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Warmth filled his chest. It was absurd how her praise lifted his spirits. “That, and I’m making a fortune. If I am not allowed to keep the cache, I am usually given a monetary reward, a retrieval fee or bonus, you see.”
“That doesn’t hurt, I suppose.” Then she grinned and he couldn’t help but return the gesture, for she really wasquiteenchanting. “But you are improving lives.” She sighed. “I want that for my life—to make a difference, to leave a memory so I won’t be forgotten.”
“Ah, Belle.” He must tread carefully before he found himself tumbling tip over tail. She could easily become everything he had ever dreamed of having in his life, but his mission came first. The case needed solving. Only then could he seriously pursue her.
His breath stalled in his chest as he stared at her in shock. Did he truly want that? To become domesticated, perhaps see a way to not being alone in his life any longer?
Knowing she waited on an answer, he said, “You will find your niche sooner or later.”
“I don’t know.” Since she hadn’t removed her hand from his, when she rubbed her fingertips along his knuckles, he nearly launched himself form the floor at the shivers of awareness shooting down his spine. “I feel so out of practice with everything, so removed from the vital pulse of life.”
Poor thing.“You can start by ceasing to hide here.” Daring much, he tucked an escaped lock of hair behind her ear. “Or you could boss Lord Ravenscroft like you do me.”
“Ha!” She wrinkled her nose in apparent distaste, and it was the cutest thing. “Bedeviling you is more fun, I think. Unfortunately, outside of Philip’s repugnant attitude, when I look at him, I can see my husband, which makes things difficult, though he doesn’t have my husband’s heart, obviously.”
Well, that much had already been made obvious, but he kept his own counsel on that. A few more minutes went by as he stared into the flames. Some of the chill had finally been chased away from the air. “Do you still love him? Laurence, I mean, not Philip.”
“I will always hold him in my heart but it’s not logical to carry a torch for a dead man.”
“Ah.” Relief coursed down his spine. Why the devil for? He’d only just met this woman.
Belle nodded. “He has been gone five years. I realize that keeping myself aloof and away from life and society wasn’t probably the best idea, and if I can gather enough courage, I might return to London after Twelfth Night.” A trace of tears welled in her eyes, and his chest tightened at her distress. “However, there are certain things I miss beyond measure.”
“Such as?” The inquiry came out on the heels of a whisper.
“I have missed being held, missed feeling the solid security of a man’s arms around me. In that absence, I realize how lonely I am, and that I have perhaps harmed my chances of making a second match or having any sort of normalcy again.”
If her chin hadn’t trembled, if there hadn’t been a nearly undetectable waver in her dulcet tones, if they hadn’t been temporarily stranded in the empty tenant cottage, he could have ignored all of that, but those things did happen, and they broke through his reserve.
Well, damn.“You have no need to be strong just now.” Without a second thought, Hawk pulled her into his lap so that she straddled him. Her skirting bunched between them. “Let me offer you a small measure of comfort.” Then he wrapped his arms around her and simply held her, hoped he could be what she needed in this moment, knowing all along it was a bad idea and would further put him from his mission.
“I appreciate that so much.” For long moments, she was apparently content to remain nestled against him with her hands tucked at his chest.
Just as he was about to fall into a doze, Belle stirred. She put a hand to his nape, furrowed her fingers through his hair, while the other she rested on his shoulder. Before he could do much of anything, she pressed her lips to the side of his neck, just over his cravat, and his whole body tightened.
“Belle? What are you about?”
“Hush, Captain, and let me do this.” Her whisper sounded overly loud in the silence of the cottage. “This is something else I have missed over the years.”
“But—”
“Ifyoucan steal kisses, thenIcan claim the same advantage. Yes?”
“Fair point.” When she placed a line of feather-weighted kisses beneath his jaw then under his ear, Hawk’s hold on his control was thoroughly tested. He didn’t need the distraction or the temptation, but since she was intent on driving him mad, he couldn’t sit idly by.
Instead, he played his hands over her back, following her spine, up and down. The warmth of her seeped into his fingertips while the glide of her soft lips on his skin continued to chip away at his reserve. The dratted woman would drag him beneath a wave of desire if he wasn’t careful, and that was a distraction he couldn’t allow, yet every brush of her lips, each exhalation of her heated breath pushed him closer to that edge.
“You must know that going further is a dangerous proposition,” he whispered as he plucked the pins from her hair. When that wheat-blonde waterfall tumbled about her shoulders and back, a sigh shuddered from him. The scent of lilacs reached his nose, and he breathed in the sweet floral aroma, for it would always remind him of her.
“So I can feel.” She wriggled her hips, which worked to further arouse his shaft. “When has a spy ever been afraid of a bit of danger, hmm?” Her laugh was a throaty affair that went straight to his stones.
Hellfire and damnation.
Tangling his fingers in her hair, he framed her head with his hands and then claimed her lips with his. Never had he been more tempted by a woman, only now he had the distinct feeling he would never be able to go back to the man he’d been before meeting her.
Over and over, he kissed her, tasted her lips, set out to chase away the chill from them both. With a tiny bit of pressure at his nape, she held him closer, and the second she traced the seam of his mouth with the tip of her tongue, he was lost. His engorged length pressed painfully against the front of his breeches, and damn if he didn’t wish to claim her body as he was doing her lips.
He tugged gently on her hair, which encouraged her head backward, and he took advantage by dragging his lips along the column of her slender throat. The silky skin, the scent of lilacs, the tiny sounds of pleasure she made all worked at his undoing, and when she shivered from need, he shoved the importance of his mission to the back of his mind.
