She set her rag aside and shrugged. It was a drawing of him, in the pub holding his concertina, a half-finished beer on the table. “You should. I certainly flattered you.”

“It was kind of you.” He set the book aside. “I’ve someone coming by shortly to look at the yearling, so I can’t ask you in for tea. Will you come tonight, for dinner instead?”

“To dinner?” When he rose, she took an automatic step in retreat.

“You could come early. Half six, so I could show you about first.” A new light came into his eyes, one of dangerous amusement as he caught her hand. “Why are you walking backward?”

“I’m not.” Or she wasn’t now that he had hold of her. “I’m thinking. Brianna might have plans.”

“Brie’s a flexible woman.” A light tug on the hand brought Shannon a step closer. “Come, spend the evening with me. You’re not afraid of the two of us being alone?”

“Of course not.” That would be ridiculous. “I don’t know if you can cook.”

“Come find out.”

Dinner, she reminded herself. It was just dinner. In any case she was curious about him, how he lived. “All right. I’ll come by.”

“Good.” With one hand still holding hers, he cupped the back of her head, inched her closer. Her nerves were already sizzling when she remembered to lift a protesting hand to his chest.

“Murphy—”

“I’m only going to kiss you,” he murmured.

There was no only about it. His eyes stayed open, aware, alive on hers as his mouth lowered. They were the last thing she saw, that vivid, stunning blue, before she went deaf, dumb, and blind.

It was barely a whisper of a touch at first, a light brush of mouth to mouth. He was holding her as if they might slide into a dance at any instant. She thought she might sway, so soft and sweet was that first meeting of lips.

Then they left hers, surprising a sigh out of her as he took his mouth on a slow, luxurious journey of her face. The quiet exploration—her cheeks, her temples, her eyelids—weakened her knees. The trembling started there, and moved up so that she was breathless when his mouth covered hers a second time.

Deeper now, slowly. Her lips parted, and the welcome sounded in her throat. Her hand slid up to his shoulder, gripped, then went limp. She could smell horses and grass, and something like lightning in the air.

He’d come back, was all she could think before her head went swimming into dreams.

She was everything he’d wanted. To hold her like this, to feel her tremble with the same need that shook inside him was beyond glorious. Her mouth seemed to have been fashioned to meld with his, and the tastes he found there were dark, mysterious, and ripe.

It was enough, somehow it was enough, to hold back, to suffer the gnawing teeth of a less patient need. He could see how it would be, feel how it would be, to lie down in the warm grass with her, to pin her beneath him, body to body and flesh to flesh. How she would move under and against him, willing and eager and fluid. And at last, at long last, to bury himself inside her.