She inhaled deeply before wrenching open her door and inhaled once again before she knocked on his. To her surprise, it opened straight away, almost as if he’d expected her.
‘Hello, Max. I’ve been waiting for sleep and couldn’t.’
She cringed and immediately prayed for death as his handsome face scrunched in confusion.
‘Couldn’t what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ The confident seductress had clearly been shot in the paddock before the race. ‘I just thought we should discuss...um...your evening... Make sure we are presenting a united front.’
‘I am glad you are awake. I’ve been wanting to speak to you about last night.’ His suddenly serious expression killed all her last hopes of seduction stone dead. ‘Come in for a second.’Just a second.Disappointment settled in her stomach. ‘This is not a conversation for the hallway.’
Effie stepped in on leaden feet, urgently rehearsing her nonchalant face in her head. If he was going to break her heart, she’d be damned if she allowed him to see it. He closed the door and leaned his back against it.
‘What did you mean when you said it wasobviousI regretted the last kiss?’
‘The bumping of faces?’ She had not expected him to start with that question. Or any question to be frank when she was expecting a polite let down.
He winced. ‘I said that, didn’t I?’
‘You also called it a big mistake.’
‘Not my finest hour. But in my defence you had just knocked me sideways and I was...’ He sighed as he turned away and then gazed at her sheepishly though the heavy curtain of his hair. ‘I didn’t mean it, Effie. Any of it. That first kiss was special. Last night’s was spectacular.’
‘Oh...’ She had no earthly idea where this was going.
‘And I would very much like to do it again... Right this second, in fact...in case you were wondering.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Two beautiful big brown eyes...
It had been an odd day. So odd that even at this late hour he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. There were so many things to think about. So much indecision it was all sending him mad. He didn’t have all the answers—but what he did know, with complete certainty, was that he needed Effie.
She looked so lovely in the candlelight, bare toes just poking out from under the hem of her unbelievably distracting coral evening gown, nothing but a pencil holding up her hair and blinking back at him as if he’d just spoken to her in a foreign language rather than admitting he was desperate to kiss her. ‘May I?’
To his utter delight she answered by launching herself at him, knocking him back against the door as her lips greedily found his. It was this honesty he adored about her. There was no artifice about Effie. No deception. No games. She wanted to kiss him and he desperately wanted her to. It was strange—a few short weeks ago he had been convinced no woman would ever want to kiss him again and he had mourned all those faceless, voiceless, soulless women as if he known each one personally, yet now he couldn’t care less because none of them interested him. Why would they when the only woman he could ever imagine kissing again was the one currently in his arms? He’d craved this all day, which was no mean feat when one considered the day he’d had, but it was true. She had possessed him, thoroughly bewitched him, and despite the war currently being waged in his head he had counted every second just waiting for the chance to hold her again.
He felt her hands burrow beneath his coat and smiled against her mouth. He hadn’t misread her desire yesterday. She was as desperate for the contact as he was and he felt gloriously alive again. Perhaps not entirely whole, not at all his old self, but not the shadow he had been when he had come here to Rivenhall completely broken. Something was shifting. He was changing. But she was here and nothing else mattered.
Which was a dangerous game while her passionate exuberance was scrambling his wits and driving his body mad with longing.
Not ready to put a sensible stop to it yet, he poured his heart and soul into the kiss, wrapping his arms tightly around her and not entirely sure if he would ever let go. Almost immediately, things got out of hand and he revelled in that, too. She ground her hips against his arousal, moaning as his lips found her ear. Her neck. Her shoulder. At some point, he must have lifted her and reversed their positions, because Effie’s legs wrapped themselves around his waist as he held her suspended from the ground using only the door and the hard press of his body, losing himself entirely in the moment. Losing himself in her. The urge to tear the buttons from his falls and plunge himself deep inside of her was the only thing which brought him up short.
He tore his lips away and rested his forehead against hers, gulping for air, his body aching for release and his head whirling like a frantic spinning top.
‘Did I do something wrong, Max?’
The bark of laughter came out of nowhere. ‘No, Miss Naive. You did everything right. Too right—when I am desperately trying to be a gentleman and about to fail miserably.’
‘Oh.’ She was pleased with herself. He could hear it in her voice and he liked that, too. No games. No lies. Just Effie.
He gently lowered her to the ground and stepped back, trying and failing not to notice how scandalously wanton she looked with her lips all swollen, those sultry dark eyes molten and one sleeve hanging off her shoulder as her straining breasts rose and fell against the silk. Thank the lord the pencil had held or he’d be completely done for, although it looked precarious. ‘Perhaps we should talk for a little while.’
‘About what?’
‘About...’ He considered suggesting something inane to do with the antiquarians or the dig, but knew there were more important things which needed to be said. ‘About me.’ Max exhaled loudly to calm himself, feeling more vulnerable than he had since those first months in his sickbed after his world had fallen apart. ‘Because I have all these confusing thoughts suddenly crashing about in my mind and I cannot make head nor tail of them. And seeing as you are the cleverest person I have ever met, I was hoping you could help me make sense of them because I have to face them, Effie. I don’t want to, but I know I must.’
‘All right...’ Her concern was instant and genuine. ‘We should probably sit in that case...’ She wandered to the bed and was about to lower herself on to it when he held up his hand.
