“What do you want to know?” he said brusquely. “Their names? Temperature? Humidity? Acidity?”
“You. I want to understand you.”
His heart thumped harder. “Hmm?”
“You’re an earl. You can do whatever you please. Yet you spend your time growing beautiful plants, to make medicines to ease people’s pain. And you don’t even like people.”
“I like them well enough. In theory.”
Her lips parted as if to protest, but she said nothing. She merely breathed out, audibly, like an echo of a fledgling laugh. Her eyes roamed over his hair and forehead, and down over his cheeks, which burned with the imprint of her palms. Then down his throat, down, down, and he felt her anew, still, again, forever, her face pressed to his chest, her breasts soft against his front, her hands spread over his back. Her gaze flicked up, veered away. She wrapped one hand around her throat and absently shifted her fingers into a row, as if measuring her own pulse.
“Well. I’m sure I can find something interesting here,” she said.
Her voice was too bright and breathy. The short sleeves of her summer dress made him think it would be no task at all to slide them down her arms.
“Rafe?”
“Hmm?”
She was caressing a reddish-green, three-lobed leaf. “I asked, what is this one?”
“It’s…” He dragged his eyes off her fingers and onto the leaf. “A plant.”
“Gosh.”
“It does have a name,” he assured her.
“That is brilliant.”
“Bellyache bush. For dysentery,” he blurted out as it came to him.
When he stepped forward, she didn’t move back. Her smile broadened. And suddenly, Rafe relaxed. He was not in this alone. Whatever this was, she felt it too.
“This is Arum ovatum,” he said, indicating another plant, his voice lower. “Used for treating burns.”
She reached for one of the large, flat leaves, then pulled her hand back and feigned innocence.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t touch.”
“You can touch. You can definitely touch.”
Her eyes flicked up to his hair, down to his chest, and his skin tingled as if it already felt her fingers. Oh, what he’d give for her touch, for her kiss, for the right to strip off her dress and taste every last inch of her soft, fragrant skin.
She whirled away and darted up the row away from him. Then she pivoted and lowered a large, palm-like leaf in front of her face, her smiling eyes peering through the fronds.
“Melegueta pepper.” He prowled closer, slowly enough for her to get away. “For colds, coughs, and stomach problems.”
As he neared, she released the leaf and danced on. She grabbed a potted plant and held it between them like a shield.
“A cannabis plant,” he said. “For relief of pain, rheumatism, and convulsions. Also a powerful intoxicant, unlike the related plant that grows in England. That was one of the ingredients in my medicine last night.”
She regarded the spiky bright-green leaves with interest. “May I try some?”
“No. You appear intoxicated even when sober.”
Tossing the pot at him, she made her escape. Rafe took his time shelving the plant; he was happy to let her escape, because he enjoyed chasing her. That was the game, and he must not catch her, however much they both wanted him to.
She skipped away to the potting area down the end.
“Oh, I know this one,” she said of the small fruit trees on the table. “Tangerines.”
“They prevent scurvy.”
She poked at a tangerine tree, making the little fruit wobble. One fruit fell into the pot. “Oops,” she said and turned away, pretending it had never happened.
There were no more plants, but before her sat a tray of rich, dark soil.
“And dirt,” she said.
“Food for plants.”
Laughing, she plunged her hand deep into the soil and jerked it back out, sending soil spraying.
“You’ll get dirt all over you,” he warned, drawing closer.
“Like you do.”
“Like I do what?”
“Have dirt all over you.”
Rafe checked his shirt, his hands. “I do not.”
“Right here.”
He was too slow. Maybe he was distracted by her radiant cheeks and impish smile. Or maybe the drug was still in his blood. Or maybe he wanted to be slow, because he knew her intention and let it happen.
Either way, he did not even try to escape as she pressed her soil-covered hand to his cheek and smeared that gritty mud over his skin and into his hair.
That giddiness washed over him again, the recklessness of a young man who cared nothing for consequences, seeking only the joy of the moment. Thea arched back, poised to run. Slowly, deliberately, Rafe extended one arm and rubbed his hand in the dirt. She followed his movements with her eyes, as he lifted his hand, thick with dark, redolent soil.
Squealing, she danced backward. Her bottom collided with the table behind her. The leaves of the tangerine trees quivered, and the small fruits bobbed enthusiastically.
“Your hair, I think,” he murmured, inching toward her. “It’s much too shiny and clean.”
With another squeal, Thea covered her head with her arms.
The pose was very effective for protecting her hair.
It left her front completely exposed.
So Rafe pressed his soil-covered hand firmly over her chest. Right at the spot where her breasts met. She gasped, a sound as warm and soft as her bosom against his palm. Sensations coiled up his arm and charged into his groin as a savage, clawing desire. Her heart beat madly under his palm—or perhaps that was his own pulse—and her chest rose and fell with her ragged breaths.
For half a dozen blissful beats of their racing hearts, Rafe let his hand linger before dragging it away. Her breathing fast and shallow, Thea slowly lowered her eyes, and together they admired his handiwork: a perfect handprint right over her bosom.
Rafe rubbed his fingers against his palm. The dirt clung to his skin, while the feeling of her softness slid under it, into his flesh and blood, right down to his bones.
They both looked up at the same moment. Thea narrowed her eyes, her mouth tightening.
He schooled his face into innocence.
“Oops,” he said.
Thea tried to breathe, but breathing proved difficult when laughter and the lingering heat of Rafe’s impudent touch had robbed her of air. Yet air seemed inconsequential when Rafe was looking at her like that. With mischief and desire, and something else, something that made her feel special and interesting. As if whatever she did next would be the right thing to do, simply because she was the one doing it. It was a wondrous feeling, which mingled with the delicious sensations bouncing under her skin to make her reckless. More reckless, even, than when she had smeared dirt on him, merely as an excuse to touch his hair.
Not taking her eyes off his wicked face, stifling her laughter, Thea fumbled behind her. Her hands landed in the pot of a tangerine tree, with its treasure trove of soil and fallen fruit.
Rafe prowled closer. Closer. She pressed her bottom back against the table. His gaze flicked to the handprint over her breasts, and her skin burned yearningly at the memory of his touch.
Behind her, she rubbed both hands in the soil.