might give me.”
Her nails bit slightly through the fabric of his shirt in irritation. His cock throbbed. He wanted her.
“I’m not a fool,” she growled.
No, she wasn’t. She was just doing what she could because she didn’t think anybody else cared, and maybe they didn’t. It was easy to forget about the people that lived on the edge, he knew. He’d been forgotten about most of his life. But the one thing good about living on edges is that it made a body tough.
“Did you ever think that growing up as he is might work for Terrance as an adult?”
The shake of her head was immediate. “He’s a scholar not a fighter.”
“You said he was eight.”
“Some things you can just tell.”
Ace sighed. “And you want to save him.”
She didn’t even try to deny it. “He’s a bright child, too bright for such a future.”
A do-gooder to the core. “You can’t control everything.”
“No, but I can give him this chance.”
He backed her up another step, controlling her movement with his body and his fingers on the back of her neck. And she went, as soft and as sweet as if she knew what he needed. He tucked the information away, even though he knew he shouldn’t. This was one woman with whom he couldn’t play his games, a good woman. Too good for him, which was why he had no business taking that last step that brought her back up against the wall. But he took it anyway.
“What are you doing?”
He smiled at the question. “Taking my kiss.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to say it.”
“You don’t even know what it is!”
He liked the fire indignation put in her eyes. He liked to bring the fire out in her. Liked to know he could make her burn when others only left her cold.
Pressing his lips against her forehead, he said quietly, “I know. Now, come here.”
She did. Spreading his legs so she was trapped between them, he leaned down until his chest pressed against hers, and he could feel the tips of her breasts poking into his shirt. Those nipples could have been hard because the air was cooling, or they could be hard because she found him as attractive as he found her. Ace leaned in a little farther, testing his resolve, teasing his desire. She didn’t back up, couldn’t back up, and that only tempted him more. She was imprisoned between his body and the wall, helpless, and that little catch in her breath as he bent his head, his shadow blocking the sun from her eyes, just brought all of his lust to the fore. His cock hardened to the point of pain; his heart picked up its beat.
When his mouth was a hair’s breadth from hers, he murmured, “This time kiss me like you know what you’re doing.”
He wasn’t at all surprised with the immediate “I know how to kiss.” His Pet was a fighter. Smiling into her eyes, he gave her something to hold on to.
“Prove it.”
* * *
DEAR HEAVENS, HE wanted her to prove it. Staring up into Ace’s light blue eyes, searching for sanity, Petunia only found more temptation than an on-the-shelf woman should be forced to confront. Honest to goodness curl-her-toes and burn-her-reputation-in-perdition temptation. And it was harder to resist than any sermon preached. Because it felt so good. Surrounded by Ace’s arms, his scent, his heat, she found it amazingly easy to imagine succumbing to her baser instincts, to wallow in the sheer pleasure of his weight against her, to tempt him the way Eve had tempted Adam. Except she wanted to offer Ace so much more than an apple. And she wanted him to take it. All of it. Everything she could give. The fact that he would wasn’t the scary thing it should have been.
She was sure she wasn’t the first woman that Ace had wanted. His conquests littered the town. But he might just be the only man who’d ever truly wanted her. Not to prove a point. Not to gain access to her family’s power or money, but because she was a woman he found attractive. Her fingers curled into his chest. The immediate hitch in his breathing padded her confidence. Inside, she started smiling. He really did want her.
Prove it.
For the skip of a heartbeat, she didn’t know if she could. She was a spinster. A suffragette. A scholar. What did she know of kissing the socks off a man? As if sensing her panic—which was silly since she hadn’t given any outward sign of her distress—Ace nudged her thigh with his knee.
“Want me to bend down?”
His voice, deeper than normal, rasped like velvet over her senses. And she wanted more. Tempting Ace Parker was madness, it was foolishness, it was reckless, but she’d already given herself an excuse. She’d made a deal, and no Wayfield ever reneged on a deal. And all she had to do to hold up her end was to kiss him like she meant it, and suddenly that didn’t seem so very hard. There was so much she could imagine doing with this man. He might be a reprobate, he might be a gambler, but he was the only man in her recollection who could make her feel like a schoolgirl and forget her morally correct upbringing. He was, quite frankly, her one chance to feel what other women felt so easily. To give what other women found so easy to give. To be who she always thought she could be.
That did not mean, however, that she was ready to just roll over. When he tried to pull closer, she shook her head. She shouldn’t have found the cock of his eyebrow endearing, but she did.
“What?”
“We had a deal. This is my kiss.”
His fingers relaxed infinitesimally on her neck. Highlighting just how subtle his control had been. “So it is.”
She fitted her mouth to his, rubbing gently until she found that perfect spot that sent tingles shooting inward, wishing she knew more than she did, wanting to make this a kiss he remembered, wanting against reason to be memorable.
Again that soothing touch on her neck. His mouth opened against hers, guiding her, she realized.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Ace took her gratitude and upped it with the lightest touch of his tongue. Those tingles burst into streaks of lightning. She returned the caress, and he moaned. She did it again, and again, experimenting with going deeper, wider, turning her head so her tongue could touch his. It wasn’t enough.
“More,” he whispered, slipping his thigh between hers.
Yes, she wanted more. She’d noticed Ace the first day she’d walked into town, and he’d made sure she could never give up that infatuation, teasing and taunting her, irritating her with his very existence. And now it was her turn to tease him. His lips were full, fuller than she expected, softer than she expected but so good. Giving in to the wildness throbbing inside, she nibbled and bit at his mouth, demanding something he needed to give.
He groaned deep in his throat. She stood higher on her toes, pulling him down, dragging herself up, rubbing her breasts against his chest, trying to get closer, but she couldn’t. There was no way she
