Tap-tap, her fingers replied against the air.
Seeing this, Daniel frowned with concern. He stopped their activity at once, and Alice felt herself being lifted away from him.
Frustration rushed her senses. She’d always found physical contact difficult, and in response, others had invariably stepped back, walked away, leaving her untouched rather than helping her to find a manner in which to experience it safely. Daniel Bixby had promised to be different. And now here he was, being considerate,taking gentle care.
Well, she would just have to show him what she needed.
She grasped his hands and, in one swift, firm motion, removed them from her hips to pin them instead to the mattress on either side of his head. Glaring down at him from within curtains of tumbled hair, she saw his eyes flash bright, and her own responded in kind, as if a current of electricity ran between them. He gave her a smile so thoroughly wicked, he might as well have gone through her book collection and dog-eared all its pages.
Alice thrilled. She had him restrained but knew that at any moment he could overcome her without even taking a breath. She paused to imagine it, and the pulse in her wrists and between her legs grew more fierce. Lowering herself again, she restarted the slow, rocking motion.
Where Daniel had been hard before, he now felt like granite against her softness. Tiny sparks of pleasure began to shoot through her nerves. Panic began to rouse itself within her at the overwhelming stimulation—but, as if he sensed it, Daniel curled his fingers tightly around hers. He held her protected even with her kneeling over him—kept her safe as she took what she wanted from his body. Alice tugged a little, testing if she could escape, but he would not relent. He had her.
She exhaled with relief.
Sparks turned into flares, and flares kindled fires. Suddenly Daniel lifted his hips, introducing a new angle as he rubbed against her, and the fire soared until it was a raging conflagration that scalded her breath and threatened to turn her self-control to cinders. Alice sought in vain for the cooling, calming modulation of old poetry...
And the whole alphabet exploded through her body.
At the same moment, Daniel’s body shuddered beneath her. Alice wondered dimly if he felt the same ecstasy, but could not ask, all her language lost and most of her breath along with it.
“Holy Mother of God,” he gasped.
Seeing his stunned expression, Alice felt suddenly, oddly shy. She would have moved away, but a heavy lassitude came over her, obliging her to remain where she was, her fingers damp in Daniel’s grip, other parts of her body damp also, as if she’d been a fire indeed, and now was doused. She did not know what to do next. Her gaze slipped away into a vague middle distance just as Daniel’s did the same, but they breathed in unison, heavily, a little shakily. Their bodies lingered together with a mutual longing that not even acute pleasure had satisfied.
“Does that answer your question?” he asked.
“Yes, it was most informative,” she replied. “I am now a little concerned about my heart rate, however.”
He laughed. Their eyes met accidentally, and intensity tightened the space between them, as if each was the other’s moon, subject to a private gravity. They looked away again, fast. Alice climbed off Daniel, her legs trembling almost as much as her pulse. A.U.N.T. regulations began firing rapidly through her brain.Damn, damn, damn, ricocheted in consequence.I should not have done that.Kissing was one thing, but she’d just crossed a line that felt very dangerous indeed.
As panic began to swell, she shut everything down with well-trained ruthlessness. Physical pleasure—gone. Desire—gone. A robust connection to her sense of self—just gone, so that she felt like an observer of Alice, rather than the woman herself. She stacked pillows before the wrought-iron headboard, then arranged herself in a stiff, upright pose against them, knees drawn to her chest and nightgown hem tucked firmly beneath her toes. Yanking the quilt until it covered her knees, she swatted briskly at a few wrinkles.
“Good night, then, Mr. Blakeney,” she said, and closed her eyes.
A moment’s silence was followed by Daniel’s hesitant voice. “Er, yes. Um. Perhaps I shall retire to the sofa again, so that you may feel comfortable lying down.”
“I am entirely comfortable,” Alice said without opening her eyes. “This is my regular position in bed.”
Although she could not see him, she absolutely felt his doubtful sidelong glance. “I’m not sure you’re being—”
“Sir. Do you mind? I am trying to sleep.”
Silence fell again.
Daniel lay carefully motionless, listening to Alice count beneath her breath. He wanted to cuddle her, kiss her, softening all those damnednumbers into poetry. He wanted to remove her nightclothes and continue practicing marital exercises with her until they both graduated several times over. But if he did not repress his desire he might just destroy the mission—and Alice’s heart—his own heart—the whole entire bloody world—along with it.
Worse, he could be fired if A.U.N.T. learned about what had just happened.
Not to mention how appalled Alice would be if she learned the degree of his attraction to her. He could just imagine the stacks of Human Resources complaints she’d write on the subject. Well, notimagine, but at least extrapolate the likelihood from known facts.
So he stared up at the ceiling (good grief, someone really ought to clean it) and started counting beneath his own breath. But the tidy rhythm broke apart again and again under the force of his pulse, and the silence in the room shivered like a shy girl—or, indeed, a shy man who lay beside a woman with whom he was hopelessly enamored.
Damn, he thought.Damn, damn. This is not safe.
“I think—” he began.
“Sleeping,” Alice snapped in reply.
