Page 45 of The Scholar's Key
She kissed him back with as much fervor as he. She turned off her mind, forgetting everything but the two of them, together in this room. There was no treasure to find, no necklace to steal, no friends to answer to, no matches to make.
It was Percy and Noah, and the heat that was threatening to consume them both.
His knee nudged her legs apart ever so slightly, and she had the urge to lean in and rock against him, as his hands kneading into her back only left her aching for him from where he touched her to where his knee rested.
She wasn’t thinking when she undid the buttons of his waistcoat. When she lifted his shirt out of his breeches. When she coasted her hands beneath it and slid them up.
When her fingers found the light dusting of hair that led a trail from his chest to disappear beneath his breeches, the room spun slightly. Percy had always imagined that Noah was rather slight, which made many consider him weak. But he was not weak at all. His body was made up of sinewy muscle, his every abdominal plane a ridge beneath her fingers, his chest hard yet welcoming at the same time.
“Percy,” he groaned against her lips, her name coming out as both a prayer and a curse.
“Is something the matter?” she asked, a bolt of confidence bursting through her as she leaned in and took his earlobe between her teeth.
He hissed and she giggled, enjoying the power she had over him.
She rocked slightly against him, testing him to see what he’d do, and he surprised her by reaching his hands around her and holding her hips close toward him so that she couldn’t move, although his fingers dug into her bottom.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said, his breath coming hard, and she closed her eyes.
“I have similar thoughts,” she admitted. “I don’t know why.”
When she opened her eyes once more, he was smiling grimly. “Does that trouble you?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I just don’t understand it. Why do you do this to me when no other man ever has?”
“Perhaps it is my spectacles,” he said, arching a brow. “Or my scent of dusty old libraries.”
“You don’t smell of books,” she said before she could stop herself. “You smell of spice and ink.”
“Is that a good thing?” he asked, laughter in his voice and she nodded.
“I would say it is.”
He kissed her again, and she was shocked at the response of her body, which immediately stiffened beneath his fingers.
He made herfeel– physically, of course, but it was more than that. He made her feel alive, womanly, desirable.
Noah kissed down the side of her face, her neck, her collarbone, until his face was nestled in the top of her bodice.
“Yes,” she breathed, “kiss me there.”
He acquiesced, and just when she wondered how his mouth would feel on her nipple, he freed one of her breasts from her dress and sucked it. She gasped as the sensation was connected all the way to the most tender place between her legs.
“Noah,” she breathed as he filled all of her senses. “More.”
She needed him and all that he could give her. She knew there was more, both from the books she had read and the yearning she felt for fulfillment when she brushed against him, when he kissed her neck and her mouth and her throat.
She wished there was no clothing between them, wished she could feel his body against hers.
“Percy, stop.”
“Stop?”
She didn’t like that word, especially at this moment, and pulled back to tell him exactly that, but she soon realized that he didn’t mean to stop entirely – he was simply removing his jacket and waistcoat, folding them and placing them on the bed before turning back to her, his eyes dark, hooded – hungry.
“Lie down,” he said gruffly, and her eyes widened. Noah Rowley was going to make love to her.
She had imagined this moment in so many ways – but never like this, never with a man like him.
