The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte: Just a Taste / Awaken the Senses / Estate Affair. Bronwyn Jameson

Using her hands on his body for guidance, she worked her way around to the front and started unfastening.

      “What are you doing?” he asked, low and throaty.

      “The first step is opening the bottle. Letting it breathe.” With a side of his open shirt in each hand, she leaned in until her nose all but touched his throat. “Aroma is the most important part.”

      “Why is that?” Deep, close, his voice seemed to rumble from his chest. Fortuitous that she didn’t need to think to answer because Jillian had ceased thinking. Now she operated on senses, on a purely visceral level.

      “A good wine has its own distinct aroma. Very recognizable.” Like Seth, she decided. She would recognize him anywhere, purely by her body’s reaction to his scent. She breathed deeply, her senses so heightened by his nearness that they quivered. “The nose picks up so much more than the palate, so while the aromas are still in your nose, you take your first sip.”

      She thought about tasting the hot skin of his neck, right there where she had sniffed, but at the last second suffered an attack of temerity. Instead, she stretched up on her toes and tasted his mouth. A slow sip from his lips that stirred her blood like the first juice from the presses.

      “White pepper, a little heat,” she whispered. “Rich, velvety mouthfeel.”

      “Mouthfeel. Is that what it sounds like?”

      “Mmm.” She rubbed her lips against his, purred somewhere deep inside, then ducked back for another slow taste. “It’s all about how the…wine…feels in your mouth. As opposed to body, which is the weight on your tongue.”

      She stroked his bottom lip with her tongue, and that was it. No more games, no more teasing, no more lessons in the art of wine. Strong, bold, assertive, he took her face in his hands and her mouth with his tongue. Just a meeting of mouths and bodies and a desire that shuddered through them both. She couldn’t get enough of his kiss, of his hands on her face, in her hair, and—thank you, finally!—on her body.

      Even when that first swell of fever abated and the mating of their mouths turned less frantic, less carnal, she could not stop kissing him. She nibbled at his lips, along the whiskery harshness of his jaw and dipped down to the vulnerable spot at the base of his throat where life beat hard and fast.

      No shyness now, when she nuzzled the hair-rough texture of his chest and licked one hardened nipple. His hands fisted in her hair and he muttered a caution about slowing down, something that urged her to, yes, slow it down and savor every moment before it slipped away. She slid her hands up and inside the sleeves of his shirt, peeling away each side until she could curl her fingers around the smooth, hot skin of his biceps.

      A work of art, those muscles, to be explored and appreciated by hands and mouth and tongue.

      Vaguely, his gravelly sound of frustration registered and she knew that his fastened cuffs had caught on his hands, holding him captive to his own shirt and her exploring mouth. Empowered, she smiled against his skin and carried on…until a loud bump and a low curse and the clink of glass against glass brought her head up.

      Blinking, she realized the blindfold was gone—when had that happened?—and that he’d backed into the table. In another time, another mood, the situation might have struck a funny note, but now the only chords twanging were off-tune and awkward and terrifyingly serious.

      Terrifying enough to rock her back on her new two-inch ruby-red heels as she broke an intense moment of eye contact. She waved a hand at his predicament. “Here, let me help.”

      Surprisingly, he accepted, and she managed to fumble the cuffs undone and his hands free and it struck her hard—fist in chest, hard—exactly what she’d been doing.

      Tasting him, undressing him, seducing him.

      And now what?

      They faced each other, hotly aware that the next step had to be taken, honestly, without the camouflage of darkness and the teasing game of tasting. Jillian’s heart pounded. Her tongue, she feared, had fused to the roof of her mouth and her knees started to wobble. She sank down onto the leather sofa and picked up the glass that had rolled to the floor—the empty one, thankfully—and sat it back on the table. Next to the open bottle of ninety-nine Casinelli pinot noir.

      That she picked up, too, a solid prop for her nervous hands and a topic to get her tongue unstuck and working again. “So, I did get the ninety-nine right.”

      “Was there any doubt?”

      “No.”

      Her heart bounded when his black pants moved into her line of vision. Right in front on her. He reached down, took the bottle from her hand and carefully placed it on the table. “Now it’s my turn.”

      She looked up and her eyes snagged first on his thighs. Because they were so close and broad and imposing. Because she didn’t want to stare higher, where those pants jutted with his arousal.