“I am.” By application of great personal discipline, he did not allow his gaze to stray over her physical attributes. “I see you in my dreams, Ann, and they are very pleasant dreams.” Also disturbing, for a man who typically dreamed of vineyards, ledgers, and battles.
She leaned into him on a sigh, snuggling close like a cat. “I see you in mine too.”
Ann felt the shift in Orion, when inherent military bearing gave way to the posture of a man holding a woman he cares for. His arms enfolded her gently, and he bent near, drawing her into the curve of his taller body.
“I told myself that I would not presume this time,” he muttered.
“You aren’t presuming. To ignore such an attraction would be folly, Colonel.”
“Rye.” He nuzzled her temple. “If we are to kiss each other witless, please call me Rye.”
His version of witless kissing began with a sweet little buss to her cheek, then another to her brow. The scent of his lavender soap was stronger this close, and the warmth radiating from him was luscious.
Ann wrapped her arms around his neck and sank her fingers into his thick, dark hair. He needed a trim; she needed to kiss him, so she did.
The touch of his mouth to hers was gentle at first, though in no way tentative. He took his time, giving her precious moments to register sensations—his hands low on her back, his shoulders so broad and muscular. His breath a soft heat against her cheek.
She was melting inside, like caramel left near the hearth, going all viscous and warm. When she felt the first touch of his tongue, spices came to mind—cinnamon and nutmeg, a whisper of cayenne.
Orion Goddard was stealthy and subtle about his advances, while Ann wanted to plunder and pillage. She wedged a thigh between his legs to emphasize her demand.
He growled, and the battle was joined. By the time they broke apart several passionate eternities later, Ann’s blood was at full boil, and Orion was panting like a spent steeplechaser.
Also smiling, as if he’d just been granted the keys to the celestial kingdom. “My eye patch, please.” He held out a hand.
Ann surrendered the requested item. “I want to remove more than that from your person.” Much more.
He used the windowpane as his mirror, tying his eye patch back in place. “What I want at this moment shocks me.”
That was encouraging. “I am not without experience, Colonel. I assume you aren’t either. Nobody need be shocked.”
He snapped off a bloom from the bouquet on the windowsill and tucked the stem through his lapel. “The mechanics of intimacy, pleasurable though they are, do not occasion shock, Annie Pearson. It’s here,”—he tapped his chest—“where you wreak the worst havoc.”
“Do I?” She liked the sound of that very much, and she liked as well the sight of him, tall, weathered, a trifle disheveled, a fading rose on his lapel. “Do I truly?”
“You listened to me,” he said, bracing his hips against the windowsill. “Let me prattle on like a schoolboy retelling the Battle of Hastings. You ply me with soft cushions, a warm hearth, and a shameless cat. You kiss me as if…”
He rose and turned away—very rude, that—but Ann had the sense he needed the privacy to gather his thoughts.
“As if you are my favorite dessert,” Ann said, crossing the room and wrapping her arms around him from behind, “and somebody has finally perfected the recipe.” She pressed herself to the hard planes of his back, her embrace a little desperate. Holding Orion felt good and right, but did nothing to stem the tide of desire that threatened to engulf her.
Where had this passion come from, and what was she to do about it?
He turned and looped his arms around her shoulders, resting his chin on her crown. “We ought not to be carrying on like this before the window, Annie.”
“This is not carrying on. Not nearly.”
He took her hand and pressed it to an impressive bulge behind his falls. “Very nearly. The sooner I subject myself to the bracing effect of the elements, the more likely I am to survive this ambush without… without behaving rashly.”
Ann itched to caress him intimately and learn just how rashly they could enjoy each other.
“I should be getting to the Coventry,” she said, giving him a single glancing pat. “Did you want me to listen for any particular sort of gossip?”
He twitched her shawl up around her shoulders. “A fellow named Philippe Deschamps has graced the Coventry’s tables a time or two. He might well be spreading talk about me, or his presence might be provoking others to talk. He was the French officer most likely to have met with any spy from my camp.”
“The waiters repeat nearly everything they hear at the tables. I’ll pay attention to them for a change. I don’t want to move.”
“Do Miss Julia and Miss Diana make a weekly venture of their library sortie?”
“Without fail.”
“Might I call again next week, Annie?”
Annie. She’d never had a nickname before. “If you don’t, I will have to call on you.”
“We keep the cellar stairs unlocked during daylight hours for the trades.” He murmured the words close to her ear, inspiring visions of daylight raids and wild interludes in his study. “I ought not to have said that, because it implies that all I seek from you is… Tell me to hush, Annie. Tell me not to be presumptuous and impulsive.”
Ann’s grip on him became fierce, because he was right: Physical arousal was a formidable distraction, but the feelings… oh, the feelings.
“We are lonely,” she said. “Tired of being lonely, tired of solitude and self-sufficiency, but what draws us together is more than that.”
He put a finger to her lips. “Not another word. You are due at the Coventry, and I must resolve once and for all the small matter of somebody trying to destroy my reputation and my business. I will call on you again next week, if you’ll allow it.”
“I will allow it.” Ann would be counting the hours, which bothered her. On the one hand, she never wanted to turn loose of Orion Goddard. On the other, she had toiled for years to achieve professional standing one step shy of the foremost honors to be had in a kitchen.
She desired Orion Goddard, respected him, liked him, and was even a little besotted with him, but he was right: Indulging her impulses with him could come at a price much higher than she was prepared to pay.
Ann pondered that lowering thought while Orion escorted her the short distance to the Coventry’s back gate and then right up to the back door.
“Until next week,” he said, bowing correctly over her hand. “I will see you in my sweetest dreams.”
She curtseyed. “Until next week.” She slipped through the door lest she make free with his person on the very doorstep, but hadn’t so much as unbuttoned her cloak before Jules, looking irascible and smelling strongly of overindulgence, blocked the hallway to the kitchen.
“Pearson, you are late, and that is no sort of example to set for your new apprentice.”
Ann looked him up and down, in no mood for his tantrums. “While you are for once on time. Would you also like to choose tonight’s menu for a change, or shall I just go ahead and do that, the same as I have for the past fortnight?”