Page 73 of The Time for Love
He’d asked her that, and she’d been about to reply, and her answer…
Hardly surprising I’m feeling unsatisfied.
And now, of course, he felt even more restless and impatient andwanting.
The sound of the door opening had him raising his head and swinging around, only to see, as if his thoughts had summoned her, Sophy slip inside.
She quietly shut the door and looked at the bed. She stared at it for several seconds, then scanned the dimly lit room. When her gaze reached him, she smiled—even in the poor light he saw her features transform—then she calmly walked toward him.
He tightened his grip on his libido to the mental equivalent of white-knuckled.
As Sophy neared, she studied his expression. Was he still in pain? She could read very little from his face. “How’s your head?” To her mind, that was the most pertinent question.
He frowned and raised a hand to the back of his head, then his brows rose in surprise. “It’s not that bad. It’s no longer throbbing and only hurts if I press.”
She halted before him, reached up, and followed his fingers to the lump, then gently nudged his hand away and explored for herself. Her eyes on his, she murmured, “It’s not as large as it was.”
From close quarters, he searched her face. “That’s a relief.”
She let her lips curve. “Clearly, you have a hard head.”
His eyes met and locked with hers. She felt his hands close, gently, about her waist, holding her where she was. Close. Almost against him. The front of his coat brushed tantalizingly over the taut fabric of her bodice.
“I’m fairly certain,” he murmured, his voice deep and low, “that you didn’t come here to investigate the size of my lump.”
Fearlessly, she held his gaze. “I’m here because I’m not about to allow whoever’s behind this—our mystery man—to dictate my life. Mine or yours.” She paused, studying his eyes. All she saw in the caramel depths was stalwart strength, potent, unwavering, yet controlled. Held reined. Waiting.
She tipped her head quizzically. “Do you remember what we were speaking about in the shrubbery before Murchison’s thugs so rudely interrupted us?”
“Vividly.”
Delicious tension rose inside her, and she locked her eyes with his. “I can see the vision you conjured, the landscape of our future as it could be. And I want it—want that—just as much as you do.”
His eyes searched hers, then his lips lightly curved, and his voice lowered almost to a purr. “I very much doubt that. You cannot possibly want that shining future, crave and yearn for it, as much as I do.”
She couldn’t stop her lips from curving at the blatant challenge. Couldn’t stop herself from responding to the lure. “Trust me, I can. Indeed, I do.” Deliberately, she closed the distance between them. “Let me show you how much.”
Sliding her hands to his nape, she stretched up against him, then drew his head down, set her lips to his, and with flagrant wanton intention, plunged, heart and soul, into the kiss.
Into the waiting flames. Flames of passion, desire, and hunger that roared and greedily welcomed her into a fiery embrace.
His arms surrounded her and tightened, holding her, then crushing her to him.
She gloried in the spike of greedy need that surged through her and him, spurred by the provocative contact. Her nerves sparked, and her senses expanded as heat swirled and built, beckoning, luring, tempting them on.Thiswas what she wanted and, after the drama, the demands, and the tensions of the day, simply had to have, and the same desire burned in him.
That avid mutual hunger was evident in the way their lips ravenously melded, in the way their tongues tangled in successive heated duels. In the desperate craving that surged through them and had their hands gripping, seizing, holding, clinging as their world and their senses spun.
Out of control.
Both of them were, and neither cared.
Since that disrupted moment in the shrubbery, they’d been forced to set aside these needs, yet while dealing with the demands the situation had forced upon them, beneath their outwardly collected façades,this—this hunger, these needs—had been simmering, swelling, and building, constantly abraded by all the necessary social touches, leaping at the nearness, the physical closeness dictated by their responses to the ongoing, evolving mystery.
Now, they’d left the mystery and all its demands outside the door. They’d dropped their polite masks and set passion free to surge as it would, unleashed by her decision. By her declaration.
In giddy delight, they let hunger consume them, let desire rage and sweep them away.
She’d never imagined kisses could be so ravenous, so rapacious. He drew back to sup at her lips, only to dive back into the exchange, and she welcomed him with equal passion, with a need every bit as desperate as their tongues caressed and their senses whirled.
