Page 99
She was still wearing only her stockings and drawers. As quietly as she could, she crawled for her shift.
“Good morning.”
Georgie’s sleep-roughened voice stopped her midcrawl. She knelt, arms crossed over her breasts.
“Good morning.”
They’d turned, one fist holding the sheet closed at their throat. Their hair was tousled, lips hitched in a half smile. And their gaze. Their gaze pinned her, bright with the starlit remembrance of pleasures given and received.
A silvery tingle moved over her skin.
She felt more than naked, shockingly excited by the feel of her own breasts pushing against her inner arms, by the breeze teasing her bare skin, by the slight bite of her garters.
She didn’t move.
Georgie didn’t blink. The moment stretched, and at last, they gave themself a slight shake.
“Pardon my…You were about to…” They put their back to her.
She pulled her shift rapidly over her head.
“I can see the manor from here,” they remarked. “And the village. That’s the spire of All Souls.”
She went to stand beside them, leaning into an adjacent notch in the battlement. The meadows fanned below, green upon green, all gentle undulations to the southeast, higher hills blued by distance to the northwest.
She let her gaze snag on the church spire, and on Redmayne Manor, and then on the bluff, the light green of the treetops mixed with velvet shadows.
Georgie followed her gaze. “We’ll dig?”
She nodded, although the thought of digging didn’t summon visions of swords and amulets but rather the memory of their calluses scratching lightly on her nipples.
It should alarm her. But she was too well pleased, and warm at her core, for anything but complacency.
“Look,” they whispered in a changed voice. “The moon.”
There it was, still overhead, a near transparent crescent floating ethereally in the blue.
She regarded it, and realized they were regarding her.
She met their heavy-lidded eyes.
“It’s not quite morning, is it?” Their brows had a suggestive slant. “If the moon’s still up.”
“You’re claiming it’s still last night?” She tried to scoff, but her heart betrayed her, jumping up and down in her chest, undignified and eager.
“Something in between.” They shrugged, the sheet slipping down from their shoulder.
She swallowed. “And that means?”
Their eyes flashed. “Anything we want.”
The curve of their mouth was unholy.
But they only watched her, and she had the distinct impression that they were waiting, that they’d let the air thicken unbearably, make her pant with anticipation, and even then, they’d wait with that unhurried, nearly evil smile.
She reached for their fist, inserting her thumb, prying their fingers open.
They grinned wider as they let the sheet fall.
