Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,142
got to take this. Please, try to be civil. We are talking about archaeology, not the fate of all mankind.”
Talbot-Ullswater rolled his eyes before offering her a cheeky grin. “Tell that to your prime minister.”
“He’s your PM too,” she reminded him before closing the door after her.
“It would do you well to remember that,” I said dryly, standing up because, suddenly, my inactivity felt dangerous. I didn’t want this witty, quick-minded creature to trap me so easily.
“Oh, trust me,” he said, hands taking flight like twin birds. “I do. Seems a man can’t turn on the telly lately without hearing about the fab PM and his heroic deeds bringing down all sorts of bad guys. Are you a politician or Batman?” He cocked his head, ringed thumb rising to rub at the absurd swell of his lower lip. “Although, I always fancied Batman would be sexy.”
“And I’m not?” It took years of studied restraint to keep my voice mild.
Why did I care what this foolish boy thought of me?
I was the Prime Minister of England. A forty-three-year-old man who glad-handed global political leaders weekly.
Talbot-Ullswater was just a boy.
Admittedly, a very pretty boy.
“I’m fairly easy to please,” he admitted with a rakish grin. “But no, I don’t typically find obstinate, antiquated men attractive.”
“All this because I won’t give you what you want.” I clucked my tongue as I rounded my desk and leaned against the front, tucking my hands into my trouser pockets so I wouldn’t give in to the insane compulsion to wring his lovely neck. “You’re acting your age, I’m afraid.”
I felt caught, tangled in the golden snare of his cast net, and as any captured mammal will do, inevitably, I fought against that hold. While no one would have ever called me genial before, the panic of my startling infatuation soured me. My own tongue felt pickled, too acidic in my mouth as I engaged in ceaseless repartee with a youth too silly and too whimsical to reason with.
“God forbid someone shows passion about something they believe in,” he countered, stalking forward until he was in my space, the tips of his leather trainers against my loafers. “Until this moment, I didn’t know lack of personality could be such a danger to our nation’s history.”
Heat welled in my belly, bubbling up my chest to sizzle at the edges of my refrigerated heart until it burned. Even my eyes felt warm in my head, my hands aching with it as if they were held too close to a flame.
It was the heat of madness.
Of the passion Tobias Talbot-Ullswater had so eloquently decided I was lacking.
Quite honestly, until that moment, my blood fevered and pulse pounded as I stared into that delicately constructed face, I hadn’t felt it in years.
Which was why I allowed it to move me to insanity.
I would prove to the git exactly how emboldened and daring a man such as I could be.
I would take charge of this preposterous situation and bend it––him––to my will.
Something changed in his expression as I something morphed in mine, echoing the predatory glint in my eyes with a shocked, thrilling, and fearful excitement in his.
A moment later, my hand was at the long, swan-like column of his throat, my thumb at his jugular so I could feel the alarmed pulse of my prey.
At the moment after that, I was kissing him.
Kissing a man.
Kissing velvet lips until they parted and then a silken tongue. His mouth was so lush it could have belonged to a woman, but the strong, lean throat under my hand and the rough-edged moan in my mouth said differently.
I was kissing a man I found utterly ridiculous just to prove I wasn’t so passionless as he claimed.
Only, as the rigidity of his surprise leeched from his body and he grew supple against me, his soft belly against the hardness pressing insistently at my trousers, I knew the only person I had truly shocked was myself.
CHAPTER TWO
Tobias Talbot-Ullswater
His hand on my throat.
His lips on mine.
His erection stiff and urgent against my belly.
Even now, two days later, I was dogged by the memory of that kiss.
That kiss.
The prime fucking minister had kissed me in his office. And not just kissed me but kissed me like he wanted me on my knees or bent over his ridiculous antique desk. He kissed me like I was about to know what his cum tasted like.
And oh, I would have tasted it. All he had to do was ask me.