“Is that why you always smell of rose petals? Why their lovely fragrance clings to you?”
She nodded.
As gently as he could manage, he brushed his fingertips over her eyelids, urging her to close them again. “What happened next, darling?”
“You positioned me before the fountain and stood behind me. I could feel the warmth of your body—and the tickle of your breaths, as you brought your mouth to my ear.”
“Wait,” Teddy said, unfolding from the sofa.
Georgina’s eyes blinked open just before he reached down and hauled her to her feet.
Then he turned her to face away from him. “Close your eyes, Georgina. Are they closed?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He moved very close, his body cocooning hers, almost, but not quite touching. “Go on.”
She, indeed, smelled of roses. The idea that she favored the flower simply because he had once given her a mere single-stemmed bloom filled him with an unbearable tenderness, and everything in himwanted to pull her into him. To luxuriate in her softness, to snug her exquisitely rounded derriere against his groin, cup her enticingly full breasts in his palms. He was hard as a rock and hanging on her every word.
“I could smell your delicious, Teddy scent,” she whispered.
He choked out a laugh and, unable to resist, placed his hands on her shoulders, edging the capped sleeves down to brush her bare skin with his palms.
“I pulled a hair pin from my coiffure…” She mimed doing so, arching her back, and her bottom did graze him then.
He bit back a tortured groan.
“And tossed it, then heard the tiniest splash. And you said, ‘What did you wish?’ And I knew I shouldn’t tell you, but I did.”
His hands flexed on her shoulders. “What did you say?” But he already knew the answer.
Her words came out in a whisper he had to strain his ears to hear. “I said, ‘I wish you would kiss me.’”
He turned her, unresisting, to face him and her arms twined up around his neck as if they belonged there.
A shudder of exquisite need rolled through him. “Say it again, Georgina.”
She gazed up at him, pure longing and desire in her beautiful quicksilver eyes. “Kiss me, Teddy,please.”
In the next heartbeat, his mouth covered hers, feasting and ravenous. She tasted so sweet, like sweet brandy, and herlips. For the love of the saints, no woman’s lips had ever felt so right under his. So…God, he couldn’t get enough of her kiss, her softness. He wanted to feel those luscious petals on every part of his body. He sucked her lower lip between his teeth and nibbled, gently, so gently.
She shivered in his arms—arms he had not meant to, had not made a conscious decision to, wrap around her. He couldn’t draw her close enough.
She seemed to be suffering with the same affliction. Her muscles quivered, straining to hold him to her.
Georgina, petite, curvaceous, Georgina. She was nowhere near his height, but she fit him, fit his hard frame as if she had been fashioned only for him.
This was right.Shewas right.
The glorious sense of being fully alive, fully present, fully seen, fueled a ravenous need in him—for this woman, and this woman alone, with the body of a goddess and the heart of an angel—to claim her as his.
You can have your way with as many women as you like, Ted, but you’ll leave off my sister.
He stumbled back as if she’d pushed him, and glanced about, looking for the owner of the voice who’d spoken so clearly he might be present in this very room, even though Teddy knew no one was here save the two of them.
But he knew who had said it, once upon a time.
What he didn’t know was why. Why would Georgina’s brother warn him from her?
