"Without question. In fact..." He set down her notebook, fixing her with those keen eyes that missed nothing despite their owl-like blinking. "I've been discussing your work with the board. There's interest in expanding your involvement with the collection."
"Expanding?"
"Nothing definite yet," he cautioned. "But your insights have already proven valuable. If your theories about regional variation prove correct, we might consider a special project. Proper funding, research assistance, perhaps even a publication under the museum's aegis."
She left the museum floating on air, her mind already racing with possibilities. A special project. Publication with the museum's backing. Recognition as a serious scholar rather than a scandalous woman with pretensions.
The euphoria carried her all the way back to Everleigh Manor, where she'd left some materials she needed for her evening's work. She'd planned to slip in quietly, retrieve her papers, and leave without encountering Adrian. The late afternoon hour should have made him safely ensconced in his study attending to estate business.
She should have known better.
He was in the library, of course, standing at her worktable with a peculiar expression on his face. As she entered, he looked up, and she saw he held one of her translation drafts; a particularly passionate passage from Ovid she’d been wrestling with. The part about bodies pressed together, about pleasure and ruin tangled in the same breath.
“I apologise,” he said, setting down the page carefully. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was looking for the Thucydides volume we discussed yesterday and saw your draft. The translation is...”
“Rough,” she supplied, though her throat was dry. Heavens, he’d read it. He’d read those lines where even she had blushed at the rawness, the lovers crying out in desperation. Did he picture her when he read them? Did he imagine her mouth gasping those words against his skin?
“It’s magnificent.” His voice dropped to that register that made her stomach clench and her thighs ache. “The way you’ve rendered the Latin...it’s as if you’ve found the heartbeat beneath the words.”
She reached for the draft, needing something, anything, to ground herself before her thoughts went filthier.If he looked at her like that a moment longer, she’d think about him pushing her against the table, about his hand lifting her skirts, about his manhood sliding inside her as she begged him not to stop.
“It’s not finished,” she managed. “The third stanza particularly needs...”
“It’s perfect.” He caught her hand as she reached past him, and the contactshot straight between her legs. His fingers were strong, warm, holding her far too firmly for the gesture to feel innocent.If he dragged her hand lower, pressed it against the hardness she suspected lurked beneath those immaculate trousers, she’d melt on the spot.
“You’re perfect.”
Her breath caught. They stood suspended, the air thick with everything unspoken. Late afternoon light slanted through the windows, gilding him like temptation itself. She could see the muscle in his jaw working, could feel the faint tremor in his grip.He wanted her. She could taste it in the air, feel it in the tension straining his body and she wanted him to do to her everything that was on his mind.
“Adrian,” she whispered, not sure if it was warning or plea. Her nipples had tightened beneath her gown, aching for the brush of his mouth.
“I know.” He released her hand and stepped back as though he’d burned himself. “I know we agreed to boundaries. I know this has to remain professional. I just...” He raked a hand through his hair, his composure fraying, and she pictured those fingers tangled in her hair, forcing her head back, making her moan around him.
“How was the museum?”
The shift was so abrupt it felt like a slap. She blinked, struggling to breathe. “Productive. Thornbury thinks my theories have merit. There’s talk of a special project.”
“That’s wonderful.” His smile was genuine, but strain rimmed his eyes.Did he feel it too, that coiled hunger, that need gnawing at every word? Did he lie awake at night, picturing her bent over this very desk?
“I should go,” she blurted, gathering her papers before she could imagine herself spread out across the table instead.
“Of course.” He moved to help her, careful not to touch butshe wanted him to touch. She wanted him to push aside her decorum and touch her in ways that he only knew would please her.
“Until tomorrow?”
“Until tomorrow.”
***
Friday dawned gray and drizzling, a mirror of her own mood. The week had been a triumph on paper—her cataloguing was precise, her Byzantine research was yielding results, and she’d kept to the damnable “professional boundaries.”
But her body told another story. She was wound tight as a spring, her pulse leaping whenever Adrian so much as brushed past her chair. Every casual glance felt like a caress, every polite word like a promise unkept.
She was starving for him. Starving for his mouth, his hardness, the weight of him above her. And the longer they held themselves back, the more unbearable the wanting became
She found him already in the library, surrounded by volumes on ancientwarfare. He looked up as she entered, and she noticed shadows under his eyes that suggested he'd slept as poorly as she had.
"Good morning," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "I thought we might work on the military history section today. Unless you have other priorities?"
