He was no newcomer to females, whether exchanging chaste pecks with debutantes at country assemblies in his earlier years to the more adventurous encounters ever since a widow in Bath taught him the mechanics of intimacy, touching every part of him except his heart.
But this!This was a sweet and sensual conflagration.This waswantingmade manifest, the careful architecture of manners collapsing into raw and real desire.He opened his mouth, and Lise mirrored him, allowing for a heated fencing of tongues.
When they broke apart, gasping, the candlelight illuminated her flushed cheeks and red lips, slightly swollen.Similarly affected, his heart pounded as though he were an untested youth.
“This is wrong,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed, only to lean down and nuzzle her satin-soft neck.
“I am leaving London soon.I am promised.”
“I know.”He thought those were important concepts, yet irrelevant to this moment of passion.
“Then why —?”she began.
“Because I will never see you again,” Jonathan said, and the truth of it was a blade in his chest.“Because you deserve to be kissed as though you matter more than anyone else in the world.”
“Maybe I do, to ...him,” she whispered, entirely without conviction.
Jonathan scoffed.“Then he wouldn’t have let you out of his sight.I cannot bear the thought of you belonging to a man who does not make you look the way you do right now.”
Her breath hitched.“Perhaps my betrothed and I are deeply in love, and I am perfectly content to marry him.”Then Lise sucked in her lower lip again, making him swallow hard, before she asked, “How do I look right now?”
“Like a goddess who understands her power.”He took a deep breath and confessed, “Over me.”
Lise frowned, and then slowly, deliberately, she went up on tiptoe and kissed him again, without trepidation or hesitation.Her gloved hands slid into his hair, mussing it.He’d encouraged her, and she was playing along.Obviously, she had about as much sense of self-preservation as a newborn lamb.None at all.
Moreover, she seemed to have no idea how dangerous was her current situation.
Groaning against her mouth, Jonathan moved his hands down her back, over the flare of her hips, to cup her buttocks, feeling the warmth of her through silk and linen.Then he squeezed.
She gasped, their mouths still fused.When she relaxed in his hold, they stumbled back until she was pressed against the wall and he was pressed against her.There was nothing between them except fabric and the wild hammer of their hearts.For he could certainly feel hers as strong and quick as his own.
“Lise,” he breathed against her throat, tasting the salt of her skin.“Tell me to stop.”
“No.”Then after a pause, she demanded, “Say my name again.”
His hands trembled as they skimmed up her body, until his fingers could trace the edge of her bodice and touch the ribbon beneath her breasts.
“Lise.”It was a prayer.
Pausing to tear off his gloves even more quickly than at the supper, using his teeth, he palmed the soft curves of her full breasts, which had tempted him all evening.She arched into his hands, her head falling back, resting against the plaster wall.Taking that as permission — reckless, damning permission — Jonathan slid one finger beneath the neckline of her gown.
Her skin was impossibly soft, warm, and when his fingertip brushed the edge of her nipple, she made a sound he would carry to his grave.A feathery moan, breathless and broken, yielding to him whatever he wanted.And it made his shaft rigid as a cannon.
“Jonathan,” she gasped.Hearing his name on her lips unmade him.
Growing bolder, he gathered the silk of her skirt, dragging it upward along with her petticoat, inch by inch with his other hand, until at last, his fingers could slip underneath, glide his palm across her bare skin and the trembling muscles of her thigh.She did not stop him.
Instead, she shifted her stance, opening for him, her hands clutching his shoulders as though he were the only solid thing in a spinning world.
He knew that feeling intensely.
When he found her damp curls, she cried out.Softly, thank God, a sound muffled against his shoulder.And he stilled his hand, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might crack his ribs.
“Should I stop?”he managed.
“No.Please.No.”
