The Inventor (The Legend Chronicles) by Theresa Meyers Read Free Book Online Page A

a conundrum. In the midst of bedlam, she’d been sharp and strong, focused and brave. But within her was a keen intellect as bright as any arc light, balanced with a sweet, feminine heart as fragile as glass.
    His pulse thrummed hard in his chest, spreading out until it filled every cell. It was as if his whole world tilted off its axis for a moment, wobbling. He’d never met a woman who’d thrown him off balance like Sephie.
    “Marley?”
    He leaned in closer. “Yes,” he whispered.
    She blinked the damp fringe of her sparkling lashes, turning her eyes into a lake of blue. Marley felt himself falling, drowning there. “Are you going to kiss me?”
    For once, Marley found words perfectly unnecessary.

Chapter 5
     
    The rocking of the poorly sprung hackney cab and the steady clop of the horse’s hooves on the cobblestone streets faded into the edges of Marley’s awareness. All he could focus on, all that filled his senses, was Sephie.
    Marley closed the space separating them in the seconds between one pounding heartbeat and the next. His hand slid around the indent of her waist. Beneath his questing fingertips he felt the crisp cloth and regular intervals of the boning in her corset. Hard when he wanted soft. He wondered if she was just as soft there beneath all the artificially constructed barriers as her cheek had been when he’d touched the satiny smoothness of it.
    The heady fragrance of hyacinth and warm female wound about his brain, making his heartbeat extend to the very tips of all his extremities, mostly notable the one between his legs. In the back of his brain a warning claxon blared. He shouldn’t kiss her. It could ruin everything for them both. He’d never kissed a woman properly before, but her lips looked as lush and ripe as a strawberry picked fresh and sun-warmed from the field.
    She was irresistible.
    His lips touched hers, gliding and pressing against the inviting softness, seeking out her warmth. Sephie’s eyelids fluttered shut, and she made soft noises as she leaned into him, her fingers wrapping possessively around his neck and threading into his hair. Her eager response wound his need into an even tighter coil, a spring waiting for release.
    For the first time he understood why Thadeus could be so smitten by females as to lose all his common sense. Deep down Marley wanted the moment to freeze, to never end, but continually replay over and over so it could always be liks e this. The warmth of her against him, the feel of her beneath his hands, the taste of her on his tongue, the fragrance of her skin filling his senses.
    Sephie thought she might come out of her skin, or at the very least out of her dress and corset. Every inch of her skin felt alive with flame. Unlike Frobisher’s hard, punishing kisses that left her feeling like she were bruised and drowning, eager to get away, Marley’s kisses were smooth and seductive, luring her deeper into his arms until she was practically atop his lap, her skirts bunched up about her hips.
    His hands, warm and firm on her waist, had skimmed up higher, the edge of his thumb tracing along the soft, sensitive underside of her breast, making the tip pebble and ache for his touch.
    She wanted to taste him. Sephie tentatively touched the tip of her tongue against his lips. He immediately responded, opening up to her, his kiss deepening in an erotic slide that reduced her insides to a quivering mass of aspic. A persistent throb at her core grew into an unbearable ache. Sephie brushed herself against the broad expanse of his thigh to assuage it. Marley growled deeply in response.
    The hackney came to a jolting halt, causing them to nearly slide to the floor. Sephie realized how close she’d come to compromising herself in a way that could never be recovered. Something about Marley made her forget herself far too easily. She pulled back from his touch.
    “We’ve stopped.”
    A look of hurt flickered through his eyes for a moment, but then he too seemed