A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)(40)

Don’t hide from me, she willed. Don’t pull away.

“Handsome,” she whispered, taking a chisel and hammer to the stone. Chipping away as best she knew how. “Fine-looking. Attractive. Striking. Noble. Body-thrilling. Swoon-inducing. Beauti—”

His kiss made a liar of her.

She’d blithely told him she didn’t fear him—but that was before his lips came crushing down on hers. Before his tongue invaded her mouth. Plunging deep, and then deeper still. Exploring, stroking, demanding. Stirring up emotions she didn’t know how to control.

A low growl rose from his chest. He moved forward, pressing his hard, masculine body to hers, and together they burrowed into the ivy covering the wall. The air was a dark, glossy green in her senses. Tiny, grasping tendrils pulled at her, scratched like small fingernails along her skin. They made her feel wild and part of something larger than herself, something elemental and natural and old as time.

As they kissed, his strong hands began to roam her body, shaping and claiming her in ways that must be wrong, but felt so necessary.

She wondered—if she were a woman with more experience, where would she be touching him? Stretching her arms about his waist, perhaps? Might she work her hand inside his coat, to feel the sculpted contours of his chest?

She wasn’t that daring. Instead, she touched her hand to his jaw, robustly formed and rough with new whiskers when the hour was barely noon. She slid her hand around the strong column of his neck, letting her fingertips graze the shorn hair at his nape. She stroked him there, softly. Tenderly. Because everyone deserved a bit of tenderness, and she was so very hungry for it herself.

What he gave her was something far more primal.

He clutched her tight, moaning into the kiss and holding her fast against him. The thrill of power was immediate. It shot through her, forking into every limb and electrifying her senses as he ravaged her mouth.

He muttered a curse as his lips slid to her neck, as though he kissed her unwillingly, against all morals and reason. She thrilled to that bit of blasphemy. It excited her to know that here, in this tiny, walled churchyard, she’d torn down his barriers. He’d lost all sense of duty or restraint, and she’d done this to him.

And then . . .

Then there was what he was doing to her.

His kisses worked lower along the left side of her throat, and his right hand worked higher from her waist, and the two seemed destined to meet at a specific point. That reddish, round, helpful point that now puckered and jutted against her garments, presenting itself as an eager target.

I should put a stop to this.

She watched the idea pass through her mind. It came, and it went, and she did nothing about it.

When his hand stroked over her fabric-cloaked breast, she nearly fainted with pleasure and relief. His palm ironed the modest globe flat, and then his thumb found the taut, straining peak of her nipple, chafing back and forth in a delicious manner. Her body throbbed with a deep, sweet ache. He kissed the sensitive skin over her pounding heart, then pushed her breast higher, nuzzling the overflowing scoop of warm feminine flesh in his palm.

Nuzzling. Who could have known this cold, ruthless man had it in him to nuzzle? At all?

“Katie.” He groaned. “I burn for you.”

Just a few husky words, but coming from a man so taciturn, she thought they must equal reams of poetry.

I burn for you.

So hot, those words. So dangerous. Their effect was incendiary.

The potent heat of his desire changed her everywhere. Her stockings itched. She wanted them off. Between her legs, she swelled and ached. Her br**sts challenged the corset’s limits with her every fevered, panting breath. They rose impatient and quivering, begging for more of his skillful attention.

He hooked his finger beneath the fabric of her bodice and ran it up toward her shoulder, loosening her gown just enough to slide it over one shoulder and down. With his thumb, he eased her neckline lower, all the while kissing and sucking lightly at her neck.

He was going to touch her bare breast.

She was going to let him.

It would happen. Soon.

Please. Now.

He kissed her lips, just as his fingers curled inside her bodice, cupping the slight handful of her breast. She tasted his dark, sensual moan. The pleasure was so intense, she arced off the ivy-covered wall, mindlessly thrusting her hips against him. Her belly met with the hard, pulsing ridge of his arousal.

My goodness.

Someone notify Lady Harriet. There was a monumental erection to be found in Wilmington, after all.

He growled against her lips as he kneaded and fondled her flesh, teasing her nipple with the pad of one finger. Rolling it under his touch, chasing round and round. Kate thought she would go out of her skin with pleasure.

“I must—” He broke the kiss, gasping. “Katie, I want to taste you. I have to taste you.”

“Yes,” she urged. “Yes.”

She worked a hand between them, reaching for the ribbon bow just at the top of her bodice. She hadn’t lied to him earlier—the bows on the gown were ornamental, sewn together.

All except this one.

She watched his eyes widen as she grasped the edge of the ribbon and teased the bow loose. It was like she’d given him a lifetime of Christmas and birthday gifts, all at once. And any self-consciousness she’d ever felt about her smallish br**sts and dark ni**les . . . it all disappeared in an instant when he pulled the fabric down, exposing her to the cool air and his hot, hungry gaze.