He was shaking his head even before she stopped speaking. “There’s only two weeks left. I couldn’t rebuild the engine in that time.”

She brushed her lips against his, smiling at the flicker of passion in his eye. “We’ll all help. Batsfoam examined the engine and said he believed all that would need replacing was the boiler. You have a little more than two weeks—can you build a boiler in that time?”

Dare frowned, an act that made Charlotte want to cheer. He was thinking about it. She could see him working mental calculations regarding what would need to be done to have the engine ready.

“It would only take me a few days to rebuild the boiler, but that’s not the problem. Obviously my design was flawed, or else it wouldn’t have exploded under the pressure of a half-filled boiler.”

“Then you will simply have to design a new one,” she said helpfully, and kissed him again, this time her lips lingering on his mouth, her breath mingling with his.

“I can’t—” he started to say, one arm snaking around her waist to pull her even closer. She rubbed against him, almost purring with the feeling of the hard, muscled planes of his chest and thighs.

“You can do anything you want,” she answered, sucking his lower lip into her mouth. He groaned and pulled her tighter, grinding his hips against hers. “I believe in you, Dare. I believe you can succeed. I would never have married a man who couldn’t keep me as I deserve to be kept.”

“Little witch,” he murmured against her lips. Her hands were busy until she had the buttons of his shirt free, sliding her fingers along the smooth, muscled planes of his back, along the pleasing contours of his chest. Even after a month of illness and inactivity, his body was still hard with muscle and sinew. “If you think you can goad me into doing what you want—”

“Never,” she breathed, nipping at his lips, wordlessly begging him to take charge. When he didn’t, she murmured, “I do not goad. Seducing, however, is another matter…”

Since he still wasn’t kissing her the way she wanted to be kissed, she decided to take matters in her own hands—so to speak. She demanded entrance to the warm lure of his mouth, and when it was given, she ruthlessly invaded—tasting him, teasing him, stirring the embers of passion that burned between them.

With a groan, he succumbed to the fire, his mouth moving over hers with increased heat, his tongue doing all those amazing tongue things she previously believed she would never find the least bit interesting (but was happy to be proven wrong), his body pressed hard against hers, moving with a seductive slowness that threatened to drain all reason from her mind. His hand was everywhere, fingers one moment tugging her head back to angle her mouth for deeper penetration; the next they were skimming along the tapes at the back of her gown, tugging down the fine lawn until his fingers met her bared flesh. In the passion-fogged depths of her mind she remembered a scene from the past, and broke away long enough to push him backward, into the wine-colored armchair. She followed, pulling up her gown so she could kneel astride his thighs.