Page 40 of The Lady’s Sweet Revenge

Chapter Fourteen

Harlow could hear her heartbeat rushing in her ears and worried she might faint. She’d risked everything to be honest and live her truth in the way he had encouraged her to do. But rather than answer, he only looked at her for so long she considered running from the room.

But eventually she had her answer.

Rather than respond verbally he took a steady breath and leaned down to press his lips to hers.

She’d been kissed before. Her mother placed a kiss to her cheek nearly every night before she went up to her room. Her father often kissed the top of her head, the touch getting lost in her hair. Even her brothers had kissed her on occasion, in celebration of a good prank, or when she’d gotten hurt and they hoped to ease the pain away so Harlow wouldn’t tell on them.

She’d seen the way men kissed women they weren’t related to. Once when she was younger, she’d snuck up on Luke with a woman in the mews as he’d been practically devouring her face. She’d thought that rather disgusting and not just because one of the participants had been her brother.

The woman seemed to be enjoying it enough to moan and cling to Luke as if wanting more or wanting him to actually devour her. She hadn’t understood.

But she thought she understood now.

For she wanted more from Reese. Though unsure what more was, she just knew her body…wanted.

The kiss had started with a mere press of his lips to hers. It shouldn’t have caused her mind and thoughts to swim so. He moved his lips together, pulled back just the smallest space. Still so close she doubted a piece of parchment would fit between them, but she felt her body freeze with worry he’d not return.

He did. Repeating the motion from the first touch again and then again. And each time, she became more panicked that that would be the time he wouldn’t return.

And then she’d felt his tongue touch inquisitively along the edge of her bottom lip and while she’d always thought a tongue to be a rather rude body part, she used hers to touch his and it somehow wasn’t rude, but exquisite. How had she never known her tongue was capable of more than a sharp barb, a taunt, or an apology?

Their tongues started with tender touches and then suddenly his encroached farther into her mouth and she moaned, not unlike that woman in the mews. It was then she realized her hands were clenched in Reese’s shirt and she was unwittingly pulling him toward her.

Part of her felt insanely glad her reaction was similar to another woman’s. Perhaps she was not so different after all. But a second later, she didn’t care if she was the last woman who walked the earth, so long as Reese didn’t stop kissing her.

She pressed her body closer to his and felt something hard and hot against her hip that had not been there when their lips first touched. She wasn’t sure what it was or where it had come from but she pressed closer and earned a gasp from the man she had suddenly become part of.

They shared the same breath; their hearts raced against one another. It was as if they’d somehow joined together. And the thought of joining together with Reese made her lower body throb with some pleasure she’d never encountered before.

That wasn’t true. One night she’d awoken from a dream that a man was touching her between her legs. A shadow with no facial characteristics other than he was a man and he had wanted her.

She’d been frightened initially and then realized she hadn’t been afraid of the unknown gentleman. In fact, she’d closed her eyes hoping she could fall back to sleep and pick up the dream where it had left off.

It hadn’t.

But now… this was no dream.

“Please,” she begged, unsure what exactly she was pleading for. She could only hope Reese knew.

“You asked for a kiss. We must stop, before this turns into far more than a kiss.”

She wanted to ask him for whatever this was, but again she didn’t know what exactly to ask for. So again, she just said “Please” and held tight to his shirt.

He bent close and took her mouth again, as his hand clasped behind her head, in her hair, holding her to him. His other hand was braced against her lower back, holding that throbbing part of her close to that hard part of him that seemed to lurch against her.

“Please touch me,” she asked even though he already was. It just seemed there were other parts of her that needed his touch more than her back and her head. Her nipples had tightened and she wanted him to ease the ache there.

“Harlow,” he whispered against her lips. She didn’t realize how lovely her name sounded when it was spoken so close to her that she could feel the word rather than hear it.

“Yes. Please, Reese. Please.”

“Do you ache?” he asked as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Here?”

His hand had moved across her stomach and she thought he would touch her breasts, but instead his fingers caressed down between her legs.

“Yes,” she answered though she was beginning to ache everywhere.