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One morning, a Sunday, Selene went down by the servant’s stair to leave the week’s menu at the housekeeper’s desk. The house deserted, as the staff attended church on Sunday mornings.
Climbing up the servant’s stairs, she planned her day mentally. She had groceries list to do, a bit of clearing in her rooms… She’d come to her landing, when she saw Philip descending from the servant’s quarters. She froze, as her heart started a lunatic’s dance. He stopped short, as well, and their eyes locked on each other. The impact of his presence on her was so immense that she gave a step back, meeting the wall by the closed door.
Never leaving her eyes, he resumed his descent, his stare hungry and purposeful. The predator. He advanced, coming to inches close to her. She lifted her head to follow his movements. Her blood heated, a daze misted her brain as his clove attention zeroed on her.
They said nothing; there was nothing to say. Her breath accelerated and her nostrils registered his smell of man, she begun to recognise only too fast. Her irises dilated and a hollow feeling gnawed in her.
Philip had gone in search of his valet, having forgotten the Sunday thing. As soon as he saw her, his predator’s instinct aroused, together with other parts of him. Rational thought vanished; his senses drove him. Towering over her, he observed her dilated pupils, her short breath, the rise and fall of her appetising bosom, the womanly smell, only hers.
He snaked one hand along the nape of her neck, the other around her slender waist, pressing her to the wall with all his body. He plundered her lush mouth. The moment their skins touched, he heard her groan in agony.
It wasn’t a kiss that started tentative, asking permission, entrance. No, oh, no. He invaded her with his full tongue, tasting, demanding, taking. He devoured her lips as a starved man, adrift in an ocean of need.
He realised the mistake he made. A foolish, stupid mistake to kiss her. Because it seemed someone had tied him to an anchor and thrown him at sea. He was drowning, drowning helplessly in the feel of her. And he wanted more, so much more. This insanity had never happened in his life. No kiss had ever had this blowing effect on him. He pressed her more against the wall, kissing her deeper, as if she could prevent him from drowning, even if he thought solely to sink further.
If Philip drowned, Selene was in free fall from a precipice. Going down and down, dizzy, swamped with alien sensations, mimicking what he did to her, in utter delight. She didn’t care a whit. Her bare fingers entangled in his sleek, smooth hair, pulling him closer. Falling, falling. She felt his hard muscles, his hard desire, making her crave him so fiercely, she thought she’d faint.
Then he pressed her further into the wall and she took him, whatever he gave, whatever he demanded. Not enough, darned little…so little. They should be doing this for an eternity.
Their mouths detached in search of ragged air. He breathed hard, strolling his open mouth down her neck, as she clung to him as a lifeline, his lips spreading pure fire wherever they went.
He made the way back and pillaged her mouth again, deeper, more erotic, hungrier. She opened more for him, capitulating shamelessly. He inflamed her, she got hot in places alien to her and there came this humid sensation that made her empty and needy. She moaned in frustration, so he pressed a thigh in between hers. Poor solace, it made her desperate for even more.
He turned his head seeking more access to her and she moved hers to allow it. They were so glued to each other, so tangled, so oblivious to the world outside, totally immersed in their own passion. It glowed, burning them almost to ashes.
A door opening sounded bellow stairs, church over. It made Philip, with his military training, surface from his haze. Gently, he took her by her shoulders and put distance between them. She made a sound of protest in her throat, reality hitting her altogether. The house seemed to awake with the movement of the staff downstairs. Philip, looking thorn with frustration, left the landing silently. She took a moment until her legs felt firmer and walked back to the hallway.
The memory of that kiss would not leave her, she thought days later. Not when she read in the library, not when she visited her friends, not when she managed the household, not when she lay her head on her pillow. Even less then. Her body reacted to the memory and her mind produced the most inappropriate reveries.
Her very first kiss. Real kiss. She touched her lips in the hope to feel it again. She never thought it could feel this way. So overwhelming, so sweeping, a whirlwind that assailed her senses in every possible way. She kissed him back the way he kissed her because it’d melted her deliciously and she’d wanted him to have the same. First kiss, and unforgettable. Dangerous, if repeated. He meant ruin, total, irreversible ruin, from any angle you looked at it. She couldn’t let it happen again, she’d be lost. It’d be social suicide, the route to bitterness and lonely days. He’d have his fill of her and set her aside when he tired of her. She’d heard he’d done it before. Women fell on him to the dozens. Fortune, title and looks favoured him. Falling for him would be a stupid error she wasn’t about to incur in.
He had to have her. Soon. Repeatedly. Philip thought as he paced his chamber impatiently. He hadn’t been able to sleep all these nights, since that heavenly mistake. A thousand times he opened the door to go to her. A thousand times he closed it again just to have acid frustration as a bed mate. And sexual frustration was driving him mad, turning into obsession, fixation. No! He had to have her or he’d lose it.
He raked his hand through his hair and paced some more. What if she decided to remarry? Hell forbid it! The thought of her with any other man wrenched his guts. But a young woman certainly would wish for a family, children. Pregnant by someone else? Never! He’d never allow it. The Duke of Crompton had power and means to prevent it and he would!
A light knock at the library’s door announced Jenkins. “The Earl of Cunningham and his mother to visit you, my lady. Are you home?”
When a widow came to half-mourning period, social life slowly resumed. Receiving calls would become more and more frequent now.
Selene preferred to talk to the insipid earl and the gossipmonger of his mother than sit there ruminating about servant stairs and Sunday mornings.
“Yes, Jenkins, I’ll be there shortly. Take them to the blue room.” Jenkins bowed and left.
She raised from the armchair, checking her dove-grey high-waist dress and patting her hair to see if it remained in place.
Selene entered the blue room and received warm greetings from the earl and a long inquisitive look from the dowager countess. Tongues might start wagging, she thought. Resuming social life wouldn’t be smooth. A young widow and the new duke, in the same house? Those ladies with unfulfilled lives would bask in the fantasies they’d weave and pass on as fact.
She rang for tea and sat with them.
Philip rang for Jenkins, the butler appeared at the study door. “Please, send Her Grace here, Jenkins.”
“Her Grace has visitors, Your Grace.”
Philip got immediately alert. “Visitors?”
“Yes, my lord, the Earl of Cunningham and his mother.”
“Thank you, Jenkins.” The butler bowed and left.
