And stared at her while the room spun in lazy circles.
He watched her shoulders rise and fall as she pulled in a long breath.
Which audibly shuddered as she released it.
Like water settling when the kettle is taken off the boil.
Oh, you felt me, lass. You felt me in your body the same as I felt you.
He drew in a breath against a fresh wave of lust.
Tentatively, she rested her fingers against her lips.
Her eyes were hazed and huge, and somber, and intent.
For a second or two, they adapted to this new world. One in which, improbably and inadvisably, the two of them now knew the taste of each other.
“It will perhaps come as no surprise to you that no one finds me a restful man,” he said finally. His voice was a husk.
She didn’t reply. But her mouth did curve a very little.
And she didn’t turn away.
By now he knew she wasn’t the sort to turn away from what undid her, even if she wanted the respite.
This was the thing he’d sensed in her from the beginning, he realized. That shone from her eyes. She fair pulsed with passion. So far, her life hadn’t required any of it from her. Or perhaps life had stifled it.
He remained still so she could study him.
“Should I apologize?” He said this quietly.
Or perhaps it merely seemed quiet over the rushing of blood in his ears.
She seemed to consider this. Then she shook her head very slowly. He suspected the room was spinning for her, too.
“But I think I shall go to bed now. Good night, Lorcan.”
“Good night, Daphne,” he said politely.
He would have stood, but his cock was currently tenting his trousers.
She stood gracefully, and she moved past him toward her room, trailing the knitted coverlet like a queen in an ermine robe.
He fancied that her walk was a trifle less steady than usual.
Daphne closed the bedroom behind her.
She moved very slowly across the room, then gingerly, in stages, lowered herself to the bed as though she’d just been given a brand-new body and was still familiarizing herself with its ways of locomotion.
The kiss wasn’t done with her.
Her blood was lava and champagne. She ached—throbbed—between her legs. Her nipples were so hard it felt as though she were smuggling pearls beneath her night rail, and the whole of her night rail was suddenly an erotic caress against her humming skin. Her stomach was unsettled. She was beset by a sense of incompletion. Her entire body felt now like a treasure map to seduction:touch me here, and here, and here,it was saying.Glory awaits.
What “glory” entailed... well, she remained in the dark about that.
The very thought of Lorcan touching all of those parts sent such a rush of blood to her head she nearly swayed.
Imagine that. All this time, her quiet disdain for the notion of swooning had really only been ignorance. She just hadn’t been properly kissed before.