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He released one of her hands, and with nimble efficiency removed his gloves, catching each fingertip in between white teeth and yanking it loose before shoving the glove into his pocket. His bare hand snagged the ribbon of her bonnet and he lifted it slowly from her head, before casting it aside onto a bush, and his top hat too.
She ought to have protested the ill treatment of their expensive headwear, but she couldn’t bring herself to see anything but him.
His naked fingertip brushed her cheek before sliding into her hair. His thumb stroked her temple, soft, gentle.
“Gina, you are so beautiful,” he murmured, as he dipped his head so his breath was warm on her cheek. “I wonder, sometimes, if you think about kissing me the way I think about kissing you. It takes up half my waking hours, and all my nighttime dreams, imagining how you’ll taste, how your lips will feel on mine.”
He’d tempted her with words before, of course, but this time was different.
“It has been consuming me too,” she whispered. “I didn’t understand why you stopped tempting me.” She pushed up onto tiptoes, so her mouth was no more than a quarter of an inch from his. He brought her hand in his to the back of his neck. To allow her to drag him down to her, she realized. Despite everything, she was still in control of this. She’d given him every encouragement, but he was working to the letter of their bargain.
So it was her who bridged the gap between their lips. It was her who put gentle pressure in order to touch their mouths together, softly, so softly.
A kiss. A press of her lips to his. Sensation skittered down her spine. A slide and heat bloomed in her despite the cold air around them.
It was a gentle, sweet kiss and she wanted more. He knew, somehow, he knew, and his lips nudged hers open to allow for his tongue to slip over her lower lip. She gasped and he stilled in response. She met his tongue with her own. Trying to say,that was good, I was just surprised.
His fingers tightened in her hair then, and he pulled her closer, banding his arm around her lower back and bringing her fully into the warmth of his embrace, and he took over the guidance of their kiss. His lips teased and sought, teaching her how to move with him. The firm push of his tongue into her mouth drew a moan from her as her belly flickered with need. The sort of need that made her understand why ladies risked liaisons with strangers in parks. This feeling of rightness and togetherness was unassailable.
His hand in her hair made the intensity of his mouth all the better. It felt like he’d never let her go. If her knees gave way from the pleasure of kissing him, he’d catch her.
When his lips shifted from hers and he scattered kisses over her cheek and down her throat until they were hampered by her scarf and the high collar of her pelisse, she nearly protested.
“Gina,” he whispered against her skin, then took a shaky intake of breath. “That’s enough temptation for a cold day, I think. Before I am tempted to take off far more than just my glove and our hats.”
His eyes met hers but his pupils had pushed out his sapphire irises until they seemed navy. He smoothed his thumb through her hair before releasing her. Picking up her bonnet and brushing it off, he passed it to her and shoved his own hat back on his head with no consideration.
“You don’t want anything more?” Was that hurt at him breaking off their kiss, when she’d refused to kiss him day after day, month after month? It wasn’t fair, but she’d expected him to want her more.
“I know what this bargain is.” He tugged on his glove and offered her his elbow. “You’ll break our engagement because you cannot abide the smelling French cheese I insist on eating, and you’ll be free. After your birthday.”
She’d thought she was counting down the days until she was twenty-one. Now she was counting the precious hours with Emmett.
CHAPTER9
Once she had begunto kiss Emmett Stanton, she could not stop. Over the next days, she learned the place of every sprig of mistletoe in the house and lingered beneath them at every opportunity. Emmett obliged her with an expression of wary hope mixed with happy disbelief.
And the kisses, oh the kisses. In the foyer, he kissed her with abandon. In the drawing room after dinner, he kissed her with tight restraint as Audrey rolled her eyes. When the Duke was watching he gave her a brief, chaste press of his lips to hers and a squeeze of her hand.
Thankfully a letter arrived for Duke on Christmas Eve morning, and he had left, making vague excuses, by lunchtime. Mother had been furious, which had the added benefit of taking her attention off Gina.
But when they met alone in the parlor or unexpectedly in the hallway, he kissed her properly. Or rather, he tempted her into kissing him with all the relish and need that sparkled through her like a pine bough in a fire.
The dark intensity of his eyes when he eased away and ended their kisses made her wish she’d asked her friends to be more specific about bodily pleasures. She could hardly write to Miss Chilson and ask what relaxation she recommended to help her overcome the growing restlessness in her body. It was worse right after she’d kissed Emmett, particularly the long kisses when they found themselves under the mistletoe in a quiet doorway at the back of the house. She was beginning to suspect the feeling was mutual.
She steered him each morning to the path that led to the mistletoe-covered tree, and he kissed her there. Deeper each day, more passionately, but always when she felt his staff rising and hardening, he pushed her away like he couldn’t trust himself. That warm, needy sensation that bloomed between her legs, demanding him to do she-knew-not-what to fulfill it, grew every day. Perhaps it did for him too, but he never mentioned it.
Emmett was kept busy with the other gentlemen outside, coming in every day with cheeks pink from the cold. That left Gina, after their prerequisite walk every morning, with long days inside and nothing to do but pretend to embroider, read books about far-flung places, and write to her friends, wishing they were all having Christmas together. That and think about kissing Emmett.
Each afternoon Emmett and the other gentlemen came to join the ladies. The first day he’d come in he’d seen the red roses embroidery and stopped, frozen as he took it in.
“You remembered,” he’d said, with something like awe in his tone, not like his teasing playfulness. He’d run his finger over the even stitches Miss Chilson had done and his face could only be described as pure happiness. “So much work,” he’d murmured, like it meant a lot to him. “It’s lovely.”
And it was a lie.
After that she took to squirreling away the red roses embroidery when she saw him. Her stitching really was very poor, and she didn’t want Emmett to think she was going to present him with anything less than perfection. He deserved perfection. A hasty letter to Miss Chilson, begging her to send the finished embroidery as quickly as possible made Gina feel a little calmer. She’d put Emmett off until after Christmas, and he’d never know about her small untruth about enjoying embroidery.
By Christmas eve, she couldn’t sleep for thoughts of Emmett. After lying in bed for at least a fortnight, staring at the gray-black ceiling, Gina gave into the inevitable. She needed a distraction. She needed to occupy her mind and take her attention from the constant pulse of blood around her body. In her room there was only that terrible embroidery. All her books were downstairs, where she’d left them in the drawing room, but she needed something new, so headed to the library.
