Selina listened to his breathing as she meticulously drafted a note to her man of business. Moments passed, and then—yes, there it was. A little hitch in the steady rhythm.
Her quill traced out the words, the scratching audible in the silent room.
“Selina,” Peter said finally. “If you imagined I could look at your notes and remain unaffected, well…” He trailed off, his eyes still fixed on the page. “I am sorry to disappoint.”
She laughed, and it came out throaty, seductive. She’d never known her laugh could sound that way. “I imagined something else entirely, if you must know.”
He looked at her, and there it was, the expression that was as precious to her as breathing. Fierce and covetous, as though he wanted to possess her. Hungry, as if he might swallow her whole.
Reckless, she thought to herself.You are getting in too deep, Selina.
But she could not bring herself to stop. She licked her lips, and he followed the movement of her tongue.
“Come here,” he said. “I want to touch you.”
She felt her lips curl at the ends, almost involuntarily. “No.”
“No?”
“This is a place of business,” she said, and though the words were prim, her voice was not. “I must refuse.”
He gazed at her appraisingly from the other side of the small room. “Is that right?”
She rose from her seat behind the desk and stepped in front of it. She kept her eyes locked with his and slowly unfastened the buttons at the side of her bodice. “I am the superintendent of this business. I could not engage in relations at my place of work.”
Her bodice gaped down, and she slipped the capped sleeves from her shoulders. Slowly, slowly, she let her fingers play over the front of her stays, tracing the underside of her breasts. Peter’s eyes were hot and dark, following the circles she drew, up and around the soft curves.
“Of course,” she said, “I could not let you touch me here.” She reached behind herself to unfasten her stays, and her breaststhrust forward, nearly spilling over the top of the garment. Peter didn’t move from the chair, but she sensed him growing more intent, his focus narrowing down to a point.
It was all she wanted in that moment. For the rest of the world to fall away.
“That does not mean,” she said, slipping free the buttons at the front of her chemise, “that I could not touch myself. That I have not sat here.” She nodded down at the book that lay forgotten by Peter’s side. “Reading that book. Thinking of your hands instead of mine.”
In truth she had never done any such thing at Belvoir’s, had rolled her eyes at the customers who felt the library a suitable location for a tryst. But here, now, with Peter’s hungry gaze upon her, she wanted to do so very much indeed.
She cupped her breasts through the fabric of her chemise, lifting them as though offering them to Peter. Then she let the sides of the garment part, the pink-tipped globes standing out against the white cotton.
“Selina,” he said hoarsely. “I have to touch you.”
A dark thrill rose in her. Unhurried, was he? Always so easy, so slow and teasing. Two could play at that game.
“No,” she said. “But you may touch yourself.”
Peter’s mouth was dry as he watched her from the chair by the hearth. Hiswife. Merciful God.
He knew she had been worried before they came to the office, and he’d felt the impact of her pale, tense face somewhere inside him. He knew she feared that they would lose the guardianship, and he hated that he could not do more to reassure her.
But somehow in the office, she’d lost that drawn look. A halfsmile had played around her lips. And he’d seized that hint of happiness with both hands and held on tight.
She had so much inside her—the businesswoman, the radical, the practical stubborn woman he’d always respected. And this too: bravery and independence and sensuality, burning in her like an ember.
Her long, efficient fingers coasted along her skin, made gold by the candlelight. She thumbed her nipples, rolling the hard peaks beneath her fingers, then pinched them. Her face was flushed.
“Lift your skirts,” he said. His voice was hoarse.
Her chin rose, a faint challenging smile on her lips. “Unfasten your falls.”
Christ in heaven, the woman was going to kill him. Blood beat painfully through his body, racing toward his cock. He made quick work of the buttons at the front of his trousers, where his erection strained fervently against the fabric.
