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Jules scent, crisp, slightly musky, perhaps even a suggestion of cloves, surrounded her.

She stood so near him, that even in the subdued candlelight, she could see the faintest shadow of his whiskers along his jaw, and when her gaze met his, slightly bewildered, simmering topaz eyes regarded her.

His regard sank to her mouth, and the peculiar stirrings of earlier burgeoned once more.

Only stronger, more insistent.

The faint music faded into the background as he dipped his head lower, than lower still, until his mouth—oh, his lovely, warm, soft, yet firm mouth—brushed hers.

In that instant, Jemmah was lost, utterly, irreversibly, and unreservedly.

She rose up on her toes, entwined her arms around Jules’s sturdy neck, and kissed him with the abandon of a desperate woman seizing her one and only chance to kiss the man she’d loved for years.

He groaned deep in his throat, the sound primitive and animalistic, and all the more arousing because of its baseness. Using his tongue, he trailed the seam between her lips, teasing her mouth open, and the headiest of sensations spiraled through every fiber of her being.

Their tongues danced together, mating in an age-old cadence, while thousands of moonbeams ignited behind her eyes.

“Jemmah, my sweet, precious Jem,” he murmured against her neck, his voice thick and husky, the sound sending delicious tremors to her toes. “Tell me I may call upon you, tomorrow.”

“Dandridge!”

Insistent scratching on the locked door had Jemmah springing away from him.

“I know you’re in there,” a feminine voice all but hissed. “We must talk. This is no way to treat the next Duchess of Dandridge.”