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He lived in a giddy frame of mind the afternoon after luncheon, imagining they would resume their exploits as they finished work. But when she excused herself and took supper in her chambers, claiming she must take an early night, his disappointment thrummed through his guts with a bitter note.
Next morning, she presented a cool stance, blocking him out of anything except the impending task. And it repeated every day since with tedious constancy.
Spending the night two doors from her drove him slowly insane. What had been the use of having a taste of the woman who would not vacate his head if it only whetted his appetite and kept him on the edge? This was getting fast to being unbearable. His hands fisted to white knuckles.
He entered his spacious set of rooms, a mere ten-minute walk from the professor’s, and gathered what he needed. His eyes fell on the whisky bottle he had brought with him the last time he had travelled to the McDougal. No doubt, a sip of it would offer a modicum of calm to his restive guts.
The lean frame sank in his favourite armchair, bottle and glass in hand. After the first dram, came the second. And then he did not count anymore.
Her insides had been febrile for a good many days. Since those kisses, to be precise. The purest and the most sensuous experience she ever indulged in her life. Not that she listed a legion with which to compare it. The little prior moments she counted told her something special took place in the study.
It cast her in a state of yearning completely foreign to her. The night after the kisses became a sweaty toss-and-turn affair roaring with images and dreams. It transformed her into a pile of lasciviousness which she did not have a clue how to manage. Between her legs she registered a constant swelling and dampening which was also new to her.
Like a coward, she retreated behind a wall of prim properness, afraid to give in, afraid to let go. Afraid to repeat her sad story.
Samuel had gone out, and she expected to find a modicum of reprieve. Ha! Who did she think she fooled? Said reprieve stood nowhere to be seen, but irksomeness answered the roll call. The possibility he might have gone to that bawdy house again and the acrid jealousy it invoked? Present, miss.
She lost track of time and could not tell how long she paced the poor carpet in her chamber. Her hair was loose courtesy of the countless ways her hands had run over it. Her exercise and breathlessness made her thirsty. Contemplating a cup of tea, she left her presently claustrophobic, even if pleasant, quarters to go make a cup in the kitchen. Mrs Marsh slept above the stables where the servants’ place was. It would be selfish to call her just for tea.
No sooner did she set foot in the hallway than she heard footsteps on the stairs. On the last tread, to be more precise. His tall frame appeared on the candlelit landing. Breeches, hessians, a white shirt, cravat undone, no coat. The open shirt front gap tantalised her with the view of a lean chest.
She looked as if in a spell, wide eyes on him as he made progress towards her. Stiff fingers tightened the shawl she had thrown over her shoulders. The movement seemed to attract his attention.
“Harriet,” he called all too silky. His voice and the fixed way he eyed her sent ripples of sensation through her nerves.
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As he neared, she noted his flushed cheeks and bright green eyes centred on her. The man came back early for bachelors’ standards, she must admit. He halted a few feet from where she stood still in the thrall of seeing him. He bent his head to meet her gaze in the same way she had to tilt hers back to meet his. And then his attention caressed the wheat strands falling around her to reach her waist with wonderment. His long fingers came up to immerse in the silky mass.
“The first time I see it loose in seven years,” the words aired in a smoky note, which whispered in her ears too tempting for comfort.
“You’ve been drinking,” she stated, her body now leaning on the wall for support.
Dear me! Why pretend all that coldness when having him this near destroyed any vestige of decency she still possessed?
“Been to my lodgings,” he answered, bracing his hands on the wall on either side of her head. “A few whiskies, nothing more.” Now she scented it in him, mingled with his clean masculine tang.
This close, the heat of his body met hers, and it became increasingly more difficult to do the right thing, whatever it might be. Run? Stay? Pull him close? Or closer still? “You should sleep it off,” she recommended for lack of something to say. She was surprised and horribly relieved that he had not joined those good-for-nothings or visited the bawdy house.
“Sleep is the last thing I want to do at this precise moment,” with that, his head lowered even more until his mouth touched the pulse on her neck.
The intense shock of pleasure it produced made her exhale and dip her head back to give him more access.
He took it and opened his lips wider to close them on her frantic pulse. “Why do you let an ugly sod like me touch you?” he asked as his lips dragged down the column.
“You’re not ugly,” she blurted as her hands abandoned the shawl to hold on to his masculine shoulders.
He pressed his utterly aroused body on hers, her softness receiving him with such good will. “No?” he replied, nibbling at the lobe of her ear. “What am I?”
If only she could tell him that his being hard for her was the most beautiful thing in the world. But she settled for, "A very handsome young man," she almost lost her voice in the maelstrom of sensations he created.
"Sweet of you, but the most stunning woman in the Empire cannot think me the least good-looking," the grave praise came wrapped in urgency.
If he could test her wetness, he would not say such nonsense; his words ever increased her awareness, shamelessly so.
One of his hands sneaked into her prudishly plain nightgown. But he gave up when the strict neckline prevented him from going farther. So the aforementioned hand undid the front buttons with an ease she would attribute only to an experienced man.
As if reading her mind, he said. “I’ve done this thousands of times in my dreams,” the drawl reverberated on her skin to worsen the swell and dampness between her thighs.
