Page 39 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
She could not go without this kind of intimacy and affection for the rest of her days.
When he finally broke free, looking down into her shadowed face, his breath quick and heavy against her damp lips—she knew for certain that she would do whatever it took to have him still in her life.
Perhaps she would never be able to forgive him for all the ways he had hurt and abandoned her. But she wanted this enough not to care. They could live as husband and wife in every sense—including Biblical—and her heart would remain intact, but her body would know every touch of a man.
That was what the list was about.
He brought one shaking hand to her lips. “I am sorry,” he whispered, and she shook her head, stepping back, freeing herself from his embrace.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t tell me you are sorry or you didn’t mean for this to happen or that it was a mistake.” She sliced a hand through theair. “There is nothing wrong with a husband and wife kissing. Surely you wouldn’t want me to kiss anyone else?”
“By all accounts, you haven’t.” There was a rough note in his voice, as though that notion still plagued him somehow. “I hadn’t thought that possible. Weren’t you being actively courted when I married you?”
“He was—” What could she say to describe the baron? At the time, he had seemed an eminently sensible option. Notexciting—as Penelope had so often reminded her—but steady and reliable, and she was old enough to know the value in such things. But her heart was racing, her body had been brought alive by the touch of a man she couldn’t even in all honesty say she liked, and she no longer had the same taste for sensible.
“He was reserved,” she managed.
He gave a short laugh. “You shouldn’t have told me that.”
“Why?” she pressed. “Because then you wouldn’t have kissed me?”
“I would have—” He inhaled sharply and ran a hand through his hair. “I must be going mad,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “I can’t say what I would have done,” he said finally. “And I can’t say exactly why I brought you here. I knew you hadn’t drunk the wine.”
“Curiosity,” she offered.
“Perhaps.”
“It is why I came. Aren’t you curious how it would be between us both? You were gone for so long, and in that time, I became a lady. And we are married.” She held his gaze, and as though he couldn’t help himself, he dropped it down her person then back up. “I’m not sorry,” she said. “That I provoked you into kissing me.”
“And how did you find it? Your first kiss?”
She gave him a secret smile and sauntered back towards the stairs. “I suppose you’ll have to keep wondering, won’t you, Alexander?”
His muttered curse followed her up the stairs.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That night, Alexander lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. His body throbbed with frustrated tension, made all the worse by the illicit kiss in the cellars. He truly had been afflicted by madness.
All it had done was make thewantdeepen into something impossible to ignore.
With a groan, he pushed back the covers and took hold of his persistent arousal. No amount of concentration had made it disappear for any length of time; every time his mind wandered back to her, his body responded.
What he needed was to get her out of his system. To have a clear head with which to make his decision once and for all.
As he stroked, he tried to think of Helena, but time had blurred her memory, and when he imagined how he had once felt kissing her, he now saw Lydia’s body. Her soft curves, the press of herbreasts against his chest, and the gentle hand she curled around the nape of his neck. Every eager slide of her mouth, the way she followed his head.
True, she had been a novice in the art of kissing, but she had responded to him with such enthusiasm, it had practically ignited his desire beyond all help. He had almost been at the point of stripping her down and taking her there and then, in the damp with the cellar and ale.
All his vows, all his better intentions, every single one of his principles, gone in an instant.
Pleasure locked his spine and gathered at the base. He pumped his fist harder, closing his eyes. She had been so plump and lovely under his hands. Every time she walked, he saw the sway of her hips, watched the shape of her thighs under the material of her skirts, and the sight was half making him mad.
How could he endure this?
