“For the record, I would like to establish I also do not enjoy young ladiesfawning over me.”
“You had the ballroom fooled,” she returned.
“Then I congratulate myself on having achieved my goal, but that doesn’t alter the truth.”
Charlotte turned to face him, stopping him in his tracks. “I thought you were something you’re not,” she said, with dragging reluctance. “But you have proved me wrong again and again, and although I believe your reputation to be true, I don’t believe you are as proud or as arrogant as you appeared.”
He had never wanted to kiss her as much as he did now. “A confession indeed.”
“One it costs me a lot to say,” she admitted, “but considering we are here under no pretense, I should be honest.”
“Then allow me to be honest in return,” he said, his voice grating. In the dim afternoon light, she was a ray of sunlight: one he desperately needed to distract himself from Constance’s plight. “I regret many things about my behavior including the way that I kissed you, but I do not regret kissing you. Not then, not later, not ever.”
Her breath caught and red stained her cheeks. He watched the way her chest rose and fell as she looked at him, and it took everything in him not to reach out to her once again.
But maybe she understood his thoughts and the desire that had every nerve in his body firing in anticipation of touching her because she raised her gaze to his and whispered, “Do it again.”
ChapterThirteen
Charlotte was not entirely certain what had possessed her to say those words. She had agreed to take a walk in the gardens not so that she could be alone with Aaron—something she had long ago determined to be dangerous—but because she needed to escape the suffocating atmosphere in the drawing room.
But now here she was with Aaron’s hand sliding across her cheek, his thumb stroking across her lip, and the familiar hunger—old yet new—rose in her chest at the look in his eyes. She had expected him to take her with the same frenzied madness as in the carriage, but he gave her plenty of time to change her mind as he leaned down.
She didn’t.
Instead, she grabbed his lapels and pulled him down those last few inches. Her mother had been intent on preserving her innocence, but her innocence with regards to kissing had already been taken, and she wanted more. She craved the feel of him against her, and although they were outside, the cool breeze trailing down her neck and across every piece of exposed flesh, she didn’t care.
No one could see. They were enclosed in their own private bubble, and she marveled silently at the thrill of it. That hunger claimed her as thoroughly as Aaron’s lips did, and when his hand reached around her back to press her against him, she obeyed the pressure. His chest was hard and flat, and a rod twitched against her belly. She’d felt that rod before—long and hard and, somehow, connected to that hunger—but she’d never dared engage with it. This time, however, she rubbed her hips across it, and he growled in the back of his throat.
They were a conflagration, scalding and flaming and consuming, and she offered herself to the fire, yielding utterly to the command in Aaron’s hands, the skill of his tongue flicking against hers, and the way he controlled her body’s response like a maestro.
“Damn it, Charlotte,” he panted, pulling back and pressing his forehead against hers. “You know how to test a man’s sanity.”
“Only at the greatest provocation,” she said, recalling his words from before. “Are you so opposed to kissing me?”
“Not in the slightest,” he said, that grating quality in his voice again—one that ran straight through her to melt liquid at her core. “The problem is I don’t want to stop.”
“So don’t,” she said and reached up onto her tiptoes to kiss him again. And this time, he hoisted her up, so she was in his arms, one arm locked around her waist, the other under her buttocks. Out of instinct, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and that rod twitched against the sensitive place between her legs. Despite all the layers between them, that tiny movement sent red-hot tingles all through her body, and she wiggled against him, trying to find that sensation again.
He groaned and if possible, held her against him more tightly. She forgot they were outside, and that there was a breeze across her legs as she locked her ankles behind his waist. She forgot everything but his presence and the way his kisses—and the persistent throbbing of that rod—made her feel.
“Please,” she whispered against his lips though she hardly knew what she was begging for.More, somehow, as though he could satiate the aching inside her. He’d teased her before with the possibility of what he could offer, but never before had he set her alight like this; she had not known she was so very combustible, or that to have the flames consume her would feel so very sweet.
With a muffled curse, he sat her on a wall, his arms wound around her tightly enough that she was not scared she would fall. “You tempt me beyond all reason,” he growled and pinched her nipple lightly. She gasped at the sensation. “You don’t know what you do to me.”
“So, show me,” she managed. Her reputation meant nothing—all that mattered was this moment, and this frantic need to be satisfied. He could offer her satisfaction, she knew it, and that was worth sacrificing what little honor she had left. No one would know, and Aaron was soft and kind in ways she had never known—never suspected—before.
Aaron skimmed a hand up her leg under her dress, stroking up her calf and past her knee along her inner thigh. “You are sweetness,” he said against her lips as he toyed around the tops of her thighs, never quite touching the place she needed him to. “You are delight.”
“Aaron,” she begged, clinging to his shoulders. “Aaron,please.”
“I like it when you beg,” he murmured. “But you must be specific. What is it you wish me to do?”
Shame and desire colored her cheeks, but not enough to stop her voice. “I wish you to touch me.”
“Oh, but I’m already touching you.” His voice was wicked now, and he pulled back so he could see her face—an act more intimate than anything his hands were doing. “Where, my sweet love, do you desire to be touched in particular?”
She let her head tip back, so she was facing the iron-gray sky. Rain was imminent, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care. “You know where.”
