“Oh, you meanphysically.”
She let her gaze linger meaningfully on his lips, then gazed back into his eyes, and her humor fled as the enormity of what she was about to do struck her. She should sayon my cheekand have done with it.
But she’d come to a shocking realization: She wanted Morgan to kiss her everywhere. Even if it was only forone night, she would have his complete and undivided attention. She would have his expertise.
She just needed to be brave and grab what she wanted with both hands. She was tired of being ignorant of the pleasures between men and women. It was one thing to see them in two-dimensional drawings—like in that naughty book he’d bought her—and quite another to actually experience them in real life. A flat map was no substitute for hiking up a real mountain.
She wanted that discovery, the danger of the adventure.
Plenty of navigators never returned home, of course. They simply sailed off the edge of the world, never to return. But maybe they hadn’t been lost. Maybe whatever they’d found in those mysterious places was so extraordinary, so compelling, they simply hadn’t wanted to return to “civilization.”
It was time to find out what the dragons were really like. Or if they existed at all.
“Where do you want it, Harriet?” Morgan repeated.
His low question snapped her from her reverie and she took a deep breath, as if she were a diver about to leap off a cliff into the ocean below.
“Where you said.” She dragged her hand down the wall and hovered it in front of her skirts, at the juncture of her thighs. “Here.”
He sucked in a breath. “Why?” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper, a gravelly demand. “Whydo you want it, Harry?”
“Because I want the adventure.”
He shook his head. “Not a good enough reason.”
Her mouth fell open in shock. She’d thought he’d jump at the chance. Panicked that the opportunity might be slipping away, she blurted out the truth.
“Because I wantyou.”
His eyes darkened. His big body loomed over her, crowding the tiny space, like a wild animal straining at the end of a leash.
“Yes!” he breathed. “That’s the right answer.”
Dear God! Now what should she do?
She swallowed and tried to sound as if she made assignations of this magnitude all the time. “Well. Good. Ah… excellent. Where do you suppose we should—? When should we—?”
He grinned at her embarrassment, but before he could answer, Gryff’s impatient tones echoed toward them.
“Are you two stuck?”
Harriet thought she heard Morgan mutter, “Only with each other,” but she couldn’t be sure.
She turned sideways and called out, “Oh, no! At leastI’mnot. Captain Davies might be.”
“Need me to give you a shove?” Madeline’s amused tones came from directly behind Morgan—she’d followed him along the alleyway. “I’d be more than happy to give you a kick in the—”
Morgan shook his head. “I’m fine, thank you.” With a hideous scrape of fabric, he turned and sidestepped after Harriet toward the narrow egress.
Harriet emerged on the brightly lit street next to Gryff. Morgan, then Madeline, followed, but Harriet could scarcely bring herself to look Morgan in the eye.
“I think it’s fair to declare Miss Montgomery the winner,” Gryff said with a taunting smile at Morgan as the four of them began walking back to the carriages.
Morgan sent Harriet his own secret smile. “Oh, I think we’re both winners.”
Maddie frowned, clearly about to ask what he meant, and Harriet’s cheeks heated even more. Luckily, Gryff interrupted before his wife could follow up.
“So, what were you playing for? What’s the winner’s prize?”
