Page 55
It wasn’t only brandy on his skin. His lips had some other savor, dark like chocolate, tantalizingly familiar. She pressed up the barest fraction. She touched his lower lip with her tongue.
He inhaled sharply. She curled her hands in his lapels, pulling his face closer, and she licked the curve of his mouth, a tentative stroke with the tip of her tongue.
De’Ath was tall and broad, dense with muscle, a man of enormous mental and physical strength. It felt strange, and desperately exciting, to explore this silky, vulnerable part of him. This softness. This sweetness.
Chocolate, yes. Date sugar. Clove.
She slid her hands up to his shoulders, to his neck. It was rigid beneath the folds of his cravat. She moved her tongue, tested his upper lip.
He growled, and his arm clamped around her waist.
“What are you doing to me?”
His grip tightened, and then something seemed to break inside him. With a groan, he bent her backward, drove his mouth onto hers. She gasped, knees loosening, but his arm was like iron. He held her upright, his teeth dragging her lower lip down. He was licking her now, stroking his tongue into her mouth. She met his tongue with hers, and this combination—dear God, it was the very essence of deliciousness.
The slick slide of tongue on tongue turned her molten. Her scalding blood pulsed in an urgent rhythm. His hands roamed over her, kneaded her backside, lifted her into him, closer and closer still. Her nipples were pebble hard, bright with sensation, like tiny stars. And between her legs, she felt a strong, quickened beat, like her heart had dropped down and lodged at the tops of her thighs. She canted her hips, and the jut of his cock rubbed right where she ached. She heard a thin, unraveled cry and realized a second later it had emerged from her own throat.
She froze. Delirious sensation transformed into stark awareness.
She had been writhing in De’Ath’s arms. Her hands were still clasping his neck. His tongue was deep in her mouth.
Oh, bloody burning hell.
Sweat trickled down between her breasts, and that heart between her thighs beat on—needy, greedy beats.
She forced her head to the side, breath shuddering.
“Nina,” he said, hoarse, fingers smoothing back her hair, tracing down the side of her face.
Slowly, she turned her face, met his gaze. His pupils were huge, ringed with thinnest silver, their wildness almost frightening. For a moment, they stared. Then he loosened his grip and let her step back. Coolness rushed in. She walked backward until her shoulders bumped the wall. The notebook lay between them on the floor. She hadn’t heard it drop.
She bent and seized it.
“My list.” She was breathless. “I’ll find it for you.” She paged through the notebook with trembling fingers. “Here.”
De’Ath’s face was composed, eyes hooded. His chest rose and fell more evenly than hers. But his hair was disheveled, the knot of his cravat loose and askew. His mouth gleamed with damp.
No pretending this hadn’t happened.
She wasn’t shivering now. She quaked, like a wobbly pudding.
Her first kiss. It had been delicious and atrocious at once. She had kissed De’Ath, mindlessly, when she should have been thinking, formulating a plan, deciding, perhaps, to sneak away to the Knack in the middle of the night. She’d wake Jack, tell him he needed to get on the train to Norwich.
No. No, more sensible to wait, to leave with permission.
Sensible. Nothing about any of this was sensible.
De’Ath was searching her face, his look dark and unreadable. He seemed about to speak.
“I have cake tins at home,” she spoke first, voice unsteady. “And a rolling pin. Even a dough docker. There’s no need for you to buy your own. If you don’t object, I’ll take the morning to fetch mine.”
“Take the time you need,” he murmured. “Miss Finch—”
“Just the morning will do.” She fetched up her pen and struck lines through items on the list. When she was finished, she tore the page free. She passed it to him, and he caught her fingers. Electricity arced through her.
“Miss Finch,” he said. “You are more than memorable. More than remarkable. You exceed my capacity for remarks.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips. When he raised his face, she had to look away.
