Chapter 5 #2
Almost unconsciously, his hand rose. He realized he was reaching for her braid and turned the motion into a scratch of his chin at the last moment, certain it looked awkward as hell. “I’d, uh, I’d love to see whatever it is you’re working on.”
“Oh!” Her eyes lit up. “I would love to show you!”
She began to turn, and he—without realizing his intent—put his hand on her arm and stopped her.
Ember turned back to him with a raised brow, and Max’s mind went blank.
He couldn’t come up with one damn thing to say. There was a bug on your sleeve sounded fake, and I just wanted an excuse to touch you sounded creepy, and Just checking the size of your muscles. Wow, feel these things! was just weird.
So he blurted what was actually on his mind. “You have beautiful hair.”
Her lips formed a little “oh” of surprise as her hand rose to touch her braid, and he found himself becoming jealous—of her hand, sure, but more so of those lips. He wanted to be the one to taste them, to make her sigh in surprise, to make her say, “Oh.”
He wanted to kiss her, more than he’d ever wanted to kiss anyone else, ever.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but didn’t remove his hand.
She smiled. “For complimenting me? Please do not be.” Was she leaning toward him? Her gaze dropped to his lips. “I rarely get compliments.”
Her breathy tone made him feel bold. “That’s a shame. You deserve all sorts of compliments.”
When her gaze rose to meet his once more, he felt the desire—the need—slam into him and shoot straight to his cock.
“About my hair?” she breathed.
Hoping to distract himself, he lifted his hand to her braid once more, but this time, he didn’t stop himself. He lifted the feathery tips of her hair and brushed them against his thumb.
Not just your hair! he wanted to tell her. But all he actually said was, “It is a gorgeous color.” One which was still tugging at his memory. “It’s a shame to keep it covered.”
Her eyes were wide, and he wasn’t mistaken; she stepped even closer to him.
“Baroness Oliphant makes me wear a cap. She says the color of my hair is inappropriate.”
“How could a color be inappropriate?”
Her lips curled up at the corners. “She says it incites men to think lustful thoughts.”
Max couldn’t help it; he burst into laughter, and when he’d calmed himself down, she was standing even closer, her head tilted back to meet his eyes.
“She’s right, you know,” he drawled, dragging the tip of her braid against her neck, and liking the way she shivered at the sensation. “I’m having all sorts of lustful thoughts right now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but it’s not because of your hair.”
Her pink tongue darted out across her lips. “What are they— I mean, why are you having those thoughts?”
He dropped her braid, and his fingertips replaced it against her neck, carefully skimming against her skin. When she whimpered softly and tilted her head to give him better access, he knew she didn’t object.
“Your lips, Ember,” he said softly, and her eyes widened. “Mainly your lips, I should say. Also your skin, and your hands.”
“My—my hands are callused,” she gasped, leaning toward him.
“Yeah, but they still make me think lustful thoughts.” Like where she might put those hands.
“Max…” she whispered.
When he took a deep breath, his chest touched hers, and he wondered if her breasts were aching for his touch. “Ember, I’d like to kiss you. Do you mind?”
Holding his gaze, she smiled. “I thought you would never ask.”
And then she pushed herself up on her toes, her arms going around his neck, and he lowered his lips to hers.
Dear God, but this had to be the most incredible kiss he’d ever experienced!
Not that he was…experienced. There’d been a few ladies back home of course, and the girls over at The Gingerbread House Saloon, and—
Why in tarnation are you thinking about other women right now?
Max exhaled and let himself sink into this kiss—this electrifying, exhilarating kiss.
Her fingers raked through the short hairs at the back of his neck, causing him to shiver, and when he dragged his tongue along the seam of her lips, they parted with a sigh. What started off sweet soon became desperate, as Max realized he wasn’t going to be able to get enough of her.
When she took his lower lip between her teeth and sucked, he instinctively pressed forward with his pelvis, pressing his hardness against her. Instead of being offended or frightened, Ember only moaned—a low, desperate sort of moan—and pushed back, gyrating her hips as if she wanted more pressure.
Well, that did it. Unable to stop himself, he broke the connection of their kiss so he could drag his lips along her jaw, then to the sensitive spot behind her ear.
When she whispered a ragged, “Yes! Oh, yes, please!” his palm found her breast, his fingers brushing against her nipple under the thin cotton of her blouse and chemise.
She wasn’t wearing a corset, and he discovered he liked that very much.
She bucked against him, and he knew she liked the sensation, so he did it again, then captured her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
“Max!” she gasped, as he kissed along her neck.
“Oh God, Ember. I have to taste you!”
She arched into his touch. “Please!”
As much as he wanted to unbutton her blouse, pull down her chemise and clamp his mouth against her bare skin, he didn’t have that kind of time right now.
So he just lowered his mouth to her completely covered breast, and when she moaned in need and pushed against his lips, he knew he’d made the right choice.
He brushed his tongue against her nipple—stiff and perfect under the layers of cotton, and she jerked in response, her breaths coming faster.
One of his hands cupped her rear end, pulling her closer, while the other palmed her opposite breast. She felt so damn perfect he couldn’t resist the urge to drag his hand down her side, marveling at her waist, then her hip. Unconsciously, he was drawn to her heat, cradling his hardness.
Max had never, ever wanted something as badly as he wanted to pull up her skirts and touch that heat with his bare skin. Not in all the years of childhood pain and loneliness, not in the years since then of hard work and sadness.
He wanted Ember with a fierceness he hadn’t expected.
Which is why he needed to stop. Now.
It took herculean effort to pull away from her, to release her breast and straighten, to move his hand off her ass. He managed it, but he was unable to set her completely aside.
Instead, he raised his hand to the back of her head and pushed her against his shoulder, trying to resist the urge to grind his erection against her softness.
Breathing heavily, he gasped, “I’m sorry,” as he stroked her hair, trying to focus on the color, so close to his face. “I’m sorry.”
Her hands dropped from his neck to his waist, then linking behind his back as if she didn’t want to let him go. “If you—” When she broke off, he heard her swallow. “If you do not cease apologizing, I am likely to think you did something worth regretting.”
His lips tugged upward. “You don’t think that me mauling you like that was worth an apology?”
She straightened away from his shoulder; her expression indignant.
“I will have you know that was a mutually agreeable mauling.” Her cheeks were flushed, her lips plump, and her eyes bright with desire.
She did look like a lass who’d been agreeable to said mauling.
“And besides, I have been wondering what you would taste like, and now I know.”
Dear God in Heaven.
“You’ve been…?”
She’d been thinking about him? Had she touched herself, the way he had, and imagined it was his hands upon her?
The way her blush deepened told him he’d likely guessed correctly, but she didn’t drop his gaze.
“Yes,” she said simply.
With a groan of surrender, he dropped a kiss to her lips once more. But although she pressed against him, and although his cock twitched in his trousers again, Max reminded himself this was not the place.
He wasn’t going to make love to Ember in the middle of a machine shop.
“Ember,” he groaned as he broke away, “I’m trying to be strong here.”
“And I like you all the more for it.” She didn’t look hurt when she grinned up at him, but rather invigorated. “But you cannot deny this is fun.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and chuckled ruefully as he loosened his hold on her and allowed her to step back. “By far the most fun I’ve had since coming to the Highlands.” And that included all the shenanigans he’d gotten into with Lysander and even that ball.
The ball…
That something was tugging at his memory again, something to do with the color red and the—
The lady in silver, the one he’d danced with at the ball! She’d had hair the color of Ember’s, and the shoe she’d left behind had been that same bronze.
“So do you want to see what I have been working on?”
Her question startled him, and he realized he’d been staring at her braid. “What?”
“My project.” She grinned. “Oh my, that kiss really scrambled your brain.”
Max was surprised to discover his arousal was under control now. Maybe it was the memory of the frantic chase after the lady in silver, or his worry for her. Or maybe it was the way Ember was smiling at him now, although he doubted it.
“Uh…yeah. Of course I’d like to see your project.”
“Good!” She grabbed his hand and began to pull him toward the lathe. “Because I have been meaning to ask you for some help with it.”
“Anything,” he vowed.
At the lathe, she beamed to him. “I am hoping to show these to your boss. I created them, and I want to make more of them and sell them to the ladies. I know they will be popular—my sisters have helped prove that—but I do not have the capabilities to manufacture them at the same rate, not in the little workshop at the inn.”
Max clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, trying to follow along with her explanation. She was so animated as she waved her hands about, he doubted she even was aware of the damp spot on her blouse where his mouth had been.
But he was aware of it. Wooo-boy was he aware of it. He could see the darker pink of her areola through the fabric and remembered the hard bud of her nipple…
Focus, cowboy.
“I have been using scrap metal—the ends of the ingots mostly, since sheet metal will not work. It took me months of scrounging—and Lawrence said it was allowed, considering who my Papa was—to find enough bronze and brass to make matching heels for mine and Bonnie’s shoes, but Tiffany’s were simpler.
I have to turn them here on the lathe, since I cannot form the heel in my workshop.
But then I take it back and do all the engraving there, then attach it to the rest of the shoe. ”
She was looking at him with excitement, as if he were supposed to know what she was talking about. He loosened his hands to offer her a shrug and a bemused grin. “I’m sorry, love. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
Clucking her tongue, she whirled around and began to turn levers. He stepped up beside her and realized she was releasing her project from the lathe. When she handed it to him, he held it up in the light of the lantern to examine the two-inch-long, two-inch wide cylinder.
“What is it?” he asked. Hadn’t she said something about a heel?
“Here. This is my template.”
And that’s when she beamed and held up a completed shoe.
It was a little odd to realize his hand was shaking slightly as he reached reverently for it.
He held it beside the cylinder and realized they were identical.
She was turning heels for fancy ladies’ slippers.
The completed shoe in his hand was red, and the metal of the bronze heel was burnished to a shine and engraved with a delicate design of gears.
It was identical to the shoe he’d hidden upstairs in his office.
“You made this?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Yes. Do you like it? Do you think your boss would be interested in manufacturing them?”
Andrew Prince likely wouldn’t care one way or the other, but Max didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. “I think it’s amazing. Women wear these sorts of things?”
“Of course. Women’s fashion—especially among the wealthy—is all about showing off. And impracticalness. When we wore these to the ball last week, they caused quite a sensation. My sisters already have ladies clamoring for their own pair.”
When we wore these to the ball.
Ember had been at the ball.
Max stared at her, his pulse hammering in his ears, suddenly understanding why her hair had tugged at his memory.
He’d seen it before, loose and curly, and hanging down her back.
Her back, encased in a silver gown while her face had been hidden by a mask decorated in a delicate design of gears and machinery to match the heeled slippers.
Ember was the lady in silver from the ball!
She wasn’t a serving lass at all, was she?