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She said, “You’re not answering.”

Adam swallowed. “If you want to know that badly, I would rather I be inside you.”

And she laughed; the real one, with her hand over her mouth and her eyes bright, and he sat across from her in the Hampshire firelight and thought about Eloise in the water with her arms long and her chin correctly down, floating without knowing she was doing it.

He thought about the woman who had come to his door at night, offered him a contract, and stayed long after the contract required it.

If I make a ruin of this, I will not deserve to be surprised by it.

Somehow, he didn’t know how long he could keep her interested in him, just the same way Charlotte had never wanted him in the first place.

Are you truly thinking of that right in this moment?

The thought was incredulous, and he was wont to agree. Now was not the time for such drab thoughts.

He said, “And so, I’ll have you.”

He stood. He came around the table to her, and she tipped her head back and looked at him with no alarm in her face, only the wide-open expression she had when she had decided to be honest about a thing and had not yet found the words.

He bent down and kissed her.

Chapter Nineteen

She made a low sound against his mouth, caught involuntarily, and her hands came to his forearms and gripped with both hands, fingers closing hard on his sleeves and digging into his skin. Responding with a groan of his own, Adam kissed her back, almost desperately even, as though he wanted to crawl into her.

He truly did.

He moved his hands from her face to her hair. The remaining pins were already half-lost from the afternoon. He found the last one and drew it out, and her hair came down across his hands, heavy and loose, and she made a sound against his mouth that was lower than the first one and more decided.

He lifted his head to find her watching him, her face close, her hands still gripping his forearms, her lips parted. She was breathing unevenly. He was not breathing much better.

“You were going to let me go to bed,” he said.

“I was.” Her thumbs moved against his forearms. “I am very disciplined.”

“You are,” he said. “Extraordinarily so.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Considering.”

She turned her face and caught his mouth with hers, and her hands slid from his forearms up to his shirtfront, and the chair back between them became an inconvenience neither of them acknowledged. He sat down on the chair’s arm beside her, which brought them level, and she leaned into him with the unhurried certainty of a woman who has made a decision and is not reconsidering it, and he put his hand at the back of her neck, his thumb at her jaw, and kissed her slowly and at length.

She drew back enough to speak, her hands still gripping his shirt. “Adam,” she moaned, her hands petting.

“Mm.” His voice was distracted, liquid seduction that made her thighs clench.

“I am not afraid of this.” She looked at him, close and level. “In case that was unclear.”

He held her gaze. “I know you’re not,” he said.

“I thought you should hear it.” Her eyes stayed on his. “Since one of us appears to be.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he kissed her again, her name against her mouth, and she answered it with a low sound that he felt in his chest and his hands and everywhere else besides, and her fingers curled in his shirtfront and held on.

He made himself draw back. He kept his forehead against hers, his hand still cupped at the back of her neck, her breath warm against his mouth.

“Adam,” she mewled against his mouth again, her body trembling.

“I know,” he said.

God, did he know.