She withdrew her touch, snatching her hand away like he’d burned her.
“You are not coming,” she pressed, setting her jaw as she rubbed her hand with the other. “You’re not invited.”
“Oh?” he said, rubbing his jaw on the smile that kept threatening to erupt there. He inclined his head ever so slightly toward the spot on the lawn where Oliver and Tommy were delivering their goodbyes. “I think you will find that I am.”
“I don’t want you there,” she said, her heart lurching and thumping beneath the still facade of her demeanor. “You can stay here or go back to London instead.”
“Oh, my dear wife,” Freddy replied, glancing once more at the lawn before stepping back into the house, the air around him pushing her a few steps backward in the process, until they were alone in the foyer. “I think you do.”
She gaped at him, her reversing steps bringing her up against a wall. “Of course you think that,” she hissed. “You’re almost always wrong, Freddy.”
The grin finally surfaced, spreading over his face like magma flow. He closed more of the gap between them, his height forcing her to tilt her head back to keep his eye. “Almost always,” he acknowledged, looking down at her, “but I’m not wrong this time. I’m certain of that.”
She grimaced, heat pooling fast and deep in her belly. “It was only a kiss, Freddy. Get a hold on your arrogance.”
“Only a kiss?” he murmured, his fingers coming up to ghost over the curl of her hair that hung over her ear. “Is that what you’re telling yourself?”
“It’s what happened,” she insisted, resisting the urge to close her eyes, forcing herself not to lean closer. “A kiss. Nothing more.”
He chuckled and managed to lean in a little closer, somehow, as though she were not already flattened against the wallpaper. “You keep saying that, if you must,” he whispered, “like we both don’t know that I was only half a second away from being buried inside you. If we’d been anywhere else, Claire. If it had lasted even a moment longer …”
Her breath caught. Her body erupted in heat. She could not move for the blaze of it, whipping over her skin featherlight and boiling.
He made a pained little sound, shaking his head, and dipped his face down to kiss her again, this time without any sort of question or hesitation. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, sampled what he did to her, his fingers still only a breath away from touching her face.
She might have resisted it if she’d had even a moment to consider the possibility that he was going to do such a thing, that he would dare to do it in this room, where anyone might walk past at any moment.
As it happened, she was taken completely off guard, and could not help but to react on instinct, to taste him back, to let a bit of the steel in her spine drip away in heavy, molten dollops, never to be reclaimed.
To her credit, she did not touch him. She did not lift her hands and explore the delicious planes of his chest or tease at the flesh of his throat with her fingers. She did not grip his hair. She did not run her thumbs along his cheekbones.
She only let it happen. Only that.
And when he broke apart from her this time, when he pulled back with wet lips and burning eyes, she did not beg him for more. She stared, yes. She burned. But she did not beg.
He indulged in looking at her, in admiring the mess he’d made, and he sighed. “You are killing me,” he told her. “You are a torment.”
“Me?!” She was struggling to pull air into her lungs, struggling to stay standing. She ducked under his arm and paced backward, holding up a hand like it would stave him off, should he decide to follow.
Strangely, he didn’t. He stood where he was and watched her, something faintly curious in his expression.
“You,” he agreed steadily. “What’s the matter, Claire? It was only a kiss.”
“I … I …” She glanced at the door again, glanced at the congregated people there that she needed to go say goodbye to and wave off like a countess ought. “I am busy, Freddy.”
“All right,” he said, still not moving.
She turned, gesturing in the direction she must go, and said one more time, “You are not coming to Chipping Camden. You are not invited!”
He only smiled at her, one last flash of smug defiance, and let her storm off in the complete and infuriating knowledge that her decree had been utterly disregarded.
“I can’t wait,” he called, just as she stepped onto the lawn.
Because apparently, the torment was destined to be mutual.
PART IV
THE COTSWOLD OLYMPICKS
