“I am not of a poetical bent, my lord. I think about practical things, about science and how the natural world works. I have even dabbled in astronomy.” She lifted her hand from his arm and pointed at the moon. “I know the scientific reasons for the phases of the moon and can cite the differences between a planet and a star in the night sky.”
“I know very little about that,” he confessed. “As a boy I only thought of the things here on Earth.” And as he grew older, the most he thought about the moon was how he could get a beautiful woman naked beneath it.
She looked around them, seeming to inspect every tree branch, every leaf as it was lined in white light. But in the end, she faced him. “My thoughts tonight are not scientific. I am thinking about waltzes and kisses, and I find myself plagued by a single question.”
His body tightened with the way she looked at him. Her eyes were wide, and her shoulders slightly hunched. She looked vulnerable and yet hopeful. “What is the question?” he whispered.
“Did our waltz seem…different to you? I know our kiss was an accident borne of enthusiasm, and I have so little to compare it to, but I have waltzed several times. It seemed different to me, and I wondered—”
“If I felt the same?”
She looked up at him and now it was her face touched with silver. Her lips turned dark, and yet he could see every curve. But most of all he saw that her eyes held a magical glow.
“Did it feel special to you?” she whispered.
Desire pounded in his veins, and he pulsed with the need to possess her. He held himself back. He didn’t want to frighten her, especially since she was so careful with whom she touched. But how could he resist a woman who asked such a thing? Especially when the answer was so clear.
“Yes,” he said, his voice husky. “Yes, it was different. Yes, Lady Gwen, you are special. And yes, I should very much like to kiss you again.”
Chapter Sixteen
Gwen had beenkissed before. She’d had men come at her too fast. She’d felt their thick lips press against hers as they grabbed her body and pressed against her with too much force, too many smells, and far too much of them coming at her. She knew she was supposed to like it. Girls tittered about their first kisses, and Aunt Isabelle had talked candidly with her about the pleasures of the flesh.
She thought herself singularly odd that she’d never really enjoyed a kiss until Lord Sayres had impulsively kissed her at the dressmakers. She had been happy and already swinging about in his arms. For the first time in her life, she’d seen the kiss coming and hadn’t tensed up.
She wanted to repeat that experience exactly to see if it was a fluke. But she wasn’t feeling giddy right now, and in the darkness, she was well aware of his larger size and the tension in his body. She heard desire in his voice and felt her pulse increase as he held her gaze.
“Lady Gwen? What are you thinking?”
How did she answer such a question? “I—” Her voice cracked on the word and she had to clear her throat. “You said you want to kiss me again.”
“I did.”
“You are waiting for my permission?”
“I am.”
He could overpower her in a second. He could press her against the tree right here and do whatever he wanted. But he waited, his gaze on her face, his eyes barely illuminated by the moonlight, and yet she felt the intensity as he looked at her.
Her breath shortened and her belly tightened. She felt her toes curl in her half boots, and her mind splintered. She tilted her head back and she wet her lower lip as she thought and thought and thought about everything that was happening. It was as if every one of her senses were sharply alert, and her mind spun from one to another to another in a whirlwind of excitement.
He was leaning closer to her, so close that she smelled the faded scent of his cologne and the sharper musk of his own body. And also her own scent, she realized, as interesting as his.
She wanted him to close the final distance between their mouths, to sweep her up in his emotions as he had before, but they weren’t dancing now. They seemed poised in an almost touch, and her lips tingled from his nearness.
This was becoming unbearable. She wanted him to kiss her if only to end the frantic spinning in her thoughts.
“I should like you to kiss me,” she said. Then she rushed the next words before he could act. “But quickly, not too hard.”
His brows rose but his chin dipped in a slow nod. “A quick, light kiss.”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “My favorite word.”
He leaned in until, at last, their lips touched. She felt his breath mingling with hers as he brushed across her mouth, back and forth and barely there. Her breath caught at the feel, and just when she would have pressed forward for more, he pulled away.
“Like that?” he asked.