Page 49 of Lady Like

The impossibilities of this night are stacked so thick and deep Emily can hardly see through them.

The first, that she should kiss Harry. That Harry should kiss her in return, the second. That Harry should take her to bed, the third.

And that feeling of Harry straddling her—of the weight of Harry’s hips against hers, she in nothing but her chemise and Harry in even less. Impossible to even imagine before this moment.

Emily throws her head back so her hair tumbles from its pins and cascades off the mattress. Between her own breaths, she can hear the soft plink as each one hits the floor.

Harry leans over her, and Emily marvels at the shape of Harry’s shoulders, divots and swells of her bones forming a topography beneath her skin. Her breasts, her hips, her soft belly, the shape like an inverted heart.

Harry slides her lips down Emily’s body, pausing when they touch Emily’s breast, and Emily thinks wildly that Harry must be able to feel her heartbeat through her lips, so weighty inside her it feels like a pulse of liquid. Harry will drink it and swallow it.

Harry sinks to her knees between Emily’s legs, then takes Emily’s hips between her hands and slides her down the slick sheets.

Emily’s chemise rides up until it is bunched at her breasts.

Emily stares up at the bed hangings, any attempts to catch her breath foiled when she feels Harry’s tongue running up the inside of her thigh, then up the creases between her legs before gliding to the peak.

She can feel the elicit throb, almost too much sensation to be borne.

She wants to pull away. She wants to lean into it, push her hips up to meet Harry’s mouth.

As if sensing her thoughts, Harry licks her, and Emily feels the ground swell down to the soles of her feet.

Harry’s breath is inside her, along with the soft press of her tongue.

Emily shudders, tightening her muscles to stop her legs involuntarily clenching around Harry as she sucks and strokes Emily with her mouth.

The swells pause, and Emily raises her head as Harry sticks two fingers into her mouth to wet them.

“Do you like this?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Emily replies.

Harry slides a finger inside her, and Emily grabs Harry’s hair as her body caves with pleasure. “Oh God, yes, I do, yes.” Emily clenches around Harry’s fingers, and now it’s Harry who curses.

Harry slides another finger in, deeper this time. “Is it too much?”

“It’s not. God, it’s not—”

Emily feels like she is about to rise off the bed.

Harry skims her thumb against Emily as her fingers crook inside her, and Emily’s whole body tenses.

She wraps her legs around Harry’s neck, heel digging hard into Harry’s shoulder, and Harry laughs, so breathless it is air more than sound.

“You’re so eager,” she murmurs, withdrawing her fingers so slowly that Emily feels herself clench around the sudden emptiness. Her body cries out for Harry.

“This is new to me.”

“It’s beautiful.” Harry kisses the inside of Emily’s knee, then presses her fingers into Emily again. This time they slide in easily, without any spittle.

“Harry,” Emily gasps, and it feels like she’s been hoarding that name in this tone, bookended by sighs, since they met. She has her hands in Harry’s hair, grasping for purchase on the short strands. She pulls harder than she means, but Harry only laughs with pleasure.

“What I’d do to you,” Harry says, “if I had two good shoulders at present.”

Emily laughs too, the sound pebbled when Harry begins to thrust her fingers in and out, slowly at first, but with increasing speed when Emily gasps with pleasure.

Then with her fingers still inside Emily, Harry pulls herself up onto the bed, resting her weight just enough on Emily that their breasts are together.

She hooks her legs over Emily’s, pushing them into the mattress, holding them still as she fucks her, and Emily writhes.

She feels like she’s sinking through the mattress and falling through the floor, and she grabs for something—anything—to hold on to.

Harry’s thumb presses into her as she leans down and kisses Emily’s breast, once again, right over her liquid heart.

In the dim light, Harry looks slick and oiled.

Her lips shine like she has just bitten into a ripe fruit.

Bruises still shadow her ribs from her fall at the steeplechase, and Emily is reminded of a map, light and dark like land and sea.

She wants to make a new world together, and this night—this here and now—will be the first steps on a new continent.

Emily gasps and moans and practically screams until the moment of summit, and suddenly she finds her throat empty.

The feeling drives the breath from her lungs, the sensation from her skin.

She felt greedy all the while Harry was touching her, desperate for more, and now she’s overwhelmed by the capacity of her body to contain so much.

Harry pulls her fingers out of Emily, puts them to her mouth, and sucks them. She wants to turn herself inside out and let Harry feast on her. She’ll gladly be tasted. Devoured.

Harry lies down and takes Emily in her arms, holds her open mouth to Emily’s shoulder. Emily’s whole body feels gelatinous and confectionary. Her thighs stick together as she shifts, the slickness coating her like a glaze.

“Would you like a biscuit?” Harry asks, which, as far as post-coital conversation, is not what Emily had expected. Harry untangles herself and climbs out of bed, groping along the floor for her shirt.

“What?”

“I think there’s some steak and ale pie left from luncheon as well.”

Emily pulls the bedclothes up over her mouth.

Harry’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you laughing at?”

“I’m not.”

“You are, you little hyena.” Harry yanks the bedclothes fully off Emily, and she shrieks at the sudden cold.

Harry pounces on top of her, pinning her to the bed, and Emily’s laughter shifts into a heavy sigh as she feels Harry’s bare legs against hers.

“What,” Harry says, nuzzling her face into Emily’s neck, “are you laughing at?”

“It’s just…” Emily resists the urge to bite down on Harry’s earlobe. “None of this is anything like I imagined it would be.”

“Is that a good thing?” Harry asks, raising her head.

“It’s good,” Emily replies, then kisses Harry, quick and light, on the mouth. “It’s so much better.”

In the kitchen, Emily sits on the table with her feet on the bench, wrapped in Harry’s dressing gown, as Harry, naked, slices cheese and negotiates its ownership with Havoc, whose chin rests on the table beside her as he follows her movements with the focus of a sniper.

Emily watches Harry as she works—the curve of her back, the muscles of her shoulders and the cords of her thighs.

The way her ass dimples when she flexes.

Harry catches Emily staring at her and grins. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re having unchaste thoughts. I’ll have no choice but to indulge them.”

Emily laughs, tucking her hands under her thighs. “Nothing unchaste, I’m only wondering.”

When Emily doesn’t continue, Harry prompts, “What have you been wondering?”

“Ever since I met you. I think I have been wondering,” Emily says, “what it might be like to love you.”

Harry turns quickly to the hearth, before Emily can get a good look at her face, but when she speaks again, her voice has gone soft. “I suspect it’s rotten work.”

“Is it?”

“Mm.” Harry hands Emily a plate, cutlery balanced along the edge. “I’m notoriously bad tempered when woken before noon. I put out my cigars on the furniture and buy expensive shirts before I pay my rent and never pick up my socks.”

“That’s fine.”

“And,” Harry says. “I’m prone to moods and selfishness. I’m hideously childish, especially when slighted, and I have been known to brood—”

Emily interrupts her. “Someone ought to love you, and I’d like it to be me.”

Harry turns from the hearth, and with the flames in the grate leaping behind her like dancers, and Emily thinks of the first time she saw Harry, silhouetted in gold wisteria.

“So perhaps,” Emily says, “you’ll let me try.”

Harry leans forward and presses a kiss to Emily’s forehead. “Darling,” she says, “it would be the greatest honor of my life to be loved by you.”