She shivered at the thought.
“Miss Oliver,” he continued, his voice firmer now. “You must listen. I understand that the idea of pursuing a criminal might seem exciting to you. But I assure you that it is a world you don’t want to pursue. This man could very well be dangerous, especially if he ends up cornered. So I must, again, insist that you cannot be a part of my investigation.”
She pretended disappointment, bending her head with a long sigh. “I suppose I understand. Is there anything I could say or do that would change your mind?”
He shifted again, and his voice was even huskier when he said, “I’m afraid not. Though I do have a request.”
She arched a brow and took a step toward him, closing the distance he had created when she called him by his first name. “What is it?”
“I hope you won’t reveal what you know to anyone else at the party, even your companion or your friends. Only Roseford and the duchess are aware of what Barber and I are doing, and secrecy is, as you might imagine, paramount in this situation.”
She edged a little closer, until she was just in front of him. God’s teeth, he was tall. Like a tree…and she’d always been a good climber. She reached out, surprised her hand was trembling a fraction, and rested her palm on his chest. There seemed to be a ripple that moved through him when she touched him, though he managed to keep his face impassive.
“Secrets,” she whispered. “I’m very good at keeping those,Derrick. You needn’t worry about me.”
His fists clenched tight at his sides and his jaw flexed. She could see him fighting, all that control trying to stay in place, all those lovely edges fraying, fraying, fraying. Oh, how easy it would be to just…
She lifted up on her tiptoes, sliding her hand up his chest, resting it on his shoulder as she brushed her lips against his jawline. The beginnings of stubble abraded her mouth and she longed to nip there, to feel that chin rub her breasts, along her inner thigh. She’d had every intention of stopping just there but now, well, now she wanted just a little more.
She lifted higher and let her mouth take his. For a fraction of a moment, he was still. But then his arms came around her as control wavered. He pulled her tight against his hard chest and his lips parted to welcome her seeking tongue inside.
Selina was not a virginal young lady afraid of a kiss. She’d done this very thing many times and with many men. She liked kissing, with all its angles and emotions and connections. She especially liked the thrill in the blood that always accompanied a first kiss.
But despite all her experience, despite the game she was playing, the moment Derrick’s rough tongue pressed into her mouth, she recognized something shocking.
This was unlike any kiss she’d ever shared before.
This was…animal, passionate, a claiming unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It was out of control and that was frightening. She, like the man before her, was always in control, especially when it came to something physical.
Despite that, she didn’t want him to stop. Now that their mouths were crushing together, innate hunger yearning to be sated, she never wanted to stop.
He wasn’t gentle, though he had a great deal of finesse as he tangled his tongue with hers with an urgency that spoke to desire and skill mixed in one. He sucked her tongue as he molded her closer, a flash of pain that made her fingertips dig hard into his back through his jacket. She sank into the sensations his mouth created. Pleasure that arced through her body, tingling through her limbs, into her core, throbbing between her legs as she lifted into him and tried to find the friction that would ease this wild ache.
The moment she did so, his mouth stilled on hers, and then he pulled away, taking a step back. His breath was short, his lips wet. She could still taste him on her tongue, still feel his overwhelming energy surrounding her like a cloak that only the two of them had ever worn.
She had won this battle in the war he didn’t even realize they were fighting. And yet she felt no triumph in that.
No, she felt something far more dangerous. She felt a longing she hadn’t experienced in a lifetime. A need for more. And that was dangerous, because it required depending upon another person for her pleasure, for her happiness, for her satisfaction. That was one thing she did not do. Not ever.
“I-I won’t tell a soul,” she promised, shocked at the stammer and the shaking of her voice. He would read it as a missish response to the kiss rather than what it was, but she knew better. She knew she’d been moved when she hadn’t wanted to be.
And she turned on her heel and bolted from the orangery to escape that truth and the man who had revealed it with his expert kiss.
Chapter 6
Derrick sat before the hearth in his chamber, his fingers steepled before him, his chin resting against them as he stared into the dying fire. In less than an hour the gathering before supper would begin in the parlor. And he would have to see Selina again.
Considering he hadn’t stopped thinking about kissing her since she slipped from the orangery, that was a dangerous truth, indeed.
She was playing a game with him, of course. He would be a fool not to see it. She was toying with the idea of being sweet and innocent, playing a role, but it didn’t fully…suit her. She wasn’t sweet. She was saucy and seductive and sharp as a blade. All equally attractive, but none of themsweet.
And innocent? Well, that he didn’t know about. It was none of his business, really. She was the sister of a duke, bastard or not. She had likely been raised in a sheltered environment. He might simply be the toy of a bored aristocrat, stretching the bounds of her world because she knew his secret and it titillated her. Or she might be…something else. He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t fully read her. That was both troubling and intoxicating.
Shewas intoxicating, from the softness of her body molding to his to the flavor of her lips, to the little sound she’d made deep in her throat when he’d driven his tongue into her mouth and staked the tiniest of claims.
Wrong, all of it. But it had happened, and now he was going to have to live with whatever consequences came, including the heated memories that kept making his cock rock-hard and his mind too foggy to think.
Tonight he needed to think. The Earl and Countess of Winford would arrive tomorrow with her blasted Breston necklace and he wouldn’t be able to spend hours pondering the fullness of Selina Oliver’s lower lip, how much he’d wanted to tug on it with his teeth until she ground her hips against his.
