He moved, came closer. Those pale, icy eyes were no longer icy but full of heat. He stepped closer, and she quivered.
A hand came to rest against her jaw.
“I . . .” he said.
She should push him away, but she wanted to bask in his touch for just one more second. And one more. And?—
“. . . find myself quite taken with you.”
She could deny herself this, deny herself him.
“But you, a granddaughter, you said,” she choked out. She wanted nothing to do with anything that could not be out in the open.
“I see.” He took his hand away, stepped back. “I am too old.”
She wanted to weep. No, he didn’t see at all.
“You’re too married!”
His face was perfectly still. “I am a widower.”
A widower. She should have known. She didn’t know him, but she should have known this gentleman would never dishonor a vow.
He came back to her. He put his hand where it had been, holding her cheek.
“Miss Beasley.”
“Yes,” she breathed.Yesto her name,yesto him,yesto anything that happened next.
His eyes went to her mouth. He was thinking of kissing her. He was going to kiss her. What would his kiss be like? Lightning in the heat of summer or the silence of snowfall. The glide of a rose petal or the ravaging of a thorn. It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, she wanted it.
His palm cupped her face more securely. His fingers dug into her neck, the angle of her jaw.
“Yes,” she said again.Yes, yes, yes, yes.
He lowered his head. His splendid nose bumped her inconsequential one. She felt his warm breath on her lips, smelled the sweetness of strong wine. She closed her eyes, and their mouths met, fit together, and?—
If there were any magic left to be found in this world, it was in his kiss.
A shower of sugar sparks on her skin. Flashes of rich purple and riotous red. And wonder, wonder, wonder. She had been awoken from a hundred-year sleep, turned into a princess with satin dancing slippers, cured of the poison from a thousand barbs.
She opened her lips to him—and her heart and her soul. Foolish, foolish, foolish gray-haired girl.
And then the slide of his tongue took complete possession of her, heated her blood until she was all molten, throbbing need.
The wall was no longer enough. She arched into him, strained upwards, and her hands went to his admirable shoulders, and she clung for her life as their tongues joined, twined, and broke apart only to come together again.
His hand slid from her jaw, to her nape, and into her hair. Another hand found her waist and then the small of her back, pushing her up and into the hard ridge of his arousal even as his lips pushed her down with a kiss that was both a tender warning and a brutal beckoning.
It was a boundless kiss.
It was an unending kiss.
She could think that, but she was wrong. The warm solidness of him was suddenly torn away from her, and a whimper escaped her lips as she opened her eyes.
Panic became the reason her heart was racing. Dando had the gentleman’s lapels in his paws, his scowling face inches from the gentleman’s.
“Dando, no, no, no!”
