Page 24 of The Devil in Her Bed
But his movements were neither too busy nor too wet. His breath was sweet and intoxicating, his scent blood-heated and masculine among the blossoms.
The bristle of his chin scratched at her cheeks as he dragged his mouth across her lips, eliciting a quiveringlittle moan from her chest. It escaped as a soft breath, and he drew it into his own lungs, releasing a dark sound in reply.
She felt that sound echo in the deep places of her body that ached to contain him.
Francesca couldn’t regain control of this kiss because he dominated it. He drove his need into her mouth, her body, against her hips.
Suddenly overstimulated, Francesca might have turned away, but his hand slid up to her jaw, cradling it as he devoured her mouth, her will, her wits, and every coherent thought in her head.
He was a marauder, this man. He consumed everything about her and replaced it with a wanton desire for more. More of him. Of this. Of them.
Had she gone mad? Had he?
His hands were suddenly everywhere, his kiss becoming a wild thing, losing that sense of seduction and control and bleeding into the barbaric. His fingers trailed pathways of shimmering sensation down her neck, her clavicles and shoulders. Hot and restless thrusts of his tongue almost distracted her from their journey to her breasts.
At that, awareness slammed back into her. Awareness that she was outside in a garden instead of where she needed to be. That this was not the man whom she should be kissing and coercing. That she couldn’t seem to stop riding his thigh as his lips dragged from hers to paint a moist trail to her throat.
“Tell me yer name,” he said in a soft groan before he bent his head to taste the leaping pulse at her neck.
“F-Francesca Cavendish.” Lord, but she almost forgot her name when his mouth skimmed her collarbone, trailing the essence of heat across her skin.
“No, my lady,” he murmured. “Tell me who ye really are.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Francesca’s heart, heated by his kisses and caresses, dropped into her stomach, now a ball of ice and stone.
“Is this why you brought me out here?” she demanded. Any moment she would push him away. Just as soon as she wasn’t still boneless and breathless from his artful seduction.
“There are speculative whispers that ye’re an imposter,” he breathed in her ear. “I hear them in dark corners.”
“I have no doubt you spend a great deal of your time in dark corners, sir, but what on earth could make you believe the claptrap you hear whispered there?”
“Because I knew her,” he murmured, swiping a thumb over her jaw, as if his words were ones of affection rather than accusation. “That is, I’d had the occasion to meet Lady Francesca as a child. She was charming, amenable, and you…” He astonished herby nibbling at the very same jaw he’d caressed, kissing away his words.
“Are neither?” she finished as wryly as she could while his mouth made its artful way back toward hers. This wasn’t a conversation with which she was unfamiliar. She didn’t find it difficult to prove she was a countess; she had the appropriate airs and graces, along with a swaggering confidence generally only belonging to nobility.
Or lunatics.
However, if someone had known “sweet, amenable Francesca”… they irrevocably asked some form of this question.
How did such a soft, delicate, good-natured little girl grow up to be… well…her? Outspoken to the point of insolent. Brash, independent, opinionated, educated, and, worst of all, unmarried.
Well, perhaps that was no longer the worst of all her sins in the eyes of society. They could now add promiscuous to the list.
Promiscuous and wanton, apparently, as she shouldn’t at present be enjoying an interrogation by a man who held her captive against a wall.
“She had a beauty mark above her lip,” Drake murmured. “Right here.” His mouth brushed softly against the corner of hers, lifting shivers from her soul.
“It faded,” she whispered, turning her head to seek his kiss.
He drew away, but only slightly. Enough that his features remained unfocused, unless she concentrated on just one. She looked into his eyes, of course. Those supposed windows to one’s soul. Except in this case, theywere infuriatingly opaque. For shame, they couldn’t even seem to decide upon which color to be.
“It’s my experience such marks and moles have a way of becoming more dramatic with age, rather than fading,” he persisted.
“I don’t remember being introduced to you as a youth.” She lifted her hands to his chest but didn’t push. Not just yet. “Furthermore, I don’t have to prove to you who I am.”
But she did. She should, if she wanted her ruse to work.
