He spread his legs and cupped the sides of her head, dipped down to take her lips. She tasted what must be herself on his lips, and the thought stole shivers up her spine.
“You do not have to,” he said.
“I want to.”
He gave a small chuckle that roared through her. “Very well then.” He released her and sank the weight of his body into his palms on the ledge behind him.
And she undid the final button and released the long hard length of him into her eager hands, she teased him with curious fingers, licked the length of his shaft, then placed a kiss upon the head. He hissed and bucked, and she wrapped her fingers around him, tugged up and down a few times before taking him into her mouth. She found a rhythm that his hips rocked to, but she could not accommodate his full size.
“Use your hand, too” he said, each word guttural, like sand on skin.
It did not take much thought to know his meaning, and she cupped him, squeezed gently, and then wrapped her hand around his shaft where her teeth and lips could not reach and let it join the rhythm of their bodies. With her other hand, she steadied herself on the hard ledge of his thigh, and the defined cut of his muscle through buckskin brought her own desire screaming back to life. His hands in her hair, the dig of the marble floor in her knees, his scent—paper and ink and earth—all around her, then… he slid from her grasp, ignoring her mew of displeasure. Jackson lifted her, settled her atop him.
Ah. Her displeasure became its opposite as she guided her body onto the length of his shaft with a hiss. Filled with him, surrounded by him.
His eyes devoured her, roaming from the wild nest of hair falling from her head over her once-shivering shoulders and breasts, bared by the low bodice of her yellow gown, to the pool of that gown around her waist and the straddle of her legs over his hips, riding him, taking him in. She felt like a feast beneath his gaze.
“Perfection,” he moaned.
She devoured him, taking his word with a kiss and giving it back to him.
Perfection.
He locked his arms around her lower back to steady her, hold her up, and she rode him slowly until he took control of the rhythm, pushed it to a more frantic pace. Lowering his lips to taste the bared skin of her neck and shoulders and the upper swell of her breasts, her body climbed once more, reaching past the glass ceiling of the greenhouse to the churning night sky. He released her breast, nipped her nipple between his teeth, and she shattered. Again. With a cry she buried in the slope of his shoulder.
Then his scream rent the air as his body jerked beneath her, and he stilled as the echo of her name against glass and greenery faded.
They sat tangled together, panting, caught up in each other until Jackson parted their bodies from one another, gathered her even closer and angled them together so he could lean against the side of the small window. She perched in his lap and closed her eyes. She wanted to feel the moment, not think of what it meant. She would not let the future scare her, though the letter still taunted her.
“I would like to start now,” she said, eyes still closed, ear pressed to his chest, the better to count the steady beats and rapid jumps of his heart.
“I’m afraid we’ve already finished.” He kissed the top of her head. “For now.”
She chuckled and kissed his chest before settling back into the home of his arms. “Digging, I mean.”
He nodded, and the slight movement brought the tip of his chin to tap her head. “Should I ask a question or—”
“Tell me of your parents.” She took a deep breath that shook her. “What is your last memory of your parents?”
He chuckled. “I thought we were digging into you. Not me.”
“Please? It will help. I seem to be able to open up more naturally when we are treading the same conversational path.”
He went so still his heart almost stopped beating. “Very well, then. We were in the garden, my father and I, on our way here to pull Mama from her plants. I needed to say goodbye. I was off to Germany. But she came running out of the greenhouse before we got there, one hand clutching her other hand. My father sprinted to her. She’d cut her hand, and it was bleeding, and my father would not settle until it was properly cleaned and bandaged. The last thing I remember thinking as the coach took me down the drive was that one day I wanted to love someone like that.”
“That’s lovely.” She did not dare ask him if he’d managed it, if he did currently love someone like that. Not ready for that yet. “Does it bother you to be here?”
“The greenhouse? I thought it would, I admit. I do not come inside here. But it’s… not horrific. I suppose I thought it would all be dead somehow. Like her. But it’s not. It’s lush and alive, a warm oasis in the dead of winter. And I’m not sad. Not even a little bit. I’m glad I’m sharing it with you.” His chest lifted her with the gentle force of a few silent breaths. A small part of me has always mourned. And perhaps always will. But this trip has helped. Searching for my father’s damnably mysterious manuscript has made me realize I do no honor to their memory by shutting them away. By shutting myself out.”
She’d grown stiff as he spoke, and he shook her a bit, kissed the top of her head. “Are you well? Every time we’ve ended up like this—”
“Like what?”
“Well, naked. Or close to it. Every time—”
“Twice, you mean?”
“Yes, twice, you contrary woman. Now silence, or I’ll kiss you into submission.” He waited.
