Page 25 of A Dream of Redemption
“Please don’t read more into the kiss than a way to thwart Glover.”
She nodded. “So if I were to say I wanted to kiss you again, you’d object.”
“Yes,” but his eyes contradicted him.
“Liar.” She moved to sit on the bed, and he did not back away from her. She could feel the heat coming off his naked shoulders. “I want to see if what passed between us was what I thought it was. Your kiss wasn’t the kiss a man gives a woman just to throw off Glover.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you’ve been kissed enough times to know that. I hardly think so.”
“Jealous?” she teased. “No. But I have many friends who have shared secrets.” She couldn’t help herself. She ran her finger over his collarbone and loved to see him shiver at her touch. “Are my hands cold?”
He reached up and stopped her finger’s journey over his chest. “You are playing with fire, little girl.”
“So no,” she said silkily as she let him hold her hand.
“Don’t do this. You could get hurt.”
She shook her head. “All I want is a kiss.”
“Now who is lying?”
She could not hold his heated gaze. “I don’t know what I want. All I know is that I’ll never have this opportunity to be alone with you again and I want to see if what I feel for you is real or simply because of the danger I was in.”
He let go of her finger and cupped her chin. “It doesn’t matter if what you felt was real or not. You and I can never be. Your sister trusts me. What would she think if I took advantage of your innocence?”
—
Clary’s senses warned him too late. He’d been distracted by her feminine fragrance. She was far too close. Tangled in the sheets he couldn’t move away from her—well that was his excuse.
Although he’d stopped her hand from its tempting wandering, he was too late to stop her luscious lips inching toward his.
Too late to stop his body from reacting to the desirable woman she was. He would only have to move his head a couple of inches and he’d be able to taste her. He tried—for one instant—to break the spell she held over him. Her offered-up innocence was both frightening and tempting at the same time. It was her smile that unmanned him. Despite all he had to lose, it was a risk his heart and body told him to take. He simply wanted her. He wanted something that was good and pure, and he knew he shouldn’t because he’d tarnish it.
It was only a kiss. The words echoed in his mind. His injury would stop him from doing something completely foolish, like rolling her beneath him and teaching her about passion.
One kiss. What harm could it do? He knew exactly what harm it could do, and yet he could not deny her sweet request, nor could he deny his own need to taste what she was freely giving.
With his hand still cupping her face, he drew her lips to his and gently molded his mouth to hers.
At the first taste of her sweetness the control he thought he held tightly in his grasp began to slip. The kiss lengthened and deepened. He felt a hand on his chest and it burned.
If not for his injury he was sure she would’ve been pressing up against him. She wanted more; he knew it. God help him, his common sense was fleeing. He knew nothing beyond her innocent hunger, and his own need to give her what she wanted.
To his horror he recognized Helen understood the effect she with having on him. She could taste it in his kiss, and she gloried in her newfound power.
But she could not possibly understand what giving in to desires could lead to. It would lead to her disgrace and ruin. A price far too high to pay for one fleeting moment of passion.
There could never be anything more than desire between them. He did not belong in her world, and she certainly did not belong in his.
Her innocence was like the opium he drank; its addiction was potent. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman who could conjure such innocent delight. The thought of her losing that innocence at the hands of such a debauched sinner saw him win his internal battle.
He drew away, gently breaking the kiss. A flicker of unease passed through him at the look of triumph in her eyes. She had more than proved her point. Desire all but hummed between them. If he’d not been wounded who knows what might have happened. Fear bit him and he reacted.
“I’m tired,” was all he could bring himself to say.
—
Heady with victory Helen simply smiled at his curt tone. She could see his chest rapidly rising and falling. He was affected by their kiss as much as she was. He wanted her, coveted her, and she was dizzy with the knowledge.
