Page 59 of Kiss Me Lady One More Time
She flung an arm out. “Are we going to start a contest over who comes from a worse family? My mother is problematic as well.”
“You’ve yet to meet my father,” he grumbled.
“Has he broken into any houses lately? Stolen any artifacts? No? Then I think you’ll come out ahead.”
Reaching up, he traced a brow with his finger and cradled the side of her face. It was an effort not to lean into the heat and strength of his big hand. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For standing up to her. For defending me.”
“I would do it again. A hundred times, if I heard her speak to you in such a way.”
He leaned in and kissed her brow and her eyes closed. She gripped his wrist, where he held her. “That’s the worst part,” she whispered. “You haven’t asked me what I want, but you haven’t asked yourself, either.”
“I know what I want,” he rasped.
“Do you?” Her eyes opened and she reached down to grab his other wrist, too. “You want to study nesting behavior and family groups and community bonds because that’s what you are looking for. You want to belong. Why can’t you admit it?”
He grabbed her arms, shifted her and pulled her around so that she straddled him. “I do admit it,” he said, meeting her gaze directly. “I do want a place to belong. And I’ve found it.”
“With your friends, you mean.”
He nodded.
“They are lovely, each and every one that I’ve met. I look forward to meeting the others. I’m glad you’ve found them, that you all support each other so well.” She let out a short, sharp laugh. “But have you told yourself that they are enough?” She dropped her head. “Of course, you have.”
“They are enough. They must be. For now.”
She scowled at him. “Lie to yourself, if you wish, but not to me.” She leaned in. “And I know it for a lie.”
He let go of her, but she merely gripped him tighter. “I feel it, just as you do,” she told him fiercely. “The ease. The comfort. The delight in shared interests. The yearning for more. The extreme satisfaction of knowing the curve of your chest under my hand. The urge to tell you all of my secrets and fears, and to hear yours in return. The utter certainty that everything awaits us—everything to experience together, if only we are brave enough to claim it.”
She slid her hands up, over his shoulders. She cradled his face in both hands. “Weareconnected. We are meant for each other. I’m claiming it,” she whispered. She kissed him softly. Once. Twice. “I want to belong . . . to you.”
His breath came fast and deep. He was poised on a precipice. She waited while he struggled, waited to see if he would step over—or away.
He did neither. He fought for equilibrium. His chest stopped rising like a bellows. He gave her no answer, save for a sad, solemn look.
She dropped her hands away. Her heart plummeted, down and down, into the shallow pool that would be her future. Bracing herself on the edge of the settee, she swung her leg to disengage from him—
And found herself yanked back.
And kissed. She found herself kissed with a devastatingly, heavy sort of desperate desire that set a match to the craving circulating in her veins and set it all ablaze, all at once.
He pressed his lips fervently along her jaw and breathed in her ear. “You drive me mad. I know I shouldn’t want you so. It’s not the time. I haven’t yet proved myself even remotely worthy. I’ve a timeline and a careful plan and you come stomping through and upend everything and I should be furious. I should be careful—for your sake, too. But all I want is to kiss you and kiss you and kiss you. One more time. Every time.”
“Kiss me, then. I’ve laid my heart bare. You know it’s what I want, too.”
He did. And she reveled in the depth of feeling in it. In the slow and hungry ardor that she could taste in the erotic exploration of his tongue. He demanded more, delved deeper and she complied, gripping his broad shoulders and giving herself over to the heat of it.
It was a martial strike of a kiss, demanding and intense and somewhat shocking—and perhaps meant as a distraction to the real invasion. This might consist of the slide of his hands, journeying up her legs, pushing her skirts away until his fingers touched the warm, heretofore unplundered skin on the inside of her thigh.
She shivered. All the hairs on her neck and arms stood up. Her nipples peaked instantly, calling to him.
He answered. Her unbuttoned pelisse was pushed away. It fell to the floor behind her. She didn’t care. He was cupping her breasts. His thumbs rubbed over her nipples, right through the fabric of her bodice and stays. He pinched them both and she gasped. Her pelvis rocked against him.
He made a sound, rough and low, which delighted her. She’d made himgrowl.
Kisses slid down the length of her neck in a leisurely path before he buried his face in the swell of breasts. Her fingers burrowed into his hair.
A purposeful shift on his part, and suddenly the bulge of his erection pressed intimately between her legs. And he won the round, because the noise she made sounded distinctly like asqueak.
