Max had never, ever wanted something as badly as he wanted to pull up her skirts and touch that heat with his bare skin. Not in all the years of childhood hunger and pain, not in the years since then of hard work and sadness.
He wanted Ember with a fierceness he hadn’t expected.
Which is why he needed to stop. Now.
It took herculean effort to pull away from her, to release her breast and straighten, to move his hand off her ass. He managed it, but he was unable to set her completely aside.
Instead, he raised his hand to the back of her head and pushed her against his shoulder, trying to resist the urge to grind his erection against her softness.
Breathing heavily, he gasped, “I’m sorry,” as he stroked her hair, trying to focus on the color, so close to his face. “I’m sorry.”
Her hands dropped from his neck to his waist, then linking behind his back as if she didn’t want to let him go. “If ye—” When she broke off, he heard her swallow. “If ye dinnae quit apologizing, I’m likely to think ye did something worth regretting.”
His lips tugged upward. “You don’t think that me mauling you like that was worth an apology?”
She straightened away from his shoulder; her expression indignant. “I’ll have ye ken that was a mutually agreeable mauling.” Her cheeks were flushed, her lips plump, and her eyes bright with desire. She did look like a lass who’d been agreeable to said mauling. “And besides, I’ve been wondering what ye’d taste like, and now I ken.”
Dear God in Heaven.
“You’ve been…?”
She’d been thinking about him? Had she touched herself, the way he had, and imagined it was his hands upon her?
The way her blush deepened told him he’d likely guessed correctly, but she didn’t drop his gaze.
“Aye,” she said simply.
With a groan of surrender, he dropped a kiss to her lips once more. But although she pressed against him, and although his cock twitched in his trousers again, Max reminded himself this was not the place.
He wasn’t going to make love to Ember in the middle of a machine shop.
“Ember,” he groaned as he broke away, “I’m trying to be strong here.”
“Aye, and I like ye all the more for it.” She didn’t look hurt when she grinned up at him, but rather invigorated. “But ye cannae deny this is fun.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and chuckled ruefully as he loosened his hold on her and allowed her to step back. “By far the most fun I’ve had since coming to the Highlands.” And that included all the shenanigans he’d gotten into with Roland and even that ball.
The ball…
That something was tugging at his memory again, something to do with the color red and the—
The lady in white, the one he’d danced with at the ball! She’d had hair the color of Ember’s, and the shoe she’d left behind had matched it.
“So do ye want to see what I’ve been working on?”
Her question startled him, and he realized he’d been staring at her braid. “What?”
“My project.” She grinned. “Och, that kiss really messed with yer brain, eh?”
Max was surprised to discover his arousal was under control now. Maybe it was the memory of the frantic chase after the lady in white, or his worry for her. Or maybe it was the way Ember was smiling at him now, although he doubted it.
“Uh…yeah. Of course I’d like to see your project.”
“Good!” She grabbed his hand and began to pull him toward the lathe. “Because I’ve been meaning to ask ye for some help with it.”
“Anything,” he vowed.
At the lathe, she beamed to him. “I’m hoping to show these to yer boss. I created them, and I want to make more of them and sell them to the ladies. I ken they’ll be popular—my sisters have helped prove that—but I dinnae have the capabilities to manufacture them at the same rate, no’ in the little workshop at the inn anyway.”
Max clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, trying to follow along with her explanation. She was so animated as she waved her hands about, he doubted she even was aware of the damp spot on her blouse where his mouth had been.
But he was aware of it. Wooo-boy was he aware of it. He could see the darker pink of her areola through the fabric and remembered the hard bud of her nipple…
Focus, cowboy.
“I’ve been using scrap metal—the ends of the ingots mostly, since sheet metal willnae work. It took me months of scrounging—and Lawrence said it was alright, dinnae fash yerself about that—to find enough bronze and brass to make matching heels for mine and Bonnie’s shoes, but Vanessa’s were simpler. I have to turn them here on the lathe, since I cannae form the heel in my workshop. But then I take it back and do all the engraving there, then attach it to the rest of the shoe.”
She was looking at him with excitement, as if he were supposed to know what she was talking about. He loosened his hands to offer her a shrug and a bemused grin. “I’m sorry, love. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
Clucking her tongue, she whirled around and began to turn levers. He stepped up beside her and realized she was releasing her project from the lathe. When she handed it to him, he held it up in the light of the lantern to examine the two-inch-long, two-inch wide cylinder.
“What is it?” he asked. Hadn’t she said something about a heel?
“Here. This is my template.”
And that’s when she beamed and held up a completed shoe.
It was a little odd to realize his hand was shaking slightly as he reached reverently for it. He held it beside the cylinder and realized they were identical.
