Emmeline laughed, and the sound struck him with such force that he forgot, for half a second, why he had meant to remain seated behind the desk like a civilized man.
Then she set Biscuit down. The dog ran beneath a chair, found nothing of interest, and darted back toward the door.
“Biscuit,” Emmeline called.
He vanished into the corridor.
She sighed. “Traitor.”
She looked back at Rowan, and the smile deepened.
Emmeline came around the desk fully and stood before him. He should have risen, created distance. Instead, he remained seated as she placed one hand against his shoulder.
“Emmeline,” he said, warning and want tangled beyond usefulness.
She lowered herself onto his lap.
The breath left him.
She settled carefully, one knee beside his thigh, her skirts spilling over them both, and wrapped her arms around his neck. His hands rose to her waist at once, closing around her, holding her.
Her face hovered inches from his. “You left this morning.”
“I had business.”
“So your note claimed.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. “It was true.”
Her fingers moved lightly at the back of his neck. “What was the whole truth?”
That he had almost forgotten every vow he had made to himself. That he had wanted to turn her beneath him with the morning light on her skin and bury himself in her before reason could intervene.
He did not say any of it.
Instead, he pulled her closer and kissed her.
She yielded with a soft sound, and the world narrowed to the taste of her. Tea and sweetness. Warm breath. The faint tremor of her body as his hands tightened at her waist. Last night returned violently: her thighs under his palms, her cries in his mouth, the helpless way she had said his name as pleasure broke over her.
He groaned and stood with her in his arms.
Emmeline clutched at him, startled, but before she could speak, he turned and pressed her back against the desk. Papers slidbeneath her hips. A pen rolled off the edge and struck the carpet. He did not care.
“Rowan,” she whispered, half warning, half plea.
“I know.”
He did not know what he meant by that.
He only knew that her skirts had ridden up just enough for his hand to find the silk of her stocking, that her mouth was open beneath his, that the little gasp she gave when his thumb pressed into her thigh nearly destroyed what remained of him.
She arched against him.
He kissed her throat, dragging his mouth down the line of it, tasting the pulse that beat there. “Do you know what you do to me?”
Her fingers tightened in his hair. “Tell me.”
His laugh came out rough and humorless. “If I begin, I will not stop.”
