Even if she was now an unmarried woman.
Who, this very moment, trailed her fingers down the front of his shirt in the most intoxicating manner.
On a hiss, he reached up to stop her. “Mrs. Mossant.”
“Eve,” she corrected him.
“Eve…” But he did not push her hand away. Instead, he raised it to his lips. “You are not quite yourself today.”
“Perhaps you are right.” She sighed loudly. “Or perhaps I am more myself than I have been in a very long time.”
Holding her fingers against his mouth, he allowed himself to drop a single kiss there.
He’d not realized that he’d missed tenderness. Unwilling to break the connection between the two of them, Niles closed his eyes and…let his senses take over.
Instead of pushing them away.
For a moment. He’d allow himself this moment.
She moved her hand to explore his face; her fingers danced across his eyebrows and then her hand caressed his jaw and the skin along his ear. When she dropped her hand abruptly, he exhaled. Had he been holding his breath?
“I’m proving to be a nuisance, aren’t I Niles? First, I weep on you for over an hour, then I nearly topple you down the hill, and now I’m making matters even more awkward. I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable. You are right. I am not quite myself.” Even though her words registered, her body said more. She maintained her position in close concert with is body.
“You are not making me uncomfortable.” God help him. His own inclinations did quite well on their own. Just sitting beside her, sharing their warmth, tempted him.
“You don’t have to say that. I’ll allow I’ve relied on you inappropriately for most of this journey.” Her voice sounded throaty, most unlike the Mrs. Mossant he’d come to know in London. “You’re likely wishing me to perdition.” Her hand rested on his chest.
She was making this impossible for him.
“You are my employer, a woman all too recently widowed. It would be unfair, unethical of me...” He stared straight ahead and surveyed the clouds. The storm had picked up strength along with their own barrage of emotions.
“Oh, Niles. If you only knew.”
He shifted both of them so that he could see into her eyes. If they were to have this conversation, he’d look at her while doing so.
“If I only knew what?” He pressed.
She took a deep breath, as though for courage before answering. “How badly I need you to be unethical today.”
Steady, sultry eyes met his with unabashed need. Her cheeks were flushed and those lips of hers parted slightly.
Dammit.
He could resist his own need, but not hers.
She would require comfort now. She’d lost a husband, a horrible one at that, but a husband, nonetheless.
He needed to be certain. Niles leaned forward and paused. “If you wish.”
But she backed away an inch. “Don’t feel that you have to. I only thought—mmphh”
He cut off her speech demonstrating the requested absence of ethics.
At first her lips felt cool, cold even, pinched tight. How long, he wondered, since she’d been kissed?
“Open for me,” he mumbled against her. “Relax.”
She nodded, slipping away until he could capture her mouth again.
