Perhaps this was the wrong venue.
He wasn’t sure he cared.
“Dishes or desks?” she asked him, suddenly very brisk and upright, grasping at her wine and knocking back what remained in the glass. “I prefer dishes, if it matters.”
He watched her as she stood and ran her hands down her dress, as though wiping away flecks of imaginary grime, and scanning the table with her eyes. She walked around to his side and reached for his plate, which was still half full of food.
“Mae,” he said again, reaching gently for her wrist. “Sit down.”
She blinked a few times, as though he’d interrupted something that had already gotten too far into its process to be abandoned, and looked down at her encircled wrist with a frown. “But I was …”
“Sit down,” he said again, tugging her closer. He pushed his chair back, allowing space enough between himself and the table for her as he pulled her into it. “Here. With me.”
She raised her gaze to his face, still looking a bit like a startled doe.
It made him feel oddly warm. Oddly soft.
“You are still hungry?” she asked, soft and breathy.
He nodded, stroking his other hand along the line of her waist, and urged her forward, pulling her gently toward where he sat in the high-backed classroom chair. “Oh, yes.”
“Roland,” she murmured, but did not resist as he shifted himself backward and continued to tug her along, until she had no choice but to climb into his lap or resist momentum entirely.
She folded into it, her hands bracing against his chest as he pulled her onto his body like she had always belonged there. Her skirt flared out around them as she settled her weight onto him.
He released her wrist and traced the pads of his fingers up the bare flesh of her forearm, into the crook of her elbow.
She shivered. She steadied herself. She met his eye.
He mirrored her breath as she slid the flats of her hands over the planes of his chest and over his shoulders, her eyes half hooded as their noses brushed at the tips.
“Not here,” she said again, so softly it barely constituted a whisper, just words made of breath.
“Not here,” he agreed, and claimed her mouth anyway, desperate to remember the taste of her while the curves of her hips filled his hands. It was a delicious torment having her astride him like this, bearing down against the ache of his want and knowing he could not satisfy it. He sighed into the kiss, wrapping his fingers around the lush swell of her backside and pulling her against his arousal, if only so she could ache with him.
She moaned into his mouth, clenching her thighs around his hips in answer. “Not here,” she whispered again, slick and hot against his mouth as his fingers dug into her flesh. “Roland.”
He made a sound in answer, affirmation by way of something animal. “I know,” he said in the breaths between tasting her. “I know.”
“I’ve never,” she managed, pausing to whimper as his hands traveled up the column of her spine, spanning around her waist to trail over the tantalizing preview of flesh that swelled above her neckline. “I’ve never been with a man.”
He chuckled against her mouth before he could stop himself, despite the fire raging through his skin.
It made her pull back and narrow her eyes at him. “I haven’t,” she said, breathy with fire. “Why do you think I have?”
“I don’t,” he answered, refusing to cease in his touching her. “It is only that you have penetrated me already. Twice, in fact. Once with a needle and the other with that soldering stick. I believe we’ve crossed many thresholds of intimacy beyond the standard of coupling.”
“Hm,” she said, tilting her head to consider it so that the candlelight flashed off her dark curls with a glint of stark white. She nodded, as though she accepted this, and moved her hands from his shoulders up to his jaw, stroking at the line of bone there. “It is called a cautery,” she whispered, as though she was telling him something filthy. “Not a solder.”
“Oh, indeed?” He laughed again and pulled her back down, catching her smiling mouth with his own and moving his hips in answer of her tease to return as good as he got.
She gasped prettily, arching her back as he dipped his thumbs below the lacy border of her bodice.
He nipped at her bottom lip, kissing along the line of her chin and down her throat as he stroked at her breasts through the layers of stiff, practical fabric. He knew he was taking liberties far beyond what he should with a woman like this, an educated woman, a woman known by his people, respected by them.
He just couldn’t stop himself.
“God, you are exquisite,” he groaned into her throat. He knew he had to stop soon or he wouldn’t at all.
