She nodded.
‘But this boy—’
‘Yes,’ she finally admitted. ‘Yes, he was the only man to show me that kind of…’ Her throat closed down. She could not say the wordloveout loud. Not when it was gone.
‘There will be others, you know,’ he said, his voice gentle.
She shrugged. She had known Ah-Lan all her life, but they’d become close in the last year before he left. When she was a young woman and he a young man, for all that Lord Domaccalled him a boy. They’d been teenagers together, and she’d thought Ah-Lan would be everything.
She hadn’t even realised she was looking down until she felt his hand on her cheek. His thumb stroked across her jaw, and his fingers gently pressed her chin up until she looked into his eyes.
‘There will be others,’ he repeated firmly. ‘People who will make you feel as he did.’
‘You did,’ she said. ‘You do.’ He looked anguished, but no more than she felt. So she took his hand and pressed it against her cheek. She held him there and she looked into his eyes. ‘I am worth it,’ she said, though she wasn’t even sure what ‘it’ was.
‘Yes, you are.’
She knew that he was going to kiss her long before his mouth descended towards hers. She knew from the heat in his gaze and the way he leaned closer to her. He tilted her head for a better angle, and she gave no resistance. Indeed, she helped him as she stretched up towards him.
Neither of them spoke as he stroked his thumb across her lips, but oh, how she wanted to give voice to the feelings inside. How could she give sound to the way she desperately wanted to be touched? How could she express the swelling, the hunger and the aching please, please, please?
He pressed his mouth to hers. He did not rush her, nor did he need to force anything. She was more than willing to let his lips brush back and forth across hers, then again with firmer pressure. And when she pressed closer to him, he deepened the contact.
He slipped his tongue between her lips, darting inside and pulling back. Inside harder, before slipping away. Each time she opened wider for him, and she tried to capture his tongue with hers. Twisting and turning, she tried to bind him, but he always slipped back and away.
By the fifth time he pulled back, she gave a mew of distress. She liked the way he thrust inside her mouth. She wanted him to keep touching her teeth, the roof of her mouth, and the deepest places that he could reach. Which was to say nothing of the way his hands slid to her bottom and pulled her tighter against him.
By the eighth time he wrenched apart from her, he pressed himself against the railing. ‘I am playing with fire,’ he gasped.
She felt like a living flame. From the tips of her curled toes through the aching heat in her belly to the way her heart pounded a steady refrain of more, more, more, she felt alive with need.
And it feltwonderful!
He turned to her then, his gaze roving over her face and lower. Did he know that her breasts had swelled, that her nipples were tight and aching? Did he see that she ached lower and deeper? Apparently so, because his eyes widened, but then he shook his head.
‘I cannot have you,’ he said. ‘And I cannot give you what you want.’
‘But I can give you what you want!’
‘God,’ he said in a groan, ‘how I wish that were true.’
Then he backed away. After a very stiff bow, he turned and went below.