He stepped back harshly, his breath coming in great gasps. She was clutching onto him so she followed, though she didn’t pursue the kiss. She too was breathing heavily, and that was the only sound in the room. Two people gasping in the most erotic of rasps he had ever heard.
He swallowed and made to straighten his jacket, but his hands would not move from her body. He was locked into supporting her until she found her legs. She did eventually, while he fought the hunger to pull her back to his kiss, and to a great deal more. He was just giving into his baser nature when she pushed herself away. His fingers were wrenched open, and he made a sound low in his throat. It was not a noise he had ever made before, and the feel of it—deep and guttural—appalled him. He was not a beast, for God’s sake.
He looked at her, seeing the rosy flush to her cheeks, the wet red of her lips, and he nearly lost himself to her again. But then she turned her face away and half stumbled to the settee. She fell upon the cushion without grace, and he was flooded with images of her hair in a wild tangle, her skirts at her hips, and himself plunging into her again and again.
“What are you doing?” she gasped. Her tone was accusing, and he took that for a well-deserved remonstrance. After all, he was half ready to leap upon her and damn the consequences. That ought to give him pause. Some things could not be forgiven, and this was one of them. And yet, he looked at her with her wide eyes and disheveled skirts, and he wanted her as he had never wanted a woman before.
“You have done this before,” he said, his words harsh. He did not intend to accuse her. Indeed, his fury was all for himself, but she took it as the words sounded.
“You attacked me!” she shot back.
“That was hardly an attack,” he returned, a sneer entering his voice completely unbidden. Sometimes his grandfather’s voice came out of his mouth at the worst possible times.
“Do not blame this on me!” she said, her voice growing stronger and her hands steadier as they smoothed her skirts.
He didn’t. He couldn’t. And yet, he didn’t feel entirely to blame either. After all, her kiss had been incendiary. He took a moment to steady himself. He needed to take stock before he further aggravated the situation. He straightened his waistcoat, he fixed his cravat, and he did his best to hide his erection from her view. She didn’t appear to be looking in that direction, but damnation…her kiss. That was no maiden’s kiss.
“Where did you learn to do that?” He tried to keep the hauteur out of his tone and succeeded for the most part. But he had to know just how seasoned she was.
“Did you think I could age to four and twenty and not experience a kiss or two?” Scorn dripped from her words, a match for his earlier hauteur.
“A kiss or two? Balderdash.” He had kissed courtesans who had less skill. “What the devil is your father about, letting you learn such a thing?”
She snorted—a most unladylike sound. “My father is about his bugs, as you well know. I have been in charge of my own education since I was eight.”
“That is not the sort of thing a gently reared girl should learn.” He didn’t know why he was arguing the point. Only that he was unsettled, and harsh words were his only means of release. Which was ridiculous. Before today, he’d never really thought twice about her. This was the place he came for science, not dalliance. And she usually busied herself with other tasks when he visited. Since he and her father were wont to take their meals in the laboratory, he had barely been in her company at all since she was twelve.
How he came from barely noticing her to being a hare’s breath away from ruining her on a settee was beyond his powers of understanding. And yet it was true. Indeed, part of him was insistently pushing him to finish what they had begun.
“Why did you kiss me?” she asked, her voice betraying true distress. “Especially if…if…”
He looked at her, seeing her beautiful mahogany eyes shining too bright in the moonlight. “If what?” he asked quietly.
“If you did not want me to kiss you back?”
He had no answer for that, and so he turned the conversation back in on itself. “How did you come by this skill, Mellie?” He used her father’s nickname for her because he thought it would help ease the personal nature of the conversation.
“Was I…was I very good at it?”
How to answer that beyond the obvious? “Yes.”
She nodded once to herself as if confirming a suspicion. “I have kissed three boys in total. Two are inconsequential. The third, however…” A fond smile played about her lips. He made a strangled sound, and she glanced his way, her cheeks heating. “I was sixteen, and he was the chandler’s son.”
“You kissed a candle maker?” The words were strangled as he fought an irrational fury.
“A great many times. It was summer and…and I don’t know. He was fun. He called me pretty. I think I would have married him if he’d asked.”
“He didn’t?” Damned idiot boy. He could have snagged himself an heiress. And a woman who kissed like she enjoyed it.
“Papa forbade it when he found out. And…” Her voice grew pensive as she stared out at the night sky. “Even then I knew I was just looking for someone who wasn’t Ronnie.” Then she shrugged. “Besides, as much as I liked him, he had the most minimal understanding of mathematics and was completely hopeless in natural history. That’s why we spent most of our time kissing. There was so little else to discuss.”
Thank God for idiot chandlers. And how awful that she’d spent so much of her life looking for an alternative to her cousin. Still, the whole thing soured his stomach even though he knew it shouldn’t. After all, that was exactly what he’d offered her: a chance to find someone other than Ronnie. He couldn’t blame her for using all her whiles to ensnare someone else. And yet, somehow he did. He blamed her even as he pushed for all the details.
“And what else did this chandler’s son teach you beyond kissing?”
“How to make candles,” she said. Her glare was venomous. “But that’s not what you want to know, is it? Though I don’t see why you have the right to ask.”
“Because I am your fiancé!” he shot back. The words echoed loudly in the room, and they stared at one another in a kind of suspended horror. It was true. They were engaged now. He had asked, and she had accepted. It was all a ruse, but indeed…they were affianced.