Page 44 of Under Her Protection

Leo reached behind her without turning her head. Her fingers found the heavy brass handle. She pulled the door to her, and it closed, and the small solid click of the latch was the loudest sound in the room.

Vivienne did not let go of Leo’s collar.

Her other hand, the one with the signet ring, came up to the side of Leo's jaw, and her thumb moved, once, over the pulse in Leo's throat, and she looked at Leo the way she had looked at her at Maison Noire in the mirror, and she did not say a word, and she did not need to.

Leo kept her hands at her sides for as long as it was possible to keep them there. It was not very long. Her right hand came up, slow, and closed over Vivienne's wrist, not to stop the hand at her jaw, but to feel the pulse there under her own thumb, and to know that Vivienne's pulse was doing the same thing her own was. Under the cuff of the cream silk, Vivienne's wrist was thinner than Leo had thought, and the bone of it fit in the hollow of Leo's palm in a way Leo was not going to think about later, though she knew, even as she did not think about it, that she was cataloguing the shape of that bone under her thumb and would be able, in a week, in a month, in a year, to recall it exactly.

Her left hand, which had been at her side, came up too. It did not touch Vivienne. It found the doorframe behind her own shoulder and rested there for the length of another breath, because she had not yet decided where she wanted to put it, and because she did not trust herself to decide with Vivienne's thumb on her pulse.

They stood like that for a beat.

Two.

Three.

Vivienne, looking at her, said nothing.

Leo, looking at Vivienne, said nothing.

And the fire kept burning, and the door was closed, and the night was still young, and neither of them looked away, and neither of them stepped back, and neither of them, in the long breath that followed, said a single word more. Vivienne's thumb stayed on the pulse at Leo's throat. Leo's palm stayed on Vivienne's wrist. The firelight moved in the grate. The door stayed closed.

That was where the evening was, at the breath before the breath that was going to change it.

9

The breath that changed the evening was not a long one.

Vivienne's thumb stayed on the pulse at Leo's throat for half a count more, and then she stopped waiting. She had spent two weeks waiting. She had spent twenty-five years waiting. She was not going to spend another breath of it.

Leo’s eyes were dark green like a forest at midnight.

She kissed Leo again. Choosing this time.

She kissed her with her hand fisted in the lapel of the black jacket and the other hand moving up into the dark hair behind Leo's ear, and she kissed her hard, mouth open, teeth catching, not yielding. Leo made a low sound against her mouth. Leo's hands came off the doorframe and off Vivienne's wrist and landed on Vivienne's hips, and Vivienne used the handhold Leo had given her to pull, and spun them both, and put Leo's back against the wall.

The wall was where Leo had put her three minutes ago.

The symmetry was not accidental. Vivienne might be smaller than Leo, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hold power.

"Mm," Leo said, against her mouth.

"Shut up."

"Yes, Madame."

"Do not call me that."

Leo smiled into her mouth.

Vivienne felt Leo’s thigh pressing between her own, her legs opened and let Leo’s muscular thigh press deliciously against her clit. Vivienne heard her own moan as it escaped her lips. It had been so long since she had allowed herself to feel real sexual excitement. Leo's hand came to the back of her neck, and Vivienne caught it before it arrived, and pinned that wrist against the wall beside Leo's shoulder. Leo could have broken the hold. They both knew Leo could have broken the hold. Leo chose not to.

"You are going to fight me," Leo said, low.

"Yes."

"You are going to lose."

"We will see."