Page 59 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
After a moment, his lips tightened, and he inclined his head. “You’re right. As much as we might suspect, we have no proof that Joy’s and Faith’s deaths were anything but terrible accidents.”
She waited, watching him—knowing that he was trying to convince himself, to make himself accept that, as matters stood, the correct thing to do for the Carrick clan was to let their suspicions lie, and allow Joy’s and Faith’s deaths to remain as accidents.
Coincidental accidents. Possibly connected accidents.
She liked the situation no better than he. “If we had any proof,” she murmured, “it would be a different story, but we don’t, as yet, have any evidence, and even if Joy’s canteen shows traces of poison, we have no idea as to who any putative murderer might be. Sir Godfrey Riddle—he’s currently the magistrate—won’t thank us for needlessly stirring up a hornet’s nest.”
Thomas grimaced. “No, indeed.” He glanced at her door. He tensed as if to step back, toward the door to his room just a few feet further down the corridor.
Lucilla’s pulse spiked. Was she going to allow him to retreat without getting even one step further?
But he paused and his gaze returned to her face. “Thank you—from me, from the clan—for what you’re doing for Manachan.”
The words were simple, heartfelt.
She didn’t stop to think. Instead of inclining her head in acceptance—as he plainly assumed she would—she stepped boldly across the corridor, stretched up, and pressed her lips to his.
And, this time, his response was both immediate and unfettered, unrestrained. He didn’t make the slightest attempt to hold back, but immediately engaged, his lips firming against hers, then his free hand rose, and he cupped her head and held her steady as he took control.
Took over the kiss and scripted it to his liking—to his need, his desire. He plunged them both into the maelstrom of their whirling senses and anchored them there, his tongue plundering evocatively, stroking hers, drawing forth and compelling a response that reached deeper, one even more primally visceral than she’d felt before.
She curled her fingers around his lapels and clung as her wits waltzed and her senses spun.
Thomas could have avoided the engagement; he’d read her intent in the glorious green of her eyes in the instant before she’d moved. He could have stepped away, but he hadn’t.
Because something in him wanted her.
After walking into the house and hearing her scream, after feeling her shaking in his arms, and now having to accept that he simply didn’t know, couldn’t be sure, whether a murderer lurked close or not…
Because of all that, he needed this—this contact, this moment.
It was that simple, and that devastating. To know beyond question that—as he’d always suspected—she spoke to that inner him, the primal male who lived inside him, and when she called, that side of him ruled.
She was all fire and promise in his arms, a temptation he couldn’t resist, regardless of the fact that he’d made the decision, absolute and irrevocable, that she would never be his. That she wasn’t his to take—or, more accurately, that accepting what she was so blatantly offering wasn’t what he wanted to do.
Accepting would mean staying—with her, under her spell.
He’d spent a lifetime crafting his own life, ensuring it remained, in all respects, his to determine and define.
He wouldn’t—couldn’t—give that up, not even for her.
Not even for the paradise he knew he would find in her arms.
Her lure clashed with his self-will, and he was determined that his self-will would be the stronger.
But he could take this much, indulge in one last heated kiss, without risk.
So he took, and gave, and reveled in the heat. In the slick softness of her mouth, in the pliancy of her lips, in the warmth of the curves she pressed against him.
She was a quick study, yet there was much more he could teach her; figuratively taking her hand, he angled his head, pressed deeper, and led her on.
Into a wild exchange weighted with the heady lure of forbidden pleasures, with the dark, pulsing heat of passionate need. Through the kiss, in his mind he could almost see her, a passionate nymph whose flame-colored tresses rippled down her back as she tipped up her head and laughed delightedly, glorying in the sweet rush of arousal, then she plunged into the rushing stream of desire, bathing herself in its heat.
In his heat, his passion.
She opened her heart, her mind, her body, and drew him in. On…
He pulled back, drew back—a primal reaction to the primitive warning of standing on an invisible brink, of being about to take one step too far.
