He was playing with fire, and he knew it. Mayhap they would both get burned. He was not sure he cared at the moment. All he did care about was the hazel-eyed siren watching him with her steady, rapt gaze. Her scent reached him then—jasmine. Sweet and exotic. Like something he could never have.
Something he very much desired.
“You are astoundingly arrogant, Mr. Winter,” she accused, but there was no heat in her voice.
He was, and he knew it. With good reason. He may not be a titled lord to the manor born, but he knew how to satisfy a lady.
His eyes dipped to her lips. “Yet you long for me anyway.”
“You presume to know what I feel?” she asked softly. “What I want?”
He reached for the line of buttons on her pelisse, removing them one by one from their moorings. “Stop me if I am wrong.”
She did not move away. Nor did she do anything to stay his progress. Instead, she remained still, allowing him to undo them.
“What are you doing, Mr. Winter?”
“Time you call me Blade, don’t you think, love?” He reached the final button at last and peeled the garment from her shoulders.
He tossed the pelisse to the floor.
Silence reigned for a moment, no sound save the fire popping in the grate. He wondered how much time he had until a servant arrived to tend it. He thought about latching the door.
He would have, mayhap.
But then Lady Felicity did the last thing he expected. She grasped his lapels in both her dainty fists and pulled him closer.
“Blade,” she said at last.
And then, she kissed him.
Felicity had lostcontrol.
Had lost all sense of duty.
Mayhap it was the distance from the main house that had emboldened her. Auntie Agatha would never follow her here—her arthritic knees would not allow the fifteen-minute walk, and nor would her gouty foot. They were alone. No Winter siblings to intrude.
No interruption.
Nothing but Blade Winter, smug and sinfully tempting and so handsome she ached.
She should not have kissed him, and she knew it. But when he responded, kissing her back with so much fervor it stole her breath, she could not summon a hint of regret. As before, Blade Winter’s kisses were a revelation. Heat flared within her. She was hot all over, and it had nothing to do with the fire at her back.
She felt alive in a way she never had before, as if all her life, she had been waiting for this man. Which was foolish, of course. She could not pursue anything with him. The gentlemen she needed to be speaking with—her husband prospects—were back at the main house, likely engaged in drawing room games or out riding. If there was any man who was unabashedly not the husbandly sort, it was the man kissing her breath away with such wickedness.
And worst of all, though she knew she should stop, she could not. She did not want to. All she wanted was more.
They kissed and kissed. He sucked her lower lip, licked into her mouth. Her tongue tangled with his. He kissed her as if she were a secret that belonged to him and him alone.
And she wanted to.
Then and there, in the freedom of the false ruins, the hush of winter blanketing the world outside, she wanted to be his. Wanted him to make her his. Wanted him to touch her, take her, do with her as he would.
Anything. Everything.
“Felicity.” He said her name as if it were a prayer. Chanted it as he kissed across her jaw. Hot little pecks that left her knees weak. All the way to her ear, where his breath made her shiver. “Sweet, innocent Lady Felicity. What are you doing to me?”
She would have returned the question, asked him what he was doing to her, but the connection between her mind and her tongue had been vanquished by the trajectory of his beautiful mouth. He was kissing behind her ear now, then down her throat, alternating between worshipful caresses with his lips, nips with his teeth, and wicked suction.
