This kiss started out the same. Tender and sweet. But then he cupped her cheeks and coaxed with his lips until she parted hers in surprise. Defenses down, he took his chance. When his tongue touched hers, she froze. Electrified. Terrified.
He wasinher mouth now. Exploring her. Observing her. Learning all of the things she’d spent a lifetime trying to hide. Discovering her from angles even she had never seen.
She felt stripped bare. As though her layers of winter apparel had fallen away, leaving her naked beneath his hands.
He did not seem repulsed by her. The opposite. He gripped her tighter, kissed her harder, made a tiny little growl deep within his throat, as though it was she who was releasing feelings he’d long vowed to keep fenced inside.
His reaction made her feel powerful. Vulnerable. As though they had skated out together to the dangerous part of the ice. It might hold; let them out alive. Or the ground might crack beneath them and swallow them whole.
Arealkiss, he had called it. That wasn’t the only thing that had turned out to be real. Her heart was stampeding out of her chest because he’d burrowed his way inside.
Their kiss meant nothing, she’d told him.
That was the problem.
Chapter 8
The Fifth Day
As had become his morning ritual, Eli passed through the kitchen to stuff his pockets with pieces of carrot before making the journey to the horses.
When he stepped outside, a gust of cold wind nearly lifted his hat from his head.
Knowing Olive would be out with the horses, Eli had spent extra time choosing his attire and folding his cravat. Fat lot of good that had done. His apparel was hidden between an enormous greatcoat, and his cravat—well. At least the wind hadn’t whipped it into his face.
Olive came into sight, greeting her beasts.
For once, Eli was not filled with dread at the thought of approaching the wooden fence. Olive was on the other side. The memory of her face in his hands, her lush mouth beneath his, warmed him far more thoroughly than gloves and mufflers ever could. He could wake up feeling happy every morning if he knew it was another opportunity to spend a day with her.
His boots crunched on the snow as he approached. A snowstorm had struck the area a fortnight before Eli’s arrival. Although the snow was no longer falling, a thin white blanket still clung to the ground. This morning, green spikes ofphleum pratensehad begun to poke through in patches.
The horses lifted their nostrils and tilted their ears toward him well before he reached the fence.
Olive turned to see what had caught their attention. At the sight of Eli, a smile blossomed on her face.
A wide, soppy grin formed on his own face in answer.
She strode forward to meet him at the fence.
Duke and Rudolph beat her to it.
A startled laugh burst from her throat. “What in the world?”
“They don’t care about me,” he assured her, stopping well out of reach to toss his morning offering of carrot pieces as far from himself and Olive as he could.
Immediately disinterested in Eli, both horses hurried away from the fence to retrieve their treats from the snow-dusted grass.
Olive leaned her elbows atop the log fence. “Was that bribery? It looked like bribery. I don’t know how I feel about my lifelong rival currying the affection of—”
He covered her mouth with a kiss.
Their woolen mufflers and winter coats separated them as much as the wooden post holding the log fence in place, but the soft warmth of her lips beneath his transcended the real world.
There was no horse farm, no winter wind, no paternal machinations. There was just Eli, and Olive, and a kiss that could pollinate the entire world with the magnitude of his love.
“This means nothing,” she reminded him when they came up for air.
He nodded. “What means nothing? It was so inconsequential, I already forgot—”
