Page 38 of To Catch an Earl

Fury burned in his chest, both at himself and at her. She was a scheming little liar, as guilty as he suspected. So why was he so reluctant to unmask her? Why did he want to stop time and stay in this state ofnotknowing just a little longer? Why did he feel the insane urge to hold her in his arms one last time before everything went wrong?

Self-loathing lashed him like a whip. He never learned, did he? He still wanted to ignore the facts, to believe in the innocence of a beautiful face, just as he’d done in Spain. He wanted to be blind to her sins. He choked back a bitter laugh. Maybe the injury to his eye was the perfect poetic justice, the physical embodiment of his greatest flaw: willful blindness.

She was stroking the waxy petals of an orchid now, and he tried not to remember the way those fingers had felt against his skin.

Concentrate.

She turned back to him, with those big wide eyes, and he experienced the usual jolt, that strange humming awareness of being alive. He’d felt the sensation once before, from an “electro-static machine” Lord Braxton had hired as a parlor trick. It had made his nerves tingle. Emmy Danvers produced the same reaction.

He couldn’t allow himself to feel anything for her. She was a criminal and he was sworn to uphold the law.

Yet here he was, breathless with desire.

The faint strains of a quadrille drifted in through the doorway, but he felt disconnected from it all, as if they were in another, more elemental world, one that consisted of darkness and earth. Her pupils seemed enormous, her skin luminous against the near-black of her dress, and he curled his fingers into his palms against the urge to put them around her throat. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to strangle her or ravish her.

He felt positively medieval, freed from the trappings of polite civilization by the shadows and the heat. There was no point in denying he wanted her. No point in pretending he wasn’t going to kiss her either. He’d thought of little else for days. Craved it like the laudanum they’d given him when he’d first been wounded.

She’d hidden the jewel somewhere on her person, he was certain. Finding it was going to be an absolute pleasure.

He closed the distance between them and the lush scent of her filled his nose, headier than all the flowers surrounding them. He slid his hand around her nape. She sucked in a surprised breath and started to object, but he didn’t want to hear excuses.

“Don’t say another word.”

His lips found hers with unerring precision. He half expected her to push him away, but with a muffled groanshe lifted herself up on tiptoe and returned the kiss as if she were as desperate to taste him as he was to taste her.

Hellfire. This woman was always a surprise.

Alex closed his eyes and kissed her deeply, extravagantly. He let her taste his hunger, taking her breath and giving her his in a sinful, erotic exchange. Her heart pounded against his chest as he pulled her close, the same heartbeat that throbbed in his ears, a deafening drumbeat of sound.

You’re supposed to be finding the jewel.

The sensible thought struggled to surface against the drowning tide of pleasure. Alex forced his hands from her nape and stroked down her arms, then slid them back up over her ribs to her armpits. She made a little whimper of pleasure against his lips; the sound went straight to his cock. He kept on kissing her, claiming her attention while he drew his thumbs down the center of her bodice, feeling for the telltale bump of a hidden gem. But all he could feel were the stiff whalebone strips of her corset and the soft, yielding woman beneath.

His hand skimmed over her breast and she arched up into his touch with a groan that made him feel invincible. Unable to resist, he slipped his fingers inside her bodice and bit back a groan of his own. God, she was so soft. The perfect weight in his hand.

Time lost all meaning. There were no seconds or minutes. Only decades luxuriating in her mouth, eons of pleasure as he tugged down the front of her dress and lowered his lips to her skin. Her fingers tightened in his hair as he flicked her with his tongue, glorying in the contrasting textures of hard, ruched nipple and satiny curve of breast.

A reckless wash of desire swamped him. More. He wanted more.

Chapter 20.

Emmy could barely think as Harland’s tongue laved her skin. She’d been close to swooning with his kisses, butthis?Words failed her.

Heat spread throughout her body and the muscles of her stomach contracted as his wicked mouth sent a spearing sensation down between her legs. He caught her nipple between his lips and the gentle tug almost buckled her knees. It was exquisite torture, one that somehow both satisfied and created more of an ache at the same time.

She vaguely registered the loosening of her coiffure. Pins were falling, the heavy coils sliding down, but it was of no importance when Harland was doing such wondrous things. It was only when the metal comb that secured her feathered headpiece jabbed painfully into her scalp that sanity returned in an unwelcome rush.

Good God! The ruby!

Emmy made a desperate grab for her hair, but there was no stopping its downward momentum; the heavy mass slithered to one side and began to unravel. Shearched her back, offering herself even more shamelessly to Harland’s mouth in the process, and tilted her head to prevent the gem from falling to the floor. With only the faintest of thuds, the ruby tumbled into the foliage behind her.

Emmy let out an inaudible sigh of relief and a thrilling wave of recklessness engulfed her. Harland could search every inch of her now and he’d never find it.

She frowned into the darkness. Wasthatwhy his hands were roving all over her? Was he searching her?

A stab of indignant outrage was swiftly followed by a smile. Who cared what his motives were? This might be the one and only time she ever got to experience the wonderful things he was doing. She certainly didn’t want him to stop.

Emmy pulled his face back up to hers and kissed him, hard. He groaned against her mouth.

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