boots, adding to the sense of domestic welcome.
“Shall we enjoy the tart with a pot of tea?” Rye asked, unbuttoning his cloak.
Ann’s gaze went to the steps. “Later?”
Or maybe married men had other reasons to hurry home of an evening. “Annie Pearson, are you eager to have your way with me?”
“Yes.”
“I am flattered.” Also torn, because they had things to discuss, difficult things.
“Only flattered? Not eager?” She took his coat and hung it on a peg next to ladies’ cloaks and bonnets.
Rye stepped close enough to take Ann in his arms. “When it comes to you, my dearest, most delectable Annie, eager is an understatement. I’m a-boil with longing for you, but a fellow doesn’t just take off his hat and unbutton his falls.”
She burrowed closer. “Some fellows don’t bother taking off their hats.”
“Such a fellow would be an idiot, when he could instead spend a moment reveling in the pleasure of your embrace, when he could allow himself the joy of anticipating the coming interlude. Kiss me before I forget what language I’m babbling in.”
A smiling kiss was a lovely way to begin a tryst. Rye had made Ann smile, and that made him smile, and the damned cat—winding himself between their feet—was probably smiling too.
“I’ve missed you,” Ann said, subsiding against Rye’s chest. “I have things to tell you, but they can wait.”
She fit him perfectly, and the feel of her was luscious, all warm, feminine, sweet, and sturdy. “I have things to tell you too,” Rye said. “Not particularly cheerful things.”
Ann chose then to run her hand over his falls. “My mood is growing more cheerful by the moment, Orion. Will you please take me upstairs?”
He ought to kiss her nose, step back, and tell her he was leaving London for a time—possibly a long time. He really should explain that his situation was growing more difficult by the week, and that his business prospects, never very impressive, were dwindling apace.
Instead, he scooped her into his arms and all but charged up the steps.
“Every lady should be carried off by a dashing swain at least once in her life,” Ann said, looping an arm around his neck. “You make me want to cook banquets for you to keep up your strength.”
“You make me want to…”
“To be wild?” Ann asked as Rye set her on her feet in her bedroom.
“That too, but also to be close.” To have his bum patted in the odd moment when nobody was looking and to be hugged when he walked through the front door. Whatever the opposite of war was, he wanted that with Ann.
To love, to build a shared life both humble and precious.
Ann slipped from his embrace, and his rosy anticipation suffered a chill. What things could she have to tell him? Gossip from the Coventry, perhaps? News of Hannah?
“Ann?”
She shut the door and locked it. “For this one hour, Orion, let’s be both close and wild. I have looked forward to your next visit more than you can possibly know.”
Her honesty caused more heartache than she could possibly know, for this might well be their last encounter. He would miss her, worse than he’d missed home when he’d gone to war. A soldier knew that some fine day he might return to his loved ones and to the familiar haunts of his peacetime life.
As Rye undid Ann’s hooks, tapes, bows, laces, he was hit with the realization that to part from Ann would wound him as no battlefield ever had. He gathered her close so her back was to his chest and buried his face against her shoulder.
“You are precious to me, Annie Pearson.”
She turned in his embrace and wrapped her arms around his waist. “And you to me, Orion Goddard. Make love with me.”
He gave himself up to making pleasure with her, to cherishing her caress by caress and kiss by kiss. By the time he had her naked on the bed beneath him, her braid was coming undone, and her gaze had taken on a heat that frayed his self-restraint.
“Someday,” she muttered, locking her ankles at the small of his back. “Someday I will find the discipline to make you as overwrought and muddled as you make me.”
They weren’t likely to have that day. Rye shoved that sorrow aside and teased at Ann’s sex with his cock.
“You are muddled, Miss Pearson? It seems to me you know exactly what you want.”
“I know exactly who I need, Orion, but you are maddeningly—”
He pushed forward. “Yes?”
“Maddeningly delicious,” Ann said,