She breezed past, intent on describing how bookshelves would line the passageway from the dining room, but he reached out and grabbed her hand.
Willow froze.
“Willow,” he said again, so softly she could barely hear him over the thundering of her heart.
“Yes?”
She couldn’t look at him. Hadn’t he looked enough for them both? Her cheeks burned under the ferocity of his stare. Their combined gazes would ignite the room.
“Willow, forgive me,” he rasped, and she had the sudden choking fear that he was about to say good-bye.
He tugged on her hand, pulling her to him, but she resisted. She stared at the floor.
He said, “I want to hear about this room; truly I do. I want to hear about everything you’ve accomplished and experienced in London. However . . . ”
He paused and tugged at her hand again. This time she allowed it. She fell two steps in his direction.
“However,” he repeated, “if I do not kiss you in the next second, I will perish.”
Her head shot up, and she searched his face in the dim light.
“I am wet and filthy from the road,” he said softly. “I haven’t shaved or bathed. I apologize, but in my urgency to see y—”
Willow launched herself at him.
***
Later, Cassin thought.
Laterhe would berate himself for kissing her when he should be discussing Caldera, and his uncle, and learning about bloody Felix’s bloody cock-up with cattle.
Later.
First, he would commit fully to this kiss, however indulgent. She was in his arms, finally in his arms, and he had wanted her so bloody long. Willow. Against him, kissing him back.
Now he would do it properly, he would bloody devour her, which was the thing he’d wanted to do since she’d swung open the door.
“Willow,” he breathed, leaving her mouth to bury his face in her hair. He inhaled her familiar cinnamon scent. “My God, how I have missed you.”
“I thought I would die from missing you,” she whispered back, kissing his jaw, his ear, his neck. She pawed at his loose, soggy cravat, searching for more bare skin.
He wrapped his arms around her, gathering her up, filling his hands with yards and yards of her dress. When his hands reached the firm curve of her hip, he flattened his palm, feeling the perfect shape of her through the fabric. He sought her mouth again, and she met him halfway, kissing her as he’d taught her to kiss. Time reversed. It felt as if he’d never left. She was just as intoxicating, sweeter now, perhaps, because he wanted her. But it had always been sweet; she had always transported him.
She made a whimpering noise, stepping on his boots to get closer to him, and he put a palm beneath her bottom, collecting her to him. Without warning, she gave a jump, leaping up to straddle him. He caught her beneath the hips with a grunt.
“My God, you are killing me,” he said between kisses. She wrapped her arms around his neck as if they weren’t close enough. Cassin staggered, weakened by desire, laughing between kisses.
Down, he thought.Must lie us down.
He opened one eye and searched the room. Horizontal surface? No, they were in an empty music room. Chair?No, the whole bloody house was empty.
He spun, still kissing her, and saw a heap of fabric near the half-tiled hearth.
It will do.
With uneven, meandering steps, he carried her to the mound of cloth, kissing her all the while. Slowly, he lowered them, straining with pickax-hardened muscle, and still he fell the last foot.
“Oof,”he said, and she laughed, and he turned to sit flat with her astride his lap. He leaned back on the hearth, and she crashed against him with a fresh rain of kisses.
