This was worthy of Bedlam, but he was too far from her to hear it. As he jogged to create lift under the kite, she jogged after him. In the past, Edward and William had gotten the kite flying and had given it to her once it was in the skies. She’d never been forced to work for it before. Thank goodness she’d swapped her slippers for boots, though her toes squelched and the wet leather rubbed.
It didn’t take long for a gust to take hold of the red fabric. The string snapped and tugged and was more difficult to control than she could have expected.Drat. I should have put on gloves.
John strode over, anticipation writ clear across his face. The kite, then, was not the entirety of his plans because no one got this excited about a kite in the rain.
As he got closer, he frowned as though he was only just realizing how drenched she was, almost as if he hadn’t noticed the downpour himself despite his hair being plastered to his neck and his cravat hanging heavy.
He shrugged off his coat and put it over her shoulders, the warmth of him enveloping her. Even with the telltale tang of a thunderstorm surrounding her, she could still smell the heady scent of him.
Then he came behind her, circled her in his arms, and put his hands on hers to keep the kite from pulling out of her grasp.
His closeness made her blood thrum. She shivered, not from the cold or the wet, but from the awareness of him.
“Just a moment,” he murmured into her ear. He slipped his hand into the pocket of the coat she was now wearing. Through the heavy wool, he brushed against her thigh. The shivers moved inward, resonating through her.
He withdrew one of the foil-covered glass jars that she’d seen in his study days ago.
“What are we doing with that?”
“We’re capturing electricity. Bottling it up. The air is rife with it. Did you see that?” He pointed to a spot in the sky where lightning had just forked. “That’s electricity in its rawest form.”
“Are you mad?” She released the kite string, but his hands caught it. She may not be a scientist, but she had seen firsthand the blackened stump in the garden where lightning had struck a tree during a particularly wild storm in her childhood.
“No, not mad. We won’t bottle lightning. But there is electricity in the air. Do you see it?” He pointed to the fibers of the cotton string, which were lifting into the air, not unlike the hairs on the back of her arm lifted when she saw him.
Tentatively, she grazed her palm across the cotton, a tingle skipped across her skin, again not unlike the sensation of his hand on hers. Her fingertip got too close to the cotton, and it zapped her sharply, painfully, the irony of which was not lost on her. The more she leaned into the frisson that was between her and John, the more likely she was to be painfully shocked when he left.
She pulled her finger away and pivoted in his arms until she was chest to chest with him.
“Is this what’s between us, then? This feeling that makes my heart go off kilter and my body come alive? Is it electricity?”
He inhaled sharply, fleeting expressions of hope, then relief crossing his face before settling into something far more primal. “No. There is no scientific explanation for this feeling. There is no reason or logic or laws of nature that explain it.”
He felt it too then. She swallowed. “And is there anything to be done about it?” Because one way or another, it had to be resolved. She couldn’t continue in this state forever, with her nerves so heightened that the barest breeze sent shivers through her, with her head so giddy it was as though she’d been dancing too fast for too long and was on the verge of fainting…or of falling more deeply in love.
John let the glass jar drop to the ground with a clunk, taking the fluttering kite down with it.
“Only this.” He captured her face in his hands and drew his lips to hers. The heat of him quenched her shivering and ignited a fire within her.
She wrapped her hands into the sodden folds of his shirt and pulled him closer. She opened her lips and touched her tongue to his, seeking out the depths of him. She knew what she was doing this time. It was her turn to explore, her tongue flicking against his.
He groaned, wrapped a hand around her buttocks, and pulled her against him. Through the layers of fabric between them—his breeches, her dress, both sodden—she could feel the hard press of his cock. Her sex stirred and her hips pressed into him, wanting to get closer.
He groaned. “Charlotte.” His words sounded like a prayer.
She didn’t want talking. She wanted to continue tasting him, but he pulled away. “No,” she whispered, wrapping one hand in his hair.
He put a gentle hand on her shoulder, putting distance between them. Rivulets of water ran down his hairline. His fine shirt had turned transparent with the wet and clung to his chest.
“Let’s not stop,” she said, trying to step toward him, her hands gripping his forearms, but he held her fast, a frustrating twelve inches from him.
He drew in a ragged breath. “Charlotte, make me the happiest man alive.”
Chapter 20
…make me the happiest man alive…”
Still reeling from the kiss, she took a heartbeat to register what he was saying.
