She felt his lips brush against her temple. “I’ll have you know, my lady, I had no intention of worrying about you. You were safe, I knew that, and yet—”

Another soft brush of lips and nose, this time against her brow.

And yet, he’d appeared at Clover Down a day earlier than planned. Leah began to hope that in Nicholas Haddonfield’s lexicon, a proposal of marriage was an awkward topic.

“I missed you too, Nicholas.” She kissed him for emphasis, right on the mouth. He’d consumed a quantity of ginger cake at breakfast, and Leah could taste the spice and sweetness on him. “And that wasn’t in my plans either.”

He growled and wrapped her closer. “We should not—”

Leah arched into him, finding evidence of his arousal rising against her belly. Rather than listen to his infernal, misguided, male should-nots, she resumed kissing him.

She had been the object of a passionate young man’s fancy and had concluded with some puzzlement that while marital intimacies had the potential to be pleasant, the poets (being male) were given to exaggerations and flights regarding the whole business.

Nick Haddonfield in a kissing mood was not pleasant. Whereas Leah’s earlier experiences had been accompanied by hesitance, shyness, and a quality of reverence, Nick’s approach to intimate matters approximated the arrival of a gale-force wind, knocking Leah’s sensibilities end over end. His tongue swept over her lips, bringing heat and spice, and igniting a conflagration of wanting beneath the pit of Leah’s stomach.

She got a hand wrapped in his hair and drew her slippered foot up the back of his riding boot, as if she’d climb straight up him. “Nicholas, I want—” You. She could not quite say that, not yet.

“I want you too, lovey, but we mustn’t—”

We mustn’t was worse than we shouldn’t, and Leah might have spared some concern over whatever was troubling Nick, except she had missed him, missed not only the pleasant gentleman and handsome escort, but the lusty, sexually astute, desirable man who made Leah feel, for the first time in her life, that being a woman was a lovely, wonderful thing.

A gift.

“Hold me,” Nick coaxed, startling a squeak out of her as he hoisted her raised leg even higher, up around his hip. “Hold tight.”

His strength was such that he could easily take her weight with his arms, and he hiked her up, so through the layers of their clothing, her sex was pressed against the surprising length of his arousal.

“Nicholas.” Leah gasped as her body reacted to the pleasure—and frustration—of his proximity.

“Hang on to me.” Nick took a few steps and settled her back against the wainscoted wall, leaving him free to hold her in place with one arm while his other hand brushed down over her breast, shaping its fullness with the exact, perfectly right degree of pressure to her nipple.

This was what the poets had been blathering about; this was passion, madness, pleasure, and desire all rolled into one experience, and Leah wanted as much of this experience with Nick as she could get. She used the wall at her back for leverage and arched forward, such that a particular, hot, female part of her body pushed directly against the rigid length of his arousal. The pleasure of that boldness, even through their clothing, was startling—and inspiring. She did it again, then again, and then felt his mouth covering hers, his tongue sweeping forward, and bliss rising up to eclipse worry, misgivings, common sense—everything.

“Sweetheart, slow down,” Nick rasped. “We shouldn’t…”

Leah arched against him, her thrust having enough determination to be almost angry, and Nick’s ability to speak was swamped by the pleasure of her writhing in his arms. All he could think was that she felt right. Not too small—many women were too small—but not too large, not that bovine peasant his father had urged on him. She felt womanly and good and pleasurable.

He should stop, Nick knew that, just as he knew the royal succession from generations before the doomed Harold Godwinson on down to the Regent. Stopping was sensible, but Leah’s breast had found its way into Nick’s hand, and the sensation of that soft weight arching against his palms…

“Ah, God.” Nick closed his eyes and lifted his mouth from hers long enough to bury his lips at her neck, inhale the fragrance of her, and gently, gently, palm the weight of that lovely breast again.

“Nicholas…” Leah’s voice saying his name with need, and desire… He applied the least hint of pressure to her nipple again, but covered her mouth with his own and pressed his cock tightly against her.

He could come like this. He could make her come like this. The notions illuminated his awareness between one breath and the next, a delightful, intoxicating couplet of pleasure that had him going still, debating logistics—he’d pleasured more than one woman against a stout wall—and trying to recall if he’d locked the library door.

“Ah, Nicholas…” Leah sighed, and her body imperceptibly softened, yielding to him, enveloping him in feminine acceptance while Nick contemplated greater naughtiness. She signaled, with that bodily sigh, that she trusted him, trusted his ability to pleasure her and to protect her as well.

And that—that surrender—got through to his flagging common sense like his own clamoring conscience hadn’t. Like a bucket of cold, filthy water. She would let him take her like a doxy against the wall while she was a guest under his roof—under his protection, for God’s sake.

“Hush.” Nick eased his body away from her slightly, enough to let her foot find the floor again. Self-disgust made him want to wrench away, but something stronger kept him close to her. “Just hush.” He brushed his hand over her hair and hung there, braced over her by his arm against the wall. He shifted, hiked her against his chest, and carried her to the couch.

“I did not mean for that to happen,” Nick said, setting her down gently then pacing off a few feet to regard her. Hysterics were not out of the question; a scathing scold was easily possible. The outcome that made him truly uneasy was the prospect of her tears.

“Neither did I,” Leah replied, her voice even. “I am not sorry it did, while you clearly have regrets.”

Nick didn’t contradict her, and he watched while arousal and anticipation faded, leaving her features impassive. He deserved a verbal birching, and she was going to deny him that penance.

“I’m sorry.” She gained her feet with exaggerated dignity. “I should not have importuned you.”

God spare me from martyred women whose lips are still damp frommykisses. Nick’s hand circled her wrist. “It is I who owe you an apology. Will you sit?”

She resisted by not looking at him—Eurydice in the underworld came to mind—but she didn’t tug her wrist free as he pulled her down beside him on the couch.

“I am sorry for what just passed between us,” Nick said. “Very truly sorry, because it makes what I have to say much more difficult.”

His lapse in self-restraint also left him feeling stupid, disgusted with himself, and bewildered, particularly when he’d never once in all his years of disporting with women lost his head like that.

“Stop dithering, Nicholas. I am not given to strong hysterics.”

Dithering. He was becoming skilled at dithering. Perhaps he was the one at risk for strong hysterics.

“Promise me something first.” Nick laced his fingers through hers, hoping she’d slap him before she tossed his offer back in his face. “Promise me you won’t reject what I say out of hand, but take a few days to think about it first. Talk it over with Della, with your brothers, even with Ethan or Val, or my horse, but don’t just toss it aside as a foolish notion.”

She studied their joined hands, making Nick aware of calluses on his palms and fingers a gentleman wouldn’t have. “I’m listening, Nicholas.”