She gasped.
He liked it. A lot. Too much, and… “Oh, my god.” He jerked back. “What the hell am I doing?” This was the jail for Christ sake! Much as he wanted her right now, on the floorif necessary, the city jail was not the place. He sucked a sobering breath into his lungs.
Oh, but dear Lord, she looked gorgeous standing before him, her gown open just enough to leave him aching to see more, and her wide expressive eyes clouded with a mixture of passion and confusion. “Damn it, Lilly, don’t you know when to stop pushing a man?”
* * *
Misunderstanding the words, Lilly believed he regretted having kissed her. “Why are you doing this?” she spat defensively, crossing her arms. “Is this a game to you?”
“What?” He appeared dazed and then incredulous. “Of course it’s not a game? Do you think I go around kissing upstanding women at random?”
“I don’t know?” Lilly sparred. “You’re obviously good at it. For all I know you waltz through Charleston seducing a different woman every night. You are something of a professional widower after all.”
“A different woman every night… Jesus.” He stalked forward, the movement predatory and suspiciously vulnerable. “You are the first woman I’ve truly kissed since my wife died, Lilly.” In a flash, his eyes grew so burdened with loss she could have cried. Gently he reached out to twist one of her haphazard wavy locks around a finger.
She quickly stepped away. “I’m sorry, Davy. I’ll go now.” She strode to the cell door, fixing her gown with trembling fingers.
“Oh, no you don’t.” A brawny arm snared her about the waist, jerking her backward.
“Whoa!” Lilly cried out, spinning in his hold. “David, this has gone far enough.” She shoved a fist into his chest. “Let me go. You’ve proved your point, I will go home.”
He scoffed. “I believe that like I need another hole in the head.” He swiftly spun her toward the back corner of the cell and vacated the barred room, closing the doors with a bang before she could mount any further protestations.
She scooped his vest from the floor and chucked it at the bars. “I am not a child.”
His gaze slid the length of her in a slow, smoldering perusal that left her skin tingling and hot with desire. “I’m aware.” He lifted the vest and shrugged it back over his broad shoulders.
Lilly plopped onto the ancient wooden cot, ignoring how his blue lawn shirt stretched over the swell of his muscles. When exactly had the earth flipped on its axis? She felt dizzy. In the space of a week David Langston had gone from infuriating colleague of her father’s to the man she’d fallen in love with.
Confused, Lilly had to admit she’d unleashed more than she’d bargained for by goading him this afternoon. She cast him a surreptitious glance.
He noticed.
“So I’m a good kisser?” Casually he reclined in the wooden chair propping a foot on the desk. He grinned, revealing a full mouth of white teeth, the front two just a tiny bit crooked and lending him the look of a little boy with a secret. The smile hit her with such force she fell in love with him all over again. There was a lighthearted side to Davy that made him Davy as opposed to David or something more formal like Marshal or General—as he’d been in the war—Langston. It was as though a small part of him would forever be sixteen years old. If he had not lost a wife and newborn son at the ripe age of twenty-five, how would his jovial nature shine?
“Don’t let it go to your head.” She promptly gave him her back so he wouldn’t see her blushing to the tips of her ears and hid the key she’d plucked from his person in her skirts.
