Free The Edge of Desire by Stephanie Laurens Page A

her sidelong glance, knew she was waiting for him to make some response, but…he simply couldn’t find the words. Could barely find his brain, let alone assemble sufficient wit to have a coherent conversation.
    Especially not with the scent of jasmine everywhere around him.
    The physical vortex they’d created had been wild enough—mind-bending, senses-scrambling, shattering enough. But the emotional whirlpool it had left behind was…at least for now, more than he could cope with.
    He felt battered, raked raw.
    Her hand in his hair, gently stroking as she always had before, had shaken him to the depths of his soul.
    Regardless, he knew he had to regroup, at least enough to take his leave.
    She’d been studying his profile. She definitely seemed more well-grounded than he. From the corner of his eye he saw her lips quirk—recognized the fleeting smile as one of smug, feminine satisfaction.
    Before he could summon the will to react, it faded. Her expression grew closed, shuttered.
    He turned to look at her as she looked away.
    And pushed herself to a sitting position.
    She started to rebutton her bodice. “No one has everclaimed a Vaux failed to honor an obligation.” She glanced at him, briefly met his eyes. “I don’t imagine any Allardyce would either.”
    Bodice closed, she swung her legs beneath her and got to her feet. She shook out her skirts, then met his eyes again.
    Her lips had thinned. “Consider what just occurred as a significant payment against our account.” She straightened, and looked haughtily down at him. “Now you have to prove yourself worthy of your hire.”
    The look in her eyes told him very clearly that she’d correctly divined, and was totally unimpressed by, his ill-formed intention of using her payment to exact some convoluted revenge.
    One fine brow slowly arched; he was fairly certain she could, even now, read the few thoughts his brain had managed to assemble. He’d forgotten just how well she knew him.
    “I’ll find Justin.” His voice came out as a resigned growl.
    That infernal brow of hers arched higher. “Good.” With a crisp nod, she half turned toward the door. “You can see yourself out.”
    When he made no further comment—in his present state unnecessary speech was beyond him—she merely raised both brows, swung on her heel and swept out of the room.
    Leaving him lying in disarray on her fabulous silk rug.
    He waited until he heard the door click behind her, then he groaned and sat up. Upright wasn’t much of an improvement; he still felt…stunned, blindsided, reeling.
    He knew what he’d intended—just a kiss, a taunting, teasing one that would have left her wanting and reminded her of what she’d turned her back on.
    He knew what had happened—she’d seized his intention and turned it back on him, and with typical Vaux disregard for safety had unleashed a maelstrom that had plunged them both back into the past.
    Back into each other, and not just physically.
    He knew what had occurred, even now could recall each stunning instant with startling clarity—feel her taking him in, even feel her hands on his overheated skin, burning him, branding him.
    What he didn’t know was why.
    And even less did he know what it meant.
    She—they—between them had taken a step back through time, as if the intervening years hadn’t mattered. As if all that had happened in those years didn’t truly exist, not on the same plane.
    As if all that had occurred in those years hadn’t affected what lay between them.
    He didn’t understand how that could be so. She’d walked away from her promise to wait for him and happily married another man. When he’d returned briefly to assume his title after his father’s death, he’d heard that her marriage to Randall was widely regarded as a love match—there being no other explanation for a lady of Letitia’s birth and family circumstances marrying so far beneath her.
    Yet tonight, on the exquisite green and gold silk rug in