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If they’d met when she was sixteen.
If he’d been a farmer.
Or she’d been a debutante dressed in white.
She kissed him wearing the skin of a different Mari, one with infinite possibilities.
His hands were on the back of her neck, angling her into his kiss. Which left her hands free to unhook the front of her pelisse, because she needed more space to breath.
He helped her with the last of the hooks and the garment pooled on the wooden floor, spreading at her feet like water.
One of his hands covered her breast through the fabric of her gown, thumbing her nipple.
Heavens, that felt good.
It wasn’t like her to do something so unheeding. Behind her was the evidence of his ambition and before her was the man himself, built on just as grand a scale as his steam engine.
He kissed with the same intensity as his conversation, a call to arms.
To his arms.
More, please. More, more, more.
Kiss me forever.
Afternoon sun slanted in the high windows and striped across their bodies. The engine behind her was hard and solid and the man in front even more so.
His hands caressed the sides of her waist and so she slipped her hands inside his coat.
When she touched him he flinched, tensed, but she soothed her hands over his sides, behind to his back, to the hard ridges of muscle, the dipping valley in the center.
He kissed her neck, the soft brush of his lips under her ear making her shiver.
She gave herself up to the kiss.
She’d been yearning for something to happen.
Around the corner. In the duke’s arms.
Something’s beginning,the hammers pounded on iron somewhere in the distance.
If you’re brave enough to chase it, the steam hissed.
He broke away from her, breathing heavily.
“Mari.” He clasped her cheeks in his hands. “We can’t.”
Can’t what?
“We can’t kiss,” he clarified. “Not in here with the door locked and dozens of men outside.”
The moment was gone. Melting like ice shavings on lips. She could feel it slipping away.
The impossibility setting in.
Duke.
Governess.
