A roguish twinkle filled his pretty eyes. “If I told you that I liked older women—”
“I’d punch you on your nose and break it again,” I said, waving a fist at him.
He laughed and grabbed my hand, then to my utter surprise, pulled me up tight against his chest and said, “You are delightful, do you know that? You always seem to say exactly the opposite of what I’m expecting.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to unhand me in front of all the tourists and workpeople who trotted about doing their daily chores when his mouth settled on mine with a possessiveness that simultaneously annoyed me (I wasn’t an object to be possessive about!) and thrilled me to my toes (dear god and goddess, the man had to be the world’s best kisser).
His mouth teased mine, coerced mine, pleaded with mine to yield to his. And of course, it did, allowing his tongue entrance, where it swanned around the place like it owned it. I wanted to be irritated about that, but I was too busy clutching his shoulders to keep from swooning. And then when he made a little noise in the back of his throat, the softest little exhalation of pure pleasure, I melted, my fingers sliding through his golden hair as I pressed myself against him in a shameless manner that my breasts and thighs and female parts wholly embraced. I touched my tongue to his, and melted even more, uncaring that we were snogging in full view of anyone who glanced our way. The sounds of tittering and electronic beeps and clicks indicated that the tourists had returned, but not even the thought of them brought sanity to me.
“OK,” I admitted when I managed to peel my mouth from his. “You win the award for kissing.”
“Oddly, I was just thinking the same thing about you.” His eyes were soft and somewhat smoky with what I recognized was purest desire.
A rush of feminine knowledge swept over me, making me very aware of all the differences between us. “You’re so hard,” I couldn’t help but say when I swept my hands down his shoulders to his biceps.
“Extremely so, to the point that it’s going to be painful to walk.”
I couldn’t help a little wiggle that had him groaning and clutching at my hips. “And if you do that again, I may very well throw all my much-lauded manners to the wind and haul you onto the nearest bale of hay, where I will ravish you as you deserve.”
I would be lying if I said I didn’t, for at least two minutes, consider letting him do just that, but at long last, better judgment won out and I managed to get my raging hormones under control.
Gregory had used the time I was doing so to speak to a young boy who was scooping up grain and pouring it into a metal bucket. The lad disappeared into the stable and returned with a blond woman with jagged cropped hair.
“I’m Clarence, the chief groom.”
“Clarice?” Gregory asked.
She studied him. “Do I look like a Clarice?”
“Well—”
“My name is Clarence. Just Clarence. You are the spy Lord Aaron told me about?”
“Thief. I’m a thief, not a spy.”
She made a “same difference” sort of gesture and snapped an order at the bucket boy. “I’m to give you and your woman horses. How well do you ride?”
Gregory hesitated. “I’ve been on a horse,” he said slowly.
“Tch. I’ll give you Old Mabel. You’d have to be an imbecile to disturb her. And you?”
“When I was growing up, I attended all the local hunt meets,” I said with quiet pride.
“You hunted?” Gregory asked, puzzled. “You don’t strike me as the type who goes in for blood sports.”
I smiled demurely. “I rode on behalf of the foxes, actually. As an alchemist, one of the first things I learned to make was a fox scent that fooled all the hounds. After a few decades of without so much as a single fox appearing, the meet broke up.”
“A job well done,” Gregory said, approval shining in his eyes.
Clarence entered into the stable, saying over her shoulder, “As you’ve riding experience, we’ll let you have Bottom.”
Gregory and I followed her into the dark confines of the stable. The delicious odors of alfalfa, horse, and saddle soap mingled and made me think of days long gone when I’d ridden to and fro over the countryside, sending the mortals and their dogs on all sorts of wild-goose hunts. “Why on earth do you call the horse Bottom?”
A horse’s head snapped up at the nearest stall, his eyes wide, and his nostrils flared as he took in our scent. He bared his teeth and let loose with a whinny that just about deafened me.
“I have a nasty suspicion as to the identity of that horse,” I told Gregory.
He shuddered. “I can say with all honesty that I am sincerely grateful for Old Mabel.”
Clarence strode past us, unlatching the stall. Gregory and I backed up as the horse, black as midnight, charged out, hooves flashing, ears flicking forward and back, and eyes rolling in his head as Clarence caught him by the halter and cuffed him affectionately on the shoulder. “Aye, you old murderer. You’re going to have a nice long run, aren’t you?”
“Oh, goddess,” I said softly.
“To answer your question, he’s called Bottom because you’ll need a hell of a seat to ride him.”
The stableboy led another horse, a solid-looking cob who didn’t so much as flick an ear to where the black devil was now tap-dancing in his attempt to get away from Clarence. She threatened to use a twitch on him if he didn’t behave himself and thumped him again on the shoulder as she half led him and was half dragged herself out into the sunshine.
I sighed.
“Thinking of that vacation again?” Gregory’s voice was as warm on my ear as the breath that touched it. I shivered at the sensation.
The stable seemed to be a small bubble of privacy. Rays of sunlight streamed in through gaps in the boards that made up the walls, motes of dust and hay drifting in lazy patterns like little golden fireflies. The stable itself was quiet, the noises from the yard muffled and distant, as if coming from a very long way. For a moment in time, the world was made up of only Gregory and me.
I turned my head slowly. Our noses brushed first, then our lips.
“We’ve got to stop doing this,” I said against his mouth, suddenly too weary to fight the attraction that seemed to swamp me whenever he was near.
“Why?”
I searched his eyes, but I saw nothing there but honest curiosity. “Because you are who you are, and I’m who I am, and my moms are who they are.”
“And never the twain shall meet?”
“Something like that.” I licked the corner of his mouth. He moaned softly and would probably have kissed me as I not so secretly wanted him to do, but the world intruded upon us once again, heralded by the cry that we should get our arses in gear because some people had work to do and couldn’t stand around lollygagging all day.
The feeling of being suspended in time dissolved.
“Don’t be so sure that you have all the answers, dulcea mea,” Gregory said in what I can only describe as a maddeningly cryptic manner. He left me standing in the stable, swearing to myself over the tangled sensations of loss, arousal, and general irritability.
“Did you just call me a know-it-all?” I asked him as Clarence gave us instructions on how to treat Aaron’s horses while they were on loan to us.
“I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.”
“Then why did you say—”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you to actually pay attention—” Clarence’s voice cracked like a whip around me. Guiltily, I turned toward her and put on my best listening face.
“Sorry. Go on.”
The look she gave me wasn’t any too friendly, but duty won out over personal satisfaction, and she didn’t tell me to go to hell, though she obviously wanted to. “You are to walk next to the horses for one hour out of every four that you ride. This saddlebag”—she patted a canvas bag that had been strapped to Mable’s ample back—“contains grain. They are to get that no more than once a day. Hobbles are in the other bag. Use them when you stop to rest, and in the evening. The horses are trained to return here if they are left unattended and unhobbled, so fair warning.”