Archive of Our Own

The bass at Caprice throbbed in Francesca like a second heartbeat. She felt it in her sternum before she felt it in her feet, a low industrial pulse the DJ had been building for twenty minutes without ever quite letting it break.

She had not wanted to go out. Eloise had insisted, in that way she tended to—chin tipped, mouth in a coy little smile, accompanied this time by glass of something amber pushed across the kitchen island. It’s been two years, Fran. You can let yourself have a night. If Mother asks, I’ll swear you’re rehearsing a new piece. Go do something new. Something different. Didn’t your therapist say you should, too?

And so here she was, in a pale blue slip dress her sister had picked and she hadn’t had the energy to argue with, the thin straps slipping every few minutes off the slope of her shoulder, her hair pinned up loosely enough that strands had already escaped to stick at her neck. It felt risqué, like lingerie, like something secret, that she shouldn’t be wearing in public. It was wild and thrilling in a way she rarely allowed herself to be.

Eloise was right, too—not that Francesca would ever admit it without some prodding. After losing John to the aneurysm and his cousin to an absolute denial of responsibility, Francesca had given her life to Kilmartin United. The least she could do was shepherd the family company John had loved so dearly. It had eaten all the time she’d been willing to give, and she’d been willing to surrender more than she probably should have. Michaela had run off and vested all her power in Francesca; what she couldn’t, she would send in erratic emails from Singapore, where she—allegedly—managed the Kilmartin Asia-Pacific interests.

Caprice was loud enough that she could barely hear herself think—an appreciated change—and full of people who didn’t know her. A night out where she wasn’t either a Bridgerton or a Stirling would be a sweet reprieve.

Francesca was on her second drink, half-turned at the bar, watching the floor without paying attention to it, when she heard her.

It was the laugh. That low, throaty laugh that started somewhere behind the breastbone and ran over Francesca’s skin like velvet. Climbed inside her skin, if she was honest, and rubbed right against her nerves and twined around her bones. Francesca’s hand stilled around the cold of the glass. She did not turn her head. She did not need to. She had heard that laugh enough in their living room and on the veranda and once, devastatingly, into the curve of her own neck when she had leaned in to fix the clasp of her necklace and exhaled.

She might forget a lot of things, but Michaela Stirling would never be one of them.

Francesca turned.

Michaela was at the other end of the bar, leaned on one elbow, talking to the bartender. She was wearing something silky in a dark, rich red, cut low enough that the soft brown swell of her chest caught the light from the bar, the fabric clinging to a waist that nipped in before flaring back out at her hips. Her braids were pulled up high, exposing the line of her throat, the large gold hoops at her ears catching every shift of light.

Michaela laughed again at something the bartender said, tipped her head back, and as her chin came down her eyes slid sideways and found Francesca’s.

Francesca would swear the club stopped for a heartbeat, a flash of light from behind Michaela illuminating her from the back, limning her in gold.

For a beat Michaela just looked at her, lips parted, the smile from whatever the bartender had said still half-built on her mouth and going nowhere now. Then she straightened slowly, carefully, and walked the length of the bar.

“Francesca Stirling,” Michaela said when she got there, and her voice was lower than the music had any right to let it be.

“Michaela Stirling.” She was proud of how her voice didn’t wobble, how she didn’t fumble. Her fingers clenched around her vodka-and-cranberry like a lifeline. Maybe she should order a mocktail. It always paid to be in full control of her faculties around Michaela; the woman had a tendency to unsettle her. Yes. Unsettle. That was it.

“I didn’t think I’d see you in a place like this.” Michaela gestured to the dance floor and the club pulsing around them. She leaned in close, right into Francesca’s space as if she had every right to be there.

Francesca took a breath and drew Michaela in with it. Peaches, vanilla, and cedar filled her lungs. Stop it, Fran. She’s not a bloody dessert.

Michaela was looking up at her under her lashes with a frankness that made the Francesca’s stomach swoop.

Definitely time to switch to mocktails.

“How long are you back in town?” Francesca asked.

“Through the weekend.”

“And then?”

“Singapore.” Michaela’s gaze dipped, very briefly, to the place where the strap of Francesca’s dress was currently losing its argument with gravity, and came back up slowly. “You look different.”

Francesca took a nervous sip, adjusting the strap again. Why had she borrowed this from El? She shouldn’t have, should have worn something out of her own closet even if most of it was better for business meetings than a dance club. Let alone something that made her feel like Michaela was ready to undress her with her eyes. “Do I?”

“You know you do.” Michaela’s eyes wandered again. They slid along Francesca’s throat, shoulders, down her torso. The touch was weighty as a caress, and at it, something solidified in Francesca. “I never thought I’d see you in a dress like that, let alone out here at a club. These were never your thing.”

Heat washed through Francesca’s cheeks. She had avoided clubs, social events, just about anything like this. The whole point of it had been something new and different. Had El known Michaela was in town? El knew almost everything, between her and Penelope. Francesca wouldn’t put it past her sister to have some kind of extra knowledge and an ulterior motive.

“Things change,” Francesca replied tightly. “I’ve been managing everything at Kilmartin for the past two years. I have had to do things I might not otherwise.”

Something flickered on Michaela’s face, and her eyes tightened for a brief moment. “Well, it suits you. And surely you didn’t come to a club just to stand here and hold up the bar. How about a dance?”

Before she could answer properly, Michaela took Francesca’s fingers and tugged her in past a knot of people until they hit a pocket of space near one of the speakers, where the bass was loud enough to make speech genuinely impossible and the lights overhead pulsed red to pink to orange and back again.

What was she going to do? Run? No—running was Michaela’s role. Francesca, perhaps despite everything, had a tendency to stay when she shouldn’t. She’d dealt with board rooms now, business reports and journalists and presentations. She’d learned how to hold her head high and how to do what was necessary.

She was past the anger now. Two years might have been long enough to dwell on it, to let it fester into some suppurating wound. but she’d refused to do that. She’d thrown herself into work and therapy. Grief counseling had done wonders for her, leading into a regular therapy appointment. She knew herself now, better than she ever had. Knew that she had more than her share of baggage; growing up a Bridgerton had been a mixed blessing. Knew she’d loved John—and loved Michaela, too. The mourning she’d done hadn’t just been for her husband, but realizing she’d lost a woman she’d fallen in love with. A funny thing, to mourn something before you knew what it was.

They started apart, two women dancing next to each other more than they were dancing with each other. Michaela’s hands stayed at her own hips at first, swaying, her shoulders rolling loose to the beat. Francesca took a minute, letting the music carry through her, remind her that this was the body she’d made for herself now, the one where she could do what she wanted because she did and not because some unspoken rules prohibited her. She knew how to dance—perhaps not as well as Michaela, who threw herself into it like it was her natural way of moving—but she could manage. She let her hips find the down-beat. She let her arms come up, slow, and the fabric of her dress shifted against her thighs.

More, she watched Michaela watch her.

A second song bled into a third and into the fourth and the DJ finally let the build break; the whole crowd surged in closer because that was what crowds did, and Michaela was suddenly half a foot from her, then less, then her hand was light at Francesca’s waist—only because the woman behind her had stumbled, only that—and then it stayed.

Francesca turned, slowly, in that hand. Put her back to Michaela’s front.

She felt the small, sharp inhale against the nape of her neck.

“Frannie,” Michaela said, low, right at her ear. The old name. The one only family had ever used and that Michaela had rarely said. “What are you doing?”

“Dancing.” Francesca leaned her head back, just a fraction, just enough that the loose strands of her hair brushed Michaela’s cheek. Her hips rocked against Michaela’s, dipped, just enough of a tease. Look who I am now. Look at what you could have had, if you hadn’t run.

 Michaela’s hand at her waist tightened, then deliberately loosened, like a woman talking herself down from something.

“You used to not be able to look at me,” Michaela murmured.

“I know.”

“You’d go pink, every time.”

“I know.” Why did she need to remind her? Or was this just teasing?

“What changed?”

Francesca rolled her hips, slow, once, against the warm give of Michaela behind her. She heard the swallow. She felt the hand at her waist go briefly, helplessly, into a grip—fingers pressing through the silk of the dress into the softness of her side—before Michaela mastered it again and eased back.

“A lot,” Francesca said. There was no way she was going to have this conversation with Michaela here and now, in the middle of a dance floor. She’d need every possible minute to gather her thoughts and willpower, and talking was damn near impossible. “Talk later. Dance now.”

“Francesca.” Lower now. Almost a warning. “I’m trying to be good.”

“Why? You never were before.”

“Because—” A short laugh, near her ear came out a little frayed. “Because you were married to my cousin and all that time I wanted something I couldn’t have. And then he died, and you were sad, and—”

“I’m not sad tonight.”

Michaela’s lips brushed against her ear, fingers curling against her side again. “That is not the point I’m making.”

Francesca turned in her arms. They were chest to chest now, Michaela’s face tipped up to hers because Francesca had a good four inches on her in these heels, and the pink light slid down the side of Michaela’s face and caught in the gloss of her mouth. Francesca could feel the press of Michaela’s breasts against the lower curve of her own through two thin layers of silk.

“You left,” Francesca said.

“I had to.” Michaela’s hands had found her hips by then, the broad warm spread of her palms a searing heat, and she was the one who pulled Francesca flush against her, not the other way around. Francesca felt the breath go out of her, a small surprised oh swallowed by the music of the club. “Otherwise I was going to do something we both might have regretted.”

“You might have.” Francesca leaned in close, lips against Michaela’s ear, the scent of her filling her lungs and making her body sing. “I wouldn’t. I knew; I just didn’t know how to ask.”

“You don’t get to say things like that to me in a room full of people,” Michaela said against her throat. Her mouth was not quite on the skin. Almost. The heat of her breath was, and that was worse, somehow, than a kiss would have been. “Do you understand me?”

“Then take me out of the room.”

Michaela went still.

She pulled back just far enough to look at Francesca. Whatever she found made her exhale, short and rough, and shake her head once, like a woman who had finally lost an argument she’d been having with herself for a very long time.

“You are going to be the death of me,” Michaela said.

“Probably.”

Michaela laughed, the same low laugh that had started all of this, and caught Francesca’s hand in hers, fingers lacing tight, and pulled her off the floor toward the door.

The cold of the street was a slap after the wet heat of the floor. Francesca’s ears rang with the absence of bass, that strange hollow buzzing that always followed her out of a club, and she was half a step behind Michaela on the sidewalk because Michaela had not let go of her hand and was walking like a woman with intent.

“Where are we going?”

“My hotel. Four blocks.” Michaela glanced back, the gold of the streetlight sliding across her cheekbone. “Unless you’d rather somewhere else?”

“Four blocks is fine.”

“Frannie.”

“What?”

Michaela stopped, right there in the middle of the pavement, a man in a delivery jacket having to swerve around them with a muttered curse. She turned and put her free hand flat on Francesca’s sternum, gentle, just above the neckline of the slip dress where her pulse was working overtime.

“If you want to change your mind,” Michaela said, “you change it now. Not in the elevator. Not at the door. Now.”

The streetlamp was doing something unfair and beautiful to Michaela’s face, picking out the slope of her cheek, the deep warm brown of her shoulder. Francesca looked down at her—really down, the height difference indecent in these heels—and felt something settle in her chest that had been loose in her for years.

“I’m not changing my mind.”

“Say it properly.”

“I want to go to your hotel. I want you to take me upstairs. I want—” and here her voice caught, only a little, only the ghost of the old Francesca who had blushed across dinner tables, “—I want you to stop being good.”

Michaela closed her eyes for a beat. When she opened them, she laughed under her breath and shook her head and started walking again, faster.

The hotel lobby was low-lit, too much marble and a well-trained concierge. The elevator was empty. The doors slid shut on their reflection—Francesca pale and pink-cheeked, her hair half-collapsed from its pins, Michaela compact and gleaming and watching her in the mirrored wall with eyes gone very dark—and the moment the floor lurched upward, Michaela turned and pressed her back against the brass rail and kissed her.

It was not a tentative kiss. There had been years of tentative between them and they had used all of it up on the sidewalk. Michaela’s mouth opened against hers immediately, soft and hot, the small sound she made when Francesca’s tongue met hers somewhere between a laugh and a groan, vibrating into Francesca’s lower lip. Michaela’s hands came up to her jaw, her thumbs along the side, tipping her down to the angle she wanted.

This was what she’d been waiting for. This made her heart race; it never had, with John. This kiss, warm and sweet and Michaela’s lips tinged faintly with lip gloss and the sharp bite of alcohol, was what she’d dreamed about. She opened her mouth against Michaela’s, an invitation to take what she wanted—a surrender, a promise. A reminder that Francesca wasn’t running.

Michaela met it with a groan, tongue sliding into Francesca’s mouth, fingers tightening on her jaw, deepening the kiss and bringing them closer.

The elevator dinged. They did not stop. The doors opened on an empty hallway and Michaela walked her out backward without breaking the kiss, one hand fumbling in her clutch for the key card, the other anchored at the small of Francesca’s back.

“Door,” Michaela mumbled against her mouth.

“Mm.”

“Frannie, the door—”

Francesca laughed, and let herself be peeled off, and watched Michaela’s hands shake, a small tremor in those long brown fingers—as she tapped the key against the reader. The light blinked green. Michaela exhaled.

The room was dim and good-smelling, the curtains open onto a wedge of skyline. Francesca did not get to look at any of it because the second the door clicked shut Michaela’s hands were back on her, walking her toward the bed, the silk of the burgundy dress brushing Francesca’s bare arms.

“I have,” Michaela said, between kisses pressed under Francesca’s jaw, at the hollow of her throat, at the slope of her shoulder where the strap had finally, fully fallen, “thought about this. For. Years.”

“You said.”

“I’m saying again.”

“What did you think about?”

Michaela lifted her head. The look she gave Francesca was almost wounded by it, by the question, by the obviousness of the answer.

“Everything,” she said. “I thought about everything.”

She caught the other strap of the slip dress between her finger and thumb and tugged, slow, and the whole thing slithered down Francesca’s body and pooled at her feet in a blue puddle. Francesca had not worn a bra. She was just standing there now in a small pair of underwear and the heels and the loose pins in her hair, and she watched Michaela’s gaze travel down her—the long pale length of her, the small high curve of her breasts, the flat of her stomach, the jut of her hipbones—and watched Michaela’s mouth go soft.

“Oh,” Michaela said, very quietly. “Frannie.”

“Your turn.”

Michaela huffed a laugh. Reached behind herself and unzipped, the dress sliding off her in a single liquid motion, and God, Francesca had imagined this. Her imagination had been a poor thing compared to this. Michaela’s body was extravagant. The full heavy weight of her breasts in a strapless black bra, the deep curve of her waist, the wide soft flare of her hips, the muscle and soft lines of her thighs.

“Come here,” Francesca said, surprised at her own voice, low and steady.

Michaela moved in, hands sliding up Francesca’s back to curl around the nape of her neck. She stroked a long line down Francesca’s spine, stealing a gasp and a soft moan from her mouth. With a wicked gleam in those dark eyes, she repeated the motion, and it was all Francesca could do not to tip her head back and moan or to purr like a cat. Sparks ricocheted through her body.

Michaela tipped her face up. Francesca bent and kissed her, slower this time, taking her time about it, sliding her hands down the dip of Michaela’s waist and around to the generous swell of her ass and squeezing, openly, the way she’d wanted to for years.

Michaela made a noise into her mouth that was almost a whimper. Francesca tucked the sound away to keep. She wanted to play that back in her dreams.

“Bed,” Michaela said.

They went down onto it together, Francesca on her back into the cool white duvet, Michaela climbing over her, a knee planted between Francesca’s thighs, chest brushing Francesca’s as she leaned down. The bra came off—Michaela reached back one-handed and unclasped it like she’d been doing it her whole life—and her breasts spilled free, dark and full, the nipples already tight.

Michaela’s hand went into the back of her hair, fingers tangling in the loose pins, and held her there. “I can’t decide if this is the hottest thing that’s ever happened or if I need to make sure I’m not dreaming.”

Francesca gazed up. “Do you do this with all the women you bring back to your room from a club?”

“I never expected you to be this—forward.”

Francesca snorted once, amused. Go do something new. Something different. That’s what both Eloise and her well-paid therapist had said. She swallowed, bringing her hands up along Michaela’s sides, stroking her skin. “Running Kilmartin taught me I need to take initiative sometimes. You might only have one opportunity, and you don’t want to lose it to regrets.”

Something in Michaela’s expression softened. She dipped down and caught Francesca’s mouth in another kiss, this one long and slow. Her tongue traced Fran’s lips, gentle strokes of reassurance, before pushing past the open seam of her mouth and dipping inside. Not plundering, but exploring—learning. Memorizing.

Maybe apologizing.

Francesca brought her arms around Michaela’s waist, stroking long lines along her spine, her back, down to her hips. She smoothed her palms along Michaela’s shoulders, tipping her own head back into the pillow as the kiss went on and on, heat coiling in Francesca and spreading out through every limb.

“You said,” Francesca murmured around her, “you were going to stop being good.”

“I am stopping. I’m stopping right now.”

“Prove it.”

Michaela made a low sound, something caught between a laugh and a growl, and pushed her flat. Caught both of Francesca’s wrists in one hand and pinned them up above her head against the pillow, not hard, just there, just the suggestion of being held. Francesca’s breath stuttered.

“You want to tease me?” Michaela said, low, mouth at the corner of her jaw. “Hm? Out there on the floor, rolling those skinny little hips back on me like I was supposed to just take it?” She didn’t wait for an answer, licking a trail down Francesca’s throat. “You been thinking about this too, Frannie?”

Her breath hitched. She could lie, but what would the point be? She was done with lying. Done with denying. “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Michaela…”

“Tell me.” And the stress of it, the hint of desperation, made Francesca wonder just how much hurt Michaela had been hiding. What hadn’t Francesca seen, as self-centered as she’d been?

Did Michaela, the most confident woman Francesca had ever met, need reassurance?

“I thought about your mouth.” Francesca was breathing shallowly, the warm weight of Michaela’s thigh pressed up between her legs and the throb of her own body answering it. “I thought about your hands. I thought about—that time when you fixed my necklace, when your mouth was at the back of my neck and—”

Michaela made another one of those strangled sounds.

“You asked!”

“I know I asked.” She lifted her head. Her eyes were almost black. “I’m going to take care of you. Okay? I’m going to take such good care of you.”

She let go of Francesca’s wrists and started working her way down—a kiss at her throat, a slow open-mouthed one at her collarbone, the warm drag of her tongue down the center of Francesca’s sternum, between her breasts, over the soft of her stomach. She paused at her navel. Glanced up. Francesca had never in her life seen anything more devastating than Michaela’s eyes from that angle, the gold-brown of them caught in the low light, her braids spilling over one shoulder.

“Still want me to stop being good?”

Francesca nodded. Michaela grinned, mouth canting up at the corner, wicked and joyous. Heat flared in Francesca’s belly. Lower.

“I want to hear you say it. Do you want it?”

Francesca swallowed around the desire that had clogged her throat. “Yes.”

Michaela hooked her fingers in the waistband of Francesca’s underwear and dragged them down, slow, over the swell of hip and the long pale length of thigh, off over the heels Francesca had not even taken off, and dropped them somewhere on the floor.

She settled between Francesca’s knees. Pressed a kiss, almost reverent, to the soft inside of her thigh. Then another, higher. Then her mouth was there and Francesca’s whole back came up off the bed, her hand flying down to grab at Michaela’s braids and then immediately loosening, mortified—and Michaela laughed against her, a low warm vibration that did absolutely unfair things, and reached up to find Francesca’s hand and put it firmly back where it had been.

“Hold on,” Michaela said. “I want you to.”

Michaela did not start fast. She started slow—a single long stroke of her tongue, flat and broad, from the slick heat of Francesca’s opening up to the swollen bud of her clit, and Francesca’s hips jerked off the mattress like she’d been touched with a live wire.

Another stroke. Slower. Michaela’s hands pressed her thighs wider, thumbs spreading her open, and the cool air of the room hit the wet of her for half a second before Michaela’s mouth closed over her again; then it was just heat, just the soft devastating pressure of her tongue moving in tight little circles that made Francesca’s heels dig into the duvet.

“God, oh God—”

Michaela pulled back. Just pulled back, her mouth a half-inch away, her breath hot and damp on Francesca’s slick skin. Francesca made a sound of pure bereft outrage that she would be embarrassed about later.

“What—”

“Tell me what you want.”

Francesca stared down at her. Her chest was heaving. The dim light caught the shine of herself on Michaela’s lower lip and the sight did something to her brain, scrambled it, left her wordless and blinking.

“I… You were…”

“I was what?” Michaela pressed a soft kiss to the inside of her thigh. Then another. Then one to the crease where thigh met hip, maddeningly close to where Francesca needed her, and Francesca’s hips canted up, eager to return to what they’d been doing. “Use your words, Frannie. You were doing so well.”

“You know what I want!”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Michaela—!” Heat slithered through her body and across her skin. It climbed up her chest and her throat. Michaela held her there, breath catching, grinning in that wicked way of hers, while Fran fumbled for words, squirmed with embarrassment.

“Say it.” Another kiss, placed with excruciating precision on the soft skin beside her clit. “Tell me exactly what you want me to do and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you ask. But you have to ask.”

Francesca’s hand was still tangled in Michaela’s braids. Her fingers tightened, involuntary; Michaela’s eyes fluttered—just barely, just a flicker of her own composure cracking—and that small tell gave Francesca something to stand on. She was not the only one unraveled here. Michaela was shaking too, she realized. Michaela’s voice was steady but her hands on Francesca’s thighs were trembling, fine and constant, like the effort of holding back was costing her something enormous.

Francesca swallowed. Her voice came out lower than she expected.

“I want your mouth on me.”

“Where?”

“You know where!”

“Say it.” Michaela’s tongue traced a slow line along the crease of her thigh. “Be specific. I want to hear you say the words.”

Francesca’s face was burning, and Michaela was watching it happen with those dark gold eyes and the faintest curve of a smile. She’s enjoying this.

“My clit.” The word fell out of her in a rush, almost garbled, and Michaela’s smile widened. “I want—your mouth on my clit. I want you to keep going—”

The last word broke into a moan because Michaela did not wait for her to finish speaking. Her mouth was back on her the instant the word clit left Francesca’s lips, and this time she was not slow about it. She was deliberate, focused, her tongue working in tight wet strokes exactly where Francesca needed it, two fingers sliding inside her with a surety that made Francesca’s vision blur at the edges and stole a groan from her throat.

“Mm.” Michaela’s hum of acknowledgment vibrated through her and Francesca’s hips bucked. Michaela rode the movement with her, mouth never leaving, fingers curling up inside her to find the spot that made Francesca’s thigh clench hard around her ear. “There?”

Francesca nodded frantically, hips rolling back up, urging. “Right there, please!”

“I love hearing that,” Michaela murmured, diving back down again.

She was not going to last. She could feel it building already, the tight coiling heat low in her belly, the way her thighs were shaking against the warm breadth of Michaela’s shoulders. Michaela’s fingers moved in her, steady and relentless, two, then three, stretching her open around the thick knuckle of them while her tongue worked in tight devastating circles, and Francesca heard herself making sounds she had never made before that went high and reedy on every exhale, her hand fisted so tight in Michaela’s braids that her knuckles ached.

“Look at me,” Michaela said, pulling off just long enough to speak, her mouth wet, her chin wet, her fingers still moving. “Frannie. Look at me when you come.”

Francesca forced her eyes open. Looked down the length of her own trembling body to where Michaela was kneeling between her legs, this gorgeous devastating woman who had waited years for her, and the sight of her the shine of her, the focused heat of her expression, the way her full lips parted and her dark eyes held Francesca’s gaze like a promise—tipped her over.

The orgasm hit her in waves. Not one clean crest but a series of them, rolling through her in deep shuddering pulses, her back arching off the bed, Michaela’s name leaving her mouth in a broken repeating moan and Michaela’s mouth stayed on her through all of it, easing only when Francesca’s thighs began to shake too hard, when the sensitivity crossed over from pleasure into something that made her whimper and push weakly at Michaela’s shoulder.

Michaela pulled back. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Crawled up Francesca’s body with the slow satisfied grace of a large cat and settled her weight on top of her, her heavy breasts pressing soft against Francesca’s ribs, and kissed her—Francesca tasted herself on Michaela’s tongue, salty and musky, and the intimacy of it made her whine into the kiss.

“Good?” Michaela murmured against her mouth.

“You know that was good.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Francesca laughed. “That was good. Very good.”

Michaela tucked her face into Francesca’s neck, lips dragging lazy and warm against the tendon there. “I’ve wanted to do that since…well. For a while.”

“How long? Truly?”

“Since the engagement party. You were wearing that blue dress. You came out of the kitchen with a tray of champagne and you looked at me and I thought…” She stopped. Shook her head against Francesca’s throat.

“You thought what?”

“I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the one, and I can’t have her.’”

The laughter drained out of Francesca. She lay there underneath the warm solid weight of Michaela and felt something crack open in her chest that had been sealed shut for a long time—not grief exactly, but something like it, the ache of all those years of not-knowing, of blushing across dinner tables while Michaela was thinking that’s the one.

“You could have said something,” Francesca said, quiet.

“You were marrying my cousin.”

“I know.”

“You were so…” Michaela lifted her head, propped her chin on Francesca’s sternum and looked up at her. “You were so quiet, Frannie. You were this quiet serious woman and I couldn’t tell if you—I thought maybe I was imagining it. The way you’d look at me and then look away. I thought, maybe she’s just shy, maybe she looks at everyone like that.”

“I didn’t look at everyone like that.”

“I know that now.”

“I never looked at anyone the way I looked at you. I didn’t know, then, but. Therapy gave me words for things I didn’t have them for. I just knew you were beautiful and you made me feel things and I wasn’t supposed to feel those things for someone who wasn’t my spouse and…”

Michaela’s expression flickered. Something raw moved through her eyes and she ducked her head, pressed her forehead to Francesca’s collarbone, and Francesca felt the small shake of her shoulders and realized with a start that Michaela was fighting something back. Eventually, she lifted her head. Her eyes were bright but not spilling over, held steady by whatever fierce composure she had built in herself over years of being somewhere else, thinking about this, thinking about her. She looked at Francesca for a long moment.

“I spent years thinking you were straight,” Michaela whispered. “I spent all that time thinking I’d imagined the whole thing. That you’d go home to some nice man and have a normal life and never think about me again. And then I see you tonight, across a bar, in that dress…” Her breath caught again, her palms resting against Francesca’s skin. “And I thought… Maybe this is just tonight. Maybe she just wants this one night to figure herself out and then she’ll go back to whoever.”

“I don’t have anyone to go back to. And I don’t want to go back to anyone. Or find someone else.” Francesca ghosted her thumbs across Michaela’s cheekbones. “I spent my whole marriage knowing something was missing. Loving John—I did love him, I need you to know that, I loved him and I grieved him and I would not trade a single day of it. But there was always this…space. This quiet space inside me that I couldn’t fill, because I didn’t know what it was shaped like. And then I met you, and I knew. I knew what the shape was. It was you. It was always you. But I was afraid, because I wasn’t supposed to want that. I was married! You were his cousin! You were a woman! But…I wanted it anyway. Wanted you anyway.”

A tear slid down Michaela’s cheek. She caught it with the back of her hand, impatient, as though angry at her body for betraying her.

Francesca swallowed again, this time around the grief and the flurry of emotion in her belly. “I’m not saying we have to figure everything out tonight. You live in Singapore. I live here. I’m not asking you for—I don’t know what I’m asking you for. But I’m asking you for something. Because I am not letting you walk out of this room and get on a plane and disappear.”

“I wasn’t going to disappear.”

“Weren’t you?”

Michaela closed her eyes. Pressed her forehead to Francesca’s. Stayed there, breathing, the warmth of her against Francesca’s skin.

“No,” she said finally. “No, I wasn’t. I was going to be a coward and text you in a week with some excuse to come back to the city.”

“That’s not disappearing. That’s orbiting.”

“Orbiting is worse.”

“It is.” Francesca kissed her. Soft, just a press of lips. “Stay.”

“Tonight?” Michaela’s mouth twitched into a smile. “You’re in my hotel room. I’m not going anywhere.”

Francesca rolled her eyes and tapped Michaela on the shoulder. If it had been one of her siblings, she’d have given them a more forceful smack, but Michaela was someone different. Despite their intimacy, they weren’t there yet. “I meant in the city. Tomorrow.” She paused, and then, almost shyly, “As long as you can.”

Michaela laughed and kissed Francesca back, harder, hands finding the bare plane of Francesca’s back and pulling her in until there was no space left between them, until they were chest to chest and hip to hip and Michaela’s forehead was pressed to Francesca’s collarbone and her shoulders were shaking with the effort of not crying.

“I have a confession,” Michaela said, muffled against Francesca’s skin.

“Tell me.”

“I’ve been coming back every couple of months. Checking. Just—not wanting to be seen by you, by anyone really, but to see how you are. The company was always a possible excuse, if you saw me. But now…”

Francesca laughed. Pulled back enough to look at her, the tear-tracks drying on her cheeks, the gold of her eyes, the shape of her mouth. The most beautiful woman Francesca had ever seen, naked in a half-dark hotel room, confessing that she had crossed an ocean to see her.

“Come here,” Francesca said, and pulled her down into the pillows.

They lay tangled together—Michaela’s head on Francesca’s shoulder, one thigh thrown across Francesca’s hips, Francesca’s fingers tracing idle patterns on the warm silk of Michaela’s back.

“I can hear you thinking,” Michaela murmured against her throat.

“I’m thinking about Singapore. About how many frequent flyer miles I have.”

Michaela lifted her head. Looked at her. “Frannie.”

“I have a lot. I traveled with John. I never used them. And I could even call it a business trip.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m a Bridgerton. And a Stirling. I think I have every right to be. I can come to Singapore, check in with the branch there. Not a weight hanging around your neck, no commitments. Just visits…”

“Or maybe I could designate someone there, and come back here. It’s been a long time since I set foot in the office. Might be worth reminding people I’m still around.” Michaela’s fingers drew idle designs on Francesca’s shoulder. “Shake things up a bit, perhaps. I could spend some time in the office.”

Francesca hummed, twisting one of Michaela’s braids around her finger. “It would be nice to see you there. There’s always a lot to get done in the office.”

Michaela’s eyes gleam, teeth flashing with another wicked smile. “Believe me, Fran, I’ve already got plans.”