When she’d launched herself at him, she’d cinched her arms around his neck—the fastest, surest way to catch him and hold him. Now, her hands roamed. She wanted his hair, his tousled, sun-streaked hair, and she dug her fingers in, sliding it between her fingers. His cravat was stiff and unyielding, ironed to parchment, and she crushed it, her fingers greedy.
He laughed against her mouth, seeking it out, kissing her again. She kissed him back, playing her fingers along his collar like she was unwrapping a gift, yanking at the unyielding cravat. After three tries, the stiff linen gave way and her fingers found bare neck. She opened her hand like a fan and reveled in the warm bronze skin.
“Tessa,” he repeated.
He said her name like the wordyes. An affirmation. An agreement. A pledge. He’d caught her around the waist, but now his hands inched slowly upward. He held her like she was a pillar, palms flat, fingers splayed, like he was carefully balancing her upright. When his hands were at her ribs, his fingertips grazed the sides of her breasts. When he moved up, the hollow of his palm slid perfectly over the curve of her breast. Here, he paused, allowing the warmth of his hands to seep through the wool of her dress. She fought for lucidity in the swirling sensation of the kiss, forcing herself to think about his hands on her body. She waited for the fear, and nothing happened—no recoil, no immobility, not even the slightest tremor of alarm. She felt only heat and closeness and the gentle strength of Joseph’s large hands.
More,she thought—her pervading thought. She fell forward. More of him, closer, more of his hand on more of her body.
Finally, after what felt like months, when she was out of her mind with need, he ever so slowly contracted his fingers, testing the shape of her breast.
Tessa made a little whimper and bowed her body forward. Her hands dropped from his neck and clasped his shoulders. She dug in, feeling the rock-hard muscle beneath his coat. The fine wool was a frustration, thick and cool with heavy seams, a separation. She slid her hands beneath his lapels, roving over his chest and to the muscle-knotted trapezoid of his shoulders. She squeezed again, feeling the actual muscles. She sighed; he was so very strong and yet restrained. She delved deeper, reveling in the power that she knew he would never use against her.
“Tessa, you will be my undoing,” he rasped, leaving her mouth to breathe, dragging his face across her cheek and ear and hair. He staggered, just a little, and pulled away to glance around. There was a bench against the wall and he stooped suddenly, lifted her, and pivoted the two of them. He fell onto the bench with anoofand pulled her in his lap. He dropped against the wall behind him, laying against a curtain of coats and scarves. His face was a mix of caution and hope and need.
Tessa laughed and fell against him, kissing his neck the way he had kissed hers, devouring the warm skin, rough with an emerging beard. Joseph groaned, and his hands went to her hair, holding her against him as she nuzzled and breathed him in, as she said his name into his ear.
The stiff fabric of her dress snagged against the buttons of his coat, and she never hated it more. It felt like a shroud. Her hair, so tightly constricted in the tight knot of a bun, began to slip free, and she was glad. His hands dug in to the loose waves.
“I hate this bun,” he said. “I’m sorry, Tess, but I hate it so very much.”
“I hate it too.”
“May I...?” His fingers began to work through her hair, massaging it free.
She didn’t answer. Words left her. She could only kiss him. She slid into the swirl of sensation where there was no detested dress or bun, no Old Tessa or New Tessa.
Please,she thought hazily. Please let me sit on your lap and be held and be desired and be close to you and to not be afraid, not of my future or my past.
She slid her hands up his arms and clasped either side of his face, holding him in place. He chuckled and widened his legs. She slid lower into his lap, dropping into the notch formed by his legs. The proximity felt urgently right, her hips pressed against him, and she squirmed to nestle in. Joseph groaned. She’d jostled from his mouth and she rose up to recapture it. He groaned a second time and slid a large palm down her spine to cup her bottom. She gasped at the pleasure of the new closeness.
Her hair, now entirely free from the bun, fell over her shoulders and down her back. It tickled her cheek and stuck in her collar, a waterfall of blonde over the two of them. She shook her head, trying to toss it back. Joseph gathered it loosely, wrapping the thick weight of it around his hand and then gently propping it over a shoulder. It uncoiled, fanning out, and he strummed it through his fingers, following it to her waist. He toyed with the ends, and she loved the feel of his hand. He’d never seen her hair loose and down, not even at Berymede. Her hair had always been a vanity, and even as she transformed into the New Tessa, she couldn’t bring herself to cut it. Now she reveled in the feel of Joseph bobbing his fingers against the ends.
When the last of it slid through his fingertips, his hand delved lower, feeling the roundness of her hip, then lower still to her thigh, hooked over his leg. She relished it all, kissing him with her mouth while her body burned beneath his touch. Her brain floated above them.
She was just about to slide her hands beneath his coat again, to peel it off perhaps, when Joseph’s fingers skated down her leg and grazed the leather of her boot at the ankle.
It was a light touch, more pressure than a touch, but something about that contact caused her brain to hitch, then seize, then plummet from the misty heavens back to the dim, musty boot room on earth.
She went very still, sucking in a labored breath and holding it. She waited. The overloaded senses of touch and taste receded like a wave, while sound and sight crashed over her. His breathing was so loud. His hands were too big and too... everywhere. Clasping her bottom, wrapping around her ankle.
Before she could ask him to stop, he moved two fingers upward, the slightest graze, from the top of her boot to her stockinged ankle, just inches beneath the hem of her dress, and panic bolted through Tessa like a runaway horse.
“Wait...” she heard herself yelp, and then,“No.”
She pushed from his lap.
Joseph’s hands flew back as if she’d combusted in his arms. His face was frozen in horror and guilt.
Tessa’s panic flared, leaping inside her like a shooting flame, and then, almost as quickly, it dissipated. It sank slowly, deflated and powerless, like a limp sail. In its wake, the terrible feelings of regret and confusion and anger. Resentful, bitter anger. Captain Neil Marking had packed her with latent panic in the same way he packed a musket with powder. She’d been cocked to explode all along, sabotaged against loving touch.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, clapping her hands over her face. “Don’t stop. Please.”
“Don’t stop?” Joseph rasped.
She peeked at him.
He was sprawled on the bench as if he’d been blown there by a strong wind.
