Free Timeless Desire by Gwyn Cready

for this evening.”
    A premeditated act. Yes, that would be Bridgewater.
    Her legs would turn to jelly. “Have you considered simply seducing me?”
    “I have. Though I doubt it would be simple.”
    He was right. It wouldn’t be. Not with Charlie standing in the shadows. And that’s what she liked about Bridgewater. He saw her complexity and wasn’t put off by it.
    He would take a deep draft of the brandy and gaze longingly at her. “Sometimes a man just wants to feel he has purchased his pleasure.”
    “Sometimes,” she would say, “a woman just wants to feel she has been purchased.”
    “Then it is settled?”
    “Everything but the price.”
    God, this was better than the stuff she sneaked off into the back of the stacks to read.
    He would reach for a chest on his desk and unlock it. It would be filled with gold and silver coins, some large, some small. He would pick half a dozen from inside and rattle them in his palm.
    “I believe this is what you requested.” He would slip his coin-filled hand into her bodice and cup her breast.
    Oh, dear! The booms of the army’s cannons outside . . . matched the pounding in her veins. It must be the brandy. I would never . . . or would I?
    He would smile, and his thumb would trace the tender outline of her nipple.
    “That was the price when you were making a gift,” she would say. “Now you are making a purchase.”
    His brows would rise, and the light in those sapphire eyes would sparkle approvingly. He would bring his mouth to her ear. “Double? Triple?”
    She would point to the chest on the desk and smile.
    His hand would jerk away if he’d been burned. “Are you mad?”
    “What would you call a woman who risks her reputation to bed a man in an unlocked room?”
    His mouth would crook into a smile. “The mistress of her own library.”
    A happy charge ran all the way to Panna’s toes, and she wiggled them inside her shoes, smiling.
    “Did you finish?”
    She jumped. The flesh-and-blood Bridgewater was looking at her curiously. “Finish?” she repeated.
    “Counting? Did you finish?”
    “Er, yes. Two hundred ninety-eight, two hundred ninety-nine, three hundred,” she said quickly.
    He frowned. “That seemed a little fast.”
    “Did it? It seemed just right to me.”
    Of course, that’s only how it happens in books or in the minds of highly imaginative librarians. In her experience, there was usually a kernel of corn in someone’s teeth, an uncooperative corselet of Spanx, a condom past its use-by date or some other sort of humbling horror meant to remind the parties involved that nothing good ever comes from too much pleasure. But, oh, were it only so.
    He fiddled with the telescope, checking the path below.
    “Are they there?”
    “Not yet,” he said. “A few more minutes.”
    The evening had grown dark, save for the occasional punctuation of crimson and orange from the cannons. Without the lights of the industrial world to compete with them, the stars in the Cumbrian night sparkled like a tray of million-dollar diamonds. She marveled at the number of them.
    “Would you care to look?” he said.
    “Pardon?”
    “At the stars?” He swung the telescope’s eyepiece toward her.
    She had never used a telescope before, and her lack of knowledge must have been apparent. He pushed a crate in her direction and said, “It’s exceedingly straightforward. Just put your eye there,” he said, pointing to the end, “and adjust here.”
    Standing on the crate made her a little too tall to look through the eyepiece comfortably, so she stooped, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. Against the deep blue-black, she saw spots of light, some large, some small, some even appearing to her overexcited imagination to be the color of a robin’s egg or a peach.
    Bridgewater touched her cheek and she started.
    “Open your eye,” he said.
    She had shut the one she wasn’t using.
    “Your mind will let you see what you need with the one at the scope,” he