Finn held his breath and waited with burning lungs as a dozen different emotions chased each other across her face. Shock, confusion, doubt, even anger, until at last something soft emerged and turned her eyes a dark, midnight blue.
Tenderness.
She raised herself to her knees so her face was level with his and she could look him in the eyes. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. She remained silent for so long, in fact, the back of Finn’s neck began to burn with embarrassment. Why didn’t she say something? He didn’t expect her to say she loved him in return—he hadn’t earned her trust yet—but surely he was owed more of a response than resounding silence.
Finn’s nerves were on the verge of snapping like taut violin strings when at last she made a pleased humming sound in her throat, and touched her finger to the middle of his chin. “I like touching you here.”
Finn was shocked to hear a low groan break from his chest when she dipped the tip of her finger into the tiny dimple. It was hischin, for God’s sake, not his cock, but it seemed her hands on any part of his body were enough to make him wild with desire.
“I thought about touching it when we were betrothed. Touching it, and tasting it,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on her own finger caressing his face, as if she were mesmerized. “May I?”
She didn’t wait for permission, which was just as well, because Finn couldn’t have spoken a word as he watched her draw closer, her thick lashes dropping to half-mast over burning eyes.
He drew in a sharp breath when her warm lips touched his chin, but his gasp turned into a moan when the tip of her tongue—dear God, her tongue—darted into the small indentation.
“Iris.” His hands shot to her hips, but before he could ease her away—yes, of course, that’s what he intended to do—she pressed a final kiss to his chin and slid her mouth higher, so her lips brushed against his.
It was a shy kiss, an innocent kiss, but it felt to Finn as if an entire lifetime had passed since he’d kissed her in the stables, and as soon as her mouth touched his, his blood raced in his veins, and his body shuddered with pleasure. He dug his fingers into her hips to pull her closer and opened his mouth under hers.
Not a demand, but an invitation.
She hesitated, and Finn forced himself to keep still and wait for her to decide, but he couldn’t restrain his groan of triumph when her tongue crept out and traced his lower lip, then slid deeper inside his mouth to meet his in a slick, hot stroke that left him panting for breath.
One kiss, and he was ready to devour her.
A dim warning penetrated the fog of desire in his brain. Her scent, her sweetly curved body, her mouth against his, the taste of her—she was driving him mad. He was one stroke of her tongue away from losing control and taking her on Lady Hadley’s soft leather sofa.
She washis, but she was also an innocent, and he was an honorable gentleman.
Most of the time.
“Iris. Listen to me, sweet.” He slid his hands from her hips to her waist to ease her away from him. “We can’t—”
She let out a protesting growl that made his cock strain against his falls, wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed closer, so her breasts were crushed against his chest. “I know gentlemen enjoy kisses, Lord Huntington.”
He touched his fingertips to her mouth to hush her, a grin curving his lips. “Not Lord Huntington anymore, Iris. Finn. I can’t be Lord Huntington to a lady who’s kissed my dimple.”
“I’m vastly relieved, then, that I’ve never heard another lady call you Finn.” Pink colored her cheeks when she said his name, but she looked pleased.
“Now, tell me about these gentlemen who enjoy kisses.” He shouldn’t encourage her to talk about kisses when he had a full, eager erection, but he couldn’t bring himself to send her off to bed, either.
“Philander and Horatio, you mean?”
Finn blinked. Philander and Horatio? Who the devil were Philander and Horatio?
Iris laughed at his puzzled look. “The heroes ofDialogues between a Lady and her Maid. Then there’s Roger, fromSchool of Venus, and Charles fromMemoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.”
Finn’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You’ve read all three?” Jesus. She might be an innocent, but she was a remarkably well-educated one.
“I haven’t finished the third one yet, but it…well, it’s more of the same, I think.” She peeked at him. “Isn’t it?”
“I—ah, the same as what?” He stifled a groan when her fingers sank into the hair at the back of his neck. He couldn’t think about the books, or about anything but burying his face in her throat and drowning in her subtle jasmine scent.
She gave his hair a gentle tug, a tiny admonishment. “The other two books are about relations between men and women, and, ah…well, about how to make a gentleman…how to give him pleasure. Isn’t that whatMemoirs of a Woman of Pleasureis about, too?”
Finn closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the sofa. He was treading on dangerous ground. He was so aroused his thighs were shaking, and the woman he loved—a woman whose simplest touch hurled him headlong into a vortex of desire—was gazing at him with her enormous blue eyes, her lips still swollen from his kisses, calmly asking about erotic literature.
“Lord Hunt—that is, Finn?”
