Chapter 13 #3
His hand rose, slow and certain, to cradle the line of her jaw.
The pad of his thumb brushed the delicate curve of her cheek, warm and slightly callused from the cane he wielded with such stubborn grace.
Millie’s breath caught at the gentle possession of it.
He was so close she could feel the heat of his body through the fine wool of his coat, the faint scent of shaving soap mingling with the herbal sharpness of liniment that had become as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.
Beneath it all lay the clean, masculine warmth that was simply him, leather, ink, and an essence that was indefinably Nick.
She did not pull away.
Instead, she leaned up, one hand lifting to rest against the solid wall of his chest. Her fingers curled into the lapel of his coat, not tugging him nearer but anchoring herself in the steady thunder of his heart beneath her palm.
His mouth was firm and warm, tasting faintly of the tea they had shared earlier and the salt of his skin.
He kissed her with tender thoroughness, as though he had all the time in the world to learn the shape of her surrender.
There was no haste, no testing uncertainty, only the quiet inevitability of a decision already made.
A soft sound escaped her, half sigh, half wonder, and he answered it by tilting her head ever so slightly, deepening the kiss with a slow glide of his tongue that sent liquid heat spiraling low in her belly.
Her free hand rose of its own accord to slide into the dark silk of his hair, the strands cool and thick between her fingers.
She kissed him back with the whole of herself, the same single-minded intensity she applied to every pursuit that mattered.
No half-measures, no artful coyness, only honest, unreserved passion.
Nick groaned low in his throat, the sound vibrating against her lips.
He tugged her to her feet and one arm banded around her waist, drawing her flush against the hard length of him.
She felt the restrained power in the lean muscles of his frame, the subtle tremor in his hand where it cradled her face, as though even now he fought the urge to devour rather than savor.
The fire in the grate crackled and popped, and the shifting light cast flickering gold across the planes of his cheeks and the dark sweep of his lashes.
Outside, Oxford continued its business beneath a winter sky, but here, in the quiet afternoon light of her father’s study, the world narrowed to the press of his body, the taste of him, the undeniable rightness of this moment.
When at last he lifted his mouth a fraction, their breaths mingling in warm, ragged puffs, he continued to hold her, thumb still stroking the flushed apple of her cheek with reverent care.
Millie’s eyes fluttered open to find his gaze, deep blue, heavy-lidded, and burning with far more than mere desire.
“Millie,” he whispered, voice diminished to velvet. Her name on his lips was both plea and promise.
She answered by brushing her mouth against his once more, soft and lingering, a silent affirmation that needed no further words.
The fire settled. The study was warm and quiet around them.
His other hand found the small of her back with a light pressure, gentle and intentional.
She felt all of it, the warmth and the patience.
For a period of time she could not have accurately gauged, she was not thinking about the quest or the Merton library or the cipher or what happened next or what she was going to do about any of it.
She was not organizing or filing or managing the assignment of her attention.
She was simply here, which was not a state she inhabited often, and which was, she found, rather extraordinary.
I wish, she thought, a thought that had showed up without asking permission, that this could last.
But perfect moments were only perfect because of their brevity, which was simultaneously their value and their cruelty.
She knew this because she had learned it at close range from a father who had been magnificent, who had argued about everything and had given her the full force of his attention and had been the most complete person she had known, and whose mind had been retreating from her for four years in stages so gradual that she had only understood what she was losing when it was already most of the way gone.
She knew the cost of relying on things that could not be held.
She pulled back.
She was panting harder than the exertion warranted.
Her spectacles were dangling against her collarbone on the scarlet ribbon.
The afternoon was in the room. Nick considered her with those dark, Nordic-blue eyes and an open expression, without the sardonic layer over it.
She could see in it all of the things she was not yet prepared to rely on.
What happens when the quest moves forward and there is no longer a reason for him to stay here?
She looked at him and he looked at her, and the study was warm around them, and Oxford was outside the window doing its ancient, indifferent business.
Millie sat with the question and did not ask it aloud, for she was a woman who asked direct questions about every subject but had now encountered one she was too afraid to ask.