Before she could consider the potentially serious repercussions of her actions, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt to hold herself upright, and dragged his mouth onto hers.
For a moment, he was frozen.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then his arms banded around her, and his lips parted, and the world stopped spinning as everything in it blurred, then came into sharp, stunning focus.
With a possessive snarl that was more animal than man, Kincaid shoved her back against the very same shelf he’d just saved her from. Her skirts bunched as he hitched her legs up over his hips, and she locked her ankles together as he deepened the kiss with a demanding thrust of his tongue.
Books toppled all around them. One grazed Joanna’s shoulder. She barely felt it. She barely felt anything except for a wildpulsinginside of her that had grown so loud it drowned out the sound of her own heartbeat roaring in her ears.
Heat licked across her body like a flame, burning away everything in its path.
Inhibitions.
Logic.
Self-restraint.
They were all reduced to smoking piles of ash when she arched against Kincaid, clinging to his broad back as her hard nipples scraped against his chest and a damp ache gathered between her thighs.
Thiswas what she’d been missing.Thiswas what she’d been craving.Thiswas the proof she’d been searching for that passion, real, bone-melting passion, truly existed. Kissing Kincaid, being kissedbyKincaid, was like opening her eyes for the first time and seeing a midnight sky filled with shooting stars after a lifetime of empty darkness.
Her nails dug into sinewy muscle as he drew her bottom lip between his teeth. She gasped, the muscles in her belly tightening as he nipped, and then suckled, and then nipped again. Bristle scraped against the edge of her jaw when he lowered his head and skimmed his mouth down her neck, leaving a fiery trail of kisses in his wake. Her head fell back, exposing the slender line of her collarbone and lifting her breasts.
He cupped a heavy globe in the palm of his hand, his thumb strumming across her nipple over the thin fabric of her muslin bodice. A strangledmewlspilled from the depths of her throat and her fingers swept across his shoulders to tangle in his hair, sinking into all of that delicious, glossy mahogany as he continued to fondle her.
She would have had their embrace go on forever if she could. But shooting stars only lasted for a moment, and after a final, lingering brush of his lips across hers, Kincaid gently set her down on her feet.
“I…” He cupped the back of his neck, his expression was adorably rueful. Like a boy who had gotten caught with his hand in a jar of sweets. “I apologize, Miss Thorncroft. I do not…I do not know what came over me.”
“Mindless lust?” she suggested dazedly.
Goodness.
Joanna had been kissed before. Charles had even touched her left breast, although he’d immediately apologized and turned so red she had feared he was going to suffer an apoplexy. Because of her previous experience, she’d considered herself—if not an expert—at least somewhat well versed in the art of seduction.
What a fool she was!
Her previous encounters had donenothingto prepare her for this. Nothing could have. It would be like describing all the colors in the rainbow to a blind person, or the ocean to someone who had never seen a drop of water. Impossible to describe, the fiery desire she’d discovered in Kincaid’s arms could only be felt. And once felt, never forgotten.
Nearly a minute since he had ended it and her body wasstillhumming with tiny little aftershocks of pleasure. Her nipples were still aroused. The soft, secret place between her thighs still ached. And all this, from a single kiss.
It was mindboggling.
“Lust is one way to describe it,” Kincaid agreed. “Still, it is no excuse for the way in which I behaved. I should not have allowed myself to lose control, and I humbly ask that you accept my apology.”
Joanna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was certainly acting very prim and proper for a man who’d just had his tongue between her lips and his hands all over her breasts. She found she liked the juxtaposition between the rogue who had ravished her and the detective who was—
“Are youblushing?” she asked in amazement.
“Absolutely not,” he scoffed. “It’s just…warm in here.”
Itwaswarm, she’d give him that.
But the steam in the room had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Ikissedyou,” she reminded him as she tucked a loose tendril behind her ear. Kincaid had inadvertently loosened several pins during their embrace, and the heavy mass was all but undone. A shake of her head, and it would come tumbling down in a thick spill of auburn curls. “If any blame is to be assigned, I fully accept all of it.” She smiled engagingly. “I can apologize toyou, if you’d like. I’ve never initiated a kiss. You’re my first.”
