“Careful,” Ambrose drawled. “You can hurt yourself falling head over heels.”
Color rushed up to her neck and cheeks, and he chuckled. Yes, he was totally losing all of his faculties.
“You truly ought to work on your humor,” she breathed. A bare breath of a whisper, but he heard it.
His eyes dropped to her lips, full and luscious, begging to be kissed again. He was a man always in control. Always. Control was what had gotten him through the harsh months after his sister’s death. Control was what he had structured his life upon after it had crumbled to the ground. Control kept him and the people around him safe.
But every time his body connected with hers, touched her in any way, everything in him responded. Hungered. Needed.Burned.
“What are you doing?” she murmured.
“Breaking my own rules it seems.”
He heard her slight gasp before he swooped down and crushed his mouth to hers. He kissed her because his life depended on it. His sanity depended on it. He kissed her as though they weren’t at war. Or perhaps he kissed her as though they were. He wasn’t sure.
But the detail his mind focused on was the wintry sting on her lips, starting a raging fire in him. A slow burn starting at the pit of his stomach. Hungering, consuming, and threatening to explode. She kissed him back as though her life depended on it, too. At least that was how it felt. Her hands skimmed through his hair, mussing it up from its perfect style, and he groaned in response.
He heard his sister-in-law huff. “Not doting on each other, my eye.”
Ah, yes, they were in public.
He didn’t care.
There was a long list of reasons he ought to loathe the fact that his wife’s soft flesh against his had him leaping into a world of chaos—a world of broken rules. But the reasons faded away as he kissed her, until the only thing left to feel was how desperately he wished to broach the distance currently separating their bodies.
“You are aware I am standing here, watching you, as is every other person in spying distance,” Poppy’s dry voice carried over to them again.
Reluctantly, Ambrose lifted his head.
“Why did you do that?” His wife breathed.
“Damned if I know,” Ambrose whispered back, out of breath.
And damned if he did.
Straightening, he carefully set her back on her feet. “Ladies, I’ll leave you to your ices,” he murmured, offering a small bow before walking back to his carriage.
Willow stared dazedly after her husband. She wasn’t at all certain she understood what had just happened. His presence had been unexpected and confusing. Then he’d swept her up in a soul-searching kiss. Which in itself was remarkable.
Not the act of kissing itself. No, they had done quite a bit of that lately. But the soul-searching aspect. They’d kissed tentatively, flirtatiously, seductively, and lustily before, but never like this. Never like their very lives depended on it.
But it had felt right.
Intrinsically right.
Day by day, moment by moment, Ambrose revealed greater and more intriguing depth to his character. Facets she found deeply appealing. Almost as if he was stepping back into the light, and suddenly, there were more dimensions present, ones she hadn’t imagined he possessed.
He was almost . . . delightful.
“Is he whistling a merry tune?” Poppy asked, the question jerking Willow back to reality.
“I believe he is,” Willow confirmed, having half convinced herself she had to be imagining the sound as Ambrose walked away.
“Well, I for one cannot believe he just kissed you and then walked off as if nothing happened. Are you still going to deny the man is doting on you?”
“Of course I am, because that was . . .”
Lovely. Enthralling. Deeply moving.
Something she wanted to do again.
Something she was sure she’d dreamed up in her mind.
“It’s worse than I first thought,” Poppy stepped up to her side, examining her flushed cheeks closely. “You are doting on him, too.”
