A few months later, Mr. Horace Watters–a baron twice her age–had started off with a customary peck on her cheek but had turned his head (he swore it was an accident, she was certain it was on purpose) at the last second and tried to kiss her flush on the lips.
Gross.
After that, she became far more adept at her tree climbing, and managed to avoid any other “accidental” kisses until the night preceding her father’s death. While the Earl of Clarenmore was contemplating a morning walk on a pond that wasn’t yet frozen, his daughter was considering allowing a groom she mildly fancied to give her a right proper kiss in the hayloft after everyone else had gone to bed.
She was supposed to meet her father in his study to review potential thoroughbred stallions for the upcoming breeding year, an evening ritual they’d established in the weeks after the passing of Lady Catherine. But she’d wanted that kiss. More than that, she’d wanted to feelaliveafter months of being shrouded in death. Except when she went to the stables, she found the groom–as handsome as he was fickle–in the arms of a scullery maid, and when she went to the study, the light was already doused. So she went to bed, knowing she’d see her father in the morning and have a word with the groom besides, but when she woke up, it was already too late.
Lord Clarenmore had gone to join his wife, and if she hadn’t wasted her time in the stables searching for kisses then she might have met with him as she usually did, sensed something wasn’t right, and alerted her sisters.
Her father might still bealiveif not for that would-be kiss, and thus she’d given up on them entirely…until a rude, condescending, devilishly handsome American stomped into her life.
All of those thoughts and more raced through Eloise’s head in the seconds leading up to Adam’s mouth crashing down on hers. Heat, an entire wave of it, slammed into her with more strength than his entire body had at the park, leaving her scrambling to right herself in a depthless ocean.
She latched onto the lapels of his coat, plastering herself against his lean, ruggedly built frame while her lips instinctively parted beneath the onslaught of demanding pressure both from his mouth and the steam building within her. She was a kettle and Adam was the flame, using his hands, tongue, and teeth to raise her temperature to a boil. Having never been kissed before, she wasn’t sure what to do with her own mouth and tongue, but when he drew her lower lip between his teeth and suckled, it seemed only natural to return the favor.
His hiss of breath and the way he rubbed his hips against hers, eliciting a foreign type of fiery warmth that set the kettle perilously close to spilling over, told her that she’d done something right, and in addition to the lust running feverishly through her veins, she experienced a tiny thrill of satisfaction. Adam St. Clair was obviously more experienced in the myriad of ways a man could bring a woman pleasure, but never let it be said that she, Eloise Rosewood, wasn’t a fast learner.
He moved his head, changing the angle of the kiss. The depth of it. The power of it. When he boldly slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and then inside, as if that was where he belonged, as if that was theonlyplace he belonged, she gave a small, helpless moan and tightened her grip on his jacket less the heat pulsing all around them turned her legs to mush.
Bold strokes changed to light, teasing flicks. His fingers tangled in her hair, pulling just hard enough to draw her neck to the side, exposing the slender column of her throat, and she quivered when he kissed her there as well, her bones dissolving into a helpless pile of marrow barely capable of supporting her own weight.
This…this wasn’t akiss.
It was aconquering.
If they were on the battlefield, her army would lay in ruin and Adam would stand upon the hill triumphant, his banner whipping in the wind.
He backed her up against a wall and she was barely cognizant of brick dust falling on her shoulders in a sprinkle of rust before his mouth plundered hers with an urgency that she returned tenfold. There was no thinking, no planning, no thought of what might happen when the clouds cleared and their sanity revealed itself. There was only passion, the kind that poets wrote of and princes stormed castles for.
His hand moved inside of the folds of her cloak and spanned across her ribcage, the tips of his fingers nearly reaching all the way around to her spine. He glided his palm upwards, and when he cupped her breast through the thin fabric of her bodice, she gasped at the jolt of electricity that ricocheted through her and the resulting dampness in the middle of her thighs that was left in its wake.
Sothiswas lust. A punch of it straight into her veins. Pure, unadulterated need that had her leaning unabashedly into his embrace, asking–begging–for him to touch her.
And he did.
Rolling her aroused, aching nipple between the rough pad of his thumb and index finger, he grabbed hold of her wrists with his other hand and pinned them roughly above her head, driving her shoulder blades into the brick and pushing her breasts into his palm. He kissed her ruthlessly, taking what he wanted without hesitation. Sating his own savage desires while he fanned the flames of her passion to new, unimaginable heights.
Just when she was convinced there was nowhere else to go, he sent her higher and higher still, until she was teetering on the edge of the sky with the earth at her feet and a million stars shining above her. Then, with no warning, he wrenched himself free and staggered back, ending the kiss as abruptly as he’d started it.
With lights dancing in her eyes, she watched, lids heavy and lips parted, as he dragged his fingers through his inky black tresses and muttered a curse that would have stained the air blue if it wasn’t already red from the potency of their ardor. A mix of emotions rippled across his countenance, one after the other. Confusion, fury, lust, loathing. All set against a backdrop of cold gray eyes that sliced across her trembling frame like a silvery frost over a virgin field.
“That should not have happened,” he said flatly, and for once she didn’t argue with him.
No, it probablyshouldn’thave happened. Then again, such was the story of her life; a combination of never-ending “should nots” and “don’t you dares” and “what have you done?” So as far as first kisses went, this was right in line with all of her other transgressions. And why not?
She’d kissed Adam for the same reason that she reached for another piece of chocolate when her belly was already full, or asked for a third glass of champagne when she was already dizzy from the second. Because even though she intuitively sensed that the consequences would be dire, the sheer decadence of giving in to her most basic desires was too enormous a temptation to resist.
So why notthiskiss, inthisplace, withthisman? This arrogant American who disliked her every bit as much as she disliked him…except when she was plastered up against a warehouse and he was making her body sing with those clever fingers and that wicked, wicked tongue.
Eloise had a habit of scoffing at women–her sisters included–who made a fool of themselves for the opposite sex, but now she was made to wonder if they wouldn’t be better served scoffing ather.
Who knew there was an entire world out there, waiting for her to walk into it? A world where a man’s touch turned skin to fire and bone to liquid. Adam hadn’t merelykissedher. He’d spun her inside out, stripped away her preconceived notions, and left her naked and exposed.
“Do you have a habit of kissing women in alleys?” she asked, straightening her cloak and retying the velvet strings at the base of her throat where his mouth had been mere seconds ago.
He glowered at her. “No.”
No?
