Page 16 of When Jess Wainwright’s Curiosity Was Satisfied (Wainwright Sisters #4)

Chapter Sixteen

T he day had not been what Cadoc had expected. Jess’s family disguised their hostility with the barest veneer of civility, and everyone but the children had been guarded and wary. His dragonfly hadn’t allowed their disapproval to deter her, and her quiet belligerence had made him proud. Their foray in the closet had been unexpected too. Especially the way she’d ferociously returned his kiss - with a ruthless precision that made him want to keep her there, all to himself, for days. He’d been determined to make her come undone and she’d turned the tables on him. It was becoming more and more difficult to dismiss the effect she had on him because every interaction deepened his fascination instead of subduing it.

Once he’d rubbed down Bacchus, he found himself in his shop. The lighting mechanism he was working on for his new lamp design wasn’t coming together, and his fingers were clumsy. Even when he pulled it nearer and bent over it with his glasses perched on the end of his nose, his touch fumbled.

He felt like a coiled spring, and knew if he didn’t release all the energy that had crackled to life in her presence, the lamp would never be finished.

Carys and the children were due back in the morning, and it was the last night he’d be able to savor the solitude of a quiet house. He stripped off everything but his trousers and laced up his gloves. He pounded the sack of grain suspended from the ceiling with all his might. Like it was the source of all the ill and pestilence in the world.

It felt good to limber his muscles and dance on the balls of his feet as he cut and jabbed at his imaginary foe. He was bracing his hands on his knees when someone cleared their throat at the edge of the room.

He remembered he hadn’t locked the door and shot up, his fists clenched and ready for battle.

The woman he’d taken his leave of, not an hour before, was standing at the threshold, twisting her hands in front of her.

“I thought we agreed you would retrieve the other lens tomorrow night,” he said, his chest heaving.

He felt the sweat drip from his chin and splash his chest, and absently rubbed the space between his pectoral muscles. His guest’s eyes darted there, and even with the distance between them, he could see she was biting her lip.

She gave herself a little shake and raised her eyes to his face. “I’m not here for the lens. I’m here because I think we should talk about what happened in the closet today and what I think it means.”

“I thought it was clear what it meant. It’s all part of the wager.”

She remained silent.

He plucked a towel from the table and swiped it over his chest and behind his neck. “Isn’t it part of the wager, dragonfly?”

“I told you, I want to change the terms of the wager. I won today. And I think my victory deserves more than the return of my lens.”

He prowled closer, so close her breath feathered over his bare skin. When he raised his arm and planted his palm on the plaster just behind her head, her eyes widened in alarm.

“Did you jeopardize your safety to corner me in my home again, Miss Wainwright?”

Cad knew she and her sisters had neither horse nor carriage.

She shrugged and her shoulder grazed his forearm. “I decided to take the evening air. It seemed convenient to kill two birds with one stone.”

“You walked here,” he flatly said. He was furious at her rash disregard for her own well-being. He couldn’t fathom that she’d been reckless enough to brave the winter cold when he’d saved her from freezing to death in the streets a fortnight ago.

She thrust up her pointed little chin. “Of course I walked here. How else was I to convey myself?”

“If this conversation was so imperative it was weighing on your mind, you could have sent word. My carriage could have picked you up.”

She vigorously shook her head. “No. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention or give my sisters reason for additional chastisement.”

“So you snuck out under false pretenses.”

Her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t feel like listening to a lecture on the impropriety of my actions.”

“As you continuously remind me, you’re a grown woman. The propriety of your actions are yours and yours alone to judge. Just like the consequences of them.”

“I know that. But trust me, a clandestine visit is much preferred to the bothersome headache I’d be subjected to if I sought their stamp of approval first.”

“Then tell me what you’re demanding from me.” He needed to hear her say it. That his irrational fury wasn’t unfounded. That she wanted more than his kiss.

She peered down at her hands. They were tangled together so tightly, her knuckles were stark white and the veins in her bared wrists shone lilac and translucent. “I want you to finish what you began in the library,” she said, her chin tilted defiantly in his direction.

All of her singular attention was now on him, and the same coiled energy he’d sought escape from earlier rose in the space between them. “I left nothing unfinished in my library.”

“When I was on the la– ladder,” she stammered. “I thought you were going to touch me there.”

“There?” He was deliberately obtuse.

She arrowed her finger toward her cunny, her face ruddier than a sunset.

He dropped his hand to her waist and when he splayed it across her stomach, his thumb just brushed the top of her mound over her skirt. “Here?” He asked teasingly, and swiped the fabric just below her navel.

She gulped and Cad thought it was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen. “Answer me, dragonfly. Here?”

She gave him a nearly imperceptible nod as she clenched her hands in the folds of her skirt.

“How specific is your want? If I touch you there right now, will that do? Or do you want me to touch you there while you’re perched on my ladder?”

“The ladder,” she confirmed and tried to duck under his arm.

If she was asking him to follow through on his original intentions, he wasn’t going to let her hide behind her inhibitions. He lashed his arm around her waist. “No. You were brave a moment ago. I’ll let you lead the way.”

She set her chin at that ridiculously haughty angle again and he steeled himself.

“If I let you touch me there, it doesn’t count. It’s not part of the wager.”

“It’s a sort of kiss, and we agreed kisses were essential to our bargain.”

“I want to know what it feels like, just once, to quiet my thoughts and simply enjoy what’s happening to my body. You cornered me into this and it’s the least you owe me.”

He barked out a laugh. “Now?”

She lifted a shoulder as if to say what better time, then now?

He shrugged in response and flashed a quick grin. “Follow me.”

She didn’t resist when he tangled their fingers together and tugged her alongside him. Her lack of resistance pleased him more than anything had in a very long time.

“I want to peruse your library at my leisure.”

“Before or after the ladder, dragonfly?”

“After. And I remember how to get there on my own, Mr. Morgan. Your house isn’t that big,” she grumbled.

“Still, I can’t risk you becoming lost and delaying our mutual pleasure.”

Cadoc had the irrepressible urge to twist her remark into some filthy innuendo. To remind her of the way she’d soon be keening beneath his mouth as her body shuddered against the ladder. He wanted to remind her she’d soon be caging his head between her knees and fisting her hands in his hair. He withstood it, because he couldn’t bear chasing her away.

He wryly acknowledged he was already lending credence to Carys’s observation that his attachment bordered on obsession.

When he pushed open the door, her sigh echoed across the empty threshold. “I can smell the pages,” she murmured.

Cadoc’s collection included tomes he’d found at bookseller stalls, and though the worn leather bindings lent a certain ambience, he found them musty. He’d only purchased the books because many of them were obscure treatises on engineering that were now out of print.

“I don’t know many people who would share your fascination. Usually, it induces sneezing, not sighing.”

She shot him a smile over her shoulder. “It’s well-ventilated and quiet. And there’s enough material here to occupy my mind for years.”

When they reached the far corner of the room, she hesitated. The ladder rose in front of them as if it was imbued with its own sentience.

“Are you going to climb it?” He whispered into the curve of her neck. The urge to coax her into submission was insatiable. He tamped it down.

“Yes, but I need you to distract me.”

He cupped her from behind and scraped his teeth along her throat. “Up you go, dragonfly.”

She leaned forward on a gasp and climbed to the second rung.

“Now, raise your skirts for me.”

Cadoc wanted to see the perfect peach of her arse, to flex his hands over it as he devoured her. She inched up her skirt and petticoat as he dropped to his knees.

“Don’t you want me to turn around?”

He chuckled at her confusion. “No, I want to stroke your little pearl just like this.”

Her mound was bare, and he brushed aside the fabric covering her thighs so he could smell and taste her.

She rose to the tips of her toes and moaned when he nipped her inner thigh. A trickle of her juices slicked the skin, and he lapped it up with a groan as he clutched her to him. “Your little hotbox is wet and ready, dragonfly.”

She shifted back, thrusting her body more fully in his grasp.

“Stop preening and apply yourself,” she grumbled.

“You’re very demanding for someone who’s asked a favor of me.”

“You have only yourself to blame for that conundrum.”