Page 44 of Broken

That was a shame. His parents had liked Lilly. “I understand that in the first year of their marriage, my mother barely made it to the other side before he flung her over his shoulder and carried her back to the house. It sounds romantic, doesn’t it? For some reason, that story embarrasses my sister, Katarina. I cannot understand why.”

Giles looked down at Lilly, hoping his lighthearted confidence had distracted her enough. He much preferred that earlier look of hers. A frightened Lilly pained his heart. Lilly’s frown faded and her lips quirked, but she didn’t speak.

“I always think that story shows how much intelligence exists in the Wexham line, don’t you?”

Lilly rolled her eyes. “Oh, obviously, and how fond they are of a healthy dose of self-flattery too.”

“My father always said it was better to conduct any battles in bed rather than out of it.” Chuckling, Giles took her hand. She still didn’t look completely at ease. Rules were meant to be broken. “Do you want to play the game?”

“Giles,” Lilly groaned, but he tugged her toward the bridge anyway.

“This is where you have to make the decision to cross and ask to pay with a kiss. Go on, ask away.”

A look of consternation graced Lilly’s face, as if she thought he was barking mad.

“Giles. Giles. How much to pass?” Giles had lightened his voice to mimic a woman’s, but then deepened it to continue. “Just one little kiss, my sweet lady. Then you say, ‘Oh, very well,’ and I say, ‘I never kiss and tell.’”

On his last word, Giles dropped his head and brushed his lips across Lilly’s before he changed his mind. It was a brief kiss, chaste in fact. And he wanted another.

He tugged her forward a step and growled, “Who goes there?”

Lilly choked out a laugh at his silliness.

And it was silly. Giles struggled to remember the last time he had played a game and thought it possibly might have been with his mother when he was very young. Lilly, it seemed, had the unique ability to bring out the strangest behavior in him.

“Giles. Giles. How much to pass?” she asked, giggling.

To which he made the correct reply, making his voice even deeper than before. Lilly shook with laughter that simply had to stop. Giles kissed her, properly this time.

At first awkward, then growing with a surety that shook him to his boots, Giles cradled Lilly’s delicate skull in his hands, holding her lips to his. Kisses had never been part of his repertoire, but he found he couldn’t stop. Lilly’s hands fluttered between them then settled against his chest. When they slid upwards, he dragged her close and started walking.

Giles kissed her every step of the way, walking backward over the bridge until they reached the highest point. Knowing Lilly as he did, he guessed she would have no idea that they had moved. He had never met a woman who focused on him with such single-mindedness.

When her back hit the wall of the bridge, Giles let her lips go and moved to kiss her cheek, her neck, tasting until he just had to return to her lips just one more time.

Lilly’s lips parted, and his world changed.

Why the devil had he ever deprived himself of kisses? Kissing lips was a new pleasure to him, like a fine glass of wine but far more intoxicating. Or, perhaps, it was just kissing Lilly.

Her body arched off the wall and into his chest. He stroked his tongue over her plump bottom lip, tickled along the inside of her mouth and touched her teeth just behind.

Angling his head, he stroked his tongue across hers, once, twice, lost in the taste of her mouth. She tasted like honey, and that was one of life’s greatest pleasures, too. He knew quite a few things he could do with honey that involved sex and eating, all at once. One day he would show Lilly.

That one thought made him stop kissing her. He had gotten carried away again. Pressing his lips to the side of her face, Giles stared off into the distance, breathing hard. Good God, he was planning more than a quick romp between the sheets.

That thought frightened him soft. Did he want to be the one to continue Lilly’s bedroom adventures? Forever?

His body screamed a resounding yes.

Giles did not like possessiveness, and he was appalled to think that he could be the one to cling.

Lilly’s hands untangled from his hair and she relaxed in his arms, but Giles made no move to release her. He couldn’t. He was too overwhelmed by the image of making love to one woman for the rest of his life.

“That was cheating,” Lilly scolded.

Giles smiled. He liked the way she talked to him, clear and un-jaded. She did not rely on coy remarks at the expense of expressing a real opinion. He liked that very much. Very few women did that around him.

“It is too late to be angry with me now anyway. You are already where I want you.”