“Princess.” Edie said it on an inhale as Cosima kissed her temple and pressed her thigh against Edie.
“Yeah.”
Edie’s hands skated up from where they had been on Cosima’s hip and nape and captured her face. “I don’t know how this works when it’s been weeks and not months or years, but I should tell you that I love you, because wehavemade it to here, and I can’t go farther if I don’t say.”
Cosima couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t hoped, hadn’t let herself wonder. “Edie.”
“I love you,” she said again. “And I know it’s not just the moment, because I’ve been heading toward this since at least Gregory Gregory’s manor, or maybe since you threw that rock that knocked my boot down the hill. I tried to be smart and think through everything first, but it turns out I can’t be naked with the woman I love and not talk about it. I understand if this means we should take a minute and heat up some vegan tapas and watch a movie. That would be one of many reasonable responses.”
“I love you.” Cosima gripped Edie’s shoulders between her hands. “This would not be happening if I didn’t, I’m perfectly sure. For me, there isn’t wherethisbegins and where my love begins, as two separate things. It’s all the same, though I’d love you even if we weren’t naked right now. There would just be more yearning. I was ready to love you and yearn for you until I withered away.”
Edie laughed, a too-happy-not-to-laugh sound. “What are we going to do about this?”
“I don’t know.” Cosima kissed the corner of Edie’s mouth. “It’s a state of being.”
Edie’s thumb found the corner of her mouth, and then they were kissing, and it was even better, because Edie loved her, and Edie wasn’t diplomatic, wasn’t careful, didn’t make silent rules. When Cosima’s heart broke, she could tell this woman. When Edie’s heart broke, she would say.
There were worse things than heartbreak. Worse than humiliation, worse than loss, worse than death, was never saying the things you needed to say. Never allowing yourself to feel the way you truly felt, to be the person you truly were.
If she’d never come here, never met Edie, she wouldn’t know that.
It was why Cosima couldn’t kiss Edie Whitelock andnotbelieve in magic.
She slipped out of Edie’s kiss and kissed her neck, lifted her breast in her hand and kissed it everywhere, licked the rough nipple, turned herself on more, felt Edie arch against her body. She brushed her hand over Edie’s hip, then her thigh. Her inner thigh. “Can I taste you?” she asked. “I want to. You’ll have to tell me what you like, because I want to be the best at giving you head. Better than anyone else could ever be for the rest of your life.”
Edie choked, then laughed. “Yes, Jesus, Cosima.”
She smiled as she kissed her way down Edie’s body, grabbing hold of her wand along the way, cataloging every single inch of Edie while her legs refused to settle, and then she had Edie to herself—her inner thighs, the arrow of her dark curls, the way she looked, familiar and illicit at once. Cosima put the head of her wand into the cup of her high inner thigh and turned it on low, and even at an indirect hum, it made her clit pinch dangerously. But she wanted to come when Edie did, once she figured out how to make that happen.
She didn’t know she wouldn’t be able to hold on to her thoughts, or a technique, or a conquering plan, as soon as she tasted her—the moment Edie’s fingers were in her hair, the very second that nothing was theoretical, or a fantasy. But she couldn’t. It was only how Edie felt against her mouth, how her body moved, the prickle of Edie’s hands tightening in her hair, the threatening orgasm from her rumbling wand. Every sense was an ungrounded wire, and Cosima was humping, touching, tasting, gone.
“There,” Edie whispered on an inhale, her thighs going still when the flat of Cosima’s tongue pressed alongside her clit. “Oh, god.”
Cosima focused, then lost focus as Edie pressed herself against her mouth, her face, and she felt Edie letting go and had to yank the wand away from between her thighs so she wouldn’t go over too soon. But then she realized Edie’s hands were on her shoulders, her arms, trying to move her.
“Should I stop?” She closed her eyes tight, hoping she didn’t have to stop, but also only wanting to give Edie everything she wanted.
“No, turn around. Let me—” Edie touched the side of Cosima’s face, and Cosima looked at her. “Turn around.”
Cosima had to breathe to keep herself from losing it right there.Jesus.She turned around, she wrapped her arms around Edie’s thighs, and she almost died when she felt Edie’s hands come around her hips, stroke up her inner thighs, tug her closer. Then her breath. Cosima was hot, all feeling, then Edie’s mouth, the first touch, made her brain tunnel to one goal, the biggest orgasm of her life, which would take moments, a few moments and every day she’d been alive. She found the spot Edie had guided her to and kissed it again, licked, recovering her attention, testing until she hit the pressure and rhythm that made Edie’s mouth pause and her hips buck, creating a feedback loop that made Cosima press herself against Edie’s tongue.
Edie became her whole world, everything she wanted or needed, and too soon, too soon, she was pushing herself against Edie’s face what had to be too hard, except she couldn’t get enough of how Edie was pressing up, grinding, how breath had become superfluous and her body gorgeous and full of light.
She came in a long, hard shudder, her thighs shaking, and Edie was coming, she’d gone silent, her hips pressed up and still but for small movements, and she was wetter suddenly. Cosima didn’t want it to end, didn’t know she was still chasing aftershocks until they both went slack and she collapsed to Edie’s side, her eyes closed, kissing the side of Edie’s leg absently.
She loved her. She loved her.
“Come here,” Edie whispered. Her voice was hoarse. Cosima turned and fit herself in her love’s arms, her head in the nook of her shoulder, her leg over both of Edie’s legs, just like she’d dreamed. She wasn’t surprised when her throat closed and she felt tears spill over her cheek and against Edie’s chin.
That was how she fell asleep, their skin cooling, her heart permanently spoken for, and Gregory Place’s spellwork done.
Now it was up to them.
Chapter Eighteen
The young tour guide, whose name was Nerea, came to the end of her speech about the architect Gaudí, who had worked on this church for forty-three years but died before the project was complete. Tidy in her below-the-knee dark skirt and cabled sweater, she was washed in color from the stained-glass windows fit into hundreds of feet of white towers. When she frowned at Edie, it spoiled the dreamy effect.
Edie slapped her hand over her yawn. “Por favor, discúlpeme. Su tour es maravilloso. Me temo que tengo jet lag.”
