Page 10 of After the Spy Seduces

Leaning his forearm against the barn wall beside her, he shifted rakishly closer and forced a grin, to once again slip behind the safety of false facades. “I’m just a man who wants to become a vicar.”

She lifted a brow, seeing right though him. “You are a liar.”

“Vicar, liar…” He clucked his tongue and fussed with the man’s neckcloth at her delicate throat, as if contemplating stripping it off her…and what a damnable shame that he couldn’t. “Such insults, Miss Morgan! And to the man who saved your life.”

“To the man who had his hands where they shouldn’t have been,” she muttered.

Her scolding comment only earned her a mischievous smile. “To the man who will help you find your brother, if you’re honest with me.”Or what’s left of him.

He straightened and took a step back from her to demonstrate his sincerity.

“Yet you still think him a traitor,” she said softly.

No. A murderer. His eyes fixed on hers. “I think his disappearance might not have had anything to do with the Frenchman you met with tonight.”

A glimmer of hope flashed in her eyes, chased immediately by a pang of guilt in his chest. He was misleading her, purposefully so, in order to keep her out of harm.

But if Morgan were still alive, then Diana was the only path to the man. And if Morgan were dead, then Kit damned well wanted proof.

“We won’t know anything for certain until we find your brother. And the only way to do that is to work together.”

She bit her bottom lip at the temptation of his proposition and looked warily at him as if he were the devil himself, come to bargain away her soul.

Perhaps he was. But he would never be able to absolve himself of Fitch’s murder without her help. In that, she might truly be an angel leading him to his salvation, after all.

“If I agree to help you, you’ll tell me if you discover anything about where he might be?” she asked.

Not a question, he understood. Terms of negotiation.

But in the end, any negotiation always included terms of surrender for at least one side, and his heart skipped that she’d so easily relented. “Immediately.”

The tension eased from her shoulders. “All right. Then we’re in this together.”

“Together,” he repeated, far more huskily than he’d intended, and stepped forward once more to close the space between them, to once more cup her face and tilt her mouth toward his.

She arched a brow at his obvious intention. “Sealing our agreement with a kiss, are we?”

“My favorite way.”

“The gentlemen at White’s must find that fascinating.”

He paused for a beat, his mouth so close to hers that the heat of her lips teased at his. Then he grinned at her audacity. “You’d be surprised.”

Her gaze lowered longingly to his mouth. “Actually, I’ve heard—”

He brought his mouth over hers, capturing her lips beneath his and finally taking the kiss that he’d ached to claim since he’d discovered her at the tavern.

Sweet Jesus. He nearly groaned. She tasted of vanilla and cherries, of warm summer afternoons and rose gardens, and of something spicier beneath that he couldn’t quite place but found himself craving. Shoving his fingers into the silky waves of her hair, he traced the tip of his tongue across the seam of her lips, coaxing her to grant him an even deeper taste.

She hesitated for one heart-stuttering moment when he thought she might stop him, only to relax with a sigh and open her mouth to his. Her arm drifted up to encircle his neck and pull herself closer in silent permission.

He eagerly accepted and slipped his tongue between her lips in a silken glide, to drink in the sweetness hidden inside. Dear Lord, how delicious she tasted! And how hungry he was as he kissed her, open-mouth and feverish… Starving, in fact. Enough to devour her if she’d let him.

“Who’s there?” A shout broke through the foggy silence surrounding them. “Show yourself! And be warned—I’ve got a gun.”

Chapter 4

Startled, Diana opened her eyes just in time to see an annoyed grimace twist Carlisle’s lips as they lingered above hers, their kiss interrupted. Full, sensuous lips…close enough for their warmth to heat hers, their deliciously masculine taste still lingering on her tongue.