The Lady By His Side(63)
There was no one else around; they were entirely alone.
Expectation welled; anticipation gripped her. Surely they weren’t there to talk about the murderer.
She halted and swung to face Sebastian.
He’d been scanning their surroundings and hadn’t been watching her; he abruptly pulled up with a scant few inches between them.
She fixed her gaze on his eyes. “What—”
The click of the door latch froze them both.
“I’ve never known much about Ennis’s Irish holdings.”
Cecilia; she’d apparently halted just inside the door—out of sight of the area where Antonia and Sebastian stood. The glass surrounding them seemed to reflect Cecilia’s words, rendering them with bell-like clarity.
“We wondered if you’d heard of any changes to the management—the people running things there?”
Filbury.
Sebastian frowned. They heard the click of the door as it shut.
“There’s still a bit of unrest over there, you see.”
That was Wilson.
Her eyes locked with Sebastian’s, Antonia’s mind raced. What did the men know? What did Cecilia know? What were the men trying to learn—and why?
“As far as I know, there have been no changes, at least not to the senior staff,” Cecilia said. “But why not ask Connell?”
“He’s rather overset by Ennis’s death, don’t you know—and we thought you might know.” Filbury continued, “We’re just a touch concerned.”
“We’re Connell’s friends,” Wilson put in, “and we wouldn’t want to see the estate get caught up in anything…well, untoward.”
“Untoward?” Cecilia said.
By their voices, the trio had been moving slowly away from the door. Any minute, they would reach the central path.
There was nowhere Antonia and Sebastian could hide and continue to listen. If they moved onto the path to the terrace door, they would remain shielded for only a short time, and if they opened the door and tried to slip out, the cold air from outside would give them away.
She evaluated their options at frantic speed, knowing Sebastian would be doing the same. They’d already heard too much; they needed some excuse—better, some screen that would suggest that they hadn’t heard a word…
They both knew their world. There was only one way.
She hauled in a breath and stepped forward, boldly closing the distance between them, reached up, framed the long planes of his face between her hands, stretched up on her toes, and pressed her lips to his.
In the instant her lips met the cool firmness of his, she realized that, while this kiss was a subterfuge to excuse their presence and reassure Cecilia and the two men that it was unlikely they’d heard anything, she—the passionate woman inside her she so rarely let free—had been waiting for this moment for much of her life.
It was that passionate woman who swept to the fore and took charge—who pressed her lips firmly to his and, with absolutely not a shred of reservation, boldly incited.
Sebastian reacted instantly—instinctively. First, to the unvoiced understanding that they needed to excuse and defuse their presence, to leave the others assured that they’d been far too distracted to have heard anything, much less taken anything in.
But even as his arms swept around Antonia and he drew her flush against him and swung them so her back was to the path and, from beneath his lashes, he could observe the steadily approaching trio, even as he angled his head, covered her lips with his, and seized control of the kiss, he sensed another imperative—another demand—one he equally instinctively moved to meet…
She and the kiss dragged him under.
Into a whirling cauldron of hunger, of greedy, ravenous need fueled by surging desire—hers as well as his.
The exchange was supposed to be just a kiss, a pretense, a façade.
It was anything but.
Passion erupted; too long denied, it geysered between them, drowning them in a raging tide of wanting.
Hunger drove them. She parted her lips on a gasp, and he dove into the honeyed warmth of her mouth, plundering, claiming, needing to do so with an intensity that overwhelmed him. That seized him, shook him, and enslaved him.
She pressed nearer; one hand slid from his cheek, and her fingers speared through his hair, then splayed and gripped.
He tasted her joy, her effervescent delight, her enthusiasm and unbridled desire.
She’d set herself free and ensnared him.
She threw caution to the winds and effortlessly drew him with her.
They strove to get closer, to taste more, to devour. Their mouths merged, lips melded, tongues tangling, stroking and inciting and blatantly claiming.
He—and she—lost all touch with the world.