As their gazes held, the significance of what they’d done sank in. Kate leaned in and pressed her lips to the corner of Tilly’s mouth. Beneath the sheet, her hands swept across Tilly’s waist, pulling her closer.

When Kate’s tongue skated across her neck, Tilly gasped. And then, sudden and strange: “How many women have you done this with?”

Kate’s kisses slowed as she attempted to make sense of the question. It didn’t matter, she could say, but it would be untrue. She’d never been one for casual sex. Each and every woman she’d been intimate with had changed her in some sense, loved her in their own way. It didn’t compare to what she had with Tilly, but those experiences had still mattered, had still made her who she was. “Don’t ask me that,” she said against the curve of Tilly’s neck.

“Why?” Tilly asked as Kate pulled back and dropped her head against her pillow.

“Because I don’t want to think about it right now.” She gazed up at the ceiling, trying to regulate her breathing.

“I’ve never felt that before.” Tilly reached out and slipped a hand between their pillows. “That…release.”

Kate licked her lips. After their discussion in the city café, she had gathered as much. “No?” she asked carefully, her voice as neutral as she could manage.

Tilly shook her head against the pillow. “How many times do you think it can happen?” She paused. “An orgasm,” she clarified.

That familiar heat curled low in her belly. “As many times as your body wants,” she murmured.

Tilly’s green eyes bore into hers. “And what if my body still wants?” she said, raspy.

Kate pulled back the sheet.

Chapter Nineteen

As Kate fixed the last button on her shirt, she leaned back on the mattress and traced her gaze over Tilly’s sleeping form. Her palm sank deeply into the pillow they’d tossed to the end of the bed sometime in the early hours of the morning. Tilly had fisted it so tightly that it had half-slipped from the case, and near the edge of complete exhaustion, neither of them had had the energy to fix it.

“Til?” she whispered.

Deep in sleep, Tilly didn’t move.

Tracking her gaze over Tilly’s relaxed features, she adjusted her glasses. She whispered her name a second time.

God, it was like trying to wake the dead. Tilly hadn’t stirred at the sound of the shower running, hadn’t even shifted in her sleep when Kate had tripped over her own sneakers in a quest to locate her bra. Gently, she reached out and touched her hand to Tilly’s bare shoulder.

Tilly’s eyelashes fluttered. Slowly, her lips parted.

“Tilly.”

As Tilly’s eyes opened, their gazes locked.

“I’m sorry,” Kate said softly, “but we have to check out in half an hour and I wasn’t sure if you’d like a shower before we go…”

Shyly, Tilly sat up, the sheet modestly pressed to her chest. She looked to the end of the bed where Kate had laid out her dress from the night before. Hidden beneath it was the underwear Kate had peeled from her body. “You should have woken me earlier,” she said groggily.