Squinty agate eyes that looked of chocolate and jade blinked at him. “Yes.”
He raised her chin and claimed those lips.
In the rain, they kissed. His heart drummed in unison to hers. That crazed rhythm in her bosom was everything, everything he felt, everything he couldn’t say.
The rain fell harder.
But he wasn’t moving. Not from this.
He’d be grumpy and fussy at how crazy she’d been or the clear burglary of his house—later.
Right now, he’d be a young fool kissing the woman who drove everything in him to a fever.
CHAPTER 26
JEMINA—CAPTURED
Iwas his prisoner, my mouth on Ashbrook’s in the rain. Thunder moaned and so did I. My hair had fallen. It was a soggy slick on my neck.
But I was in his hot arms, dripping wet, being kissed by this man like I was air. Maybe he was air, for I gulped him up, too.
His dog’s barking picked up. Zeus might be wandering.
Yet, I held Daniel tighter and let his hands wander, exploring the soggy fabric of my shirt, my corset.
He took a deeper breath and just embraced me, fitting me to the hardened muscles of his chest. His voice whispered words that dug into my soul.
The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
“More poetry? I love your voice, but what does it mean?”
“It’s Phillis Wheatley, a negress poet from the Americas. I find it calming when my heart is about to explode.” His fingers twirled a lock of my hair. “Maybe it will soothe yours. It’s riotous against me. And I only want it closer. I hunger for so much.”
He began again.
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with ev’ry virtue glow,
The living temples—
I kissed him. Didn’t need him painting words about the communion of human temples made to worship flesh and flurried desire. I had too many images in my head of him and me and sweet abandon.
The rain worsened. Groaning, he quit me and motioned his horse. “Back to the house. We need to get out of these . . . I mean we need to get you good and warm.”
I was warm, and he knew it. The question was what to do about it and all our secrets.
He rode over to the Shire horse and grabbed his reins. “You didn’t steal this too?”
“No, he belongs to the duke. Are you going to turn me in to the magistrate?”
“Jemina, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you but sending my would-be mistress to Newgate would be an awful scandal, especially with the talk about us dying.”
He clicked his heels. “Come on, boy. Come on, Max.”
