But then her hand crept up his arm, her fingers curled around his biceps, and her mouth moved against his. “One more taste,” she pleaded, a low, husky appeal that curled through his blood like liquid temptation.
What harm could one small sample do? One sip of the passion he felt simmering beneath his mouth and his hands?
When his lips moved over hers, changing the angle and deepening the contact, she made a tiny yielding sound. Barely a sigh, it echoed through his body, bouncing off every tense, hard surface—and there were plenty—until it thundered in time with his pulse. It didn’t help that her other hand had fastened around his neck, holding him tight, urging him to forget every take-it-slow vow he’d ever made to himself.
Then her mouth opened under his and he was a goner.
Their tongues met and the essence of the kiss changed in one stroke of heat. Like one of her big California reds, she exploded in his mouth. Hot, intense, packed with complex flavors he knew would linger long after this kiss had ended.
End it now, he told himself. While you can.
Ah, but he couldn’t, not when this had been so many years coming, this chance to get his hands and his mouth on Jillian Ashton. He nipped at her bottom lip and dived back into her mouth. He eased back to taste her lips with his tongue, to press kisses to the corner of her mouth, to her chin, to her lips again. He kissed her throat because he couldn’t stop himself, and she tasted as he’d imagined, as addictively sweet and supple as the flesh under his fingertips. The flesh that curved in wicked torment—
He stopped cold.
He had his hands inside her jeans?
What had happened to take it slow, earn her trust, give her time? How far did he think he could stretch his willpower before it snapped? Before he lay her down on this table and ripped away her clothes and tasted the wine and woman on her body, in places he’d dreamed about, in ways he’d only fantasized about, for so many years.
Not the kind of horizontal tasting this table was intended for.
Carefully he slid his hands from the curves of her backside and up to her waist. He put her away from him and watched her faraway green gaze struggle to refocus as her grip loosened and slipped away from his neck.
And there they sat in an awkward afterward vacuum, their breathing ragged, her face flushed with sensual heat and his feeling about the same. Seth figured he should keep his mouth zipped until his brain started being helpful. Anything would be better than his current mental blame game. It didn’t matter who started the kiss or who goaded whom for more, only that he’d extinguished the hot connection before it burned out of control.
He should apologize—she probably expected at least a sorry, won’t happen again—but, dammit, he wasn’t sorry.
“I’d forgotten about kissing.”
Huh? Seth stared back at her for a second, completely thrown by her comment. “You’d forgotten what?” he asked, since she clearly hadn’t forgotten the how-to part. Maybe, like him, she was having trouble with cognitive function.
“The things that stir my juices,” she murmured absently. “Like a good wine or a hot gallop.”
He hadn’t known what to expect from Jillian, what reaction, which first words. Fair to say he hadn’t expected that comparison. “Are you saying that kissing should be on your short list of passions?”
“Possibly.” She pressed her fingertips to her lips, then—holy Moses—she reached up and touched him the exact same way. “And it should be on your list of skills.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
God, she was turning him inside out. The candor of her words, the heat in her eyes, the gliding touch of her fingertips across his cheek. Seth covered her hand with his, trapping it against his cheek and savoring its smooth warmth for the time it took him to feel something else.
The smooth warmth of her wedding band.
It lay flush against his skin, a real and visceral reminder of why he shouldn’t have been kissing her. Why he shouldn’t have been dreaming up some go-slow, win-herover fantasy, either. His brother’s widow still wore the symbol of her love, of her enduring connection to a man who’d scorned the sanctity of marriage.
Right up until the night he died.
Seth’s gut twisted as he peeled her fingers from his face. “I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said shortly, and he stood up. “I’ll go get the rest of your glasses.”
Confusion clouded her eyes as she stared up at him. “There’s no need to do that.”
Oh, yeah, there was a need. To get the hell out of here before the bitter churning in his gut had him saying things that didn’t need saying. He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “You don’t trust me with your glassware anymore?”
“I trust you, Seth. You’ve always been straightforward and honest with me, so please don’t walk away now. Not without explaining what just happened here.”
No, he hadn’t always been straightforward and honest. He’d kept things from her, painful truths that he’d buried deep beneath the rubble of the past. There was no reason to share them, then or now or ever. No need to share the truth burning hot in his blood, either, but she was watching him with a steady, direct gaze, quietly pleading for the same from him.
“I haven’t always been honest with you,” he admitted tightly. “Not about you and me.”
A stillness came over her body, her expression. “Do you mean about this…attraction?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Oh, okay. Because I’ve felt something, too, this past week. I know—”
“Not just this week, Jillian. You had reason to feel uncomfortable around me. That kiss has been a long time coming.”
Yeah, she had reason to look shocked, too. A right to stare at him with those big green eyes while the thick cellar air enclosed them in recollections of that kiss.
“And now it’s been—the kiss, that is—” She swallowed and moistened her lips. “What now?”
Seth straightened, preparing to leave and get those glasses, whether she wanted them or not. Preparing to get the hell away from honest-eyed temptation.
“While you’re still wearing that ring? Nothing, Jillian. Not one blessed thing.”
Seth might have rocked Jillian’s world on that sultry Sunday afternoon, but one breathtaking kiss and one ground-shaking revelation didn’t change much in the big scheme of things.
Afterward, back at the Vines, Caroline had insisted on serving coffee and cake in her garden. Rachel snuggled onto Jillian’s lap and made her chest ache with a hollow tenderness. Nobody seemed to notice the studied lack of eye contact between Seth and Jillian.
And the next day, life went on. The renovations started with Seth using the winery’s two visitor-free days to attack the heavy work. Better that no walls fall on tourists, she supposed, and she’d left him alone to do his thing. He knew where to find her if needed.
Obviously he hadn’t needed.
A good thing, Jillian reminded herself for the umpteenth time on Tuesday afternoon. Not seeing him meant she didn’t have to worry about forgetting herself and staring at, say, his mouth in a moment of unprofessional weakness. She had enough to keep busy anyway, what with setting up the tasting stations in the cellar and priming her staff on the new layout and procedure. On top of this, she’d initiated her let’s-stop-stewing-and-start-acting strategy regarding the Anna and Spencer situation.
If one could label a tentative first step with no planned future steps a strategy.
On