Joseph glanced again at the door and then slid onto the piano seat beside her. If he expected her to move to create ample room for them both, he was mistaken. She snuggled closer. Her skirts lapped over his lap. Her foot worked the pedal of the pianoforte and their legs rubbed together. He felt the heat of her body up and down his side. He was swamped with the scent of her.
He swallowed hard. “Now will you stop playing?”
“Playing helps me to listen, don’t you see? It occupies my hands.” She glanced at him. “How else am I to occupy my hands, Joseph, while I listen to the long details of your long expedition?”
Joseph made a growling noise and shifted on the seat. She slid closer. She was playing with both hands again, a rhythmic succession of chords that seemed to mimic the accelerated thud of his heart.
“How about this?” she suggested. “For every detail to which I listen and acknowledge, you will give me one kiss.”
Joseph laughed. He’d never met anyone as bold or diverting. “You want me to kiss you here, now, in the midst of the servants? With your mother somewhere in the house?”
“No one pays any mind if they can hear the pianoforte. What trouble can we get up to if I am still playing?”
Joseph growled again. His mind spun with the very great potential for trouble. Tessa made no secret of her desire for him; in fact, she had made it clear that he could make love to her even now, before they were married, if he so desired.
He did desire, very much, but he was also an honorable man, and he had been granted the respect and blessing of her parents. The wedding, however elaborate, was being thrown together in a matter of weeks. Although his need for her was colossal, he assured her they could wait.
“And what if these kisses cause you to stop playing?” he asked.
“They won’t,” she promised, leaning over him, pressing the lush curve of her breast against his arm to reach the highest note on the keyboard. She pinged it twice and scaled back down with renewed volume. Joseph grinned at the opposite wall.
“It might,” he said, watching her profile as she bent over the keys.
“I suppose we’ll never know....” she sighed, and he was undone. He bent his head and brushed his mouth across her ear once, twice, breathing against the soft whirl of skin.
“I know a challenge when I hear one, Miss St. Croix,” he whispered, “and you give me little choice but to accept.” He kissed her ear lightly, nipped her earlobe, and breathed deeply against her skin once more.
The music came to an awkward pause and the room filled with the sound of her hitched breathing. After that, two flat notes.Clink-plink.
Next, a sigh, a laugh, and she resumed her playing. The recovery took only five notes. She’d reverted back to the memorized piece from before. She sat bolt upright, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “Go on, then,” she said, smiling down at her hands. “You have my full attention.”
He watched for a moment more, wondering if he would ever recover from the delight of her, marveling that a spirited, beautiful, irresistible gentleman’s daughter seemed to want little more than to delight him.
He cleared his throat. “The shortest conceivable time I will be away is eight months,” he told her. “We will sail for Barbadoes, buy supplies and hire workers, and then decamp to the island to begin work.”
The past June, Joseph and his partners had won a small, seemingly worthless tropical island in a game of cards. They assumed the island had no value, until new scientific research revealed an unexpected resource with the potential to make them all very rich. Their scabby little island was heaped with it. They needed only to determine how to extract it from the island and sell it back in England.
Tessa nodded and proffered her cheek.
Joseph bit back a smile, checked the doorway, and then nuzzled her skin. He refused to be led and bypassed her cheek for the sensitive spot on her neck, just below her jaw. He breathed deeply, reveling in the scent of her, and then laid a line of kisses from her neck to her lips, sucking gently. His left hand slid across her back and around her waist, pressing her more tightly against him. Her playing slowed but did not stop. He heard her slight intake of breath and she swayed a little on the bench.
“And what is it...” she began, but her voice was a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “And what is it that you are mining from the island? Dead birds?”
“No. Not dead birds. It’s a naturally occurring resource calledguano. It is dried bird excrement.”
She crinkled her nose, and he was overwhelmed with the urge to pull her from the keyboard and draw her into his lap.
She glanced at him. Deftly, she lifted one hand from the keys. With her other hand, she maintained the steady drum of a throbbing chord. With the raised hand, she proffered her wrist, flipping it so he could kiss the sensitive underside.
Joseph blinked at the creamy skin beneath her sleeve and the soft palm of her hand. Slowly, he raised the hand to his face and settled it on his cheek. She made the tiniest gasp. Her fingers formed gently around the curve of his face, warm and delicate. Slowly, he tugged, sliding her palm downward, scraping it against the stubble of his emerging beard. When her open palm was centered directly over his mouth, he kissed it. One gentle kiss in the center of her palm. She gasped again.
Joseph himself felt a little like gasping. He fought arousal endlessly when he was near her, but when he touched her? When he touched her, he surged with need. What would it be like to make love to her, if kissing her palm ignited such lust? He counted the days—the hours—until he knew.
In the meantime, he employed extreme restraint, kissing her wrist and then wrapping his own hand around her arm and tugging, pulling her to him. She listed in his direction, and he kissed the very corner of her mouth.
Tessa went still again, her extended hand hovering above the keys. Disjointed chords rose faintly from the other hand.
Another kiss to her mouth, and the chords grew slower and flatter and—
