“No,” Dorian took a full mouthful. “I cannot say I have been accused of that.”
“Clearly,” she flung her hands up in frustration. “I am at a loss as to why I have agreed to this sham marriage at all, knowing that I may be a candidate for bedlam at the end of it.”
He snorted. “If you haven’t lost your head before, why would you now?”
“My aunt and uncle were afractionas frustrating as you are,” she huffed.
“In the balance of things, I have the upper hand on frustration here,” Dorian drawled dryly, still feeling himself throb under his flap.
She rolled her eyes. “What on earth are you talking about now?”
He threw his head back and laughed, unable to find another reaction. She was so innocent, so pure; a part of him felt tainted just being in her vicinity. And why in God’s name did he think she was adorable when he knew, for a fact, that she was the most frustrating female he’d ever met?
“If I tell you, you will collapse,” he said, reaching for the bottle and splashing another drink into the glass.
“You are drinking?” She didn’t hide her disapproval. “Why would you imbibe at this critical juncture?”
“I can hold my spirits,” he said curtly.
She turned mutinous. Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared. “Tell me why you barged into my room like a troglodyte.”
“No.”
“Try me.”
He was on his feet in the next breath, advanced quickly, and had her back pressed against the wall. He planted both palms on either side of her shoulders, trapping her. In the next instant, after a frantic gleam of his eyes… his lips were upon hers.
Like the ripple in the air before a thunderstorm, charged awareness crackled over her, lifting gooseflesh from her skin and the soft hairs on the back of her neck.
His kiss—her third with him—was a shock and a revelation at once. In the steamy darkness, his hard, firm lips ignited a dormant need. Ellie felt paralyzed.
Everything around her faded, but he ground her; his scent, his body, his pressing closeness. The butterflies swarming in her belly were beating up a storm under her breastbone.
“Open for me,” he whispered. “Let me in.”
Somewhere in the far recesses of her mind, she realized that her lips were clamped shut. Senses spinning, she obeyed his order, and his tongue plunged boldly inside.
His kiss swept over her like an inferno, sucking the air from her lungs; in some distant part of her mind, she knew she ought to be struggling, protesting… but the protest died.
Curiosity and craving rolled into one, and an intrinsic yearning surged from the deepest recesses of her being. Instinct took over, all thoughts abandoning her, save one.
More.
A desperate moan escaped her, and he swallowed the sound.
Tilting her head back, and then the kiss caught fire. Senses aflame, she felt the hot, invading thrust of his tongue, and she answered naturally with a parry of her own—as unsophisticated as it was.
A low growl rumbled from him, he might not even care. Their tongues twisted and twined, the slippery slide releasing a rush through her skin, pulling pinpricks of pleasure spreading through her body. Hunger for something she could not quite place came roaring to life inside her, and the feeling was astonishing.
He lifted her against the wall, and she felt his thigh boldly insinuating between her legs. Her neck arched as his lips moved over and down her cheek to titillate her throat, licking her tender skin and working his way down to her pulse point.
Her woman’s place was throbbing, aching, shockingly wet, and the heat of that thickly muscled ridge between her legs burned through the layers of her petticoats. He groaned, and she slid her fingers into his thick hair, holding him in place so he could suckle.
“Doesthatanswer your question?” The raw hunger in his voice mesmerized her as he stepped away to sweep the glass from the table.
His back was turned to her, the muscles of his shoulders flexing as he threw the rest of the drink down. Ellie was glad the wall was at her back as she doubted she could stand firmly—certainly not after that.
“We need to be at the church tomorrow at nine,” he called over his shoulder. “We cannot afford to be late.”
