She couldn’t stop her lips from twitching, curving. She looked down and dropped the last napkin on the pile.
“Perhaps…” He sounded not precisely hesitant but diffident, unsure—unsure how she would react. “In the interests of Avening as a whole, we—you and I—could come to some arrangement.”
It was her turn to blink. She looked at him; his eyes told her he was in earnest, but, like her, wasn’t at all sure how such an arrangement—between him and her, people like them—might work. Yet he’d spoken her thoughts aloud; perhaps, if they both wished it, they could rub along together…somehow.
“What did you have in mind?” She was under no illusions that he wasn’t an arrogant, accustomed-to-command gentleman of her class; however, she’d already discovered he wasn’t as bad as others of that ilk, and he had suggested it. She wasn’t the sort to cut off her nose to spite her face.
He studied her; there was something in the line of his lips, the cool steadiness of his gaze that assured her her earlier suspicion that he saw her clearly wasn’t wrong. He knew—appreciated—just how strong she was, just how steely her will would be.
He’d made his offer and was going forward with his eyes fully open.
For quite the first time in her life, she felt a touch giddy.
His brows rose consideringly. “All I can suggest is that we play it by ear. You’re hardly the sort to suffer in silence.” His untrustworthy smile flashed. “And neither am I. Why not simply proceed, and deal with matters as they arise?”
The only sensible solution. She nodded, brisk and businesslike, and held out her hand. “Agreed.”
His gaze dropped to her hand, then rose to her face. His hand engulfed hers, then he smoothly wrapped it, her arm and his behind her and drew her to him.
Before she could blink, she was in his arms, breast to chest, eyes widening as he bent his head.
“Agreed,” he confirmed. His lips curved in a wholly male smile, then swooped and captured hers.
Captured her. She didn’t understand how it happened, how he did it, but the instant his arms closed around her, the instant his lips touched hers, the field on which they stood changed, shifted.
She’d started her day distantly hurt, reminding herself his attitude to her was no more than she’d expected. Gentlemen of her class didn’t like ladies who managed, no matter how well they accomplished the task. She’d half expected him to take umbrage at the role she’d assumed in his absence; she hadn’t been surprised by him claiming it back. But she had been, somewhere inside where she hid what she termed her foolish self, been disappointed.
His lips firmed and she met them, and felt that foolish self slip her leash. And dance a little jig.
This—this sensual exchange—had nothing to do with the bargain they’d struck, yet that bargain was both intriguing and, to her, fascinatingly tempting.
Something unexpected.
As was he.
As was this.
His arms locked about her, and tightened, slowly, easing her against him—and she went. Without any missish hesitation, but with foreknowledge and intent. She pushed her arms up, draped them over his broad shoulders, clasped his nape between her hands, and boldly kissed him back. Then she parted her lips and let him take, let him lead her where he would.
Into an engagement that spoke of hunger and need, that promised mutual pleasure.
Pleasure of a sort she’d thought had passed her by, that had long ago drifted beyond her grasp. Pleasure of a sort that despite never experiencing it she understood very well.
He concealed nothing, pretended nothing; he let her see his need, feel his hunger. Let his desire rise unfettered and caress her with fingers of flame.
Evoking hers. Inciting hers in a way that had never happened before. Physical desire wasn’t something she’d felt before; the realization had her mentally blinking, then the challenge—the pressure of his lips on hers, the subtle taunt of his maurading tongue—firmed, and she, not just her foolish self but with conscious decision, responded.
Why shouldn’t she know, experience? Why shouldn’t she take?
She moved into him, deliberately meeting him breast to chest, hips to hips, thighs to thighs. Through the now flagrant mating of their mouths, she sensed his reaction, a brief hiatus while he caught his breath, and his control. Not because she, with her wanton response, had weakened it, but because his response to her action had.
Fascinating. Her newfound interest in physical desire escalated. She twined her arms about his neck and settled to returning the heated caresses he pressed on her.
Jack met her, matched her, dueled with her for supremacy, a tug-of-war that neither could truly win. The exchange—she—held his attention utterly, so completely it scared him; he couldn’t think. With her in his arms, with her lips under his, her mouth freely offered in a scorching, viscerally tempting exchange—a viscerally arousing engagement of lips, tongues, and heated breaths—lust fogged his brain. Only one thought penetrated it, the thought of penetrating her.
Of having her beneath him, arching as she took him deep into her firm, curvaceous body, into her scalding feminine heat.
He wanted her naked and abandoned. Wanted her with a need, an elemental hunger that shook him. That snared him so deeply he didn’t want to look too closely, to examine why it should be, why of all the ladies with whom he’d dallied, or who he now could have, she—a haughty termagent he was going to have to deal carefully with on a daily basis—was the one who struck sparks to his tinder.