“And… what about now?”
“Yes, also now, but…”
“What?”
“Juniper’s asleep,” Catherine whispered.
Jules laughed and kept her eyes on Catherine, taking a slow sip of wine before placing her glass on the coffee table. She leaned over, scooped Juni off Catherine’s lap and popped him onto the floor, and with a disgruntled meow, he sauntered out of the room.
Jules scooched closer. She gently prised the glass from Catherine’s hand, placing it down before meeting her gaze with an unmistakable look of want.
Catherine swallowed. “I think I’ve run out of excuses.”
“I think you have, too.” Jules leaned in, her lips so close Catherine could almost taste the kiss. The air between them fizzed with desire, and Catherine’s body thrummed at the sensation of Jules’s breath so close to her lips, theirnoses nearly touching. She reached up, cupped Jules’s cheeks, and closed the gap. Soft and slow, until Jules’s hands found her neck, her fingers threaded in her hair and the kiss deepened, grew urgent. Jules pressed forward and Catherine yielded, slipping beneath her, breathless and wanting. The room narrowed to just the crush of their lips and the heat between them, and Catherine released a soft sound — half sigh, half surrender.
“Is this okay?” Jules murmured.
Catherine answered by fusing their lips together again because it was more than okay; it felt fucking amazing. She wasn’t thinking about what came next. She wasn’t thinking at all. Just feeling — the heat of Jules’s skin, the press of her warm mouth, and the way her own heart felt like it was trying to climb out of her chest.
But then her brain kicked in with the unhelpful vision of someone else sharing this intimate moment with Jules whilst she sat trapped in her apartment below listening to the creaks of the ceiling, and the moans of pleasure beyond.
“What is it?” Jules pulled back, swiping a thumb across her kiss-swollen lips. Catherine didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. She just looked away, embarrassment prickling as it unfurled inside her.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, sorry. It’s not you. It’s just…” She couldn’t think with Jules’s body pressed against hers and the taste of Jules still on her lips.
Catherine shifted a little awkwardly and Jules withdrew her weight, putting distance between them; only asmall gap, but it may as well have been a canyon, because Catherine instantly mourned the loss of where their bodies had pressed, and couldn’t fathom her way back to that closeness now.
A deep wrinkle formed between Jules’s searching eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I get a little caught up in my head sometimes. I don’t mean to get ahead of myself, but what if things go sour between us?”
“Sour? We’ve literally just kissed. I don’t see?—”
“No, I don’t mean right now, I mean like in a week, a month, or further down the line.” She gestured with her hand to an imagined spot in the distance. “This is my home; this building, I mean. If things were to go awry between us, it would make things very uncomfortable.”
“I see.” Jules passed Catherine her wine and collected her own before moving back to the far end of the sofa. “Well, I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“No, unfortunately my mood-killing mind likes to calculate all the eventualities. Thus far, precisely zero percent of my romantic relationships have lasted longer than a few dates… so I don’t like our chances.”
“Huh! That’s an odd take.” Jules puffed out her lips. “Do you always put your umbrella up before it rains?”
Catherine felt ridiculous. She’d exposed herself as the nutcase she was, and she’d blown this glimmer of a chance with someone she really liked. Her overthinking weirdness had crushed the moment, and Jules would run a mile. She’d be mad not to — in fact, if she didn’t, Catherine would question Jules’s sanity.
Suddenly the room felt too small, her feelings too big. “I should go.”
It wasn’t a question, but Jules answered by looking back at her with a brightness in her eyes that held Catherine in place.
“It’s such a shame to deny yourself something because of whatcouldhappen. You know, like being presented with a delicious piece of chocolate cake but turning it down because youmightget a stomachache.” Jules shrugged.
Catherine scoffed. “That’s hardly the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?” Jules cocked her head. “What’s that saying about vulnerability?”
“Oh God, don’t you start quoting Brené Brown at me too! My friend Penny, she?—”
“Probably has a point.” Jules chuckled, and her gaze drifted into the middle distance as she took a long sip of her wine. “You know, I moved away all those years ago because of how uncomfortable it made Mum when I came out. I was hurting, too scared to push past the pain and shame of her disappointment.” She fixed her gaze back on Catherine’s. “But I see now, if I’d given her a chance, things might’ve turned out differently.”
