Her lips were infinitely sweeter than he had imagined, plump and yielding. For the barest moment he allowed himself to breathe her in, to capture her scent of fresh air and sunshine amid the autumn mist, to feel the caress of her against his mouth.
Long enough for his body to stir and a hot thread of panic to dart through him. Good Lord, he had to have her.
Intoxicate.
She intoxicated him.
He drew away. She gulped breath, her lashes stuttering open. Then she smiled and the lapis pools shone.
He choked back a groan.
Mistake. Weakness. Enormous mistake. What had he been thinking?
“That was a perfect first kiss,” she breathed.
“Second.” His voice was uneven.
“Second?”
He tapped a fingertip to the place on his jaw that she had first attempted. Her berry lips opened in a grin of pure delight.
He should kill himself now rather than wait to meet his end after murdering the duke. None of the thoughts in his head were gentlemanly. None of the desires. He saw a flash of her pink tongue and wanted it wrapped around every inch of his body—several inches in particular. He wanted her here, beneath him in the straw and damn every scruple, rule, and plan he’d had for the past five years. Ten. Fifteen. The way Diantha Lucas made him feel was far from gentlemanly. He needed to be inside her.
She had no idea. Despite her inebriated advances and innocent insistence, her face wore an expression of complete satisfaction. She hadn’t any notion what lay beyond kissing, of what he could do to her now.
The air seemed thin.
He could regain control.
“Are you in the habit of assigning numbers to the kisses you share with gentlemen, Miss Lucas?” Speech. Inane speech would help. He would imagine himself in a London drawing room trading flirtatious banter with a lady of society. In a manner of weeks she would be just that, after all, safely surrounded by propriety and safely none of his business.
“Numbers?”
“Counting them up on your fingers, as it were, like points in a card game.”
“No. Why would you think that?”
“ ‘First’ suggests you anticipate a second.”
“ ‘First’ actually means that you are the first man I have ever kissed.”
Her first kiss? Impossible. Yet he was a scoundrel for even imagining otherwise.
“Your suitors have not—?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t have any suitors in Devon—except Mr. H. I was all spots and two stone rounder until last summer, after all. Gentlemen found nothing of interest in me. You didn’t.” She said it so blithely, as though commenting on the shade of the grass.
“I found your quantity of opinion interesting. And before that I found that you danced quite prettily.”
“You remember?” She drew her chin in, disbelief bright in her wonderful eyes. “You remember at Savege Park two years ago when I told you that you should not drink as you did? Do?”
“I do. Remember, that is.”
“Oh.” She seemed to consider it. “But you don’t really remember dancing with me on the terrace at Lord and Lady Blackwood’s wedding. You were drunk then.”
“I remember everything, Miss Lucas. It is my curse.”
She seemed not to hear the last. “Do you . . . ?” Her gaze fluttered past his mouth, then down his chest. “Do you remember what those young men were saying to me?”
“I remember that you wished them to cease teasing you.”
Her voice quieted. “You saved me.”
He turned back to the carriage. “I merely recalled them to their manners.” He affixed the final loop of rope and pulled it tight. “All is ready here. We can leave immed—”
She grasped his arm. His every muscle tensed. She would not make this easy, but Wyn didn’t know if he wanted it to be easy. Part of him wished to crave something he could not have, and to suffer accordingly. It was the foolish part of him, the part that had trod that path of craving and suffering so well he knew it by heart, the part he’d thought he left behind when he escaped home, then again when he joined the Falcon Club, but that nevertheless clung tenaciously.
“Can—” She caught her lip in her teeth. “Can you tell me . . . ? How does one breathe?”
Very unsteadily while those eyes gazed up at him. “Breathe?”
“While kissing.”
Not easy. He tried to moderate his voice. “In the usual manner, I imagine.”
Her slender brows dipped.
“At opportune moments,” he suggested.
Her lips twisted up in that manner he both dreaded and longed for.
“Through one’s nose, perhaps,” he said, because his only refuge was to continue speaking or to walk away.
“Really?” She appeared unconvinced.
And so, because her skepticism suited his need to have her lips beneath his again, he showed her how one breathed while kissing. To her soft gasp of surprise, he took her waist in his hands, bent to her mouth, and kissed her in truth this time. Her lips were warm and still, and then not still as he felt her eager beauty, tasted her, and made her respond.
She held back at first, and then she gave herself up to it. Her mouth opened to him as though by nature, offering him a sweet breath of the temptation within. If he’d gone seeking an innocent with more ready hunger he could not have found her. But he had not wanted an innocent. He’d wanted no one, yet here he was with his hands on a girl he could not release, his tongue tracing the seam of sweet, full lips that she parted for him willingly.
“Now, breathe,” he whispered against those lips, then he sought her deeper. She made sounds of surrender in the back of her throat. He wanted to run his hands over her body, to pull her to him and make her know what a real kiss could be.
“Breathe.” God, she smelled so good. He could press his face against her neck and remain there simply breathing her. But he feared that if he enjoyed much more of Diantha Lucas he would be in a very bad way when it came to giving her over to her stepfather and subsequently her intended. A very bad way indeed. And she didn’t deserve it. Rule #9: A gentleman must always place a lady’s welfare before his own.
She slipped her tongue alongside his, gasped a little whimper of pleasure, and he coaxed her lips open and showed her more than how to breathe. He showed her how he wanted her.
It was a pity for Miss Lucas’s welfare that no gentleman could be found here, after all.
She wanted it to go on and on, forever and ever.
His first kiss had not been what she expected. Having a man actually touching her face was a bit odd. It was not soft like when a woman bussed her on the cheek, but firm, and he smelled of leather and horse and a hint of elegant cologne. But after a moment she’d thought it was quite nice. Quite. It made her heart beat swiftly and her breathing cease. She’d been glad she arranged for Betsy to play lookout so Mrs. Polley would not discover it.
It did not feel odd any longer, and glad seemed an enormous understatement.
She never allowed anyone to touch her waist, not even her sisters when they embraced. Told so often by her mother and the girls at school that she was as wide as a tree trunk, she’d learned to pleat her gowns to hide her belly. When he grasped her waist she recoiled. But his hands were so large and strong and certain, and anyway his lips on hers made her forget entirely about her waist because she simply could not think. She gripped his arm, which was thrillingly hard, unlike his mouth that was a little bit open over hers and hot and made her hot too. But not just on her mouth. Rather, in other places that he was not even touching with his lips or hands, below her belly especially—deliciously warm and needy in a strange sort of way. It wasn’t what she had imagined—not in the least. She had always assumed it would be wet and distasteful, but the only place she felt wet was between her legs and he seemed to be doing the tasting.