" Why would you do that with me? A simple kiss was enough. What could you be thinking?"
"What indeed." He pushed a hand through his hair, more than a little offended at her accusatory tone. "I'm male. You rubbed your... femaleness all over me. I didn't think. I reacted."
"You reacted."
"Yes."
"To..." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "To me."
"It is a natural response. Aren't you a scientist? Then you should understand. Any red-blooded man would react to such stimulus."
She stepped back. She dipped her chin and peered at him over her spectacles. "So you find me stimulating."
"That's not what I-" He bit off the rest of that sentence. The only way to end a nonsensical conversation was to simply cease talking.
Colin drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He closed his eyes briefly. And then he opened them and looked at her. Really looked at her, as though for the first time. He saw thick, dark hair a man could gather by the fistful. Prim spectacles, perched on a gently sloped nose. Behind the lenses, wide-set eyes- dark and intelligent. And that mouth. That ripe, pouting, sensual mouth.
He let his gaze drift down her form. There was a wicked thrill to knowing lushness smoldered beneath that modest sprigged muslin gown. To having felt her shape, scouting and chartering her body with all the nerve endings of his own.
Their bodies had met. More than that. They'd grown acquainted.
Nothing more would come from it, of course. Colin had rules for himself, and as for her... she didn't even liked him, or pretend to. But she showed up in the middle of the night, hatching schemes that skirted the line between academic logic and reckless adventure. She started kisses she had no notion how to continue.
Taken all together, she was simply...
A surprise. A fresh, bracing gust of the unexpected, for good or ill.
"Perhaps," he said cautiously, "I do find you stimulating. "

― Tessa Dare , A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove, #2)