She peered down at her hands. They were tangled together so tightly, her knuckles were stark white and the veins in her bared wrists shone lilac and translucent. “I want you to finish what you began in the library,” she said, her chin tilted defiantly in his direction.
All of her singular attention was now on him, and the same coiled energy he’d sought escape from earlier rose in the space between them. “I left nothing unfinished in my library.”
“When I was on the la– ladder,” she stammered. “I thought you were going to touch me there.”
“There?” He was deliberately obtuse.
She arrowed her finger toward her cunny, her face ruddier than a sunset.
He dropped his hand to her waist and when he splayed it across her stomach, his thumb just brushed the top of her mound over her skirt. “Here?” He asked teasingly, and swiped the fabric just below her navel.
She gulped and Cad thought it was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen. “Answer me, dragonfly. Here?”
She gave him a nearly imperceptible nod as she clenched her hands in the folds of her skirt.
“How specific is your want? If I touch you there right now, will that do? Or do you want me to touch you there while you’re perched on my ladder?”
“The ladder,” she confirmed and tried to duck under his arm.
If she was asking him to follow through on his original intentions, he wasn’t going to let her hide behind her inhibitions. He lashed his arm around her waist. “No. You were brave a moment ago. I’ll let you lead the way.”
She set her chin at that ridiculously haughty angle again and he steeled himself.
“If I let you touch me there, it doesn’t count. It’s not part of the wager.”
“It’s a sort of kiss, and we agreed kisses were essential to our bargain.”
“I want to know what it feels like, just once, to quiet my thoughts and simply enjoy what’s happening to my body. You cornered me into this and it’s the least you owe me.”
He barked out a laugh. “Now?”
She lifted a shoulder as if to say what better time, then now?
He shrugged in response and flashed a quick grin. “Follow me.”
She didn’t resist when he tangled their fingers together and tugged her alongside him. Her lack of resistance pleased him more than anything had in a very long time.
“I want to peruse your library at my leisure.”
“Before or after the ladder, dragonfly?”
“After. And I remember how to get there on my own, Mr. Morgan. Your house isn’t that big,” she grumbled.
“Still, I can’t risk you becoming lost and delaying our mutual pleasure.”
Cadoc had the irrepressible urge to twist her remark into some filthy innuendo. To remind her of the way she’d soon be keening beneath his mouth as her body shuddered against the ladder. He wanted to remind her she’d soon be caging his head between her knees and fisting her hands in his hair. He withstood it, because he couldn’t bear chasing her away.
He wryly acknowledged he was already lending credence to Carys’s observation that his attachment bordered on obsession.
When he pushed open the door, her sigh echoed across the empty threshold. “I can smell the pages,” she murmured.
Cadoc’s collection included tomes he’d found at bookseller stalls, and though the worn leather bindings lent a certain ambience, he found them musty. He’d only purchased the books because many of them were obscure treatises on engineering that were now out of print.
“I don’t know many people who would share your fascination. Usually, it induces sneezing, not sighing.”
She shot him a smile over her shoulder. “It’s well-ventilated and quiet. And there’s enough material here to occupy my mind for years.”
When they reached the far corner of the room, she hesitated. The ladder rose in front of them as if it was imbued with its own sentience.
