Page 39 of The Wallflower Manifesto
She felt her hands come up and grip at his shoulders, her back pressing into the soft give of the cushions behind her. His feather-soft kiss progressed with a nip at her lip and the graze of the calloused pad of his thumb against her cheek. It was hungry and insatiable all at once. She could taste a whisper of champagne punch on his tongue as he tasted her.
She opened herself to him, sharing in this forbidden indulgence, her need and boldness growing together as she gripped him closer to her. She felt him lean his weight against the chair and wondered for a brief, thrilling moment how the weight of his body might feel atop hers.
Her skin felt alight, as though white-blue flames might burst from her pores and dance over her every inch of bare flesh. She could feel the phantom flames already, triumphant and devastating.
He made a sound deep in his throat, pulling back for a moment and resting his forehead against hers, his breath coming fast and shallow. He tilted her head to the side and descended again to taste the column of her throat, sending an explosion of feeling through her very core.
She gasped but could not form words. His hands had moved to her shoulders, his thumbs tracing the path of her collarbone, hovering dangerously close to her breasts. It was all she could do not to arch her back, to encourage his touch into more forbidden territory.
She had never felt this way in all her life. She wanted to fall into it headfirst. She wanted to forsake everything to follow the lure of the heat until she herself was one of the flames.
He hooked his fingers into the neckline of her gown, his first two fingers vanishing into the cleft between her breasts. His knuckles pressed against that forbidden flesh as his teeth grazed the tender hollow at the base of her throat.
And it might have continued. It might have escalated. If not for the cat.
Queen Mab startled them both, leaping up from seemingly nothing but shadow onto the arm of the chair in which they were engaged and swatted, claws out, at Abe’s forearm.
Millie yelped, a rather high-pitched, undignified sound, while Abe recoiled so suddenly that he fell backward back into the couch. “Twice-damnedgrimalkin!” he barked, gasping for breath.
He was panting, his hair askew, while Millie clutched at her throat in disbelief, her eyes locked on the cat.
Queen Mab simply flicked her one ear toward Abe, as though to acknowledge that she’d heard the insult he’d paid her and cared not at all. She licked her paw and then jumped down again, vanishing under the sofa.
She must have been sequestered in the room with them the whole time.
They sat in silence for a moment before the laughter began, sounding almost like a sob as it bubbled up in Millie. She sank her face into her hands and allowed it to overtake her, aware that it was tinged with hysteria.
Abe did not join her in laughing, but when she peeked up at him through her fingers, she found that he was wearing an expression of amused affection, watching her in this state.
Her letter to wildflowers had gotten knocked to the floor; its varied pages of differing sizes and shapes of paper were littered around like so much confetti.
She slid to the carpet, balancing on her knees, and began to gather them up, avoiding the eye of the man she’d just indulged in such impropriety with. She already felt the embarrassment brewing, and knew if she didn’t act quickly, she’d be stuck in this room with him, unable to ever meet his eye again.
What had overcome her?!
She still felt heat creeping up her throat and over her face, but this particular brand of it felt far less pleasant.
“You’d better get off that floor,” Abe observed with a rise of his sandy brows, “before I lose myself all over you again. The cat might actually kill me this time, protecting your honor.”
Millie gazed up at him in shock, her embarrassment for a moment forgotten. Somehow, she’d thought he would be utterly humiliated by this lack in decorum and eager to escape her after such a breach, but he looked completely at ease, his head propped against his hand on the arm of the sofa.
If anything, he lookedsatisfied.
She was truly stunned.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to do exactly that,” he continued, oblivious to her confusion. “But I’d rather we did it in my own study, rather than Mrs. Cain’s.”
“Youdo?”she croaked, staring up at him in disbelief, her letter clutched to her chest.
He laughed, at last. It was a throaty, sincere sort of laugh that came upon him hard enough that he squeezed his eyes shut as it escaped him. He shook his head at her and stood, offering his hand. “Of course I do.”
She took it, hoisting herself to her feet opposite him. “I … am surprised,” she managed to say.
“Millie, I have wanted to do that for averylong time,” he told her in a throaty whisper, rearranging the curl of brown hair on her shoulder. “And now that I have, all I want is more.”
“More?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, his eyes gliding over her mouth and her throat. “Oh, more than you can know. I want to see …” His gaze slid down the front of her dress, lingering on her breasts. “I want to undress you.”
