“Yeah, Austen’s themes are still shockingly relevant, especially in this book.” I raised an eyebrow at him to see if he’d catch my meaning.
“Definitely. Lizzie totally misread Darcy the first time they met,” he answered with his own eyebrow arch.
“Did she, though?” I asked. “He was incredibly rude.”
“But she judged him too quickly,” Logan replied.
“It was mutual dislike at first sight, with good reason on her side,” I sniffed.
“He was misunderstood,” Logan insisted.
“So calling her looks ‘tolerable’ wasn’t meant to be a putdown? ‘Not handsome enough to tempt me’ is a totally cool thing to say about someone you just met?”
“It’s not like he said thatto her.How was he supposed to know she could hear him? And besides, he changed his mind about her pretty fast. Meanwhile, she made a snap judgment about his character and that was that, no matter what he did. According to Lizzie, he was the most disagreeable man in the whole world.”
“Can you blame her?” I demanded. “If I ever overheard a man talking aboutmelike that?—”
“Impossible,” Logan interrupted, his gaze heavy on me.
I stopped breathing as he moved closer. My heartbeat was a drumline I could hear echoing around the room.
“Oh yeah? And why is that?” My voice came out somewhere between a whisper and a rasp.
“Because no man in his right mind wouldeversee you as anything other than spectacular.” Logan’s eyes looked hungry. “If someone were to quote Austen to you, the line they’d probably choose would be ‘you have bewitched me, body and soul.’”
I let out a shuddery breath.
If we didn’t end up kissing,soon, then romance was dead.
Iwanted it, and based on the way he looked almost feral with need, I assumed he felt the same, yet neither one of us moved.
The hush in the room was thick, like we were both waiting for something to interrupt the charged, pin-drop silence. Maybe a far-off noise somewhere else in the house would give us an excuse to tear our eyes away from one another.
No such luck.
Instead, we both inched closer, so slowly that it was hard to tell if I was imagining it. But then Logan’s bare toes were sliding past mine.
His thigh brushed against me.
His palm found the small of my back.
And then we were pressed together, the book clutched against my chest the only guardrail between us. Logan pulled it away and tossed it onto the chair, and then my breasts were flush against his body.
I gazed up at him, my breath shallow.
“My feelings will not be repressed,” Logan whispered.
He couldn’t quote Austen to me and not get kissed, so I took it upon myself to go up on my tiptoes and end the stalemate.
Sense memories flooded through me as our lips touched. I remembered everything about our drunken wedding night as his hands raced along my body and his tongue found mine.
I could remember feeling out of control that night, and the sensation that we were in a delicious middle space between right and wrong.
Right, because my body felt like it was made to fit against his.
Wrong, because he was myboss. And because we’d been at odds most of the time I’d known him.
Those same out-of-control emotions flooded through me as he kissed me. I wanted this, wanted him, but on some level, it still felt dangerous. Taboo.
