A Taste of Desire(70)
Tracing the curve of her hip up past the indent of her narrow waist, he found the underside of her breast. Amelia let out a low moan and wrapped her arms tightly about his neck.
Lust had him in its grip, making his mind merely a vehicle of his physical needs. Mewling sounds escaped her lips when he angled his head for a more thorough and carnal access to her mouth.
One hand inched up and palmed the firm thrust of her breast, his thumb swiping repeatedly across the nipple, causing it to pebble against the pale green bodice of her gown. Thomas didn’t only want to feel them in his hand, he wanted to feast on them with his eyes and taste them with his lips.
A guttural sound emerged from his throat as he lifted his mouth from hers to gaze into her shadowed, flushed face. Taking in her swollen lips and closed eyes, he started on the row of pearl buttons marching down the front of her gown, deftly releasing them to reveal a white silk corset barely containing her breasts … and firm, smooth, creamy skin. He grew harder than he thought possible.
Slowly, her eyes, dark with desire, drifted open and she gazed up at him. It only took a few moments for her to lose the look of a woman lost in the deepest regions of passion. His fingers were releasing the buttons at her waist when her eyes widened in alarm.
What the blazes am I doing? Amelia began frantically batting at his hands. “Stop! Do not—don’t touch me.”
Thomas halted and stared down at her with a dazed expression of unappeased hunger. For a moment she thought he intended to override her weakened defenses, mute every protest she would make. Slowly, however, he removed his hands from her dress and levered his muscular frame from hers.
Amelia immediately bolted into a sitting position, caught both edges of her cloak, and jerked them together in a desperate attempt to shield herself. There was no time to struggle with her buttons, not with his gaze blistering her with its heat.
Moving to the opposite seat, Thomas watched her silently, a derisive smile now twisting his mouth.
In the past when she’d seen him in public, he was usually dressed as he was now, in dark colors that only succeeded in accentuating his goldenness. How well he wore the façade of the honorable gentleman. If his adoring admirers could see him now, lounging back against the leather seat, his legs splayed, his gaze hooded and hair tousled, no one would mistake him for anything less than the rake she knew him to be.
“Doesn’t it ever get tiring?” he drawled.
“Pardon?”
“You want me physically. You’ve already admitted to that. So why the performance of the affronted virgin every time I kiss you? I imagine it gets tiring after a while. I know it does to me.”
“Per-performance! You believe that I enjoy you taking unwanted liberties?” Her voice rose with every indignant word.
A dry laugh emerged from his lips. “Taking unwanted liberties, Princess?” he said in that manner she most despised—not that he’d ever said anything in a manner she liked. “Then it’s a very fortunate gentleman who can show you true enjoyment. Do you make the same panting sounds when he kisses you?” His gaze dropped to her breasts. “When he touches your nipples?”
“I did not,” she croaked, but the memory of the truth shamed her.
“Would you like me to show you again just how easy it is to make you wet?” His voice was a sultry challenge.
Amelia jerked the cloak tighter about her in a fruitless effort to halt the tremors wracking her form. “Do not touch me again.” The command, however, sounded as if it came from a woman fighting a losing battle of retaining a semblance of her control.
It seemed an eternity until Thomas spoke again. He casually gestured toward the window at his side, its curtain closed. “We’ve been stopped well over five minutes now. Something you failed to notice, because you were, er, otherwise occupied. Oh, don’t worry, Johns will only open the door if the curtain is drawn.”
Swinging her gaze immediately to the window beside her, she pushed back the curtain. Surrounded by high railings of fortifying iron, its tops spearlike in shape, was the viscountess’s red-bricked townhouse.
Without uttering a word, Amelia threw open the door and scrambled out. In her hasty exit, she caught the hem of her skirt on the carriage step. The fragile material rent under her impatient tug, but she didn’t care. She would have gladly shredded half her wardrobe to get away from Thomas Armstrong and every wretched emotion he elicited in her.
Chapter 18