She struggled for a careful breath and advanced, walking inches from him where he stood.
They were not touching. Not so close as that, but close enough. Their arms brushed, the fabric of his jacket a whisper against her skin as she walked past.
“Wait.” His deep voice dropped on the air, filling the scant space between them. “Don’t go.”
Chapter Three
Mercy had just passed him when he spoke the words. They echoed in her ears.
Wait. Don’t go.
She stopped but did not turn around. He did not need to see her face again. He did not get to see her face again. Not as it was. Her heat-radiating face was not his to behold. It was her shame. Hers alone. A private thing.
“Yes?” She tossed the question over her shoulder.
Mercy heard the rustle of movement. His movement. He was coming closer. She felt him right behind her. His breath directly on the back of her neck.
It took every bit of restraint inside her, but she held herself still. She waited. Waited for him to do whatever he was going to do . . . say whatever he was going to say, so that she could leave this place unscathed—at least physically—and never come back.
She was rooted in place and it was because of him. Because he had changed his mind about her leaving—at least momentarily.
Why was he keeping her here after he had rejected her and sent her on her way?
She stared ahead. The door loomed. Roughly a dozen feet. She simply had to reach it. Pass through its threshold and she was free.
The voucher burned like a living torch inside her reticule, searing into her hip. Had he sensed it there? Were his suspicions roused? Was that why he had called out to her? Would he make an attempt to search her and her bag?
Her hands were shaking in front of her and she clasped them together tightly, telling herself to get a hold of herself. Now was not the time to unravel. Her nerves were getting the best of her.
She had done nothing to give away her true purpose here. He merely thought her a woman after . . . well, after him.
He did not hold her captive. She could keep moving. She should. She doubted he would stop her. He had declined her offer of herself, after all, even if he had just told her to wait and not go.
She was not tempting enough. She should be relieved instead of unaccountably hurt. And disappointed. Very well. Crushed would be an apt description.
It was nonsensical though. She was free. She need only put one foot in front of the other and she would be liberated. Mission completed. A success. She could return home and forget all about this aberration.
Suddenly it was more than his breath on her neck. His nose grazed her nape. A hiss escaped her at the physical contact.
“You smell like . . . oranges.”
“Oh.” Her breath shuddered out of her chest. “Yes.” She knew that.
She spent a good deal of time in her beloved orangery. It was what she did—aside from seeing that the farm ran smoothly. The orangery was her pet project. Tending to her trees and experimenting, creating creams and balms and soaps from the fruit and zest of oranges. She tested the products that she sold in Shropshire and local fairs and market days on herself, naturally.
“Oranges,” he murmured again and there was a touch of marvel in his voice. She heard him inhale—felt it.
His nose shifted, slid over her skin, and she shivered.
She held her breath for a long moment before releasing it. “Do you like . . . oranges?”
“I was a lad the first time I tasted one. It was quite the luxury. A rare treat. I had never even seen an orange before my mother gave it to me one Christmas morning.”
“I am sure you can have all the oranges you want now.”
And if she meant something more than oranges, something like women who were more to his tastes, then she was certain he caught her meaning.
She did not know this man—not really—but she knew enough to know that he was keenly intelligent. It vibrated from him. Gleamed from the deep pools of his eyes. It was one of the things that made her so on edge around him. His ability to look at her and see more than she wanted him to see. At least it felt that way.
The longer she remained in his company, the more likely it was that he would discover her true purpose here. It certainly seemed like a law of probability.
It should prompt her to flee, to tear herself from the fan of his warm breath on her neck, from the sensation of his nose inhaling her skin, and go.
Now. At once. Immediately.
“I can,” he agreed in that deep voice that made her knees go weak. “Oranges are no longer so . . . unattainable.” Even that simple word—unattainable—felt laden with erotic promise. “They are well within my reach.” His nose and mouth nuzzled her then and she released a ragged puff of breath. “But it is the sweetness of the memory, no?”
Why did it feel like he was talking about something other than food?
He went on, “The delicious smell that brings it all back and makes your mouth water?”
She made a garbled sound of assent and turned around to face him—which was, yes, the opposite of fleeing.
The opposite of smart and sensible and self-preserving.
The opposite of modest and lackluster Mercy Kittinger.
He was directly in front of her. The air sawed from her lips, as though she had run a great distance and could not recover her breath.
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip until she tasted pain. Releasing it, she asked, “Do you want a sampling . . . of oranges?”
His eyes, intent and deep, peered into her face and she felt certain he could see everything then, into her very soul, beyond the surface of her skin and flesh and bones to the truth.
Hopefully, the foremost truth he read on her face was how very aroused she was and not that she had stolen a voucher from his desk. Not that she was a thief.
“A sampling of oranges?” he husked as though contemplating that. “Is that what you will taste like?”
There was a decided shift in the air. A change in the room’s atmosphere, in his eyes, in the way he looked at her, in the way he watched her. Even his mouth looked different as it shaped and formed words. Softer. Touchable.
Kissable.
Now she had snared his interest.
She was not certain how she had accomplished such a feat, but that lessened the sting of his earlier rejection a modicum.
“Yes,” she answered, committed to the role she had assumed. She would see this to the end.
“Oranges. Unusual perfume for a woman.”
“I am an unusual woman.”
His lips twitched as though amused. As though he doubted that about her. It was irksome. “Are you then?” he queried.
She moistened her lips, hoping it was an enticing measure and she did not look like a cow back at the farm licking its lips with an enormous and inelegant tongue. “I think you are coming to realize that I am.” He had stopped her from leaving, after all—and sniffed her neck. That had to signify something.
“Perhaps,” he allowed, looking contemplative and not so amused anymore.
A sudden rush of nervousness assailed her, but fortunately it was not stronger than the other feelings besetting her, primary of which was the desperate desire to not get caught. Mixed in there with that overriding compulsion, however, was a fair amount of arousal.
Yes, she knew enough to recognize that particular sensation. Her mind stored a wealth of knowledge on the subject of arousal. She might be a virgin, but she was no novice. Indeed not.