She shrugged, glancing under my arm at something on the butcher block. My mother’s aged blue recipe book lay open there.
“When did she give you that?”
“When I visited her last night,” she answered.
I drew in a deep breath. “What about the pretty courtesan? Did you bring her to meet my sick mother, too?”
Elsedora let her head fall back against the brick. When she peered up at me, she looked so tired and exhausted of any will to quarrel.
“My dry spell continues,” she said, trying to make light of it. The embers of rage I’d carried all night were stomped out.
“You didn’t spend the night with the courtesan?” I needed her to confirm it. I had no right to demand her fidelity. But I wanted to win that right.
She shook her head. “Leonna is an old friend. She helped me realize I’d been seeking the wrong things in the wrong places. After I sobered enough to make it to Luz, I went and visited your mother. I should have gone there sooner, but I was too afraid to see her so frail. She made me sleep off my lousy night in the armchair.”
I couldn’t help my growing smirk as I leaned further into her space. Our lips nearly touched, and I reveled in her light gasp. I liked the side of her that revealed her insecurities—I’d do whatever it took to dispel them. Those fears didn’t belong between us.
“What are the right things in the right places?” I asked.
She swallowed hard before she said, “You. Here.”
I soaked in her admission. Those words were all I’d needed.
Her pupils dilated, her breath hitched, and my anger slipped away.
“I don’t want to muck this up, Emmerick. But selfishly, I’d keep you from any other. It isn’t fair how much I want you to myself.”
If she kept me to herself, I’d shout about it from the damned mountain tops.
Running my hands down her goose-bump-covered arms, I heaved a sigh of relief. “You’ve mucked up nothing. And I am here. It doesn’t feel an ounce unfair to me. So what are we to do about that?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, but her attention fixated hungrily on my lips.
Knowing her interest ran deeper than lust spurred my confidence.
I let my stubble brush her cheek and whispered in her ear, “Unless you have objections, I’m going to kiss you now, Else. And you’d best make it a good one because it won’t be happeningagain until we remake this batch of shortbread together. No matter how much you tempt or beg me for more.”
Chapter 57
Elsedora
Make it good?
I’d kiss him senseless.
Since waking at dawn, all I’d wanted was to kiss him. After my foolish, flighty show the night prior, I’d thought I’d lost that chance.
I could make this wanting side of him my permanent residence and happily live under his hungry gaze and feel the weight of him against me for eternity.
He closed the distance between our lips, and I dug my fingers into his hair, pulling his mouth hard to mine. We should have done this hundreds of times by now.
His hand wrapped around my neck, and his thumb brushed my pulse point before tilting my chin up to deepen our connection. Our tongues collided with exploratory eagerness, and heat gathered in my core.
My thigh climbed up onto his hip as I sought more friction. I wanted to tear the pesky, unnecessary clothing away and havehim here on the kitchen floor. He lifted me against the wall, allowing me to wrap my legs around him.
Unable to repress a moan, I ran my nails down the hard planes of his muscular back. Touching him indulged my senses and left me needing more.
We’d kissed once already. But this was an admittance of so much that I’d denied myself. I gave everything to him, diving headfirst into waters I’d never treaded.
