She kissed him back with a fervor that left them both panting, each crush of their lips more urgent than the last, as if they might suddenly run out of time.
If he had not been worried about ruining the moment and turning her passion back into anger, he would have knocked the papers, inkwell, and various ornaments and accessories off the desk. Instead, he held her tighter and pressed her close as he kissed her, deep, fierce, and hungry.
When her leg curved around his, holding him against her, he almost came undone. She was right there, urging him on, alone behind a closed door, her thighs parted for him. It would not take much to unfasten his trousers and plunge into the delicious heat of her.
But she hasn’t done that before… It shouldn’t be hurried.The reminder slowed him down a little, tempering the fervent inferno of his desire to a calmer smolder. He could not allow himself to get carried away, even if he was fairly certain that just one night with her, one experience with her, would be enough to get him over the maddening hurdle of her distracting presence.
Leaning her weight against his arm, he pressed her back into the desk, careful not to disturb any of her belongings. When he kissed her, it was not frantic, but rather the slow, sensual rhythm of a man who no longer wanted to rush and preferred to take his time.
With her legs loosely wrapped around him, he forced his thoughts away from the aching pulse in his loins, the urgent need that craved her silken skin, and reached his free hand back. Finding the hem of her skirt, he slipped his hand beneath it, a shiver running through him as his bare palm brushed against her stocking.
His hand eased upward, the silky friction of her stocking soon giving way to the smooth glide of her bare skin.
“Oh…” she panted, biting her lip.
He had been shoved away twice before when he had tried to touch her there, but she showed no sign of pushing him off or telling him to stop as he let his hand slide higher, under the hem of her drawers. Instead, her legs gripped him a little tighter, making italmostimpossible not to take her right then and there, to give her what her body was screaming out that it wanted.
Her thigh was soft as he gripped it, her ragged breaths turning into moans that stirred him inside, the wildness in him pushing against the bars of the cage he had built for himself. And the closer his hand got to that glorious, wet heat of her, the harder it would be to keep the cage shut.
As the side of his hand came to rest in the line where her hip met her thigh, his thumb sought the pulsing call of her secret bud.
He groaned in the back of his throat as he felt the slick of her, knowing how good it would feel to sink inside her. And when his thumb brushed that bundle of nerves for the first time, thegasping jolt of her body, the soft cry that left her lips, did nothing to ease his need.
“Oh… Oh, Jeremy…” she moaned.
He smiled against her mouth as he kissed her more deeply.Thatwas how he wanted to hear her speak his name, not in pity but in pleasure.
“I can show ye what a lass deserves to feel,” he whispered, as his thumb teased her again, circling that sensitive center of her bliss. “I can show ye what ye’ve been m–”
“Daenae run away from me, Sophie!” a familiar voice barked, so loud it sounded as if it were in the study with them. “Sophie!”
Jeremy and Anna froze, with her hands clutching his shirt, holding on as if he could somehow hide her. But if Beatrice and Sophie entered the room, there would be no explaining this.
“Sophie, stop!” Beatrice called again, her voice getting closer.
Jeremy drew back, though it pained him deeply. An hour more in the seclusion of the study, and he was fairly sure he would have been on his way to getting Anna out of his head, out of his veins, out of his focus. Two or three more hours, and he would have her out of his system entirely. Maybe.
Bloody hell. They’re supposed to be resting.
Anna’s grip loosened on his shirt, and when she met his gaze, the shine of passion had already faded. As if they had both been lost in a daze, and she had just snapped back to herself.
Catching her breath and hastily pushing her skirts back down, her hazel eyes narrowed in a glare. “I forbid… you to… touch me again… while we are under the same… roof,” she panted, her words hissing out in gasps that still stoked the sparks of his desire.
He was about to tease her, asking what might happen if they were under someone else’s roof or out in the gardens, when a knock came at the study door.
“Who is it?” Anna called out, as if nothing had happened.
Needing a moment, Jeremy moved to the corner of the room and pretended to survey the books on Anna’s shelves.
“Sophie!” the little girl shouted back.
“Sophie, come here at once!” Beatrice’s voice shouted after her.
The door burst open, and the child ran in, halting just inside the threshold with a grin on her face and excitement in her eyes.
“Uncle, I am nae sleepy,” she declared, as Beatrice skidded to a standstill behind her, a look of suspicion flitting across her brown eyes. “Can I meet the goat now?”
Jeremy adored his niece more than life itself and would have walked through a thousand devastating fires for her, but at that moment, he very much wished that he did not have a niece at all. For how on earth was he supposed to get Anna out of his head now?
