She gave a shake of her head. “No need. I don’t have such aspirations. A simple kiss will do.”
Oh, really? Julien bent his head until their noses almost touched. “Shall I give you one right now, then?”
“No!” Her gaze darted to the door and back at him. “Not here! What if someone walks in?”
His lips quirked up. “Then what did you have in mind, Lady Elowyn? As you know, I am at your mercy.”
She blinked up at him before a lovely flush spread over her cheeks. “Well, for one, the setting needs to be perfect.”
The setting? Julien’s brow sprang up. “What does setting have to do with anything?”
She let out a small scoff. “You’re a man so you won’t understand. Setting iseverything.”
He couldn’t argue there. “What setting do you have in mind?” God knows, he couldn’t think of a setting that would be perfect. Setting was setting. What did it matter if the goal was a kiss?
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten that far in my planning yet.”
“Ah, so there isaplan?” And Stagbourne had been in it.
Her eyes flew wide again.
Well, be that as it may, she wouldn’t have to think farther on the matter anymore. Snatching her wrist, Julien tugged her up against him and crushed his lips against hers, taking advantage of her gasp to sweep his tongue past her lips and into the hot cavern of her mouth.
Sweet.
So bloody sweet, Julien nearly groaned.
Had a kiss ever felt so good? He couldn’t recall. If he had kissed a handful of women in his life, that would be a lot. None had been this intoxicating. This bewitching. This disarming. An unfamiliar desire to carry her off to his bed blazed inside him. Julien fought the infuriating impulse. Besides the obvious—this wasn’t his house, his woman, his right—he refused to be bewitched.
He still couldn’t get enough of kissing her.
Unfortunately, the wildflower witch placed both her hands on his chest and pushed, wrenching her mouth away from his.
Everything in Julien protested.
She retreated several steps, a small, delicate hand covering her mouth. He imagined that hand wrapped around his—
“What did you just do?” she demanded with a hiss.
He dragged a hand through his hair, cursing his body’s throbbing reaction. This had never happened before. “I fulfilled our contract.”
“We never had a contract!”
“No?” His body hardened even more at her fierceness. “A kiss in exchange for your silence. Was that not the deal?”
“I didn’t say I wantedthatsort of kiss!”
Julien had the strange urge to laugh. “What other sort is there?”
“A thousand! There are a thousand different kisses, you, you, you haxcomb duke!”
Haxcomb? His lips threatened to quirk. Did the wildflower mean coxcomb? And athousand types of kisses? That seemed exaggerated. And exhausting. In his estimation, only two kinds existed. A kiss that was chaste and a kiss that was not. He willed his body under control. “Can you even count to a thousand?”
The light dimmed from her gaze . . .
Damnation.
Julien didn’t even have to read the horror coupled with incredulity, coupled with sparks of rage, to know he’d said the wrong thing. He opened his mouth to retract his idiocy but the very devils of the earth decided to announce their presence in that moment and in the way of the door slamming open. Luck. This damn thing. Abandoning him once again. A perfect setting? What about the perfect amalgamation of the nightmares?
