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Was this a dream?
Ara didn’t dare blink in case it was.
She and Margot did not speak during the drive back to Covent Garden. They held hands tightly, hearts beating in tandem within the dark of the carriage as if a single uttered word would break the magical spell between them. If hands could speak, an entire conversation was being held in each exploratory brush, the soft tangle of knuckles, a whisper-soft graze over a sensitized palm, and the eventual interlacing of bare fingers. By the end of the journey, Ara’s entire body reeled on the knife-edge of arousal.
She had never imagined that her birthday would end like this…with the most impossible wish in her heart, fighting like the tiniest ember and refusing to be snuffed out, coming true. Her chest felt so tight that each sip of air was a battle. Honestly, if she did blink, would it turn out to be some fantastical fever dream? Because it was the stuff of fucking fantasies that Margot was in the carriage with her. That Margot had kissed her. That she was going home with her.
That she was here.
While the evening had not been spent attached at the hip, it had been fraught with enough heated glances across the supper table, from one end of the small ballroom to the other, and anywhere else their eyes crashed together, which was often. The tension had been so thick that the Countess of Rawdon had fanned herself and asked conspiratorially if they required the private apartments above the gallery. Her unequivocal acceptance of what was happening between them, as well as Percival’s support, had floored Ara. They both loved Margot and wanted her to be happy.
Ara intended to live up to that expectation.
They entered the building in silence, their interlinked hands the only sign of the heat simmering between them, as Ara led Margot up to her apartments. Inside when the door closed, Margot stood there, that gorgeous blue-gray gaze pooling with affection and so much more.
Ara lifted her hands gently so as not to startle her and skated them over Margot’s cheeks into the silky brown tendrils over her ears. With a delicate fingertip, she slowly traced the winged brows she’d painted so many times, slid down the slope of that bold, haughty nose, and grazed the sweeping curves of those delicious lips.
“My beautiful muse,” Ara whispered. “So exquisite, so mine. I feel like you’ve nestled so deeply under my skin, that you’re already part of me.” Margot’s eyelashes fluttered, her throat working at the soft confession. “I’ve craved you from the first moment you crossed my threshold, all furious frost and winter skies.” Ara dragged her thumb across the plush fullness of her lower lip, tugging it down, lust barreling through her as Margot’s tongue peeked out to lick the pad of her finger. “Goodness, how you undo me. Are you sure you want this?”
Blue eyes smoldered. “I want you.”
With a harsh garble of need, Ara replaced her thumb with her tongue, the taste of Margot as intoxicating as the rarest of wines, and when her lips parted so sweetly beneath hers, all pliancy and soft submission, Ara groaned into the embrace.
Her fingers dug into her hair as Margot’s hands wound around her neck. She wanted to devour her, but she also didn’t want to frighten Margot with her ardor. It hurt to hold herself back, but Margot deserved patience and care. With considerable effort, Ara reined in her eagerness and gentled the kiss only to rear back when a soft chuckle rumbled against her lips.
“I’m not a piece of porcelain, Ara,” Margot said, pushing up onto her tiptoes, her fingernails scouring down Ara’s back and winding into the fabric of her skirts to anchor her close. “If you’re going to kiss me, fucking kiss me.”
Hearing the oath fall from the cultured lips that never spoke out of turn was like a spark against dry tinder. Ara growled low in her throat, a creature provoked beyond reason, as a bolt of lust almost addled her mind. She reached for restraint one last time. “I was trying to go slow.”
“I don’t need slow. I need everything you have.”
After a searching look at those dilated irises that practically glowed with ice-blue flame, Ara needed no more urging. Grasping Margot’s hips, she walked her back, their bodies almost flush but for the skirts between them, and when they hit the wall, she crushed her mouth to Margot’s. If the kiss earlier had been unhurried and tentative, this one was all fire and raw hunger. She grasped Margot’s chin, angling her head to where she wanted it and slanted her mouth over hers, nipping and sucking, chasing Margot’s tongue with hers.
“You taste sublime,” she said in a hoarse voice. She tugged Margot’s head back with a handful of hair, not enough to hurt, but enough to expose that elegant column to her greedy mouth. She nipped her way down the velvety skin, biting into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and soliciting a groan of pure pleasure. Ara’s tongue edged the lace of Margot’s bodice and dipped into the swells of that creamy décolletage. “I want to mark every inch of you.”
“Then do it.”
Bloody hell, could a person come from the sheer sound of that rasp? Ara was already so wet that her thighs felt slick, the need for friction all-consuming. Too soon, too soon. She pressed her legs together as Margot’s fingers dug into her scalp while she obligingly nibbled and sucked at the plump curves, leaving a trail of red bites in her wake. The soft moans and kittenish whimpers were music to Ara’s ears.
“Quick, unlace me,” Margot said in a breathless whisper and twisted around so that she was pressed up against the wall, completely at Ara’s mercy. God, the position was so erotic that her knees nearly buckled as Margot’s arse rolled back into her pelvis.
She wanted to savor the unveiling of all that smooth skin, to count each and every one of those freckles along her shoulders, but her greedy fingers deftly unlaced the ties at the back of the dress as if they had minds of their own. The heady fragrance of gardenias wafted up as the fabric gaped and pooled around Margot’s waist, and it didn’t take much more to unfasten the petticoats for those layers to tumble down that superbly formed body.
Ara’s mouth dried, her hands faltering on the corset that cinched her waist. Curves on top, curves below, so much skin. And her scent. Fuck. Ara’s brain simply shut down and primal desire took over. Yanking the fabric of the chemise to the side, she sealed her mouth to Margot’s nape and ground her hips into hers as she slid her hand around beneath the filmy layers and into Margot’s drawers. Her knees nearly gave out at what she found there.
“You’re so fucking wet,” she moaned, copious amounts of silky arousal coating her fingers, as she licked a hot path up to the sensitive spot beneath Margot’s ear and elicited a whole-body shiver.
“Please,” Margot whispered, grinding erratically into her palm. “I need…”
“I know what you need,” she purred into Margot’s ear as her thumb swiped over the bundle of nerves at the top of her sex. The whine that came out of Margot was so deeply carnal that Ara trembled. She slid two fingers inside Margot’s hot sheath, knuckle-deep, and they both groaned at the sensation before Ara withdrew and sank back in to the base.
“You feel fucking incredible,” she whispered and quickened her thrusts.
They were both so tightly wound that it didn’t take long for Margot to detonate, her body seizing and her passage grasping Ara’s fingers with each rhythmic pulse. Ara tilted her chin with her free hand and swallowed Margot’s helpless cries with her mouth, even as her fingers wrung every last drop of the orgasm from her shuddering body.
“Such perfection,” she murmured. “I love feeling you clench so beautifully around my fingers.”
Margot gasped. “That was…I’ve never…”
