Chapter 17
Setting down the glass, Jeremy folded his arms across his chest and adopted an air of nonchalance, ignoring her unnecessary apology.
“Is that why ye summoned me in here, so angry ye were ready to rip me head off… because ye were jealous?”
He flashed her a dark smile, needing not to think of what he had lost, needing to distract her, divert her from the things he did not want to talk about.
He pushed away from the liquor table and stalked toward her. “Is that it, lass?”
Anna stared at him as if frozen again, though the shock in her wide eyes was different; it was not the look of someone who had been informed they were wrong, but the look of someone who had been caught.
He stopped in front of her and leaned forward, his arms coming down on either side of where she stood, trapping her against the desk. If she pushed him away, he would move, of course, he would, but he had a feeling she would not.
“Were ye raging mad because ye could not stand the thought of another lass having what ye want?” he whispered close to her ear, a delicious shiver running through him as he heard her gasp, saw the gooseflesh prickling across her smooth skin, felt her back arch so he could lean in closer.
Her breath tickled his ear in return as she whispered back, “You flatter yourself, sir.” Her hands came to rest on his chest, but she did not shove him; she just let them settle there for a moment. “Even if she were your wife, I would not be jealous; I would feel sorry for her.”
He pulled back, surprised, the fire in him blazing as he saw the defiance on her beautiful face, the smirk on those lips he longed to kiss until neither of them could breathe, and the triumph in her eyes, as if she thought she had already won this round.
“Why is that?” he asked, as curious as he was frustrated.
“Who would wish to be shackled to a man that cannot be trusted?”
He laughed in the back of his throat. “Ah, but ye are imagining it all wrong, lass.” His body pressed closer again, the arch of her back, her neck, her parted thighs, doing things to him that probably were not wise.
“In the wee fantasy ye have, ye assume me wife is another lass, oblivious, and ye are the temptress I can’t resist. I have never been married, aye, but I know that if I were… I would worship me wife.”
His arm slipped around her waist to hold her as she bent backward, his other hand sliding up the soft curve of her thigh.
“I would not marry a lass I did not want to get on me knees for...” he purred, dipping his head to her neck, feeling the frantic rise and fall of her bosom against his chest. “I would not marry a lass who did not intoxicate me, who did not have such a hold on me that we would not leave the bedchamber… or any room where I could have her. I would not marry a lass who did not occupy me every waking thought, until I could not bear it anymore. A lass who would be waiting for me, eager for me tongue, me touch, me…”
He tilted his hips forward so she could feel the end of his sentence, the hitch of her breath letting him know that she had.
The heat of her was a maddening thing that razed through his veins, the teasing knowledge of that sweet, hot well of pleasure—so close and yet guarded behind the thin fabric of his trews and her drawers—making his loins ache until he thought he would explode if he could not have her.
Anna moaned, and as his lips skimmed the curve of her neck, her hands slid up into his hair to pull him closer.
His mouth claimed hers, all patience and restraint giving way as he lifted her and placed her on the edge of the desk, a gasp escaping her lips. He did not want to dwell on all the bad things that had driven him here; he just wanted to lose himself in the one good thing he had found.
She kissed him back with a fervor that left them both panting, each crush of their lips more urgent than the last, as if they might suddenly run out of time.
If he had not been worried about ruining the moment and turning her passion back into anger, he would have knocked the papers, inkwell, and various ornaments and accessories off the desk. Instead, he held her tighter and pressed her close as he kissed her, deep, fierce, and hungry.
When her leg curved around his, holding him against her, he almost came undone. She was right there, urging him on, alone behind a closed door, her thighs parted for him. It would not take much to unfasten his trousers and plunge into the delicious heat of her.
But she hasn’t done that before… It shouldn’t be hurried.
The reminder slowed him down a little, tempering the fervent inferno of his desire to a calmer smolder.
He could not allow himself to get carried away, even if he was fairly certain that just one night with her, one experience with her, would be enough to get him over the maddening hurdle of her distracting presence.
Leaning her weight against his arm, he pressed her back into the desk, careful not to disturb any of her belongings. When he kissed her, it was not frantic, but rather the slow, sensual rhythm of a man who no longer wanted to rush and preferred to take his time.
With her legs loosely wrapped around him, he forced his thoughts away from the aching pulse in his loins, the urgent need that craved her silken skin, and reached his free hand back.
Finding the hem of her skirt, he slipped his hand beneath it, a shiver running through him as his bare palm brushed against her stocking.
His hand eased upward, the silky friction of her stocking soon giving way to the smooth glide of her bare skin.
“Oh…” she panted, biting her lip.
He had been shoved away twice before when he had tried to touch her there, but she showed no sign of pushing him off or telling him to stop as he let his hand slide higher, under the hem of her drawers.
Instead, her legs gripped him a little tighter, making it almost impossible not to take her right then and there, to give her what her body was screaming out that it wanted.
Her thigh was soft as he gripped it, her ragged breaths turning into moans that stirred him inside, the wildness in him pushing against the bars of the cage he had built for himself. And the closer his hand got to that glorious, wet heat of her, the harder it would be to keep the cage shut.
As the side of his hand came to rest in the line where her hip met her thigh, his thumb sought the pulsing call of her secret bud.
He groaned in the back of his throat as he felt the slick of her, knowing how good it would feel to sink inside her. And when his thumb brushed that bundle of nerves for the first time, the gasping jolt of her body, the soft cry that left her lips, did nothing to ease his need.
“Oh… Oh, Jeremy…” she moaned.
He smiled against her mouth as he kissed her more deeply. That was how he wanted to hear her speak his name, not in pity but in pleasure.
“I can show ye what a lass deserves to feel,” he whispered, as his thumb teased her again, circling that sensitive center of her bliss. “I can show ye what ye’ve been m–”
“Daenae run away from me, Sophie!” a familiar voice barked, so loud it sounded as if it were in the study with them. “Sophie!”
Jeremy and Anna froze, with her hands clutching his shirt, holding on as if he could somehow hide her. But if Beatrice and Sophie entered the room, there would be no explaining this.
“Sophie, stop!” Beatrice called again, her voice getting closer.
Jeremy drew back, though it pained him deeply. An hour more in the seclusion of the study, and he was fairly sure he would have been on his way to getting Anna out of his head, out of his veins, out of his focus. Two or three more hours, and he would have her out of his system entirely. Maybe.
Bloody hell. They’re supposed to be resting.
Anna’s grip loosened on his shirt, and when she met his gaze, the shine of passion had already faded. As if they had both been lost in a daze, and she had just snapped back to herself.
Catching her breath and hastily pushing her skirts back down, her hazel eyes narrowed in a glare. “I forbid… you to… touch me again… while we are under the same… roof,” she panted, her words hissing out in gasps that still stoked the sparks of his desire.
He was about to tease her, asking what might happen if they were under someone else’s roof or out in the gardens, when a knock came at the study door.
“Who is it?” Anna called out, as if nothing had happened.
Needing a moment, Jeremy moved to the corner of the room and pretended to survey the books on Anna’s shelves.
“Sophie!” the little girl shouted back.
“Sophie, come here at once!” Beatrice’s voice shouted after her.
The door burst open, and the child ran in, halting just inside the threshold with a grin on her face and excitement in her eyes.
“Uncle, I am nae sleepy,” she declared, as Beatrice skidded to a standstill behind her, a look of suspicion flitting across her brown eyes. “Can I meet the goat now?”
Jeremy adored his niece more than life itself and would have walked through a thousand devastating fires for her, but at that moment, he very much wished that he did not have a niece at all. For how on earth was he supposed to get Anna out of his head now?