She leaned forward with interest.“And the other four hours?”
“Spent exactly how you think,” he responded at once, unrepentant wickedness glinting in his eyes.“Toss me a towel?”
She handed him her wool-lined baking mitts, still reeling from their kiss… and the idea of experiencing far more for hours.
He pulled the tray out of the oven and set it on the cooling cloth in the middle of the table.
“Should I start the chocolate?”she asked.Her voice was surprisingly steady, but her trembling legs threatened to melt into a puddle at his feet at any moment.
“The chocolate is for you.”He stepped close and lifted her hand as if to kiss it, then turned it over to press a soft kiss to her wrist instead.“You smell delicious.”
“It’s the biscuits,” she blurted.But she deserved the awkward reminder.
It wasn’t the biscuits.It wasDuchess, rudely reminding her that Nicholas was simply responding to biological urges she’d chemically engineered for precisely this purpose.Her stomach twisted.
She wished she was worse at chemistry.That his extremely pleasing reaction was toher, not to a complex blend of compounds and extractions.That she had never started this trial at all.
He straightened his jacket and gave her a crooked smile.“Thank you for a lovely afternoon.”
“You aren’t staying for biscuits?”Her heart gave a lurch of disappointment.
He paused.“Is that what you want?”
“Are we… still talking about biscuits?”she stammered.
“We should figure that out,” he said, his gaze intense.“And possibly allot ourselves more than twelve minutes.”
“But you’re a rake,” she babbled.For a man famed for his conquests, Nicholas was proceeding remarkably slow.Curse her inability to instigate properly!“What is there to figure out?This is what you do.”
“Wrong,” he said, his voice rough.“You are not ‘what I do.’This is something else entirely.Something I’m not certain either of us is ready for.”
She hesitated.“Because I’m a virgin and you’re not?”
“Perhaps there’s more than one way to be a virgin,” he said at last.His brow furrowed as he ran a hand through his hair.“I’m always ready for a tumble.I’ve never had it mean something before.”
Her heart stopped.“What does it mean?”
His intense gaze focused on hers.“That continuing down this path would be dangerous.”
And with that, he was gone.
Chapter 11
Nicholas warmed the tip of his blowpipe in the fire.The simple, calming act should have made him relax.Made him feel at peace with the world and himself.
It did not.
He clenched his jaw.Although this rented space did not fully replicate his workshop back home, the smithy was not the cause of Nicholas’s unrest.A certain tempting chemist was.She had haunted his thoughts since the moment he walked out of her home.
Perhaps heshouldhave stayed for biscuits.He shoved the tip of his blowpipe into molten glass.No.He should not stay for biscuits.There were no biscuits.There was only hot, sweaty lovemaking, which was especially odd phrasing, given he had never made love to anyone before.His liaisons had just been meaningless tumbles.
Not that he was inlove.He wasn’t that foolish.This was a mere infatuation.His first.No wonder it was so confusing.
Every moment with Penelope was like being with… what?A friend?A lover?Something in-between?
That was the problem.He had friends and he’d had lovers, but he’d never had an “in-between” before.It marked a perilous crossroads.Friends were forever.Lovers were temporary.If Penelope crossed from one side to the other…
He whirled the molten glass onto the end of his blowpipe.Being afraid of losing Penelope was ridiculous.Walking away had always been the plan.He was on holiday, not some bride-hunting expedition like his brother.
