Chapter Three
The first touchof his lips to hers was nothing short of incendiary. Her mouth was even lusher than it looked. He kissed her with the sudden, voracious hunger that had ignited within him from the moment he’d found himself enclosed in a confined space with her. It was visceral, this need to make his mark upon the strange creature who dressed as a man and spoke of meteorological predictions.
She gasped and he took advantage, his tongue sinking into the wet heat of her mouth. He pulled her closer still, relishing the decadence of her. She tasted like cocoa and sweetness, and nothing and no one had ever been more delicious. He wanted more.
The brim of her hat knocked into his forehead. He plucked it away, tearing his lips from hers so that he could have his first good look at her. She was younger than he had supposed, and he recognized it in the wideness of her eyes, the faultless cream of her forehead. Everything about her was fresh and new and different.
He could say with all honesty that he had never met another woman like her. His gaze swept over the arresting planes of her face, lingering on her freckles, bright-blue eyes, the slight cleft in her chin. Her hair was the lustrous red of a summer sunset, bold and beautiful, gathered into a thick braid that swept down her back. Stray wisps curled around her face. Harry could not resist catching the tip of his glove in his teeth and shucking it so that he might feel the softness of her skin.
A jolt went through him as his fingers trailed first over her high cheekbone, then lower to the curve of her jaw. She held still for his exploration, eyes never wavering from his. The way she watched him—one part meticulous calculation, one part wary desire—was enough to make his cock twitch. Orange and bergamot perfumed the air. Her thighs clenched around his, and he swore he could feel the molten heat of her cunny through the layers of trousers separating them.
“Your name,” he said, striving to keep the breathlessness from his voice lest she think he was so affected by a mere kiss and a woman on his lap. Which of course he was. “Give me your name.”
He trailed a caress down the smooth line of her throat, absorbing the wild flutter of her pulse in the hollow at the base. Her coat gaped and he made the tantalizing discovery that her shirt was not buttoned to the collar, leaving a mouthwatering swath of her skin revealed. A wildness took hold.
Just when he thought she would remain stubborn and deny him, she made a hum of pleasure and clutched at his shoulders. “Alexandra.”
“Alexandra.” He tried it on his tongue, mesmerized by the hitch in her breath as his fingers traced the vee of bare skin he had uncovered. His mind tried to recall an Alexandra Danvers and could not. He was sure he had never met her, and though her name held a certain familiarity, placing it escaped his lust-addled mind.
There were a thousand and one reasons why he ought not to continue on the ruinous path upon which he found himself. A myriad of reasons why he should instead button up her shirt, tug her overcoat about her shoulders, and deliver her to the squab opposite him where she belonged. A whole host of reasons why he should avoid ever setting his lips to hers again.
But Harry had been doing what he should do for his entire life, and all it had managed to get him was the woman he’d wanted to make his wife as his sister-in-law and an interminable Christmas at home looming ahead like a veritable Yuletide gallows. He had worked hard to become an MP, to further his causes and beliefs. His every action had been steeped in caution and precision, designed to uphold the Marlow family name and legacy.
What was the harm in one moment of madness? In giving in to his impulses and desires for the five minutes remaining in the carriage ride to the rear entry of Boswell House? Outside, snow swirled and covered the land in gleaming white. If any holiday was one of endless hope and possibility, surely it was Christmas.
He plucked a button from its mooring. Would it be wrong to see the curve of one ivory breast? Lord Harry Marlow, MP, would never act with such a rash dearth of honor. But that man, the unquestionable gentleman who was always above reproach and did the right thing—the man who had never even once kissed the woman he’d been courting—had grown restless and bored. Yes, he was feeling decidedly out of sorts, and staid, responsible Lord Harry Marlow, MP, could bloody well sod off.
Was this not the season for miracles?
“Lord Harry,” she said, stilling his fingers in the act of undoing another fastening on her shirt.
Devil take it. He had gone too far. In a burst, his conscience returned to him, along with the weighty manacles of responsibility. The repercussions for such an indiscretion as this were endless. What in the hell was he doing?
“Forgive me,” he forced himself to say, though stopping and forgiveness were the last things he wished to think about in this crazed moment of uninhibited passion.
Had he truly been attempting to debauch an innocent—and one of his family’s Christmas guests at that—in a carriage in the midst of a blizzard? He ought to leap from the vehicle and bury his head in the nearest snow bank in shame. He withdrew his touch and clamped his hands around her waist, intending to deposit her safely back on the cushion opposite him.
“My lord, stop,” she startled him by ordering in a rather commanding voice for a lady so young. A bewitching flush crept over her cheeks. “Please, would you kiss me again?”
Her sweet request undid him. A bolt of pure, molten lust made his cock go rigid. He went mindless, a growl tearing from his throat as he covered her kiss-swollen lips with his. He had never before seen a female in trousers, but he wholeheartedly approved of her unorthodox decision as his hands swept down to clasp the delicious curves of her hips. There was no mistaking her femininity. She was all woman, lush and lovely.
Her arms twined about his neck, and she scooted nearer on his thigh. The friction of her on his leg unleashed a fresh onslaught of need as the movement crushed her breasts flush against his chest. Her overcoat had done a great deal of concealing.
His tongue dipped once again between her lips, sliding inside her silken heat, and she tasted every bit as sweet as before. His hands seemed to take on a life of their own, clawing at her overcoat, peeling away her layers until he palmed the heavy weight of her breasts through her shirt. She did not wear a corset, and her hard nipples prodded him in reward. Every part of her, from the breathy sighs she made to the way she ground against him, to the pebbled peaks of her breasts, was so responsive.
She was a fierce thing, and he was drawn to her heat, to her flame.
For the first time in his life, the prospect of getting burned didn’t alarm him.
Nothing alarmed him other than the thought of having to end their kiss, which surely he must. The carriage had ceased to sway. Either they were once more lodged in the snow with yet another broken axle for their efforts, or they had reached their destination.
But he could not seem to control himself. His thumbs rubbed over the tight buds of her nipples in slow circles. He sucked her lower lip into his mouth, dragged kisses over her jaw, pressed his lips to the shell of her ear, traced its delicate whorl with his tongue until she shivered.
His blood thundered through his veins, and all he knew was that he had to have this woman. He kissed Alexandra’s throat, inhaled deeply of her scent, for it seemed concentrated on the smooth dip of skin where her shoulder and her neck met.
The urge to taste her here would not be contained. He opened his mouth and sucked her skin, wringing a moan from her. She tasted of orange and the saltiness of her skin and something else that was indefinable yet delicious. Harry plucked at her nipples, emboldened by her response, half drunk on the way she made him feel—as if he were simultaneously high in the clouds and weightless, capable of all things, wild and free.
He never wanted this moment of abandon to end.
