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The excited, hopeful feeling returned, fizzing in her chest like bubbles rising in a glass of champagne.
The joy of his solid arms around her, encouraging her to bring the walls down and do something for herself. Something to break away from her mother’s control.
He smelled like sweat and the chalk-scent of plaster, with an underlying hint of evergreen cedar, like the scent of the hope chest that contained her wedding trousseau.
She’d watched him working, so strong and so free, and she’d wanted to possess that confidence, nurture it in her own heart.
All summer long she’d dreamed of kissing this man. She’d been thinking about kissing him for so long—her whole life, it seemed.
She’d seen him as an object, as a beautiful sculpture, bursting with muscles, bursting with life. Something completely beyond her reach, beyond her window, behind glass and at a distance.
He was within her reach now. He was right here, holding her, urging her to live a little.
She wanted to livea lot.
And so she dropped the hammer, turned to face him, and plastered her lips to his.
Chapter Thirteen
Only... he dipped his head at the same time she was reaching for him, and so she missed his lips and planted a kiss on his nose instead.
Yes. She, Beatrice Bentley, imaginer of extraordinary kisses, completely missed the mark and smacked her lips against his nostril.
It was definitely one of the more humiliating attempts in the history of kisses. What had she been thinking?
The answer to that question was that she hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d allowed herself to be carried away by his strong arms and his exhortations to do something unladylike.
She squirmed with embarrassment, attempting to extricate herself from his grasp, but he held her firmly about the arms.
“What was that?” he asked, his blue-and-gold eyes all confusion.
“Never mind what it was, I was... mistaken. I’m going to go upstairs now.”
“Did you just try to kiss me?”
She struggled to free herself. “I was carried away with lifting hammers and smashing down barriers and I... I... oh.”
Her last words were swallowed up by his lips descending and claiming hers in a kiss so devoid of awkwardness that it melted her knees like sealing wax.
His lips were gentle, yet firm, as he folded her more forcefully into his embrace, kissing her with sensual skill.
Here was the sunrise she’d imagined, her body heating from the inside out, the warmth spreading along unfamiliar routes: from the pit of her belly to the peaks of her breasts, and from the corners of her lips down her limbs to the tips of her toes.
Warm in strange places and cold in others. Her hands were cold. She had to warm them against his chest, slip them under his shirt collar to feel the beating of his heart.
He held her as if he’d never let her go, kissing her so long and so well that all of the clocks in England must have frozen, for time had stopped.
It was sweet, so very sweet.
And then it became something less controlled, something more wild than sweet.
His tongue slid along the edge of her lower lip, nudging her to open her mouth. He slipped his tongue inside her mouth and the warm places in her body caught fire, blazing into new awareness.
His hands reached for her hips and pulled her flush against him.
Kissing him was everything she’d imagined it to be and more.
She wanted more.
