“How is your headache?” he felt compelled to ask for the sake of politeness, leaning his forehead into hers.
“It is…fine,” she said on a sigh.
“I lied about kisses curing headaches,” he admitted before kissing her again. Just one more drugging sip from her lips. She was like an elixir, and he could not get enough.
He withdrew at last, breathless and aching for her.
“I lied about having a headache,” she whispered, her gaze unwavering, burning into his.
“We are both of us liars, it would seem,” he said softly. “Sinners.”
“Yes,” she agreed, tipping up her chin and rubbing her lower lip along his in the most erotic half kiss he had experienced.
In theonlyhalf kiss he had ever experienced. When had half kisses become something one did? He did not know. None of his mistresses had ever done so, he was sure of it. All hedidknow was that it made him more desperate for her than before.
Bloody hell.
He had to slow down. In truth, he had to leave this chamber.
But he could not. He could not leave her side. And not just because of his plan. Not just because he wanted to thwart her. But because ofher.
Because she was mouthwatering and breath-stealing, and she was fire to his ice, and he wanted to melt.
“We should go,” he told her anyway, the small part of his mind still capable of reasoning chiming in. “I should escort you to the west wing as I promised. As a gentleman would do.”
“What if I do not wish for you to be a gentleman?” she asked.
Fuck.
One question from her, and his cock was more rigid than ever, straining at the falls of his breeches.
“Sit,” he rasped.
It was the only word he could manage.
She stared at him for a beat, looking as if she wanted to challenge him. Indeed, part of him expected her to. But in the end, she settled upon the settee. And not with a bit of grace. Here was evidence she was not as practiced in the art of seduction as her kisses would suggest. She had dropped to the cushion with such force, the gilded wooden frame slid into the wall with a loud thump.
Some distant part of his mind wondered if anyone would overhear and come to investigate. But the rest of him only saw Miss Eugie Winter in a diaphanous billow of seafoam-colored skirts. Her dark curls were coming undone, trailing over her shoulders. Her red lips were parted. She was the most alluring sight he had ever beheld, even set against the backdrop of dark-green walls and hunting pictures.
And there was only one thing he could do.
He sank to his knees before her.
Chapter Five
The Earl ofHertford was on his knees before her.
Surely, nothing good could come of this.
She was old enough to know better. World-weary enough—thanks to the odious Baron Cunningham—to understand just how great a risk she took. One kiss was all she had given the baron, and he had turned that anthill into a mountain of pain and shame. Allowing liberties to any man, let alone another fortune-hunting peer, was the last thing she ought to be doing.
She had her plan to see through, she reminded herself.
Or, at least, shetriedto remind herself. Thinking anything at all was becoming dreadfully difficult. Especially with a man as beautiful as the earl staring at her. And especially when he slid his hands beneath the hem of her gown.
Definitely when he settled his hands upon her ankles and caressed a path upward, over her calves.
Eugie stared at him, hunger coursing through her, a throbbing ache pulsing from between her thighs and drawing outward, overtaking everything. Their gazes were locked upon each other. She had never in her life been more painfully aware of the unwanted barrier of a gentleman’s gloves and her own silk stockings.
