Thanks to his talented mouth, her level head no longer ruled supreme. Instead, it was her body that controlled every inch. Nothing existed beyond her new needs and this potent kiss she wanted to last forever.
Except it didn’t, because he suddenly wrenched his mouth away.
Stared at her wide-eyed. Panicked and uncertain as though he wanted to run far away—yet he seemed incapable of letting her go.
His breath sawed in and out. His heart raced beneath her fingertips. And his eyes—his mesmerizing dark-brown eyes—were heated with desire. “This is madness.”
Georgie nodded as she held on tight—because it was. Glorious, unfettered, and addictive madness that she didn’t want to stop.
His arms loosened. Unlocked themselves from behind her back. Found their way to her hips instead while he tried to calm his breathing. She was sure he was going to step well away until his gaze dropped to her lips and he scrunched his eyes closed, but before they did, she saw the war in them. All the desire.
All the need.
All for her.
Her!
That really was the maddest thing of all. That this intoxicating man, who could have his pick of women, currently wanted her.
He swallowed. Hard. And when his eyes opened, his heated gaze latched immediately onto her mouth and he growled in frustration as he tugged her hips back to his. So close that she was left in nodoubt of his desire for her as it throbbed hot and hard against her belly through all the layers of their clothes. His mouth found hers again, then feasted. As if he wanted to gorge on her now rather than take his time. Every hot, fevered, and gloriously intimate kiss sent all those fizzing champagne bubbles within her tummy ricocheting everywhere until she was drunk on him.
At some point, her back found the wall and her leg wrapped itself around his hips to anchor him. By then, she was witless and practically boneless and so desperate to have him inside her that all propriety had flown out of the window. Shamelessly in pursuit of her own pleasure and so caught up in the kiss that nothing else mattered. As he began to hike up her skirts, she wrestled with the falls of his breeches. Both in such a hurry to finish what they had started that Grace’s cry brought them both up short.
Still panting with unslaked lust, they were both barely decent when the little girl emerged from her bedchamber rubbing her eyes, oblivious of the passionate, carnal insanity she had just interrupted.
“I had another nightmare, Miss Rowe.” Then she held out her little hand. “Will you sleep with me in my bed again tonight?”
ChapterTWENTY
Harry had thought that the pit of despair he had been wallowing in could not possibly get any deeper, but he was wrong. Not only had he crossed the respectable line between employer and employee, he’d exacerbated his ill-timed and unwelcome yearning for the siren.
Who knew that a simple kiss could enthrall him so? Ruin him so spectacularly that he knew no other would ever match it?
The darndest thing was that Miss Rowe’s initial kiss had been so clumsy, it shouldn’t have affected him so spectacularly. But that had been the start of his undoing. Then the clever minx had learned so fast she had made him unfurl like a sail.
She was such a passionate little thing. There had been nothing coy about her when she was aroused, and he had been left in no doubt that she had been last night. The soft, encouraging moans and greedy sighs as she sought her own pleasure had stoked the flames of his desire until they had positively burned. He’d lifted her hips to his and pressed his hard cock against her, for pity’s sake, and insteadof being scandalized by that outrageous liberty, she had wound her shapely leg around his waist and ground her womanly hips against it.
Her nipples had been so puckered with need he had felt them all the way through his clothes, tempting him. When he had given in to that temptation and had filled his hands with her pert, perfect breasts, she had moaned and writhed and bucked her hips some more and, heaven help him, he had been seconds from having her. Worse, he could not shake the seductive knowledge that she would have let him.
How, exactly, was he supposed to cope with all that new and torturous knowledge today? Tomorrow? Next week?
Until blasted Flora decided to come home to save him from himself and the dangerous siren who consumed him?
His intense physical attraction to her aside, there was no denying now that something about her called to his heart as well as his body. The clues had been there before last night. In truth, they had been there from their very first meeting, when he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Amongst all that spontaneous attraction had been something less definable beyond a sense of serendipity. He’d felt it like a jolt the second her lips touched his. That sense of rightness, like a bolt sliding into place, which he was pretty certain he had never experienced before—which was worrying.
Now he was left not only wanting to know what it would be like to possess all of her in the carnal sense—but to know all of her too. What she thought. Her hopes and dreams and… essence, he supposed. He also had the overwhelming urge to woo her. To charm her and court her. To make her his in every possible way, and that was… terrifying. Not only because this was the absolute wrong time to enter into such madness, but because he knew in his heart that if he ventured down that treacherous path again, that there would be nocoming back. The previous siren in his life had not been in this flame-haired vixen’s league. Miss Rowe was Salome and Delilah and Helen of Troy all rolled into that compact, passionate, and indomitable womanly package. An intoxicating and addictive enchantress. One oozing spirit, determination, and uniqueness. She was very definitely the sort of woman a man couldn’t sail away from—when he very much had to. The sort he would foolishly sacrifice a career for.
All control for.
Himself for.
The exact sort, if he was stupid enough, that he would allow history to repeat itself for, so he had no choice but to end things between them before it was too late, and certainly before they arrived in blasted Plymouth.
He could hardly dismiss her. In her own irrepressible way, she had done everything so right, the children not only loved her—they behaved! However, there was no denying his life in Plymouth would certainly be less painful if she was safely two hundred and fifty miles away from him. And as tempting as it was to say to hell with it all and just have her the once and be done with it—as men had been prone to do for time immemorial when they had an itch to scratch—Harry already knew once with her wouldn’t be enough. She was the sort who lured a man willingly onto the treacherous rocks of forever.
“Good morning, all.” Harry took a deep breath and strode into the stable yard. He hoped his façade of breezy calm was more convincing than it felt because his besotted heart thudded at the sight of her in the same plain gray traveling dress he had thoroughly ravished her in last night, giving his still-rampant body ideas.
She stiffened at his voice and was blushing profusely by the time she turned around. Although to her credit, even though you could probably fry an egg on one of her overheated cheeks, she was alsodoing her very best to appear unbothered by the inescapable and inexcusable fact that only a few hours ago, her oh-so-sensitive breasts had been filling his greedy palms. While his insistent erection had been twitching against her tummy.
