It was his turn to flinch.
“I don’t like him touching you.” He stepped into her space and loomed over her. Without a trace of trepidation, he moved closer still. His voice was rough as he said, “But that wasn’t the only reason.”
“Then why…?”
Both hands came to rest on the table behind her, his arms at either side of her, but not touching. Tension thickened the air further when he lowered his face to hers. His tone turned reverent. “Because I wanted you in my arms. When I saw you laughing from across the ballroom… it was impossible to focus on anything else. I had never heard you laugh before.”
“Surely you’ve heard me laugh.” She huffed. They had known each other for years! Admittedly, her laughter had become rare as of late, but never? There must have been one instance that proved him wrong, but try as she might, she couldn’t bring anything to mind, not with him surrounding her, clouding her ability to think.
“Not like that, not with me.” There was a new depth to his eyes, so near to hers, dark in the low light, it made her heart race and the tiny hairs on her body awaken. “You have a beautiful laugh, Cassandra.”
He raised his hand, but instead of touching her, he reached past her to pluck a flower from the table. With a gentle, sensuous movement, he trailed his hand down her arm and tucked the bloom in between her fingers.
Another gardenia.
Secret love.
“Is that why you kissed me?” Cassandra twirled the stem between her thumb and forefinger, spinning the white flower.
“That, and I couldn’t wait another fortnight to be rewarded for my heroic deeds.” He sighed dramatically. With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, he took a step back, pulled the worn page from his pocket, and presented it to her.
Hesitantly, she reached for it and he laughed, running a hand through his hair.
“No tricks.”
She held the page in the same hand that held the flower, and she wondered why she didn’t feel relieved. It had given her nothing but stress having her private thoughts in his possession. He strung her along, made sport of her, and now that the game was over. It all felt… anticlimactic.
“I was never going to read it,” he admitted. “I should have given it to you right away.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted your attention,” he said with a slight raise to his shoulder, a sheepish grin on his face. “I didn’t expect you to actually kiss me.”
“You kissed me,” she corrected.
“You kissed me back.” He reached forward to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. The touch of his skin on hers ignited a familiar heat within her. Eyes trained to her mouth, he whispered, “Do you regret it?”
It wasn’t regret that she felt, but mild disappointment. She hadwanted him for so long. In her girlish dreams, she had always wanted her first kiss to be with him, but not like that. “It’s only… it’s not how I imagined it would be.”
“Show me how you imagined it,” he whispered. “Tell me what to do.”
Alone with him, in the still of the in-between, with moonlight shining in his eyes, all of her walls crumbled. These might be the last days she would have with him. “Why-I-shouldn’t” became “why-not” and she moved forward, raising both of her hands to cup his face as he had done. The coarse bristle of his night-beard scratched her palms as she angled his head down to hers.
Tentatively, she leaned up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. She brushed her lips across his, once, twice, and it felt… pleasant enough, but compared to the passion from earlier, how he kissed her in the meadow…. She flushed deeper. It wasn’t as if she could do that to him. Pulling away, she saw mirth in his eyes and a teasing expression on his face.
He was laughing at her!
“Not like that, little bird.”
Cheeks flaming, she looked away, but with his fingertips, he gently guided her face back to his. Half-lidded midnight eyes met hers, and against her lips he whispered, “This is how you ought to be kissed.”
Seth closed the distance and pressed his mouth to hers, coaxing her to open for him with slow, prolonged kisses, gliding his tongue over hers. Firm muscles flexed under her hands as she shyly roamed her fingers over his chest. Experimentally, Cassandra dipped her tongue into his mouth, and he groaned in approval. His heartbeat quickened under her palm. Separating from her, he whispered, “I’ve dreamed of this.”
With great care, he curved one hand on the back of her neck. His cool breath on her heated face sent shivers through her as he pressed akiss to her cheekbones, one, and then the other.
“I wondered how you would taste.”
Bending down, he ghosted feather-light kisses down the delicate slope of her throat and ran the tip of his tongue against her pulse point. A tender, open-mouthed press of his lips followed and a breathless whimper escaped her. His mouth traced the line of her collarbone to the hollow of her throat, and his tone darkened, sensual and possessive. “How sweet you are, Cassandra… sosoft.”
