He was about to ask what she meant when she leaned down and kissed him. Though kissing her was exactly what he’d been thinking about for at least this last hour, it took him a couple of seconds to respond. And then respond he did, reaching up and finding her waist and coaxing her down, settling in, exploring her as she explored him. She snuggled in, partly beside him, partly on top. He pushed his hands around to her back and drew her in tight so the full length of her body was pressed against his, and he wasn’t sure which part of him was enjoying it the most.
“This isn’t something I would normally do,” she murmured, breaking the kiss and looking into his eyes with an expression somewhere between wonder and want.
“You really don’t need to explain.”
“I know. But I figure, I’m on vacation. I don’t need to be my usual careful self.”
“And what else would you do right now if you didn’t have to be you? Not that there’s anything at all wrong with any version of you.”
She thought for a moment, biting her lower lip, then pushed up and straddled him. She nudged his open overcoat and topcoat off his shoulders. He sat up a little so she could take them off completely, and propped himself back on his forearms as she got to work on the top button of his waistcoat. She leaned in for another kiss, then abruptly pulled back.
“Holy shitballs,” she said, examining the button. “These are mother of pearl!”
He laughed. “You really do notice the finer details.”
She slowly unhooked the buttons, and it felt like she was unbuttoninghim, flick by flick. “My mom reckons that when I was learning to write, at school, I was so obsessed with getting all the serif flicks and finials and things in the right places on the letters, like I’d seen in books, that I’d run out of time to finish the sentence.” He pushed up to sitting and pulled her into his lap. He unthreaded her scarf and gently pulled it off, watching the green silk slip over her skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. He dipped his head and kissed her neck. With a moan, she angled her chin up, giving him more room to explore the satiny skin. “It drove my teachers crazy,” she continued, her voice box vibrating under his lips. “Mom thinks it’s because I had undiagnosed short-sightedness as a kid, so I ignored anything on the horizon.” Tom lifted her hair and lightly kissed a path to her ear, smiling as she shuddered. Touching her, tasting her, smelling her—his every sense was in this, in deep. It was almost too much.Almost. “There was never much in my focal distance, so I guess I cataloged everything in it.”
“It’s quite a gift,” he murmured, as he reached the dip below her ear.
“I’ve had laser surgery,” she said, getting so husky it seemed like she was breathing the words rather than speaking them, “so I can see into the distance now, which makes me feel like a superhero. But sometimes I still forget to look up.”
She slipped off the last button and slid her hands underneath the waistcoat, finding his hip bones. His lips found her mouth again, catching a gasp, and he cradled her head, trapping handfuls of soft hair. She tugged his shirt out of his waistline, and the roughness of the linen coasting over his skin only further raised the tension that had been ratcheting up in him for hours.
“I have been known to miss the bigger picture though,” she said, pulling back. She touched her tongue to the top of his sternum, where the shirt placket separated. The tiny contact reverberated right down his body. She went to draw the shirt over his head, but he stopped her.
“Buttons on the wrists,” he explained. “They’re a bitch to undo. I unbuttoned the collar when I took off the cravat.”
“Oh, I noticed that. And don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.” She caught one of his hands and drew it toward her. “Custom-made fabric-covered buttons,” she said approvingly. She took excruciating care with the trio of buttons and then brought his wrist to her lips and kissed it. She found the other hand and repeated the ritual.
“You’re enjoying this.” He raised a finger and lightly touched the side of her lips, where they curled into a half smile.
“It’s even sexier than when you were discussing Jane Austen’s skill at characterization.”
“Well, I am here to make your tour as … satisfying as possible.”
“In that case…” She pulled the shirt over his head and ran her hands up his chest, inhaling deeply like it was a reward for her hard work. Though in truth the reward was mostly his. “I say we go to the darkest depths of the wine cellar andchoose the dustiest, rarest, most expensive-looking bottle we can find. And then I’d like to book the full-immersion Jane Austen experience.”
“Is that where I linger half a second too long while kissing your gloved hand?” He caught her hand, drew it to his mouth and kissed a scar on her palm, then shot out his tongue to lick it.
She laughed, which he decided was his current favorite sound—second-favorite, after her groan when he kissed her neck. “Do you do aLady Chatterley’s Lovertour?”
“Open to adding it to the itinerary. Jane might be a little scandalized.”
“She was a modern woman, in her time.” Amelia skated her fingertips down his chest, making him arch. “If she’d lived a century or two later, I reckon she’d have been down with it. Hell, she’d have been writing it.”
“In that case, I’m most happy to read between the lines.”
And he took her in a kiss that promised the night would be just the escape they both needed.
Chapter 6
Tom
The present
“And that’s it,” Tom said, placing a chunk of hawthorn wood onto the kitchen fire. “That’s about as far as my memory reliably goes up to. Besides going to the cellar and finding the brandy. Obviously, things only got more interesting after that,” he added wryly.
At the table, Amelia cradled her mug with both hands, though she’d finished her coffee long ago. She was staring into it like she’d stared into the wine yesterday. “We each had a taste of the brandy while we were still in the cellars, to check it was okay. It must have started working straight away. I remember a few things after that, but I couldn’t swear they weren’t dreams or hallucinations.” She pressed a palm onto her forehead and let out a shuddering sigh.
