Lyon’s heart thundered in his chest after that accidental touch. It had been as bad as yesterday’s moment on the ladder, when he’d been aware of how very easy it would be to turn his head and claim her lips with his.
I want you to kiss me, Lyon.
Despite the turning of the pages of this technical manual, he’d been doing very little except thinking of that request.
When he next made the mistake of looking up from his reading, Bonnie had migrated, from her chair to the window seat, where she’d spread her notes across the cushions and was now standing over them with her hands on her hips, frowning at them the way he frowned at a schematic that wasn’t behaving.
“Lyon.”
“Hmm.”
“I have been thinking about Nessa Oliphant’s work.”
He turned a page he hadn’t read, his cock stirring at the thought of this woman considering the same wicked images he had. “Have ye?”
“Specifically the tamer pieces. The embracing couple—theactuallyembracing couple, not the one that turned out to be?—”
“I ken which one ye mean.”
Bonnie looked up from her notes, lips twisted as if she thought it amusing he didn’t want to hear her try to define theothermedieval embroideries. “Could you describe it to me? From memory? I want to know if my description in the manuscript matches what is actually there.”
He should’ve saidgo and look at it yourself, it’s down the corridor.That would’ve been the sensible answer.
Instead, Lyon lowered his manual and described it: the dimensions, the faded ochre of the background, the way the stitching along the border was finer than the figures themselves, suggesting a different hand had done the edging. The woman’s sleeve, rendered in a silk thread that had survived better than the wool around it, so it still caught the light when the rest had gone flat.
When he finished, Bonnie was staring at him.
“What?” he said.
“You have spent a great deal of time looking at that embroidery.”
“It’s in my study.”
“So is a great deal else.”
He picked up his manual. “I notice details. It’s how my mind works.”
She made a soft sound—not quite agreement, not quite a laugh—and looked back at her notes. Lyon wondered if she’d guessed how many times he’d frigged his own hand while studying those embroidered pieces of art.
A few minutes passed. Then he heard her gather her pages and cross the room toward him, and he looked up to find her standing beside his chair, manuscript in hand.
“I have written a description of the piece,” she said. “Would you tell me if it is right?”
He held out his hand for the pages. She passed them over, and instead of stepping back—instead of returning to her chair, or the window seat, or any of the considerable available space in this room—she leaned over his shoulder to point to the relevant passage.
Lyon went very still.
She was close enough that he could feel her warmth, close enough that her hair—that loose piece that was always escaping, the one he’d tucked back once without thinking—was near enough to his cheek that he could have turned his head and inhale and?—
He looked at the manuscript.
She was pointing to a line. He made himself read it.
The figures appear to be in an attitude of tender congress.
“Here.” Lyon’s voice came out lower than intended. He touched his finger to the page, to that line, and was grateful to have something to distract from the way his cock was throbbing beneath his kilt. “I’d changecongress. Sounds like a parliamentary debate.”
A breath escaped her, warm against his temple. “What would you use instead?”
