to the door, and nothing but silence between them. Distance was what Georgiana knew. Coldness. That was what was safe.

But then she’d come up, and Cat had been there, still awake, half-dressed and furious with Georgiana. And she had not been silent or cold. She’d been honest, her lashes wet and her voice thready with need and hurt and all that mad, invulnerable bravery.

Only she wasn’t invulnerable, was she? Georgiana knew that now.

She ran one fingertip across the shell of Cat’s ear, then down her neck and across the valley of her collarbone. Cat’s skin was unbearably soft, and Georgiana could feel the flutter of her pulse.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Georgiana whispered. But her fingers told a different story, moving along the edge of Cat’s shift, dipping under to stroke her skin. “I can’t hurt you again.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.” Frustration was thick in Cat’s voice. Her eyes were dark. “I don’t think you know what you want.”

“Just you. Always you. Since I was fifteen. Since the moment I saw you, bright and brave and so damned vivid I could not look away.” Her fingers curved around the back of Cat’s neck, and God, it would be so simple to put her mouth on Cat’s again.

To taste her. To lose herself in desire, as deep and dizzying as the sea.

She could feel it already—pooling in her lower belly, loosening her thighs.

Her gaze dropped to Cat’s mouth, red from kissing and mulled wine, and lingered there.

Cat’s lips trembled, then firmed before she spoke. “I want you. God, Georgiana, you know I want you too. But you cannot—” She swallowed, and looked Georgiana in the eye. “You cannot do what you did before. You cannot be with me now and then pretend tomorrow that none of this ever happened.”

Georgiana heard the sound of her own heart beating in her ears. She understood what Cat was asking for.

It was easy to be caught up in passion. To tell oneself later that it had been a mistake. She’d told herself that before, when they’d kissed—that she was wrong for Cat. That Cat deserved someone better, someone as open and joyful as she was.

That she would hurt Cat, if she let her get too close.

But Cat was asking her now, in the intimate darkness of the chamber, to say aloud what she wanted. To tell the truth, to mean it—and to promise that she would not pull away.

How many times had Georgiana been astonished by Cat’s courage? By her willingness to drop her guard? She thought again of the way Cat smiled—wide and generous, as though it was as easy as breathing.

Blood rushed in her ears, and her chest hurt, and she wanted.

She wished she had a thousandth part of Cat’s courage. But she was only herself—afraid to be vulnerable, unwilling to let down her guard.

Terrified. But too goddamned stubborn to let Cat go.

“I promise,” she whispered. “I won’t—do what I did before. I swear it.”

Cat reached up and cupped Georgiana’s cheek. Her fingers felt cool against the blistering heat churning inside Georgiana. And slowly, soft-eyed, she tugged Georgiana’s head down until their mouths met again.

It was different this time—gentler. Sweeter than Georgiana could ever have imagined.

“You wanted me then?” Cat murmured. “At Woodcote?”

“Always,” she managed, and then buried the word against Cat’s lips.

They kissed for a single intoxicating moment before Cat drew back. She looked almost painfully alluring, the valley between her breasts deep in shadow, the rise of flesh above her low-cut chemise glistening in the candlelight.

“I want something from you,” Cat said.

“Anything,” Georgiana said—recklessly, fervently—and refused to give in to the cowardly impulse to take it back.

“Do you trust me?”

Twice now, Georgiana had made that same inquiry of Cat. And twice, Cat had handed her trust over without question, regardless of the chance of disaster or the potential for pain.

Could Georgiana not find it within herself to do the same?

“Yes.” There was longing in her voice—and fear. “I do.”

Cat’s lips curled up, that slow, wide smile that Georgiana loved so much. “Good,” she said. “Take off your clothes.”

“I—” Georgiana swallowed. “What?”

“You arranged for a bath,” Cat said. “I do not mean to waste it.”

Georgiana took a breath and watched Cat’s gaze drift down to where her breasts rose and fell. She breathed again, for courage, then brought her fingers to her bodice, which fastened in a dozen cloth-covered buttons right down the front. She slipped one free, and then a second, and a third.

Cat followed the movement, her eyes hungry and her full lips pressed lightly together. She didn’t move.

When Georgiana had unfastened enough of the buttons for the two halves of her violet walking dress to part, she paused, and shrugged her shoulders out of the garment. She let it fall to the floor and stood, trembling lightly, beneath Cat’s gaze.

She had not done this before. Never had she been so revealed.

“Keep going,” Cat whispered. “Don’t stop now.”

“You needn’t leave me to the task alone, you know.” Georgiana had aimed for tartness, but her voice was shaking. “You could help.”

Cat’s smile went the faintest bit crooked, the right corner of her mouth lifting above the left. “Her ladyship needs assistance undressing, then?”

God, that she could tease at such a moment. Georgiana let her petticoats fall and worked off her boots as well. “No. But I would rather have you with me.”

I would rather not be alone.

She thought she kept the words inside her head, where they belonged, but Cat’s face softened as though she’d heard. “I am here with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Georgiana slipped out of her stays. Her chemise was very soft linen, but even the fine white weave felt coarse where it brushed against her nipples, which had gone tight beneath Cat’s gaze. She brought her fingers to the tie that held her chemise, then hesitated.

“Please,” Cat said, very softly. “I want to see you.”

Georgiana’s breath was coming quickly now.

She understood what was happening. Neither of them could be borne away by passion like this. Not when each movement was deliberate: a slow baring of Georgiana’s body.

Of her heart.

Georgiana let the chemise slide down her body, and she shuddered at the feeling of the fabric coasting like a breath over her hot, sensitive skin.

Cat’s lips were parted, and when she spoke, her eyes were fixed on Georgiana’s own. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

And then, very slowly, she looked down. Her gaze moved over Georgiana’s body, naked but for her stockings. Her fingers flexed at her sides.

Pleasure hit Georgiana in a hot, vertiginous flush. She had not known she would relish this—the calm assurance in Cat’s voice, the thrill of Cat’s eyes upon her naked body. The deliberate surrender of her own closely guarded control.

She had not known such a thing could be erotic. Desire tightened her lower belly, pulsed urgently between her thighs as she stood still beneath Cat’s deliberate perusal.

“Take off your stockings,” Cat said, and then, “no. Wait. Let me.”

She knelt in front of Georgiana, her chemise pooling on the floor, and her fingers—cool and callused and deft—going to the ribbons at the tops of Georgiana’s stockings.

Georgiana caught her breath. She put her hand to Cat’s head, tangling in all that mass of heavy dark hair, and shuddered at the feel of Cat’s breath on her skin, on the slow, unhurried way she rolled Georgiana’s stockings down her legs.

When Cat was finished, she sat back, and Georgiana could not help herself. She passed her thumb across those spiced-wine lips and paused to caress the corner of Cat’s mouth.

Cat swallowed hard. “In the tub,” she murmured. “Don’t tempt me.”

Georgiana let Cat help her into the tub.

It was small—she sat half–folded up, her knees bent—and the water had gone lukewarm in the time since the maids had brought it up.

But there were still cans of water on the grate, and Cat brought them over one at a time.

She tipped one into the bath, and Georgiana gasped at the sensation of hot water swirling around her hips, her ankles.

“Too hot?” Cat asked. A smile played around her mouth, and her fingers slipped beneath Georgiana’s knee.

Each little touch—the eddy and slide of the water against her skin—all of it aroused Georgiana further. “Not too hot.” Her voice was breathless.

Cat’s dark eyes caught and lingered on her face. “Good. Close your eyes. Lean your head back.”

Georgiana did. She let her lids fall closed, and the uncertainty of what Cat meant to do felt strange and stimulating. She waited, almost panting, desire like a plucked string vibrating through her body.