Chapter 33
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Thirty-Three
Neil stood in the narrow, blocked-up chamber. Sword light flickered over the carvings on the walls.
He was fairly certain he had missed something. His brain was having trouble processing whatever Constance just said. Perhaps his ears were still ringing from the rock-fall.
“Sorry?” he asked.
Constance’s reply was mildly exasperated. “I said I think we should try kissing each other.”
His first thought was that it would be a terrible idea.
His second thought was that he very much wanted to do it.
Then his thoughts stuttered to a stop altogether.
Constance’s gaze drifted over Neil like a caress. “It’s only that I’ve been paying far too much attention to your Adam’s apple lately. Among other things.”
Neil swallowed thickly. Constance’s eyes tracked the involuntary movement of his throat.
The look was hungry.
Neil started to sweat. “I’m, ah… I’m not quite sure that I…”
“It’s just an experiment, Stuffy! You needn’t go all pink at the ears about it.”
Neil felt his ears go pink.
“But an experiment requires a hypothesis about a projected outcome,” he protested.
Constance raised her hand to his shoulder. Her touch grazed over the fabric of his shirt. “Of course,” she replied, clearly only half thinking about the words.
Neil’s nerves sparked with a hissing, unruly awareness at the subtle movement of her touch.
“Then what’s the hypothesis?” he asked, holding himself very still.
“Oh!” Constance returned vaguely as her fingers drifted over the line of Neil’s bicep. “That it won’t be particularly good.”
Bolts of delicate fire burst across his skin at each point of contact. The distraction made him take an extra moment to process what she had said.
“Hold on—that it won’t be good!?”
“We’re friends, Stuffy.” Constance’s absent-minded exploration reached the exposed skin of Neil’s forearm.
He couldn’t move it. He was, after all, using it to hold a flaming sword.
Her touch blazed across his skin.
Friends.
She reached his hand and traced her fingers over the knuckles of his grip on the hilt of the blade.
“I suspect it will all be rather dull,” Constance concluded.
“Dull?” Neil returned vaguely—and his mind flooded with visions of just how dull it would be.
Visions that had started the moment Constance had crashed into his tomb in Saqqara, lovely and dangerous and terrifying. Visions triggered when she irritably ordered him to undress in a cave at Gebel Tukh.
Visions sparked by the erotic carving on the wall of this very room—which was still right behind him, where Constance must certainly be able to see it if she troubled to look past his shoulder.
Please don’t look past my shoulder, he thought desperately.
Not that it mattered. Neil was already lost.
Heat roared up, fierce and hungry. It blasted him with even more filthy, delicious visions.
Of his hands in her hair. Of his mouth on her throat.
Of her gasping his name as he pulled her legs around his waist and took her in a manner that had absolutely nothing to do with years of childhood torments and a softly burgeoning friendship based on shared history and surprising mutual respect.
His throat turned to sandpaper as any semblance of coherent thought fled from his brain.
She was still touching his hand.
Dull, he thought numbly.
It was a terrible idea. He couldn’t kiss her. He wanted her. His desire for Constance was a raging, dangerous beast stalking him like a tiger in the rain.
“But what if it goes wrong?” he burst out desperately.
“If it isn’t any good, then we’ll know,” Constance returned with a shrug.
She hadn’t understood him. She thought he was afraid he wouldn’t like it.
That was not remotely what Neil was afraid of.
Belatedly, his mind caught up with the rest of her words. “Wait. Know what?”
“Whether it’s worth doing it again, silly.”
Again.
The word made Neil dizzy.
Constance set her fingers against the flat surface of Neil’s chest. With the slightest pressure, she propelled him backward until his spine bumped against the wall.
She stood close enough that the swell of her breasts under her blouse brushed against Neil’s torso. The movement of her breath was an exquisite form of torture. His self-control fractured dangerously in response.
Her hand rose to the top of his shirt, where her fingers traced his collarbone, drawing trails of fire over his skin.
“We’re trapped in a hole in the ground,” he pointed out tightly.
“Obviously,” Constance retorted.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something more…”
He trailed off, at a loss for what word he had meant to say.
“We’re just passing the time, Stuffy,” Constance retorted. “Think of it like charades.”
Nice, harmless charades.
This did not feel like charades.
Neil knew what he ought to do. He should remove her hand from his skin and gently set her back a step.
It would only take a few words to straighten things out between them and return their relationship to its nice, safe status quo.
Doing that would demonstrate respect for Constance’s family, who had taken him into their home and their lives with a warm and easy welcome.
It would honor her relationship with Neil’s sister, whom he loved dearly and never wanted to hurt.
Constance would be disappointed. She would probably make his life miserable for a while in revenge for thwarting her whim, but it was clearly the sensible thing to do.
Neil had always preferred things to be sensible.
“Just a kiss,” he blurted out.
Which was not the right answer at all.
Constance’s mouth curved with wicked triumph. “I’m sure that will be sufficient.”
He could do this, Neil thought distantly. It wasn’t really that momentous. It was just a kiss. Constance’s experiment would be concluded, and they could go back to the way things had always been.
And for at least one brilliant moment in his life, Neil Fairfax would have known what it was like to touch her.
Almost like a real fiancé.
Not her lips, Neil thought in a last desperate attempt to retain his sanity. Not yet.
Constance’s head came to the height of his chin. She had tilted it back to look at him, eyes sparkling with victory and anticipation.
Neil lowered his mouth to her cheek and brushed his lips over the silken curve of it.
He fought back ragged impulses as he drifted lower, tracing another kiss along the perfect line of her jaw.
Constance’s hands rose to his shoulders as she pressed herself closer to him, generous curves melting against the harder surfaces of Neil’s body—and setting every inch of him on fire.
He grazed over the sensitive skin at the base of her ear. The soft heat of a gasp brushed his throat.
The beast inside of him tugged more wildly at its leash.
Constance shivered in his grip—and then her pliant surprise shifted to a dangerous determination.
Her hand tangled in the cropped brown hair at the nape of his neck. “That doesn’t count,” she accused darkly... and took his mouth with her own.
Her lips delved hungrily. Her hands gripped his shoulders as she arched herself against him.
Want blasted through Neil like a hot wind, shattering the last vestiges of his self-control.
He used his greater strength to spin her around and press her against the wall instead. Then he plunged his fingers into the thick silk of her hair, tugged her head back, and devoured her.
His teeth grazed over her lower lip, tugging it before he moved in to catch the low groan that escaped from her throat in response. He dipped his tongue into her mouth, dancing it over her own.
She tasted like jasmine and nutmeg, honey and heat.
He wanted more.
He was only half aware of the flaming sword he still held in his hand. He slammed it into the wall to hold it out of the way. His mind vaguely registered that there was something odd about the blade’s angle.
Neil brushed the irritating thought aside like a fly. He would rather not have been holding the damned thing at all. Then he could have put both of his hands on Constance. He needed them on her—but they also needed the light.
The last delicate tendrils of his moral decency slipped through his fingers. “Connie,” he pleaded—and then forgot what he was begging for as Constance traced her tongue up the sensitive length of his throat. “Dear God.”
“I have been wanting to do that,” Constance reported, gloating. “You know, you’ve almost got a bit of stubble back here.”
She clarified by running her hand along the nascent beard roughening the edge of his jaw.
Neil groaned with a mix of mortification and lust, then kissed her again.
His free hand moved to her hip, feeling the strong curve of it under his grip as she fitted herself to him and explored his mouth with her tongue. It was like holding a river in his arms—power and suppleness, curves and strength.
Constance flexed against him in response to his touch, and friction exploded fireworks against the back of Neil’s eyelids. His reason degraded to a strangled sound in the back of his throat.
He wanted the rest of her—all of it. Right there, in a Somavamshi stepwell where they were very possibly going to meet their doom.
And he was fairly certain she would jump at the suggestion.
Constance didn’t give a damn about her virtue. She had frankly admitted to considering taking him as a lover in the past.
But you’d be ruining her, the rational angel on his shoulder reasonably pointed out.
Worth it, the devil in his trousers returned.
The war raged inside of him. Neil was momentarily consumed by it, teeth gritted with the effort it took to resist.
One thought, finally, rose above the others, fighting its way clear with an unexpected ferocity.
Not like this.
He took his hand from her hip and set it against the stone instead. “Connie…”
She paused at the desperation in his voice, her lips plump and red with kissing. Hair tumbled in abundant waves around her shoulders. Somehow she’d lost a pair of buttons, exposing the soft curve of the top of her breasts where they pressed up against the line of her corset.