the doorframe of his office, studying her with undisguised desire. “I should have known you’d be trouble from the moment we first met,” he said, casually undoing the buttons of his jacket.
Chapter 5
“I wasn’t—” Lenore stammered, darting a glance past Phineas’s shoulder to the hall, then looking behind her at the desk full of papers, drawings, and photographs, then back to Phineas himself. “I don’t—you have the wrong idea.” Her heart raced in her chest, and she didn’t seem to be able to draw a breath. And not simply because she’d been caught. The way Phineas finished with his jacket’s buttons had her insides shivering in expectation.
“I don’t think I have the wrong idea at all,” Phineas said, stalking deeper into the room and discarding his jacket as he did. He tossed it over a leather-upholstered chair sitting in front of the smoldering fireplace without so much as a side glance to see if it landed correctly over the arm of the chair—which it did, by no surprise at all—then proceeded to work open the buttons of his waistcoat.
Lenore’s eyes shot straight to his hands. They were beautiful, with long fingers and perfectly trimmed nails. They were the sort of hands that could do things, though they didn’t appear to be particularly calloused, like a working man. No, the things Lenore was certain those hands could do had nothing to do with hard labor and everything to do with the way he finished undoing the buttons of his waistcoat, letting it fall open to reveal a soft, white shirt.
“I understand entirely,” he said, lowering his voice to a timbre that was as intoxicating as the wine he’d served at their interrupted supper. “You’re a curious minx and you simply could not resist discovering all of my secrets.”
Lenore’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out at first. He was dead right about that. She backed against the desk, thanking the heavens that bustles had gotten much smaller in recent years so that sitting against the edge of the desk was merely awkward instead of impossible. It was immediately necessary for her to grip the edges of the desk as Phineas stepped so close to her that their bodies were flush against each other, and she had to lean back slightly to stare up into his wicked, blue eyes.
“Did you have enough time to solve all of the mysteries of the universe?” he asked, brushing a hand up her side so that it came to rest just under her corseted breast. He leaned in so that his mouth was only inches from hers.
Good sense would dictate that Lenore should be terrified out of her mind to have a man make such a blatant advance on her. He’d already begun undressing, for heaven’s sake. The way he subtly nudged at her inner thigh with his knee, prompting her to widen her stance so that he could stand between her legs, was as bold an indication of impending seduction as possible. Any woman with half her wits intact would have run screaming from the room.
Lenore wasn’t a sensible woman. She wanted to throw herself on him, tear the rest of his clothes off, knock him to the ground and ride him like a prize stallion until they were both limp and satisfied.
“You cannot possibly think to deny that you are the author of Nocturne now,” she managed to say, though her words were decidedly breathless and infused with desire. “Not after I’ve seen all this.”
She turned her head slightly to gesture to the papers and photographs on the table. The moment she did, Phineas moved in, brushing his lips against the top of her neck where her jaw met her ear. He kissed and nibbled his way down to her pounding pulse-point as his hands journeyed farther up her sides to cradle her breasts in earnest. “Do you like what you see?” he asked in a wolfish whisper.
The question came just as her gaze settled on an etching of a couple engaged in a decidedly gymnastic tangle. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, snaking her arms around him and dropping one hand to his firm backside.
Phineas jerked straight at her possessive touch, staring into her eyes with a combination of surprise, fire, and amusement. “Good God, Miss Garrett. Is this the sort of behavior a darling of high society should engage in?”
“Who said I was anyone’s darling?” Lenore asked in return, lowering her head just enough so that she could stare up at him through