to replace what he had lost. She was nothing like the woman from the village. That woman was olive-skinned and dark-eyed, lush with curves and sultry good-looks. Whereas this one was blonde and petite, blue-eyed and more than slightly bookish. It made no sense.
Except for one more difference that made all the sense in the world.
This woman he wanted.
She pulled something from the briefcase then, a sheaf of papers, and looked up, blinking warily when she saw him standing in the doorway. ‘Count Volta. I wasn’t expecting you.’
He nodded. ‘Dr Hunter,’ he acknowledged, moving closer, searching his mind, certain that he’d been intending to say something but knowing only that he needed to get closer— maybe then it would come to him. And maybe he might even find an answer to his earlier question. But before he could latch onto his reason for coming, or work out whether there were telltale lines under her singlet after all, her face broke into one of those electric smiles. He felt the charge all the way to his toes, felt the jolt in his aching length.
‘You picked the best time to drop by. Come and see.’
‘What is it?’
‘I translated the first of the pages. It’s a prayer, a midnight prayer, beseeching the coming of dawn and an end to the darkness of night.’
He looked at the page and then at the translation she had up on her screen. ‘And that’s important because …?’
‘Don’t you see? The Salus Totus was revered—no, more than that, almost worshipped in its own right—as a book of healing. But little of the book remains to explain why. Remnants talk of eating and drinking in moderation, of taking fresh air, and while that is good advice, scholars have always felt there must have been more to warrant such a reputation for miracle cures and saved lives. Speculation has existed for centuries as to what might be in the missing pages and why they were removed.’
He didn’t understand what she was getting at. He couldn’t honestly say he cared. But her face was so animated with whatever she’d discovered that he could not help but join in the game. He shrugged. ‘Because the pages offended someone they had to be destroyed?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s the most common theory, I agree, but I don’t think it’s right. Not now. I think they were sliced from the book not to destroy them but to save them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re secular. They’re prayers of life and living that talk about the earth as mother of all. Nothing offensive to us now, in these times, but for all their gentle truths and wisdom they would have been seen as blasphemy then. The only reason we have what remains of the Salus Totus is because these pages were removed from inside its covers. With them gone there was no risk of offending anyone and the book could live on in more than memories. If they had stayed, the Salus Totus would surely have been thrown into the fires. So you see, by removing them from the book someone was trying to preserve them. Someone was trying to ensure their survival.’
Colour was high in her cheeks. Her blue eyes were so bright they had a luminous quality. He didn’t know anything about ancient texts or book-burning, but he knew he was burning and if he didn’t do something soon he would self-combust. His hand found its way to her shoulder, scooped around to her nape, his fingers threading into the upward sweep of her hair. She blinked up at him, questions in her clear eyes to which he had no answers.
Except that he wanted her.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE trembled slightly as he dipped his mouth and brought her close, but it was not fear he sensed under his hand but an answering tremor of need. And then his lips touched hers and she sighed into his mouth. It was all he could do not to crush her to him. It was all he could do to remember to breathe. And when he did it was filled with the tantalising fresh perfume of her set amidst the coiling scent of desire.
He drew her closer, her lips soft under his own, pliant, her body close enough that they touched, chest to chest, her nipples hard against him. No bra, he registered with that small part of his brain still functioning, aching to fill his hands with her sweetness. Aching to fill her. Aching.
His hand cupped her behind, angling her back towards the desk, deepening the kiss as he lifted her.
She should not be doing this. She should have told him no. She had felt his warm hand slide around her neck, seen his mouth descend and known she should stop him.
Except she hadn’t.
Just one taste, she’d foolishly thought, before she’d insist they stop. One taste of a man who could turn her inside out with just one heated glance. One taste of a man who made her feel more acutely aware of her gender and her innate femininity than she’d ever felt before.
And now, with his lips on hers, coaxing, bewitching, one taste wasn’t enough. One taste led to a hunger for more. He was addictive. Compelling. Impossible to deny.
Her body was his accomplice. Her skin rejoiced at his touch. Her mouth revelled in his mastery and his mystery.
Even when his hand slid to her behind, squeezed her and caused every muscle inside her to contract and then bloom, even when she felt a moment of panic and knew this was dangerous and foolhardy and reckless and so many of those things she had never been, she could not stop herself. For whatever he was awakening in her, whatever madness he was unleashing, she wanted more.
She gasped into his mouth and found no respite, for he claimed her lips in a savage kiss that fuelled her desires and quenched her now wafer-thin resistance. And, whatever he was doing, she knew it was well worth the price. For his kiss was a drug, pulling at her sensibilities, his touch on her flesh a sizzling brand.
Divorced from reality, she was his for the taking—almost. For when she felt his hands beneath her, lifting her, when she felt herself settled somewhere he could so deliciously insinuate his legs between hers, there came the tiniest glimmer of doubt—almost as if she’d lost hold of something she should remember in the firestorm of their mutual desire.
But no rational thought could find a way through this forbidden haze of primal need, and she gave herself up to the wanton pleasure of his hot mouth at her breast.
Until she reached back to steady herself against his pressing weight and felt her hand brush something aside—something featherlight that fluttered from the table.
She wrenched her mouth away from his, turned her head to see the centuries-old page flutter to the floor. With a mighty shove born of panic she pushed him away. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’
The words were directed as much as to herself as to him. She was madder with herself, because she should have known better. What a fool! She swiped a glove from the box on her desk, pulling it on as she knelt down. If her actions had compromised the page’s condition she might as well give up her job now. She would never forgive herself. Maybe she should give it up anyway, given she’d so easily disregarded her first responsibility. A paper that had survived for centuries only to be destroyed by a thoughtless couple behaving on top of it like hormone-driven teenagers—and one of them the person charged with ensuring its preservation. That would look good in her report. If she wanted to make a name for herself in this industry, a name nobody would ever forget, there would be no faster or surer way.
What the hell had
