Edie picked up a slice of melon. “Hmm.” She licked melon juice off her thumb, then took a bite. “Generally, I have a never-say-never philosophy, though I would grant that it’s narrowed a bit as I’ve gotten older. I’m twenty-nine next month, so I feel the wisdom of age coming over me.”
Cosima snorted as Edie smiled at her around her last bite of melon. “You know I was giving you a line, right?”
Edie turned to Cosima, tightening the leg around her hips, then ran her finger over Cosima’s bottom lip until she opened her mouth and pulled in Edie’s finger, sticky with melon juice, and sucked it, making everything clench in a wave that felt like almost coming.
“Fuck.” Edie’s green eyes had gotten so dark, they matched her hair. She gently pulled her finger out, then put it in her own mouth, pressing it against her tongue.
Then, Cosima couldn’t get her lips to Edie’s fast enough. Her body was trying too hard to rush it, to seduce her to come or make Edie come. But Cosima wanted to savor these heartbeatsbefore, with her upper lip against Edie’s teeth, their tongues sliding past each other, the way a moan vibrated against her neck. She dreamed about kissing Edie. She woke up touching her mouth, feeling her there. Most of her brand-new fantasies were replays of kissing Edie, sometimes of one moment that couldn’t have lasted even a second, like the first time their lips touched and she’d understood so much about herself at once.
“Cosima.” Edie was kissing the underside of her jaw, and she was pretty sure that somehow this kissing had unknotted the tie at her waist. Her jersey dress felt slack.
“Yes?”
Edie eased back. Her freckles were connected by little blooms of flush. Cosima admired how much she’d messed up her hair. “We’re alone?”
“We are.”
“No one has a reason to let themselves in? Or interrupt us with a hulking monster of a plasterer? It’s just us until ten-thirty tomorrow morning, and right now it’s—”
“Nine forty-five at night.” Cosima read the time off the sleek, midcentury Cartier desk clock at the end of the stone mantel.
“There are seven bedrooms.”
“Yes. The one I use is on this floor. When I shot up in height at seventeen, we came here for part of the summer, and I threw a tantrum over my feet hanging off the end of my antique bed. Duncan had a comically huge mattress delivered. It requires custom sheets.”
Edie quirked an eyebrow. “Do you want—”
“Yes.”
“You have no idea what I was going to say!”
“You confirmed the existence of bedrooms and then started to ask a question, so the answer’s yes.” Cosima brushed her hand down Edie’s arm. “I want to. But also, I want whateveryouwant to happen. I don’t know how to explain it, but that’s how it works for me.”
Edie traced a finger along every one of Cosima’s fingers on Edie’s thigh.
She tried to steady her heart. She focused on Edie’s expressive face, her pretty eyes, the cleavage that had revealed itself in their kissing and touching.
“I want this, too,” Edie said. “So much. But I’m afraid of what I’m always afraid of. That I want the wrong thing. That I’ve set myself up for disappointment. I worry about getting into my head. I worry about gettingout ofmy head and becoming someone’s weird sex story at the bar.” Edie frowned.
“Have any of those things happened? In France? In the inn’s kitchen? Right now?”
“No. God. I haven’t… it’s never been like it is with you. And I never thought I’d even say something like that out loud, because I would’ve thought it was corny. But it’s so true. Everything feels good. Everything is what I want.”
Cosima moved herself closer. “Do you want to go down the hall and into my bedroom?” The question sent heat over Cosima’s skin. It made her middle disappear. Her mouth needed Edie’s mouth.
“Yes.” Edie pulled in a breath that hollowed out her throat. “What if I told you what else I wanted?”
Cosima closed her eyes, happiness flooding into her system like hot sun. “Tell me.” She wanted to laugh, she was so excited. “Do you want to go to the screening room and watch a movie?”
Edie kissed her. She would never get over how good that felt. “No.”
“We could find something to eat. I told the staff you were vegan, and they said something about vegan tapas.” She put her tongue in Edie’s ear, which was burning hot and made her more desperately horny than she already was.
“I’m not hungry.” Edie’s hands slipped into her open dress to grip her waist. She ran her thumbs over Cosima’s navel, making her wet.
Cosima smiled. “I ordered some things that I brought with me that could give us some ideas.”
Edie let go of Cosima’s bottom lip, which she had just sucked between her teeth, and sat back. “Excuse me? Roll that one back.”
