“Would you be open to a kiss, Miss Trelayne?” he asked.
“A kiss?” she asked, barely speaking.
“Mmm-hmm,” he rumbled, as he dipped his head. His nose was just inches from her jaw.
“To test the unyielding societal rule?” she guessed.
“No.”
“To celebrate today’s progress?”
“No.”
“But... why?”
“If I must think of a reason...” he said, but then he trailed off.
They stood so very close, they shared the same air. Warm, whisker-rough angles of his face brushed against her nose, her chin, her ear. With every tantalizing scrape, sparks rose in her chest, and she raised her chin, seeking, wanting.
Desire unspooled inside her, a tight, corded rope stretching to the limit.
Again, she repeated his words, prompting him, “‘If I must think of a reason...’”
“Right,” he breathed, and he nudged closer. Her shoulders leaned into the arm he’d propped on the pillar. The wool of his coat and the silk of his waistcoat rasped against the ruffle of her bodice. His thigh pressed into the layers of her skirt.
“The reason is,” he began lowly, speaking against her neck, “you told the girls you’d never had a kiss, andI couldn’t believe it. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve been driven to distraction, Miss Trelayne, thinking about your unkissed . . . state.Youare a distraction to me.Youand your unkissed mouth.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Andbecause I want to.”
I want, she thought, agreeing. The two words sang through her; there was a chorus of want.
She didn’t trust her voice. She nodded instead.
God help her, she ducked her face to seek out his lips.
Likely, this is a very bad idea, Ian thought, his last truly coherent thought before he kissed her.
But then she was there,reallythere. Not nearby. Not jostled against him. In his arms, against his chest. Her lips were parted, seeking him—and he descended. The kiss was harder than he’d intended. Actually, he’d had no intention, like so many pinnacle moments in his life, he’d not seen it until he lived it.
One minute they’d been talking about the girls, and then theyhadn’tbeen talking about the girls, and then his brain lost track of the conversation, and he could only think how very close she was, and how very curious he’d been about how she would feel and taste.
He’d had the forethought to ask permission only because he’d been a gentleman once upon a time. This was a new role: Portrait Gallery Stalker. Also new: Kisser of Staff. After acknowledging these, all forethought and afterthought and good sense evaded him entirely, because kissing her was (this, hehadpredicted) so thoroughly incinerating, his consciousness caught flame like a very dry log, every hollow and nook suddenly engulfed, licking hot.
She didn’t know how to kiss; she hadn’t lied about this. If curiosity had led him to this moment, his reward was the incredibly arousing act of slowing down, of sliding his hands to her shoulders and squaring her in front of him, ofwidening his stance, of starting from the beginning. Teaching. Coaxing. A soft, slow peck. Once. Twice. The third time, he lingered, fitting his bottom lip below hers. She responded to each soft peck with a little jolt, leaning in to follow him. He smiled at her eagerness and then nibbled, ever so softly, just at the corner of her mouth. When her lips parted, he hovered there, his mouth bussing against hers, waiting for her. Immediately, gratifyingly, she sought more, and he deepened the kiss, swiping his tongue across her bottom lip.
She let out a delicious little gasp and he inhaled it, allowing her to seek more still, to take the lead. It was exhilarating and mind erasing and thuddingly erotic.
Ian couldn’t remember ever teaching a girl to kiss—his dalliances generally involved eager tavern girls or merry widows, women who’d been in the correct place at the correct time. When their ingenuity and eagerness managed to distract him from a card game, or overtake his departure from the theater, who was he to stop them?
But this? This was something else entirely.
She offered plenty of eagerness but there was no ingenuity, and he loved it.
His hands slid down her arms and swept her back, and he stopped trying to define any of it. What use were definitions when he held her—finally held her. She was so gracefully tall, and lithe, and thin—yet not so thin that her waist didn’t dip; that the slope of her hips didn’t swoop. Wherever his hands roamed, she trembled and melded closer. The swirl of lust and sensation sucked him under, and he allowed it. He happily drowned in it.
When a working thought did flash into his brain, it was a simple, animalistic demand.Let me show you. Let me taste you. We’ll want more of this. We’ll want everything.
