She slid her hands around to his back where the muscles bunched and flexed with his movements as he explored her mouth and deepened the kiss. His hands came up and cradled her face. The frantic need wavered and his ministrations gentled. He drew back. Then he leaned in and kissed one corner of her mouth and next the other.
Her breaths coming in little pants, she kept her hands where they were because she wasn’t ready to disconnect from him completely. Lightly he traced his thumb back and forth over her lower lip.
“The curve of your neck,” he rasped, “your shoulder, your breast... your nipple.”
Her eyes widened at his brazen words. “What are you talking about?”
“That night at the Elysium, all the places you could have asked to be kissed, and you chose your mouth. A thousand times since, I’ve wished you’d said everywhere. Every place you dare. Every place you want. Every hill, every valley. Every inch.”
“You claimed to be asking about a location within the room.”
“I was. But you weren’t. What spots came to mind? Which ones did you almost ask for?”
If he wasn’t cupping her chin in the palm of his hand and his thumb wasn’t still caressing her lip, she might have ducked her head or better yet pressed it against his comforting chest. Instead, she barely shook it.
“Tell me. I’ll lock it away and no one will ever know.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “My hand.”
She expected he might laugh, mock her at the simplicity and dullness of her answer, especially when he was bold enough to speak out loud incredibly intimate parts of her person. But no sound came. His thumb stilled at the corner of her mouth. Slowly she opened her eyes to find him studying her with a mixture of interest and revelation.
“I haven’t much of an imagination, I’m afraid,” she confessed. “I have to be able to take things apart in order to understand them, to see the possibilities in them.”
“Is that the reason you asked for a kiss? So you could take it apart and examine it?”
She gave the tiniest of nods. “I wanted to understand the mechanics of it. Only it wasn’t mechanical. It was... sublime.”
Wherever the light was coming from, it allowed her to see his flash of a smile. “They’re never the same, you know. Kisses. So many factors come into play. The couple. The moment. Desire. Want. Need. How long it’s been. Sometimes it’s all hunger. Other times it’s comfort. And once in a while it’s farewell. And that’s the hardest kiss of all.”
Her heart felt as though it had been pierced, and her chest ached. Her fingers pressed into his skin as much as they could, which was little because of the firmnessof his muscles. “Have you ever given one of those—the farewell kind?”
“Eventually everyone does. You might not think it is at the time, but it doesn’t make it any less painful once you realize it was.”
While he hadn’t exactly answered her question, she couldn’t help but feel that he was speaking from experience, and she very much wished he wasn’t, that he hadn’t gone through something so agonizingly unpleasant.
“Was this a farewell kiss then?” She didn’t know why she sounded as though it was something she was dreading. They’d hardly had a hello kiss. She barely knew the man.
His thumb that had been tucked into the corner of her mouth stroked the curve of her cheek. “No. I knew only that I wanted to kiss you again, that the last one left me yearning for more.”
The answer was overwhelming and unsettling.
“You gave no hint of that at the park today.”
“You have no idea how difficult that was, to remain civilized. Even now, I want to engage in deliciously wicked actions with you.”
“But you haven’t.”
“I wouldn’t without permission.”
Suddenly she realized her hands were still beneath his shirt, her fingers drawing lazy circles over his skin. She eased them out from beneath the fabric. “Before things get out of hand here, I should probably return to the ballroom.”
“Aren’t you at all curious regarding what happens following a kiss?”
Was that an invitation or a dare? Either way, she did hope not enough light shone on her that he couldsee she was dreadfully, wantonly curious. But she did know enough to comprehend that what followed was for the wedding bed, not a moonlit garden.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I—” If she ever were to marry, how would she explain to her husband that she’d once given herself to a man out of curiosity? It seemed so very wrong to join her body with that of a man she didn’t love. More importantly, one who didn’t love her. “I may have been brazen enough to request a kiss, but my virtue... I can’t take it that far... outside the boundaries of marriage.”
The slightest furrow appeared across his brow, and his eyes seemed to bore into her as if he were mining her soul. Far too late, she realized her words might have given him reason to believe she was suggestinghemarry her.
