He couldn’t see her freckles. He couldn’t see the delicate slope of her shoulders or the sparks of fire in her eyes that had so consumed him. Mercy became her breath, heating the fabric between them, the scent of rosewater, and the feather touch of her fingers atop his jacket. Her lips grazed his through the silk of his cravat. Behind his closed eyes, the world grew smaller, collapsing in on itself, until it was just the two of them in the darkness behind his eyelids.
She didn’t move closer—she barely moved. It felt as if she were waiting. Waiting for him, pleading for him, to show her how much he needed her touch. But if he kissed her now, there would be no going back, cravat notwithstanding.
Not for him.
If he kissed her fully and she walked away, he wouldn’t only lose her—he would lose himself. He should say something, at least. Anything. Explain himself better. It was no common thing for him to go about kissing women. As a duke, he knew he could be given liberties by Society, but after losing his father’s respect, those kinds of liberties had never tempted him.
Not until now.
But if he could do this right... Mercy had practically agreed to marry him if he could get this one thing right. A kiss. One very good kiss. He would have the chance to spend the rest of his life with this woman.
Nicholas’s fingers were first to move, each knuckle tightening until his hands became claws, taking purchase on the bodice of her dress. He pulled her more firmly into him, letting their bodies collied in a way that sent every one of his nerves reeling. Mercy’s breathing hitched, her chest rising, pressing into his own.
His mouth was the last to catch up to what his fingers, hands, and arms had been doing. He lifted a hand to the back of her head and crushed his lips onto hers. Every suppressed desire, every chance he’d had to hold Mercy, and politely refused, every emotion he had held in check for years, exploded to the surface. Mercy’s kiss had been tentative, a question he hadn’t answered. His kiss was a declaration, a claim, a promise, and there was nothing tentative about it.
The cloth between them was inconsequential, so thin he could still feel the curve of her mouth as it molded to him. He knew the moment her breath came back, for it mingled hot with his own. His fingers laced through her hair and then closed into a fist, capturing her and keeping her exactly where he wanted her—in his arms with his mouth on hers.
One of Mercy’s hands slid up his chest, her delicate fingers leaving a trail of fire in their wake. When her hand reached his neck, he thought she would wrap her hand behind his neck, but instead she brought her fingertips to his throat.
He swallowed, and her hand followed the movement, then wrapped around his neck and pulled him down, lifting her chin and kissing him back in matched desperation. Why had they waited so long to do this?
He slid his lips to her cheek, cursing the fabric over his mouth for the first time because it robbed him of the touch of those wonderous flecks on her skin.
“Mercy.” Her name was a choked prayer, one he had muttered over and over in his lifetime, but he’d never meant it in the way he meant it now.
Mercy.
Heaven have mercy on him, but he wanted this woman in his life. He didn’t care if she helped his public opinion or if she would be a buffer between him and Mother. He wanted her as his wife so he could kiss her like this whenever they were alone. Based on the way she sank into him, his chances had increased dramatically in the past few minutes.
He reached up to the cravat, grasped the smooth silk with his fingers, and tore it down from his mouth. Mercy’s eyes widened, but this time he wouldn’t mistake her motions as fear or disappointment. He’d surprised her, but based on the glint that flashed in her green eyes, she had no objections to what he’d just done.
Her mouth was begging to be kissed now that he was free from the constraints of the silk, but first thing was first. He bent low and trailed kisses along her cheekbone, taking his time, finding a particular grouping of flecks on her skin and covering them, then dragging his lips higher, stopping often, reveling in the fact that he finally had the chance to claim her freckles as his own.
When his mouth reached her ear, he whispered her name again. She responded by pulling her arms tighter around his neck and lifting herself upward.
He pulled away just enough so that he could dip back down again and crush her lips with his own, skin on skin, with no silk to impede him. He’d thought the cravat hadn’t mattered; he’d thought he could feel the intricate details of her mouth with it between them, but he’d been wrong. Very wrong. Her lips tastedof honey and lavender, and their softness made his silk cravat feel like sandstone in comparison.
Mercy took a step forward into him, and her movement left him nowhere for him to go but back. His thigh hit the corner of the door, and it swung shut with a loud thud. They were alone, kissing, and the door was closed tight behind them.
Her mouth curved into a smile beneath his. With a chuckle, she shifted, her warm breath trailing up the side of his face, until she brought her lips to his ear. “Not so proper now, are we?”
He pursed his lips together. He would have none of that. Hewasproper. Or, at least, as proper as he could be with his cravat hanging from his neck and Mercy wrapped in his arms. He made certain his left hand still held her firmly against him—he could not bear to part with her. Not yet—and reached for the doorknob with his right. He pushed the two of them away from the door slightly and opened it a few inches.
“I’m always proper.” His lips were just above hers, ready to kiss her again.
Mercy laughed softly, and he could feel the rumble of her joy in his chest. How had he ever lived without this? Then she lifted one of her hands off the back of his neck to shove the door closed. This time when it shut, she grinned. “My parents sent me herealone.They aren’t fools; they were hoping this would happen.”
He tipped his head to one side. “Devil woman.”
She shrugged.
He reached for the door and opened it again, then stepped away from her as if offended. Mercy came into full view. Her lips were swollen and her eyes bright. He certainly hoped she was right about her parents’ wishes, because it would be very hard to hide what the two of them had been doing.
The thought didn’t horrify him.
He placed his palm on her cheek and brushed his thumb acrossthe skin on her cheekbones. “Have I told you”—he dropped a kiss onto one of her most prominent freckles—“how much I love your skin?” She pursed her lips together and nodded. He leaned forward and kissed the very corner of her lips, the spot where her upper and lower lips met, the spot where her smiles always started. Mercy’s breath caught, and her eyes met his. “Putting that cravat over my mouth was the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you.” He paused and rubbed his thumb along her bottom lip. Had he really only just been kissing her? The thought brought too much air into his lungs. “Thank you for seeing exactly who I am and giving me what I need.”
Mercy’s eyes blinked slowly, like she was still coming out of a haze and his words weren’t helping. If this was what it was going to be like for the two of them, all of his plans were going to backfire. He was never going to get any work done in Parliament. “I’d like to claim I kissed you without it because I wanted to give you what you wanted, but I’m afriad I wasn’t thinking quite that clearly. All I knew was I needed to kiss you like I needed air. But now that I have breathed that air, can I pretend that I did it to please you? Because I want this kind of care for each other to be a part of who we are from now on.”
