Page 50 of To Woo and to Wed
“Or?”
“Or,” Sophie repeated, and she tilted her head back slightly, so that her gaze on him was heavy-lidded and lazy, “we could do something compromising… in truth.”
Something about her manner suggested that she was throwing down a gauntlet—one she did not expect West to pick up. She was offering him nothing more than what she’d offered four years earlier. And, he realized, she thought she knew him well enough to predict how he’d respond—that he’d step back, demur.
What would she do, he wondered, if he did the opposite?
If he reminded her of just howgoodthey were together?
He reached out and very deliberately leaned his cane against the wall.
Sophie’s eyes tracked this movement, then flicked back to his.
He took a step toward her, and then another one, until there were only a few scant inches of space between them. He reached out, and rested one arm on the wall above her head. She tipped her head back farther to meet his eyes, and he saw her swallow.
He allowed himself one single, satisfied second to revel in the sight, and then he ducked his head and pressed his lips to hers.
It should have felt strange, and new, and unfamiliar, kissing her again after all this time, and yet, in that first instant, the overpowering sensation that hit him was one of homecoming. His body seemed to recognize hers, and a thousand memories crashed into him as he reached out to cup her jaw, tilting her head to a better angle so that he could kiss her properly. There was the softness of her skin under his hand, and the electric feeling of her hand sliding across his shoulders, into the short hairs at the nape of his neck.
He pulled back after a moment, resting his forehead against hers, and she opened her eyes, blinking up at him.
“What is it?” she asked, the slightest breathless edge to her voice.
“It’s still us,” he said, his tone dangerously near marveling, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than he registered how foolish and inane they must have sounded to her, but something complicated was playing across her face, and nothing about her expression indicated that she found him foolish.
Instead, she merely said, “It’s still us,” and tugged his head down to hers.
Where there had been the slightest bit of tentativeness, of hesitation to their last kiss, none was now present: This was all hot, fast certainty. Her nails were digging into his shoulders sharp enough to cause a bolt of pleasure to arrow directly south, and his tongue teased open her lips, slipping into her mouth and tangling with hers. He stepped closer, so close that her breasts were brushing his chest, and he dropped his arm from the wall above her head to wrap around her waist instead, tugging her more firmly against him. She pushed back after a moment, and he made as if to step back, break the kiss, but she seized his jacket without removing her mouth from his, turning them so that it was now his back at the wall, thudding against it with surprising force, and she was leaning against him, all of her soft curves pressing against him, her leg reaching out to twine around one of his as one of his hands drifted toward her breasts—
“Iknewyou needed a chaperone!”
Sophie drew back with a start, and West loosened his grip on her enough to put some space between them, but kept a hand at her waist as they turned to peer down the length of the terrace, where Alexandra, Violet, and—heaven help them—Harriet were standing. All three wore expressions of varying degrees of amusement, though there was something a bit inscrutable about Alexandra’s; it was Harriet, however,who had spoken, and there was a note of barely concealed glee in her voice now.
“Betsy is going to be so distraught to have missed this—she went to the retiring room a few minutes ago—you know how ladies in acertain conditionare,” she added, her tone heavy with meaning. “But Alex said that you’d come out here a few minutes ago, and I, naturally, washorrifiedthat an unmarried couple was allowed to escape onto a darkened terrace, without someone to protect their virtue.”
“How considerate of you,” Sophie said. “Particularly given that I once found you and George behind a set of drapes in my very own library, before you were wed.”
“A youthful indiscretion,” Harriet said, waving an airy hand. “I am amothernow, Sophie. I havematernal instincts.”
“Doesn’t Cecily have colic?” Sophie asked skeptically.
“Indeed,” Harriet said brightly. “Which is why George is at home with her this evening! It is so useful when gentlemen know their place is in the home,” she added fondly.
“In any case,” Alexandra said, casting her younger sister a look of half-affection, half-exasperation, “Harriet was quite insistent that we follow you out here, convinced we would find you doing something compromising. And she was correct.” There was a note of faint surprise in her voice, which seemed strange to West—should not they expect to find an affianced couple doing something mildly scandalous? He was distracted from this thought by the sight of Violet, who looked as though she was trying very hard to fight back a smile. Violet, who—he remembered in a flash—was now aware that his and Sophie’s betrothal was feigned, thanks to James.
He met her gaze, and the look in her eyes informed him in nouncertain terms that his brother would be hearing about this incident in approximately three minutes.
He glanced down at Sophie. “Shall we go back indoors, dearest?” he asked her, very dryly.
“Indeed,” she said lightly, allowing him to take her hand. She reached for his cane and, as she handed it to him, added in a murmur quiet enough that only he could hear, “I believe that will have made our ruse considerably more convincing, don’t you think?”
Ruse.If she thought that was a ruse—that that kiss had been nothing more than a ploy to make their act convincing, to pull the wool over her sisters’ eyes—then West was tempted to ask her if she’d experienced the same past five minutes that he had. Nothing—nothing—about that kiss had felt like a ruse, or like acting, to him.
But then he heard it: the slightest, shakiest exhale as his fingers brushed hers, taking possession of his cane. And he knew, in that instant, that she was no less affected than he had been.
And if she thought she could kiss him like that, and then still insist that they had no future together, that this feeling that burned between them was something to be ignored…
Well, he would simply have to prove to her otherwise.
