Page 51

She tugged.

The sound that escaped him was low and unguarded. She drew him the last, reckless fraction closer; he went without even pretending to resist. The front of her body met his, warm and solid, and every controlled muscle in him tightened in answer. He’d never realized want could feel like this: not a polite interest or the mild curiosity of a ballroom balcony, but a bright, insistent pull under his skin that said closer, closer, more.

He deepened the kiss before he could think better of it, tilting his mouth to claim hers more fully. Her lips parted willingly, on a soft gasp that went straight through him. He tasted ratafia and something purely her—sweet, unsettled, utterly honest.

His hand stayed cupped at her jaw, thumb brushing the damp trace of a tear at the corner of her mouth; his other hovered at the small of her back, a shield against the wall more than a claim. Everything in him screamed to close that last, safe inch, to pull her hard against him until there was no question at all what she was doing to him. The only thing stopping him was the fierce conviction that if this was her first real kiss, he would not let his lack of control be what she remembered.

It didn’t matter. His body betrayed him anyway. Heat coiled low, sharp and insistent; his pulse hammered against her palm where it pressed to his chest. Every breath he drew tasted of her and made him want another.

She was learning him. He could feel it. The small way she adjusted the tilt of her head, finding the angle she liked best. The curious, feather-light press of her tongue against his lower lip, as if testing whether he’d allow it. He answered without words, with the slow, deliberate slide of his mouth over hers, promising her that she could explore as much as she dared, and he would match her, never overwhelm.

Her hand in his cravat tightened. For a second he thought she’d push him away; instead, she clutched the linen and used it to pull him even closer as she opened for him. Her body met his more fully, the soft curves of her against the hard lines of him, and he lost the battle to keep things entirely gentlemanly. His free hand slid, very slightly, from the air beside her spine to the tiniest bit of pressure at the small of her back—just enough to tell her he was there, all of him, and that he wasn’t going anywhere unless she asked him to.

She didn’t.

She made another of those unguarded little sounds instead, right into his mouth, and any lingering doubt he’d had about whether or how much this mattered to her vanished.

A rational voice, very far away, cleared its throat.

She hates Wyndale.

But she’s kissing me like she knows the man beneath the title.

She had stood in a bakery and condemned his circular to his face without knowing whose hand had signed it. She had just listened, pressed against him in the dark, while his mother discussed her like broodstock in a sales catalogue. If she knew…if she knew this was the man she had spent weeks railing against—

He kissed her anyway.

Not to steal anything from her or for conquest or sport like other men did. He kissed her because, for the first time in all his tidy, expected years, he wanted something that had nothing to do with his title and everything to do with the way this woman made him feel absurdly, miraculously like a man who could only be whole with her.

Her name moved in his chest, helpless.

“Pepper,” he breathed against her mouth, the word half prayer, half surrender.

She answered without speaking, tightening her hold on him. Her gloved fingers slid from his cravat to the bare edge of skin just above his collar, the briefest brush at the back of his neck. Fire raced down his spine at that small, daring touch. He’d never thought a lady’s hand there could feel like that. He remembered, suddenly, the tiny hitch in her step in the garden—the way her right foot touched down a heartbeat after the left—and how he’d been so taken with her smile and her boots that he’d pretended not to see it. Now, with her fingers curled around his sleeve, it struck him that this was the limp his mother had dismissed and that this same woman was the one whose letters his Board had waved away.

If she finds out—

If, in the next instant, someone yanks this curtain back and says his title in that tone, would she look at him as if he’d taken something from her instead of sharing something with her?

As if summoned by the thought, a voice knifed down the corridor.

“Wyndale?”

He froze.

The name hit like cold water slammed over hot iron.

She stilled, too; he felt the tension flicker through her. Of course she heard it. The syllables snapped in these echoing hallways the way his seal snapped on wax.

He broke the kiss, dragging in a breath that did nothing to steady him. He didn’t step far—there was nowhere to go—but he eased back just enough that he wasn’t taking her mouth anymore, only breathing the same thin air.

Her eyes were huge in the narrow light, pupils blown dark, lips kissed swollen and glistening. For an insane second he thought of leaning in again, catching that lower lip with his teeth just once, to see what sound she’d make—

Instead he dropped his hand from her jaw to her fingers, threading them briefly through his own.

“I’m not sorry,” she whispered. “Only for the danger.”

What an extraordinary woman, to apologize for the danger—she was the one compromised, not him. And yet, he’d own up to her any time. Perhaps getting caught would be the easiest way?