“You brought me here to kiss me.”
“No, I didn’t.”Clever woman. Too clever by half.
They glared at each other.
Steam hissed somewhere. Men shouted.
She was daring him to kiss her.
But he couldn’t do that. It was against his code of conduct. Topple one rule and they’d all collapse.
This was a battle for his very soul.
“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” she said, heaving an exasperated sigh.
And then she twined her hands around his neck, pulled his head down, and sealed her lips to his.
Chapter 13
When Miss Mari Perkins kissed a man, she went all in.
Her kiss stoked his body into blazing arousal.
Gone was the starched and proverb-spouting governess. In her place, the firebrand he’d sensed when he first met her.
The smell of her, sweet and warm. The oasis of her neck, her little chin jutting against his jaw.
The taste of her mouth, heady and complex as the aged brandy he hadn’t tasted in a decade.
Her slight, feminine curves melting against him, like wax pouring into a mold.
Everything he’d denied himself for so long. Comfort, surcease... pleasure.
“Oh,” she drew back slightly. “Oh that’s...” She dove back for more.
Her enthusiasm made his blood pump so fast he felt lightheaded.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t remember why this was wrong.
He kissed her with the pent-up longing that had built since the moment he met her.
She felt so good. So right. The silk of her skin. The velvet of her tongue. He untied her bonnet and lifted it off her head, never breaking the deep kiss.
This was madness.
She stiffened his cock but she also quickened his heart. Made him long for more than just her body.
The near terror that had swamped him when he stood outside the nursery returned, but this time instead of the blind urge to flee, to run away, he wanted to immolate himself in her fire.
Make this count. Make this last.
He shifted his good knee between her thighs, wanting to touch her with as much of his body as possible. Needing to give her pleasure.
She moaned, opened her legs slightly to give him access.
That soft little moan brought him back to his senses.
They were at the foundry.