Chapter 14
Ambrose was kissing her.
This kiss wasn’t an enticement or whisper. It was a demand, a bellow. His mouth was hot and exploring, his tongue boldly dancing between her lips.
A blast of sensation swept through her blood, thrilling her to the bone, and she lifted her arms to circle around his waist in response. She was pressed up so tightly against him, Willow swore she could feel his pulse quicken against her breast when she returned his kiss with equal heat, greedily devouring all he offered.
If there was ever a time to wonder at her sanity, it would be at that very moment, as they consumed one another in the National Art Gallery.
It alarmed her. It thrilled her.
When had the grounds of war altered to include touching, seducing, and an abundance of kissing?
Not that it mattered at that moment. Nothing quite mattered then. Not when his hand was slipping down her arching back, drawing her nearer still.
She quivered at his touch, tendrils of warmth wrapping around her. She knotted her fingers in his hair, holding onto him for support when it felt like her knees would give out.
He backed her against the pillar then, tilting her head up to deepen the kiss.
Only the movement wasn’t all that smooth. Her back hit the pillar with a rather startling thump. Shards of reality stabbed at her brain. Even before Willow felt the bust rocking back and forth, even before she heard the terrible sound of marble scraping against marble, she knew what was about to happen.
Ambrose must have felt something too, because his tongue stopped dancing, and his lips tore away from hers. Their eyes met for a heartbeat, then turned towards the catastrophe. Willow glanced over her shoulder in time—so regrettably in time—to see the bust of the faun that had been perched so peacefully upon the pillar, tilt, and tilt, and tilt, and then plummet to the ground.
Her heartbeat slowed.
Their gazes swung back to each other just as the grim sound of an ancient sculpture smashing into a thousand pieces, of marble exploding against marble, filled the gallery.
There was a moment, half of a second, where complicity passed between them, and then he breathed, “Run.”
Willow did not look back once as they dashed off, hand in hand. She did not look back at the grim event or the horrified people in the gallery. No, she did something far worse. She laughed. She did not know why it happened—lord knows it was not a laughable event. Perhaps it was the look Ambrose shot her right before he saidrun. But whatever caused it, the fit appeared from nowhere and once she began, she could not stop.
They burst through the doors of the Gallery and onto the slippery path of the sidewalk with scarcely contained relief. Willow skidded to a stop at once, doubling over from laughter, prompting Ambrose to skid to a halt, as well.
Heavy rain bounced off the cobblestone, the drops beating against her skin while she gasped for breath.
Within seconds, they were soaked.
Ambrose hunched down before her. “Willow?”
The sky rumbled.
“Willow,” he urged. “We must seek shelter from the rain before we freeze to death.”
She held up her hand, gasping for breath. “I know,” more giggles. “Just give—,” some laughter. “Just give,” a bit of gasping, “me a moment.”
“Willow.”
“Stop!” She attempted to draw breath through her convulsions. “Please do not sound indignant at a time like this. We just destroyed a hundred-year-old sculpture and you saidrun!”
She was answered by a foul curse before her laughter was captured by his lips, his mouth attempting the impossible feat of kissing away her fit of hilarity.
Oddly, it worked. Seconds later, lips glued to his, she was lifted up against his chest and carried to the shelter of their carriage. She did not protest.
Knight in moody armor, indeed.
“So,” Jonathan said, dropping down in a chair opposite to where Ambrose nursed his brandy. “Have you come to your senses or am I still to be married off?”
“I am in possession of all my senses.”
