They continued along the corridor that led to their rooms.
He halted outside his door, and she paused beside him and, through the shadows, looked up at him.
His eyes found hers, and their gazes locked.
Temptation surged. Never in his life had he felt such a powerful compulsion to sweep a woman into his arms and kiss her witless.
He almost swayed, pushed by that invisible urge. Blindly, he searched for the doorknob and closed his hand about it as if clinging to some anchor in a raging, roiling sea.
Good Lord!He had to break free of the ruthless compulsion before he gave in to it and complicated everything.
Yet he couldn’t drag his eyes from hers, couldn’t haul his awareness from the interest—the desire—he sensed behind her perfect porcelain features.
Addie discovered she was breathless, rendered so by a flaring connection she’d had no idea could leap into being in such a forceful way. Her gaze locked with his, she fought to steady her whirling wits, but they wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t respond any more than her clamorous senses.
Every element of her being was excited, eager, passionate, yearning, and willfully wanting, urging her to be even more reckless.
To take a step—a single step—into his arms.
To take the plunge and kiss him.
She stared, mesmerized, into his eyes, and the compulsion only grew.
So powerful was the incitement, so unrelenting, that she tensed to take that one small step.
The click of a door opening had her sucking in a desperate breath and looking down the corridor.
Sally emerged from Addie’s room. The maid looked along the corridor and saw them—standing stock-still in the shadows—and smiled. “There you are, my lady. I was just coming to ask if you needed anything.”
“No. I was just…on my way,” Addie managed.
Without looking at Nicholas again—without risking falling under whatever spell had held her—she inclined her head his way. “Goodnight.”
His answering “Goodnight” followed her as she walked the few yards to where Sally waited.
Behind her, she heard Nicholas’s door open, then quietly shut.
As she preceded Sally into her room, Addie finally managed to fill her lungs again.
She allowed Sally to help her out of her riding habit and into her nightdress, then sat and let the maid brush out her hair.
The soothing strokes settled the last of her skittering nerves.
Only then did she allow herself to review those fraught moments in the corridor. It had felt as if some net, some force—something—had captured them and held them, urging them closer…
Recalling what, despite his impassivity, she’d been able to read in his face, she was fairly sure she hadn’t been the only one feeling that pressure.
And that, indeed, was a point to ponder.
Twenty minutes later, as she lay in her bed and listened to Sally’s not-so-soft snores, she had to admit that she honestly didn’t know whether she felt grateful or annoyed over the maid’s unwitting intervention.
Because increasingly, the question incessantly nagging at her was what kissing Nicholas Cynster—and being kissed by him—would be like.
CHAPTER6
She had to keep her mind on the task at hand. That was the only way she was going to be able to stop herself from dwelling on that almost-kiss.
It was ridiculous. She’d woken with a sense of unrelieved longing dragging at her, and she was not at all amused at being prey to the sensation.
