Page 67 of Affair

Her eyes were suddenly swimming with mystery, full of unfathomable promise. But her voice was remarkably cool. “I vow, St. Ives, you are the most annoying man it has ever been my misfortune to employ. I can see nothing but complications ahead, but, yes, I shall have an affair with you. Now, then, can we please get back to business?”

For a single, unbearable instant, Baxter could not react. She had agreed to the affair.

He was aware that by some incredible good fortune the dangerously overheated crucible had not yet exploded in his hands, but he was as shaken as if his experiment had blown down the very walls.

Charlotte reached up to touch his cheek. “Baxter? Are you ill?”

“Very likely.” He caught her face between his palms. “If I am, one thing is certain. You are the only one who can supply the elixir I require to cure the fever.”

“Oh,Baxter.”She stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms very tightly around his neck. “You are the most amazing, most maddening man.”

She kissed him with such fierceness that her teeth scraped against his own. Baxter staggered back a step. He caught her, steadied her, and returned the kiss with a sense of euphoric desperation.

Her undisguised desire was his final undoing. She wanted him. It was all that mattered in this moment.

He consigned his self-control to oblivion without a qualm and savored the great, ravening hunger that roared through his veins.

The world was suddenly fashioned of quicksilver. Bright, gleaming, ever-changing, endlessly fascinating. Nothing stayed in focus. It was impossible to concentrate on logic. His unquenchable need was all.

He crushed her lips beneath his own, seeking the damp heat of her mouth. He leaned into her, bending her back until she came up hard against the workbench.

“Oomph.” Charlotte sounded startled but she did not pull away. Instead, her fingers clenched fiercely in his hair.

Shuddering with hunger, he kissed her cheek, her eyes, her ears, her throat.

He raised his head just long enough to yank off his spectacles. He tossed them carelessly aside. Then he shoved one booted foot between her stocking-clad legs and slid his knee upward. She cried out and clung to him when she found herself astride his upper thigh.

“I can feel your heat straight through my breeches,” he muttered, awed. “You’re already dampening the fabric.”

She groaned and buried her face against his shirt. “You embarrass me, sir.”

“On my oath, that was not my intent.” He ripped several pins from her hair. “If you like, I shall study some of that bloody romantic poetry. Perhaps I can learn a more refined language to use at moments such as this.”

“Do not trouble yourself.” She started to jerk open the fastenings of his shirt with trembling hands. “You are doing very well without a course of study.”

Her fingers splayed across his bare chest. Baxter squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in his breath. His shaft threatened to burst through the front of his breeches.

Charlotte put her lips to one of his nipples. She said something against his skin. The words were unintelligible but the meaning was unmistakable. He realized with a sense of unfurling triumph and boundless gratitude that she was as desperate for him as he was for her.

A part of him wanted to take ample time to relish this first joining. But he was powerless to halt the headlong rush so long as Charlotte was rushing in the same direction. The combined force of their desire was truly irresistible.

There would be opportunity enough later to make the lovemaking last for hours, he promised himself. This time it was too elemental, too primitive a thing.

He grasped a fistful of her fine muslin skirts and hauled them up to her waist. He lowered his knee slowly and slid his hands beneath her bare, rounded buttocks. He eased her up onto the edge of the workbench.

A ceramic flask got knocked on its side as he struggled with the foaming skirts. The jar rolled to the edge of the bench and crashed to the floor. He ignored it.

“Baxter?” Charlotte sounded disoriented, confused.

“Just hold on, my sweet.” He grasped her legs and pulled them around his waist. “That’s all you have to do. I’ll take care of the rest.”

He quickly opened the front of his breeches and guided himself to her.

“Dear God,Baxter.”She gripped his shoulders.

The feel of her fingertips on the old scars sent shock waves through him again, just as it had last night. But this time he did not fight the sensation. It rolled through him with the force of lightning and he gloried in it.

“Tell me that you want me,” he said into the curve of her throat. “Let me hear you say it.”

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