A Lily Among Thorns(46)

That brought him nearer to kissing her than any of the rest, but still he was checked by her odd half smile. He drew in a ragged breath. “Have you been drinking?”

Her smile widened, lazily. “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”

Self-control had its limits. “‘She is loud and stubborn, her feet abide not in her house,’” he said, and kissed her hungrily.





Chapter 11


Her mouth opened readily beneath his. She didn’t taste like liquor—she tasted, in fact, like strawberries. His last fractured thought, before everything was swallowed up by rising desire, was of the baskets of strawberries he had seen delivered to the kitchen that afternoon.

He ran his hands down her back, the softness of her flesh separated from him by nothing but a thin layer of cotton. Sliding one hand up between them to cover her breast, he squeezed lightly. Her nipple hardened against his palm and her breath shuddered against his mouth. She was close and he wanted her closer. Cupping the curve of her buttock, he pulled her to him, pressing the core of her against his erection.

He still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, that this wasn’t real, that she would melt away under his hands like fairy gold. But he couldn’t think when she rolled her hips like that. His hands tightened on her, and she gasped and kissed him harder.

Finally she pulled away. “‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit; he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein,’” she said. Solomon was still trying to make sense of that when she dropped to her knees and reached for the flap of his breeches.

Never mind the shocking heat that flooded him. Never mind how much he wanted her to. He leaped backward so fast he hit his head on the bedpost. “What the devil do you mean?”

She stayed on her knees. At first Solomon thought she looked as dazed and heated as he did, but when she looked up, her gray eyes were mocking. “Too squeamish for that, too?”

“I’m not interested in strange women.”

Her head snapped back as if he’d punched her. “Oh no?” she said venomously, dropping her eyes to the unmistakable evidence of his interest. “What’s that, then?”

“That’s for you,” he said fiercely. “I don’t want you to be a strange woman, Serena.”

She rocked back on her heels. “There’s not much you can do about that at this late date.”

“I mean that I don’t want you to be a strange woman to me. Is that all I am to you? A—a customer?”

She rose to her feet, leaving her robe in a silken puddle around her ankles. She did it gracefully, but he still thought of an animal with its leg mangled in a trap. She looked as if she’d claw and spit at him if he came close.

“I don’t care if you’ve slept with half the men in London,” he said, too loudly. “That has nothing to do with how I feel. I said I liked you. And when I said that I meant I wasn’t trying to get anything. Can’t you understand that? Don’t you like me too?”

She frowned.

He tried to ignore his hurt at her lack of an answer. He knew she liked him, damn it; but he wanted her to be able to say it. “Serena, all I want from you is you. If you don’t want to give me that, fine, but get out of my room.”

She looked at the ground. “I can’t imagine why you would want that.”

“Right now, I can’t either.” He strode to his lab table and pulled the bottle of Madeira out from behind a crucible in which he’d been trying to match the color of Serena’s eyes. Bluish-gray liquid sloshed about in it, looking like dishwater. He took a shaky swig; wine burned away the taste of strawberries. “Listen, Serena. I find it equally difficult to imagine why you would want any part of me, so I can’t be too critical. But don’t do this again.”

She pressed her eyes shut for a moment and ran a hand through her hair. When she opened her eyes, the act was gone; she just looked like herself. It was funny how much less graceful she was when she wasn’t thinking about it. “Christ,” she said. “Solomon, I—Christ, I’m such a harpy.”

He held out the Madeira.

She took it and knocked it back expertly. “I really wasn’t drinking before, you know.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth.

“I know.”

“Would you like some strawberries?” she offered, uncertainly and intently.

He swallowed, almost choking on the desire that swamped him at the words. Would he ever be able to taste strawberries again and not think of Serena pressed against him? “Have you got some?”