Page 72 of Let Me Be Your Hero
Although he was sure she would come to regret it when she realized how grimy he was, he wasn’t about to ignore a direct instruction, so he wrapped her firmly in his arms. She was trembling like a newborn fawn, which destroyed him, but he tried to stay calm, rubbing her back and murmuring that he would never let anything happen to her.
After a few minutes, she said in a small voice, “I thought it was over.”
He could not bear the bleakness in her voice. “As did I.”
She sniffed. “What do we do now?”
“Whatever we have to do,” he said without thinking. “Anything it takes to keep you safe.”
She sighed. “And at least we have the means to do it. I shouldn’t complain. I know how fortunate I am. It’s just… being the princess locked away in the tower sounds romantic in a fairy tale. But I must confess, I was looking forward to going back out into the world.”
“Naturally so,” Archibald said, holding her close.
“Staying locked away for two weeks isn’t so bad. But I can’t help but wonder how long this is going to last. A month? A year? The rest of my life?”
Archibald wished he had an answer. “We’ll find whoever is behind this.”
Izzie sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Your men did manage to capture three of the assailants today. Perhaps they’ll reveal something upon questioning.”
As she withdrew her hand from her face, Archibald saw with horror that her cheek was coated in a fine film of coal soot, transferred, no doubt, when she had pressed herself against hiswaistcoat. He had chosen its dark color specifically so it wouldn’t show dirt, which meant he hadn’t realized how filthy it was.
He began fumbling with the buttons. Izzie looked up at him, confused. “Archibald?”
“Sorry,” he said, peeling off the offending garment and dropping it on the floor. “I—”
“Yes,” she said, tugging his shirt from the waistband of his trousers. “This is what I need.”
He frowned. “This is what you need? What do you—” The answer occurred to him when her hand stroked over the muscles in his stomach, and her lips found his jaw. “Izzie! I only meant to remove my soiled garments so as to make myself less offensive. I wasn’t suggesting that we… that we…”
“Well, I am,” she said, pushing his shirt up over his head and tossing it aside. She made a sound of approval, stroking her fingertips over the planes of his chest. “I want to forget about what just happened.”
“But Izzie,” he protested, “we can’t make love on my desk!”
She was kissing his neck, which was not helping his resolve. She reached down and caressed the bulge that had unsurprisingly sprung up between his legs. “Are you sure?” she asked, voice full of mischief. “Because it seems like this could work.”
He groaned, his head lolling back.God, that felt good, and of course, hewantedwhat she was suggesting. There was never a moment he didn’t want to make love to this woman…
She giggled in his lap, then tugged her skirts up to her thighs so she could straddle him. Again, this did not help his sense of resolve.
She began unbuttoning the jacket of her traveling costume. “See? This will work splendidly.”
He was struggling to come up with reasons why they shouldn’t do the thing his cock was absolutely desperate to do. “What if… what if someone comes through the door?”
She tossed her jacket on the floor, then unbuttoned her skirt and peeled it off, leaving her in only her fine white chemise and stays. She bit his earlobe, which made him jolt with pleasure. “Do your employees normally come barging into your office without knocking?”
“No,” he admitted. She scraped her nails gently across his nipples, and his whole body shuddered. It was impossible to think while she was doing this to him…
“What if… What if somebody hears us?” he managed.
Just then, the din of a cannon being bored out started up on the forge floor below. From this distance, the sound wasn’t earsplitting, but it would certainly drown out whatever they were doing in the office.
She was undoing the buttons of his falls. Archibald made a final effort to be good. “I’ll make a rumpled mess of you, and then everyone will know… will know…”
She wrapped her soft, sweet hand around his cock, and every thought fled his brain except getting inside of her. She began stroking him up and down, paying particular attention to the head of his cock, just the way he liked. “I’m already a rumpled mess,” she whispered. “Take off my stays.”
“I… I shouldn’t.”
She guided his hands to the ties in the back. “You know you want to,” she teased.
