Page 36 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"I know," Lucy said. "I told Nadia the schedule myself."

"I checked it again anyway." Carrington put her coat over the arm of the sectional.

"Of course you did," Lucy said.

Lucy shut the door and turned the lock. She had never had a reason to during the day, and the sound it made was enormous. Then she took Carrington's face in both hands and kissed her in the middle of her own front room with the sun streaming through the window. They were both entirely visible. Carrington kissed her back with one hand flat between her shoulder blades and the other in her hair, and her breathing changed against Lucy's mouth.

She wanted to look at her. She wanted to see what Carrington looked like coming undone by her fingers and mouth in the light of day. Lucy pulled the jacket off Carrington's shoulders and put her mouth under her ear and wanted, absurdly, to stop and turn her around and look at her.

"Sit down," Lucy said.

"On what?" Carrington asked.

Lucy took her by the wrist and walked her backward into the sectional. She got a knee up onto the cushion beside her and then the other one. Carrington's hands came up her back under her shirt, and Lucy opened two buttons and then three.

The two halves of the sectional came apart down the seam. Lucy fell backward into the gap with Carrington's hand still in her shirt, and Carrington came after her. One of the cushions crashed down on top of them, and the leg of the far section screeched six inches across the boards and stopped.

Lucy lay in the gap between two pieces of furniture with a cushion over her face and Carrington's elbow in her ribs, and she pushed the cushion off onto the boards.

Carrington had pushed up onto one arm. Her hair had come half down on one side and her shirt was open to the third button. She leaned over and looked down into the gap at the frame.

"The clips underneath have come apart," Carrington said.

"You bought this couch," Lucy said.

Carrington started to say something else about the clips. Then she stopped, and she laughed.

It was loud and she did not stop. She put a hand down on the boards to hold herself up. Her shoulders shook, and she made no attempt to be quiet. Carrington kept laughing long enough that Lucy quit waiting for her to stop and instead lay there in the gap and listened.

Then Lucy started laughing too, and hers lasted longer. By the time she stopped, she was lying flat on the boards with a hand jammed under her ribs trying to get a breath in. She looked up at Carrington, still laughing on the floor of a broken couch with her hair coming down, and she did not say it.

"Don't stop," Lucy said instead, and took a fistful of the open shirt and pulled her down.

Carrington came down, both hands catching the floor on either side of Lucy's head, and the impact rapped her palms against the boards and she laughed again. The sound rippled through Lucy, low and electric. It was the same sound Carrington made when the couch had groaned, buckled, and dumped them both sideways. It had made Lucy roll over and look at her in the full April sun coming through the window and think, I want you here where I can see all of you.

She pulled the shirt tighter in her fist and dragged Carrington's mouth down to hers. The kiss was angled wrong, but neither of them fixed it. Lucy bit down on Carrington’s lip, and Carrington made a sound into her mouth that was half gasp and half something else, something that vibrated through Lucy's jaw and down through her chest, settling warm and urgent between her legs. She wanted more.

"Off," Lucy said against her mouth, yanking at the shirt. "Get this off."

Carrington pushed herself up on one arm and fumbled the buttons with her free hand. She got the last two open and shrugged the shirt off one shoulder, and it caught on the other arm and she yanked and the sleeve turned inside out. She made a frustrated noise that was almost a growl.

"Here." Lucy sat up and grabbed the cuff and peeled it off her wrist, inside out, and flung it behind her. It landed on the fallen cushion.

The blouse underneath was white, thin, clinging to the slope of Carrington's shoulders with a sheen of sweat. Lucy could see the outline of her bra and the long line of Carrington's throat, bare now. She put her mouth on it, and Carrington's head dropped back and she lifted her hands then stopped. Lucy felt her hesitation, Carrington’s fingers hovering near her shoulders, not quite landing.

"Your rings," Lucy said.

"I— Yes." Carrington pulled back just enough to look around. She reached over to the edge of the broken couch half that still stood, the arm where her coat was draped, and she lined her rings up on the wooden armrest. Three of them, gold and thin, placed in a neat row with the kind of precision that made Lucy want to laugh and also made her chest ache.

Lucy grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. Carrington's mouth was open and her hands landed on Lucy's waist and gripped hard enough to shift the fabric of her shirt. Lucy was on top, half in her lap, one knee between Carrington's legs, and she could feel the heat of her through the fabric of her tailored slacks. She rocked forward once, and Carrington's hips came up off the floor to meet her.

"God…"

"No," Lucy said, grinning. "Just me."

Carrington stared up at her. Her hair was coming down; two pins were already lost somewhere in the couch wreckage, and the sleek weight of it was sliding free on one side, a heavy lock falling across her cheekbone. She looked wrecked.

"I want to see you," Lucy said. “I want all of this off and I want you in this light."