Page 40 of The Defiant One
His lips were against her temple, feathering down the outside corner of her eye, his breath warm against her chin. She shuddered, feeling herself go liquid with answering heat even as her own arms went around him and her fingers explored the hard ridge of his shoulders, his nape, the silky queue of his hair. She didn't know whether to be thankful or despairing that she'd only had the tiniest sip of the brandy . . . thankful because she didn't feel drugged as she had the last time, despairing because she'd had just enough to take the edge off any inclination she might otherwise have had to shove him away from her and straight out of the carriage.
Andrew, on the other hand, had finished off the entire bottle.
His mouth found hers yet again, needy, desperate. How warm his lips were against her own . . . how good he smelled, like some exotic spice from a faraway land . . . and how wonderful his hand felt, driving through her hair, thumbing the velvety skin behind her ear, tracing the rise of her cheekbone, while his other hand —
She moaned into his mouth as his hand roved over, then cupped, her breast.
Her small, insignificant breast, which he would surely find wanting.
"Andrew . . . you're touching my — my —"
"Breasts? Ah, yes. So I am. I quite like touching them, you know. They're high and firm and fill my hand quite nicely. Very nice. Very nice indeed . . ."
"You don't find them . . . wanting?"
"I do find them wanting. They want my hands all over them. They want my mouth all over them. They want my tongue and teeth and kisses all over them. God, you're gorgeous . . ."
He leaned down, his glossy, dark auburn hair filling her field of vision, his breath hot against her bosom and making her heart skip and trip and tumble all over itself as it fought frantically to retain its beat. And then he caught her shirttails in his hands and pulled the garment over her head, leaving her naked from the waist up.
His mouth drove between the faint cleft between her breasts, out over the high, pale rise of the right one. The sensation was enough to make her head dizzy with pleasure.
"A-Andrew, what are you doing?"
"I am kissing your breasts."
"But I thought kisses are for lips!"
"Kisses are for wherever one chooses to put them. And I choose to put mine, here . . . and here . . ."
He was now suckling the fiercely erect nipple, causing Celsie to gasp and squirm and tangle her fingers in his hair in an attempt to find anchorage on a sea of feelings that were totally overwhelming her. Oh, don't fight it. He's not going to stop. You don't want him to stop. Sit back and enjoy it . . . oh, enjoy it, this is never going to happen again!
His hand skimmed down her waist, moved out over the soft buckskin of her breeches where they covered her mound, and drove itself between her thighs, forcing them apart.
"And here is another place that quite likes to be kissed," he murmured, rubbing her cleft through the breeches. "Another place where I shall quite enjoy putting my lips. My mouth. My tongue."
"There? H-how can you even think such a thing?"
The coach thundered on, its rocking movement causing her body to scrape against his, his hand to vibrate against her intimate flesh, and heightening the wild, prickly-hot sensations he was creating in her.
"I will do more than just think it." He leaned close, so close she could see the starbursts of green that radiated out from his rust-colored irises, so close that the heat of his gaze drove right through her and impaled her with its intensity. "Let me tell you something, my dear Celsiana. Aphrodisiac or not, I have been wanting to peel these breeches off you from the moment you stepped out of the carriage. I have been wanting to touch those long, silky thighs, to trace the curve of your bottom, to slip my hand between your legs and feel you hot and wet with desire for me for the last agonizing hour."
God help her, she was hot and wet with desire already; she could feel the moisture dampening her breeches, knew he felt it against his hand, and knew she ought to be mortified. But how could she be mortified when heat was rising from every pore in her skin, burning every blood vessel in her body, making her head feverish with longing? She gazed, fascinated, up into his intense eyes and felt her leg, bent at the knee, sag back against the squab; her other slid downward, off the seat, the ball of her foot just resting on the floorboards and leaving her wide-open to his questing fingers . . .
"And I have been wanting to strip you naked and take you on the floor of this coach from the moment we entered it," he said roughly. "There is nothing you can say or do that will curb my desire for you. I want you. I need you. And I will have you."
He bent his head, tasting her nipple once more, drawing it with a taut, ruthless pull into the hot cavern of his mouth even as his hand rubbed her through the breeches, hard, over and over again.
"Oh," Celsie said faintly, sinking back into the seat and closing her eyes as her bones and muscles went liquid. "And here I thought you weren't interested in women . . . that the only thing you cared about was your science . . ."
"I am interested in you. I just don't want to marry you. Nothing personal, of course," he murmured, the deep reverberations of his voice against her breast, her nipple, both tickling and exciting. "I don't want to marry anyone."
"If marriage means getting to do this every day, then maybe it's not such a terrible thing after all," she breathed, watching him through half-lowered lashes as his tongue lazily circled her areola, the nipple in its center as hard as a dog's toenail. "If you married me, Andrew, could we do this every day?"
"Every day and every night."
"But we're not going to get married."
"No. We are going to outsmart Lucien."
