Page 36 of An Unexpected Earl

“I don’t know.”

“Does it have to do with your lost fortune?”

“No,” she whispered, the word barely a sound on her lips.

“Then how did you lose it?”

She couldn’t tell him that. Wouldnevertell him— “It’s not important.” But the quaver in her voice easily gave that away for the lie it was.

So did the disbelieving lift of his brow. “A lost fortune, the head of the House Committee of Privileges, a brother who’s being blackmailed by a criminal organization into replacing men who have been murdered, a sister who’s doing everything she can to protect him… Seems to me that everything about this is important.”

Breathe. She forced herself to remain calm, to keep her breath steady and the tremors that gripped her from becoming visible. To keep him from discovering more…Just breathe!“Not that.”

“One.”

She blinked, confused. He was making her head swim! “Pardon?”

“That’s your first lie.”

Her confusion dulled into quick anger. “How dare you accuse—”

“Two.” When her mouth fell open, he drawled, “Now you’re lying about lying.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and she pushed once more at his shoulders. This time with both hands. She had to leave.Now.“We’re done with this conversation. I want you to leave. I don’t want to see you or talk to yo—”

“Three.”

His mouth came down upon hers.

Ten

Pearce groaned at the bittersweet taste of her kiss. Sweet Lucifer, he’d forgotten how soft and warm her lips were, how yielding and supple beneath his. The memories came rushing back of the hours spent kissing her when he’d still been nothing more than a green lad, when she’d been eager to learn how to kiss and actually asked him if he minded if she practiced on him.

If he minded… Laughable! What he’d minded was having to stop. Even back then, a dark part of his soul suspected that she would never be completely his. That teaching her that last and most important lesson of intimacy would belong to another man. But he’d selfishly taken whatever else she’d been willing to give, including kisses and caresses that had left her trembling. Just as she was trembling now.

Yet those kisses had been nothing like this.

True, she still tasted of vanilla and sugar, like a decadent dessert just waiting to be devoured. Still tilted back her head to mold her lips perfectly to his. Still ran her hands over his chest as if she couldn’t touch him enough to satisfy herself. But now a hesitation tempered the longing inside her, one that held her back when it never would have before.

God help him, but he wanted her to surrender to the moment and let him give her the kind of passionate kiss he’d been longing for since he laid eyes on her at the masquerade. No—since long before that. Since that night twelve years ago when he was forced to leave her behind.

With a growing need to deepen the kiss, his lips teased at hers to coax her to open her mouth and invite him inside.

“Pearce,” she whispered, half an entreaty to be given more, half a plea for mercy. But then she did as they both wanted and welcomed his kiss by parting her trembling lips.

Joy surged through him. He cupped her face between his hands and slipped his tongue between her lips in a silken glide. With sweeping plunges and little licks, he slowly explored her mouth in an attempt to rediscover her.

When a soft sigh escaped her, he couldn’t resist the urge to take her bottom lip and worry it gently between his teeth.

This time, it wasn’t a sigh that came from her but a whimper, one that stirred aching heat in his loins. When she slipped her arms up to encircle his neck and pull him down to her, giving herself over to the old affection and rising yearnings stirring between them, he couldn’t stop his own sound of pleasure.

Kissing her felt like coming home.

He moved his mouth away from hers to bury his face in her hair. He breathed in deep the delicious scent of her and drank in the softness and warmth of her body pressed against his. He could barely believe she was real. He slid his hands over her shoulders and down her back, needing to feel her to prove that she wasn’t a dream.

But she turned her head away when he leaned in to kiss her again. “You…have to stop.” Yet she belied her words by fisting his lapels in her hands as if she were afraid he’d do as she said and vanish like smoke.

He nuzzled his cheek against hers with a smile. “Ihave to stop?” The tip of his tongue darted out to delve into the corner of her mouth and capture the sweetness waiting there, and she bit back a soft mewling of longing. “I think you’re a willing party to it.”