Page 58 of A Match Made On Duchess Square

What was wrong with him? She was going to run out of here like her tail was on fire.

To his surprise, she did not. “You love me?”

“Of course I do. Achingly and helplessly so.” He held his breath as the silence stretched between them.

A dozen scenarios raced through his mind while precious time passed. She was going to slap him. She was going to run up to her bedchamber in tears.

She was going to insist her heart would only ever be bound to Andrew Clement.

“James, are you certain?”

“Yes, not a doubt.”

“Oh, James,” she said in an agonized whisper.

He gave her cheek a light caress. “What are you thinking, Gwen? Tell me. I’ll understand, no matter your response.”

She nibbled her lip, and then stared up at him for another long moment, looking achingly lost and vulnerable. “I think… I think I would like you to give me another kiss.”

He hadn’t expected that answer.

“With pleasure,” he said, and captured her cherry-sweet mouth again with possessive heat and a commanding determination to break through her defenses, through everything that bound her and held her back from finding her true happiness.

She was here with him now, surrendering to his kiss and wanting to open her heart to him. He felt her desperation to move forward, felt it in the way she clutched his shoulders and raised herself on tiptoes to better press her lips against his own.

A dam burst within him. All his pent-up yearning came flooding out.

He lifted her up against him, wrapping her in his embrace and deepening the kiss with a slow and scorching grind of his mouth upon hers. He wanted her to know he would always care for her and protect her, and that theirs would always be a loving marriage.

A true marriage.

He drowned himself in this kiss and felt her body turn to liquid heat.

But he had yet to do anything beyond this one, searing kiss when she suddenly pulled away with a soft cry. “I cannot do this!”

James felt his heart hammering within his chest. Fire roared through his veins.

Gwendolyn would never have kissed him with such riotous abandon unless she cared for him. He wasn’t about to let her leap back into the safety of the past.

The past was not safe for her at all. Holding on to it as she was trying to do would leave her old, alone, and lonely because that wretched Clement was never going to return for her.

“What is it you supposedly cannot do? Kiss me? Give your heart to me? Be my wife and share my bed? I have no wish to bed you outside the bonds of marriage.”

Well, that wasn’t quite true. He yearned to have her anywhere and any time she was willing, but always with the intention of marrying her.

She was no mere dalliance for him.

“Marriage, James? Why do you keep bringing this up?”

“Why do you resist? Do you not wish to make a happy life for yourself? One with me in it…and my sons, too.”

“I adore your sons.”

“I know,” he said, casting her a soft smile. “Gwen, would it be so awful if we were husband and wife? If you do not like me in that way, then just tell me so. I’ll leave you alone. But whyever tell me that you wanted to kiss me if you had no feelings for me?”

“I was drunk and did not know what I was saying.”

“And kissing me now? You aren’t drunk tonight. You kissed me back twice with as much ardor as I kissed you. Perhaps more. What was that about?”