Page 42 of Better Off Wed

“We…we could consider it further private rehearsal for our public roles.”

“And will one kiss be sufficient rehearsal, do you think?” Slowly, he moved until he was facing her. He leaned forward, his hands resting on the mattress, one on either side of her hips. “Think carefully before you answer, because I cannot marry you, Laura.” His gaze was remorseless, filled with something like anger. “You will never be Lady Sterling in earnest.”

She wet her lips to speak and found them trembling. “You presume a great deal, my lord.”

Instinctively, she had leaned away from him, which only seemed to encourage him to prowl closer. Close enough that she could see the truth: what she had mistaken for cruelty in the blue depths of his eyes was really pain. Pain, and a hunger she understood all too well.

“One kiss,” she promised, closing the distance she had put between them. “No more.”

“No more,” he agreed and brought his mouth to hers.

Chapter 12

Twelve years had passed between Jeremy’s first kiss and this one.

Twelve years also stood between his last kiss and the present moment. Twelve years since he’d inherited the title of Viscount Sterling and gone to the village pub, more to drown his sorrows than to celebrate, and Sally Miller, middle daughter of a local squire, had climbed into his lap and kissed him in front of half the townsfolk, and he’d realized that nothing would ever be the same again.

That afternoon, he’d discovered that a title he did not want and did not deserve nonetheless made him interesting to others. And eligible, in a way the son of the rector had never been. Knowing he could not afford to marry, Jeremy had gently set Sally aside and sworn off drink, kisses, and everything to which they might lead.

But twelve years, as it turned out, was a very long time. Long enough for such a vow to grow brittle, fragile. It turned to dust beneath the first brush of Laura’s lips.

God, had anything ever been so soft and wonderful and warm? He was torn between wanting to devour their sweetness immediately and to savor it for an hour—for though she’d agreed to just one kiss, if he never lifted his mouth from hers, could not that one kiss go on forever?

Careful not to break the connection between them, he balanced his weight on one arm and slid the other hand beneath her head, tangling his fingers in her short, honey-gold curls and learning her gentle curves. The velvet plumpness of her lower lip. The peaks of the upper, as delightfully sharp as she. The advance and retreat of a dance for which he’d had no teacher and yet knew by heart.

If he was tentative, she was bold, wrapping her arms around his ribs and drawing him closer, welcoming his weight as he pressed her down into the mattress. He could feel her breasts rise and fall with her rapid breath, answering and echoing the drumming beat of his pulse.

Again and again, when the firm press of lips softened and shifted, he feared the end, thinking it could go on no longer. Then her lips parted beneath his, and he felt the wet heat of her breath, heard her greedy little murmur, and the kiss deepened. Open-mouthed and eager, she levered herself upward with one hand while the fingers of the other curled in his shirt, her nails lightly scoring the skin of his back. The first tentative touch of her tongue to his lips, a hint, a taste, and he was lost.

Not twelve years since his last kiss. Forever. And if he’d known such kisses existed in the world, he could never have survived the wait.

He opened to her, let her have her way, as she slipped her tongue inside his mouth, every stroke a lesson in pleasure and how to please. When she tilted her head, sealing their lips together, he took control of the kiss and showed her what he had learned. The erotic contrast of sharp teeth and slick tongue. The sensitive arc of the roof of the mouth. The trembling promise of a groan.

In his years in the army, he’d worked hard to develop a set of skills, numbers and letters, mathematics and languages, anything pertaining to the ancient art of cryptography.

Much as he might have wished it, however, those academic pursuits had not entirely erased his interest in other things. He’d spent a good deal too much time, alone in his monkish cell in the Underground, thinking of what it would be like to kiss a woman like Laura—

No. Not like Laura.

He had never been bold enough to conjure such a woman, even in his dreams.

One kiss. No more.

At the risk of breaking the kiss, and his promise, he shifted his lips from hers. One chance to know the velvet softness of her cheek, to explore the sensitive hollow beneath her ear, to feel the flutter of her pulse in her throat. To confirm that beneath her adamantine shell she hid a voluptuous, vulnerable core.

She hitched one leg over his hip and wrapped it around his waist to pull him closer yet, fitting their lightly clad bodies together as if they really were husband and wife, and he shuddered. She’d called him a gentleman, and a gentleman he would be, no matter how coarse his present thoughts.

Though coarse was hardly the right word to describe them: he could think of nothing but how she was soft as silk everywhere he touched, everywhere he wanted to touch, which rendered every inch of him rigid with need.

“I’m being poked.” Her giggle hummed against his lips as he dragged them back up her throat to her mouth.

He stifled a groan, knowing he ought to apologize, though he wasn’t sorry. He’d never been so hard. Though there was no hiding his state, he shifted a little, trying to oblige her. But that only seemed to make matters worse.

“Ow,” she whispered, squirming beneath him. “What is that?”

“I, er…” Oh, God. Was there something wrong with him? Wasn’t arousal a normal reaction to kisses? As quickly as he could make the taut muscles of his shoulders respond, he hoisted himself upright, taking all his weight onto his arms. “I’m sorry. I—” Heat rushed into his face.

She sat up too, her arms still wrapped around his body. “Not that, dearest husband.” Her smile was sly, slightly naughty, not at all chagrined. “This.” In a flash, she produced a thin book from behind his back and turned its cover toward the light. “Why did you tuck Lord Thornton’s copy of The Noble Game of Chess into your breeches?”