7. Quietly, Chastely #2
The laughter tasted like champagne and left her feeling just as light as a fizzy bubble from a fluted glass.
Bran had done his best to hold her off without hurting her, and she’d chased him all over the shop until he’d caught her, thrown her over his shoulder and tossed her into her bedchamber.
He’d locked the door and sat against it in the hallway, sleeping on the floor until she’d pissed the potion out the next morning.
She’d slept on the floor, too, curled up against the door, her face to the crack where she could smell the man the potion had made her love.
On the tail of her last laugh, she hiccupped then took a long swallow of wine.
“The potion,” Braxton said, “doesn’t create love out of nothing.”
“Of course not. It heightens lust into an emotional delusion. He was a terribly attractive fellow.”
“Really?”
“Do not be jealous. He was beautiful and deadly, and now he’s simply dead.
And when he was alive, he wanted nothing from me but a professional relationship.
Not that I would ever have tried anything, being married to you.
I do have a moral compass. When I’ve not accidentally dosed myself with love elixir.
” She sighed, but there was less pain in it than usual.
“You know, I think that helped. Talking about him, laughing. I feel lighter.”
“You don’t know.” His throat worked through a swallow, and she couldn’t look away. Was the glamour thinning? She’d never seen his Adam’s apple bob before. “That he wanted nothing from you.”
“Why else would he run? Believe me, duke, the man did not want even a kiss from me.”
“I think he did.” His chair slid backward with a soft scrape, and he unraveled to his full height. A few steps brought him round the table where he propped a hip against the table’s edge, the fire outlining the long length of his body.
“And what evidence do you have for that?”
“You.”
“Elaborate, Brandon Fitzwilliam Lennox.”
“You.” The first touch of his knuckles on her cheek was like a ray of sun on a heat-starved body.
The way he stroked them downward, seeking the tip of her chin, nudging it up, stole her breath.
“You are too delectable to be ignored. Too… kissable”—he hinged forward at the waist—“to not be…” He lifted her chin just a fraction more as he lowered and said against her lips, “Kissed.” The heat of his breath across her mouth felt like a kiss, but he did not kiss her.
He licked his lips and said, “I think he stood by you day after day after damn day and wanted you madly and knew the only way he could have you was quietly, chastely…what was that word you used? Oh, yes—professionally.”
“You… don’t… know.” Finding three words like finding air in the ocean. Drowning.
“Trust me. I know.”
He kissed her as the fire died once more.
The glowing embers no longer enough to produce a flame or make him visible.
He was nothing but an outline again, but he seemed more solid, more real than ever before.
He kissed with a hard ferocity at odds with his touch.
His mouth slanted against her, consuming and coaxing.
Not that she needed much of that. Six years since she’d last been kissed, and this man was making the most of it. She would too. She shouldn’t. She didn’t want him dead. Liked living herself.
But what was living without kissing?
And good Gaia, was he kissing, his hand curving around the back of her neck, fingers raging into the hair at her nape.
She couldn’t get close enough to him, and the chair collapsed backward as he dragged her from it, holding her close against his body.
She fisted her hands in his shirt. He’d been telling the truth.
No jacket or cravat beneath the glamour.
Just a linen shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled past his elbows.
What a discovery this kiss was. Like walking into a pitch-black room and slowly finding everything she wanted with searching fingertips.
When she looped her arms around his neck, he deepened the kiss, parting her lips with his tongue and sweeping it into her mouth.
She met him, mirrored him, caution crumbling beneath desire.
This why she could never have kissed Bran, this why she’d always been glad she’d not caught him that potion-mad night. Because this was the kiss she craved.
The kiss she feared.
Body to body, they kissed until they were breathless, and until his shaft was long and hard between them. He groaned and the kiss became gentle, his giant hand cradling the back of her head.
And something in her cracked.
She broke away, almost fell over the chair behind her.
When he reached for her to steady her, to bring her back to the perfect circle of his arms, she pushed him away.
“Guin,” he said in a voice so raw it ripped her open.
“No. I cannot. I c-can—” She fled, stumbling through the darkness and through the door that connected their rooms, listening for his footfalls chasing after. But all she heard was the click of the lock she bolted home herself.