“Have you tried”—she glanced up doubtfully—“that particular act?”
Which involved the man being placing his mouth between the woman’s thighs.
She’d seen a couple in a similar pose depicted in the widow’s book of scandalous prints. She still wasn’t certain why that was supposed to be pleasurable.
“A gentleman never kisses and tells.”
“Those…beasts are not kissing.”
“A kiss does not have to be confined to the mouth, you know.”
She sent him a dubious sidelong glance. “I understand cheeks to be extraordinarily popular, too.”
“Cheeks? How disappointingly pedestrian of you, Blackbird.” His smile slanted. “Where’s your imagination? Right now, without the least bit of effort, I can name several places I’d like to kiss you.”
Oh? She swallowed.Ohhhh.
Finally, she grasped his implication.
His sentence had left his mouth parted, and those lips she couldn’t resist, slightly puckered. Like a bee to a flower, she touched her finger against the slightly roughened, slightly damp skin.
“Soft,” she whispered.
He closed his mouth over her finger and sucked. Rivulets of pleasure tumbled over her skin. He pulled back, leaving a glistening point on her tingling finger.
“Sweet,” he replied.
Tiny hairs on her neck and arms rose. “I’m not sweet.”
“No?” He bent his head and then brushed his mouth against her own. Again and again, he kissed her lightly, each time nudging closer. Repeated touches, brief and tender, quickened life in other parts of her body.
“Well”—he came up for air—“you taste sweet.”
She stared at his lips. He’d a wealth of carnal knowledge. She’d none.
But she wanted him. She wanted him to want her. And she was beginning to fear she wanted him for reasons beside the satisfaction of bludgeoning his arrogance.
“Rogue,” she whispered, “teach me what you know.”
They were barelyeven kissing and, God, he couldn’t breathe. Each, featherlight touch of her lips—hesitant, almost completely innocent—restricted the expansion of his lungs.
He rested his hand against her cheek.
Her skin was as smooth and pliant as he’d remembered. She’d high cheek bones—he moved his fingers over the contours of her face—and thin delicate brows. He brushed a lock of hair from her brow, quickly realizing the chignon that had tamed her mane had been either removed or come undone.
Her thick, silky mass of locks now hung free.
“Soft,” he murmured in an intentional repetition of her description.
Gently, he planted a precise, deliberate line of kisses across her jaw and then down onto her throat.
“And, yes, sweet.”
He nuzzled beneath her ear, seeking the place he’d touched the last time. The tiny patch of skin that had made her whimper like a cat in heat.
But nipping the lobe only made her hum. A nibble two inches below merely caused her to flinch. Then, he darted his tongue into a valley just above her collar bone. Her breath hitched. He’d found his prize. He fluttered his lips over the spot until her hiccup turned into a long, low moan.
“Again,” she demanded.
