“Go home, Lou, before I do something barbaric. You’re a temptation I’m not certain I can refuse.”
She glanced at the clock, then traced a fingertip along the edge of his desk, close enough to make him restless. “I have two minutes left to give you my wedding gift. A secret I neglected to share. I’d kept it to preserve my pride, but that seemed pointless after I discovered what you’d done for me. I wanted to thank you, in my own way, before the ceremony. So there’d be nothing standing between us.”
Dom’s mind ignited with images of her thanking himin her own wayby sinking to her knees and—
As if she sensed his fantasy, Louisa coyly licked her lips.
His soon-to-be wife had the lushest mouth he’d ever seen, the upper lip fuller than the lower, singular in his experience. He ached for the day she would explore every inch of him, the thought alone enough to undo him. And this was hardly the moment to recall his dreams of her hair—ginger and auburn, streaked with honey—spilled across his sheets, his skin.
Fearless, Louisa came around the desk, advancing until she stood before him. The faint hint of sulfur and peonies drifted from her, the opposing fragrances enchanting. The sudden flash of her smile had him helplessly sliding a hand around her waist and anchoring her to him. “I didn’t want to leave a doubt in your mind about how this came to be, Dominic. Or that I wanted it to.”
He understood nothing except the impulse—not far from the addictive need he’d once felt for cards—to kiss all reason from her. “I don’t know what—”
“I chose you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, baffled.
“I asked Mrs. Dove-Lyon to add you to the list of potential suitors.” Louisa laughed softly and dipped her head, touching her brow to his chest in a gesture so sweet it might have belonged to the girl in the bookstore. “Actually, you were the only man I added. The others were her idea.”
His mind spun with the notion: she had wanted to marry him all along. “But this isn’t—”Love, he nearly blurted, before biting the word back. The start of it, maybe, for what else did you call it when a woman filled your head every bloody hour of the day?
In response, her wounded green gaze found his. “I know what this is, Dominic. You don’t have to remind me.”
He didn’t let himself think, just caught her face in his hands and kissed her hard enough to erase thought, hard enough to brand them. Louisa melted into him with a moan that went straight through him, her fingers curling into his shirt, her lips parting until there were no barriers between them.
The taste of her—warm, sweet, faintly floral—was everything he’d been starved for.
Dom dragged her closer, his palms sliding down to grip her hips, and in one rough motion he lifted her onto the desk. Papers scattered, the clock wobbled, and still he couldn’t stop, his mouth moving over hers with the hunger of a man too long denied. She clutched at his shoulders as he stepped between her legs, skirt riding higher, and for one dangerous heartbeat he thought of laying her across the scarred oak and taking what they both burned for.
Her thighs clamped around his waist, her breath ragged. “Dominic,” she whispered, hips rising, her need as clear in her body as in her voice. Her fingers fisted in his hair, urging, ready to take every ounce of him if he’d only allow it. “I’ve dreamed of touching you like this. It’s why I didn’t want you to cut it.”
Fuck. He tore his mouth away, fighting the wildness clawing through him. No one had ever said anything more erotic to him. “Not here, Lou. Not like this. Just this once, let me do things the right way. And I swear I’ll never deny you again.”
“One more,” she whispered, lips brushing his ear, her voice both plea and promise. She was inexperienced but wicked, and he was weak. “I’m curious. Five minutes, and I’ll go.”
Curious. The word made his breath catch; he exhaled hard against her brow. She had him, because there were few people in this world he longed to please more than he longed to please her.
“Stay here,” he said, already striding for the door. “The last thing we need is Griff barging in. I’ll tell him we’re discussing a vital detail for the ceremony.” A lie, of course. Dom knew exactly what he meant to do to Louisa when he came back, and he’d wager Griff suspected the same.
Bargaining with himself, he decided to tell his brother he neededtenminutes.
A quick release—hers—and she’d float home on a wave of bliss. Dom, perversely, wanted to wait until his wedding night to claim his own. At the door, he glanced back to catch her swift smile, satisfaction at winning this encounter.
Damn it all, she owned him, and she knew it.
Refusing to fight a losing battle, he surrendered, every inch of him branded hers.
Chapter Eight
Where passion demands itsdue.
Louisa watched hersoon-to-be husband stride into the alley, his restless power barely leashed, arousal written in every taut line of his body. Arousal she had awakened! Who would have thought that Louisa Radcliffe, unapologetic scientist and hoyden daughter of society, could rouse a man as glorious as Dominic Beckett to anything? When the command in his voice,stay here, was enough to send her into a swoon.
And she was no swooner.
She giggled into her fist, her cheeks scalding.
Of course, she hadn’t asked for more time for a simple kiss. As instructed, she waited, not daring to move from her precarious position on the desk.
