Page 60 of A Wicked Duke's Arranged Marriage
Josephine pushed her palm into her belly, trying to soothe her still-racing emotions.
“You make me … feel things as well,” Josephine whispered, fumbling her words and inelegantly offering him what she could.
Feel things. It sounded so simple, said like that, but it felt anything but.
Henry’s smile was rueful, the barest twitch of his lips as he took another step back. Josephine might have been offendedif it weren’t for how he still looked at her. The way his eyes drank in her every inch.
For a long moment, they regarded one another, the silence between them heavy and loaded with all the things they could not seem to put into words.
“I should like to kiss you goodnight,” Henry said at last, finally apparently regaining enough composure to step forward once more.
“Didn’t you just do that?”
Oh, stupid girl.
She had no idea why she’d said that aloud. She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted anything he was willing to give. Why would she say such a thing?
Henry chuffed a laugh, stopping just short of standing as close as he was before. His fingers were gentle, mere ghostly whispers against her cheek as he looked down at her, his eyes moving between her own as if he were trying to read something in them.
“No. That isn’t at all what I was doing.” His words were also a whisper, his head dropping again so that he could rub his nose lightly against hers.
There was no rush like before. It was slower, even than their first kiss. More intentional with the way that he lifted her face with his fingers under her chin.
His lips were barely there, a gentle press as her eyes fluttered closed once more.
The kiss was different. Not lesser, not more.
It was as if he were saying everything with his lips that his voice could not find the words for. And Josephine felt her heart stutter in her chest with it all.
He couldn’t love her, he had said. But perhaps he could feel something for her.
As she knew she already did for him.
When he backed away that time, she found herself staring up at him, her lips curling into a small, soft smile.
“I rather like ‘goodnight’,” she murmured, watching his lips move to copy hers.
“Then I shall leave you with it before I destroy it,” Henry muttered. “Tomorrow?”
Josephine could only nod as Henry took one step backwards, then two … and then three before finally turning on his heel and walking off down the hallway.
She opened the door to her bedchamber in a daze, slipping inside with a dreamy smile still hovering about her lips.
“Feelings,” she whispered, laughing to herself as she wandered aimlessly into her bedchamber, blind to anything but the emotions coursing through her.
She made him feel things. Maybe he had only meant physical, but she didn’t think that had been it.
And it gave her hope.
He gave her hope.
Her smile grew as she sank onto the end of her bed, her fingers dancing over her lips as she remembered the feel of his against hers.
If this was a taste of married life, she thought maybe she could bear it even better than she had first thought.
He made her happy, she realized.
Her feelings for him grew with each day she got to know him more. And he proved time and time again that it was worth it.
