He could kiss Tilly beneath this magical, snowy sky.
In this moment, and every moment since he’d kissed her, it was all he wanted.
Except something sat inside him at an odd angle—and he couldn’t quite lay his finger on it.
It was located somewhere in those words…
Would you like to kiss me?
Her head tipped back, her soft lips parted, she reached up and caressed the side of his face, her hand warm through her kid gloves—and his misgivings fell away. He took her heart-shaped face in his hands and pressed his mouth to hers—warm and soft against the chill of night edged with sharpness.
During and after their kiss last night, he’d thought it and her perfect.
Now, as his tongue grazed across her bottom lip…his next breath inhaling her delicate sigh, it was confirmed.
He couldn’t explain what precisely set it apart.
For this wasn’t merely about kissing a beautiful woman.
Or merely about kissing a desirable woman.
Or merely about kissing a woman in the interest of progressing the kiss all the way to her bed.
Not merely, because he supposed it was those things, too, if he was being honest.
The perfection of last night’s kiss and of this kiss lay deeper—and it held a mystery.
The sort of mystery a man could spend a lifetime exploring.
Without realizing, instinctively he’d walked her backwards until she was pressed against a tree. Every one of his senses felt lit alive.
Something else, too—hunger.
Of a sudden, he was ravenous for this woman.
Inquisitive hands slipped beneath his greatcoat, brushing across his chest, then his stomach. An appreciative laugh escaped her, and she shifted back a degree, meeting his eye, a little smile curving her mouth. “My, Lord Rhys, what muscles you have beneath your clothes.”
Lower, her hands slipped—to his hard and ready cock. Her hand grazed across his hot length that threatened to spend at any moment.
He groaned.
And it wasn’t just any groan, but long and rasped and animal…full of ache and desperation.
A year, it had been, since he’d had the touch of a woman.
But the desperation ran deeper.
Somehow, he’d gone his entire life without the touch of Tilly.
His mouth again claimed hers with a slow, deep kiss—and again she brushed curious fingers along his cock.
And again, he groaned.
She smiled against his mouth. “You like that, don’t you?”
His eyes slid open. A vertical line formed on his brow.
There.
