A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(14)

Which brought him to surprise the third.

Pleasure. Triumph. Damn, he’d been wanting this. He hadn’t known it. Would have gone to his grave before admitting it. But a part of him had been wanting this. Badly, and for quite some time. He wasn’t learning her through this kiss, so much as confirming long-suspected truths. That for all her unfeminine interests and education, she was pure woman beneath. That she didn’t feel prickly and stubborn in his arms, but warm and pliant, her curves molding to his strength.

That he could make her melt. Sigh. Tremble.

That one taste of her wouldn’t be enough.

He ran his tongue over her closed lips, seeking more. It had been ages since he’d kissed a girl simply for kissing’s sake, and he’d forgotten what a pure, heady pleasure it could be. He wanted to sink into that cool sweetness. Get drunk on it, bathe in it. Utterly lose himself in a fathoms-deep kiss.

Open. Open for me.

A little sound escaped her. Something like a squeak. Her lips remained sealed under his.

He tried again, lightly dragging his tongue toward the corner of her mouth. Slowly, reverently—the way he knew a woman enjoyed being licked, just about anywhere.

Finally, her lips parted. He swept his tongue between them, tasting her. God, she was so sweet and fresh. But utterly still. Unmoving. Unbreathing. He paused to sip at her plump lower lip before trying again. He pressed a little deeper this time, swirling his tongue before retreating.

The sweet sigh of her breath whispered against his cheek. It was a confession, that sigh. It told him two things.

First, she had no earthly idea how to kiss him back.

But, secondly? She wanted to. She’d been waiting for this, too.

As they broke apart, a sense of mutual disbelief wavered in the air.

“Why—?” Her hands pressed flat against her belly. For a moment, she looked everywhere but at him. Then she lowered her voice and asked, “Whyever would you do that?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, chuckling. “You kissed me.”

“Yes, but why would you do . . .” Her face twisted. “The rest of it.”

Colin paused. “Because . . . that’s the way a grown man kisses a woman?”

She stared at him.

For God’s sake, she couldn’t be that naïve.

“I know you can’t have had much experience, but surely someone’s explained the natural way of things between the sexes?” He held out his hands in an attitude of illustration and cleared his throat. “It’s like this, you see. When a man cares for a woman very, very much . . .”

She buffeted his shoulder with her fist, once. Then barely restrained herself from a second blow. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” She lowered her voice and slid a glance toward the group of girls, who were now disappearing into the rooming house, still absorbed in their own conversation. “Why would you do that with me? A simple kiss was enough. What could you be thinking?”

“What indeed.” He pushed a hand through his hair, more than a little offended at her accusatory tone. “I’m male. You rubbed your . . . femaleness all over me. I didn’t think. I reacted.”

“You reacted.”

“Yes.”

“To . . .” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “To me.”

“It is a natural response. Aren’t you a scientist? Then you should understand. Any red-blooded man would react to such stimulus.”

She stepped back. She dipped her chin and peered at him over her spectacles. “So you find me stimulating.”

“That’s not what I—” He bit off the rest of that sentence. The only way to end a nonsensical conversation was to simply cease talking.

Colin drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He closed his eyes briefly. And then he opened them and looked at her. Really looked at her, as though for the first time. He saw thick, dark hair a man could gather by the fistful. Prim spectacles, perched on a gently sloped nose. Behind the lenses, wide-set eyes—dark and intelligent. And that mouth. That ripe, pouting, sensual mouth.

He let his gaze drift down her form. There was a wicked thrill to knowing lushness smoldered beneath that modest sprigged muslin gown. To having felt her shape, scouting and charting her body with all the nerve endings of his own.

Their bodies had met. More than that. They’d grown acquainted.

Nothing more would come from it, of course. Colin had rules for himself, and as for her . . . she didn’t even like him, or pretend to. But she showed up in the middle of the night, hatching schemes that skirted the line between academic logic and reckless adventure. She started kisses she had no notion how to continue.

Taken all together, she was simply . . .

A surprise. A fresh, bracing gust of the unexpected, for good or ill.

“Perhaps,” he said cautiously, “I do find you stimulating.”

Suspicion narrowed her gaze. “I don’t know that I should take that as a compliment.”

“Take it how you will.”

She stared in the direction of the Queen’s Ruby. The group of girls had disappeared. “Drat. I’m not sure anyone even noticed the kiss.”

“I noticed it.” He rubbed his mouth with the side of his hand. The taste of ripe plums still lingered on his lips. He found himself unaccountably thirsty.