He teased her lips open, and then pushed into the lush wetness of her mouth with his tongue, tasting her. Tea laced with sugar. Sweeter than before, even. God. He couldn’t get enough.
A growl tore from him as he angled his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss, plundering her mouth. Showing her with his tongue and lips and teeth just how badly he wanted her. Everything he wanted to do to her. How thoroughly he wanted to claim her.
Another needy sound, and now her fingers were tangled in his hair, fingertips dancing over him in tantalizing touches, nails scraping against his scalp. Her tongue writhed against his, wet and smooth and greedy, as she consumed him too, kissing him with a carnal abandon that took him over the edge.
He hadn’t intended for the kiss to progress to anything more, but now that their mouths were fused, his ability to control himself dissolved. He moved them as one, Torrie forward and Bess backward, until he had her pinned against a wall of bookshelves. And then he thoroughly devoured her some more.
But he couldn’t stop at her lips. He buried his face in her throat, kissing the silken smoothness, finding her pulse beating hard and fast, just like his. Good. She desired him, too. He wanted her with a ferocity that startled him. Had his hips moving into hers, pressing his length against her softness. And still, it wasn’t enough.
Had he thought to woo her? To slowly seduce her?
It seemed the worst idea he had ever had by the light of day, with her pliant and warm in his arms, her abundant breasts a delicious torment as they spilled into him. He sucked on her throat, his need for more of her bare skin thwarted by her prim decolletage. He would give his left arm right now to peel her gown and suck on her nipples.
Lifting his head, he gazed down at her, pleased by the way her lips were plump and swollen from his kisses. Pleased, too, by the glazed look in her eyes. But none of these small triumphs were sufficient. Nothing, short of burying his cock deep inside her, would be. He needed her more than he needed air to breathe.
“Come to bed with me,” he said. “Let me show you how desirable you are.”
“Torrie.”
Her voice was a husky blend of desire and prim censure, and he loved it. He couldn’t tell if she was protesting or acquiescing. But in the next moment, her response failed to matter, for the door to the library opened, and the voice of Harriet intruded on the fog of lust clouding his mind.
“Torrie, Mama said you were… Oh dear! Forgive me. I hadn’t realized you were… Perhaps I ought to just go.”
Grinding his molars, he turned to his sister, taking care to shield the flushed and thoroughly ravished Bess. Not that Harriet would gossip, and nor did he believe she would disapprove, but he was stunningly protective of his wife after what he had just learned.
And the irony in that was he was the bastard who had hurt her. He hated the man he’d been for that. Hated the absence of so many memories that forever plagued him.
“Harriet,” he greeted, attempting to keep the irritation at her untimely intrusion from his voice. “I hadn’t expected you to pay a call.”
His sister’s eyes were wide. “Of course you didn’t. I should have sent word. I’m desperately sorry. I merely thought to see how Elizabeth is settling in here at Torrington House.”
He raised a brow. “As well as can be expected.”
She would have been settling in even better if he’d had five minutes more to persuade her to join him in his bedchamber. But that wasn’t the sort of comment a gentleman made to his sister, so Torrie kept it to himself, even as he struggled to rein in his overwhelming desire for his new wife.
“It is kind of you to pay me a call,” Bess said, moving to stand at his side, looking as if she had been ravished.
He would have preferred to make her even more flushed and rumpled. To get her out of that travesty of a gown and have her naked in his bed.
Who would have thought he would be this enamored of his unexpected wife? Certainly not the Torrie of several days ago. But then, no one knew how quickly everything could change better than he did.
Harriet smiled wryly. “The next time I decide to call on you on a whim, I’ll be certain I’m not intruding.”
“You could never intrude,” Bess insisted politely.
“Yes,” Torrie growled, still vexed at the lost opportunity to seduce his wife, “you most definitely could. And did.”
Harriet sent him an apologetic glance. “Am I forgiven, dearest brother?”
“You’re forgiven,” he allowed grudgingly, for he liked his sister. She was tenderhearted and good. Quite the opposite of their mother in every way.
“I’m so pleased to have a sister,” Harriet added, smiling. “You must forgive me my enthusiasm. I never thought to see the day you married, Torrie. You were always far too content in your rakish ways.”
He winced at the reminder and wished he could change the circumstances under which he and Bess had met. Eugenia had been doing her utmost to spread gossip and fan the flames of scandal at every opportunity, and he feared the effect it would have on Bess. To that end, he did need his sister’s help with blunting the wagging tongues and earning Bess some acceptance in Society. He needed to speak with her about that. But first, he had to direct the conversation into safer waters, lest he drown.
“I’m no longer that man,” he told Harriet coolly.
Bess’s bearing had grown stiff at his side. His sister seemed to recognize her error, for she hastened to add, “And now you shall be quite content with our Bess, I know. For look at the two of you. I don’t believe I’ve seen a couple more besotted with each other.”
