She couldn’t look away. His eyes held hers with a predatory intensity; and her whole body wound tighter, a coil of tension nearing its breaking point.
“That’s it.” His features darkened with a primal focus. “Let go. Give it to me.”
She shattered. Her teeth sank into her fist to muffle her scream, her body clenching around his fingers in wave after wave of release. He worked her through the climax, slowing his strokes and drawing out every last tremor until she finally collapsed against his shoulder, boneless and gasping for air.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Her forehead remained pressed against his shoulder, her breath hot throughhis linen shirt, but then, he withdrew slowly, and she shuddered at the sudden, hollow loss of him. He raised his hand to his mouth, his eyes burning into hers, and licked his fingers clean.
“Sweet.” The word was a rasp, ruined by the friction of the moment. “Even sweeter than I imagined.”
A wire pulled taut inside her and gave. She grabbed the lapels of his coat with both fists and dragged his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hard, tasting herself on his tongue. Dominic groaned into her mouth, his hands gripping her hips to pull her flush against his frame.
She bit his lip. It was a hard, vicious snap that drew the metallic taste of copper into her mouth.
He jerked back with a sharp hiss of pain. Blood welled on his lower lip before dripping down his chin—and she stared at him, her breathing ragged, every breath tearing out of her. The taste of him sat heavy on her tongue.
“Don’t come here again.” The words shook, yet she fixed him with a steady, freezing glare. “Ever.”
He touched his lip, looking at the blood on his fingertips before shifting his regard back to her. She looked magnificent amidst the chaos of fallen flour sacks, wrecked and furious. He smiled. It was a slow, dangerous expression, his teeth stained pink. “I’m afraid I can’t promise that, Mrs. Ashford.”
He inclined his head in a small, formal gesture, a gentleman acknowledging a lady in a drawing room, and walked out of the storeroom. She heard his heavy footsteps cross the shop floor. She heard the front door open and the bell chime one final time as it closed.
He was gone.
She sat on the shelf, surrounded by the ruins of her work, her thighs still trembling and the ghost of his blood on her tongue.
The front door banged open. Nell flinched, her heart beating faster. She stumbled out of the storeroom on legs that felt likewater, smoothing her skirts with frantic hands. Daphne stood in the kitchen doorway, her face flushed pink from the autumn wind and her delivery basket swinging empty on her arm. Her eyes swept over Nell, noting the disheveled hair, the high colour in her cheeks, and the swollen curve of her lips.
“I just passed Lord Westmore in the street.” Daphne said with piercing curiosity. “His lip was bleeding quite profusely.”
Nell said nothing. She moved to the worktable and gripped the edge until her knuckles turned white, needing the solid wood to keep from collapsing.
“He was smiling.” Daphne set down her basket and moved closer, her eyes narrowing into slits. “Bleeding and smiling like a cat who had caught a particularly fat mouse. What happened, Nell?”
Nell looked at her friend, seeing the question burning there. She couldn’t give the answer. Not to Daphne. Not to anyone.
“I don’t know.” She heard the words fall from her lips, and the lie soured in her mouth. “I don’t know what I did.”
But she did know. She knew exactly what she’d done.
Dominic made it halfway down the lane before he tasted blood.
He stopped, pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. It came away red. He stared at it, then pulled his handkerchief from his coat and scrubbed his chin clean. The cut on his lip he could do nothing about—swollen and visible, a brand she’d left on him with her teeth.
He couldn’t walk through the village square like this. Not with her shop sitting at the end of the street and every tongue in Cresswell ready to wag. One whisper that the viscount had stumbled out of Nell Ashford’s storeroom with blood on hisface, and the damage would fall on her. Never on him. Men like him collected scandal like dust on a coat sleeve. Nell would lose everything.
He cut down the alley between the smithy and the saddler’s, taking the back lane toward the churchyard. His collar turned up, his stride quick.
But beneath the caution, his blood still roared.
He could still feel her. The way she’d shattered around his fingers, biting into her own fist to keep quiet. The way she’d grabbed his collar and kissed him like she meant to wreck him—then done exactly that with her teeth.
Don’t come here again. Ever.
He smiled against the sting of his split lip.
She could bar the door. She could spit fire and threats and tell him to keep his distance until her voice gave out. It wouldn’t change what he’d felt—her body arching into his touch, not away from it. Her mouth opening under his, hungry and furious and honest in a way her words refused to be.
He would not be careless with her name. He would not parade through the village or let the gossips sharpen their knives on her reputation. She had children, a livelihood, a standing in this place that one reckless moment could gut.
