Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(45)

She froze on the verge of pulling away. “That feels so good,” she breathed.

The warm, happy sound of her voice jolted sensation down his body and into his loins. “Number four: I bought a special license because I planned to talk you into marrying me as quickly as I could.”

She examined his face. He consciously tried to slow his breathing, aware that it had grown ragged, a result of the slender foot in his hand and her delighted response to his touch.

His fingers trembled, poised to trail caresses from her feet up her legs.

“False?” she asked, uncertain.

He couldn’t stop a smile. “Very astute of you, Miss Belgrave. I bought the special license because I had a vague feeling that you would try to back out. I thought—wrongly—that you were fearful of my family, or the attention given to a duchess.”

“Not the former, but a woman would have to be mad to want the latter.”

North had known many women greedy for precisely the attention that duchesses received. “I meant to use the license only if you couldn’t bear the idea of a ceremony in the cathedral, if you felt strongly that you could not face public scrutiny. I had not imagined,” he said wryly, “that you didn’t want to marry me at all. A measure of my arrogance, I suppose.”

She did not soothe him with a falsehood about herself. Instead, she gave him a rueful smile, wriggled her toes, and nudged her left foot into his hands. “One question more and I will have earned a pair of slippers.” The gleeful sound in her voice made him laugh.

“Fifth and final: I loved you.”

The words hung in the lazy summer air.

“How can I answer that?” she said, her eyes on his. “You’ve since told me and Lady Knowe that I did not break your heart. So obviously the answer is no.”

He kept silent.

Diana let an audible puff of air escape her lips. “Yes?”

North didn’t know what he was doing. What game he was playing. Was he playing for a pair of slippers, a kiss, or something altogether more costly?

“Skip that one,” he said. “Five: Aunt Knowe is one of my favorite people in the world.”

She laughed, palpably glad that the tension was broken. “That’s true. She’s your mother, isn’t she? For all intents and purposes?”

He nodded and shifted position, managing to come to his knees without rocking the boat overly much. “I’m going to claim my kiss now.”

“You didn’t win a kiss!” she said indignantly. “I won shoes.”

He came to her side and tugged her lower into the well of the boat. Propping himself on an elbow, he leaned over enough to kiss her straight nose and her rosy cheek. “I said that I would kiss every freckle,” he reminded her.

“That was foolishness.”

“I love your freckles,” he murmured. Her skin was warm and very smooth, like taut silk. “They’re on the bridge of your nose, but not on the tip.”

“No one loves freckles, and it’s unkind of you to remind me of them.”

He buried his free hand in her hair and looked into her eyes. Meeting those eyes was frightening, like leaping off a cliff. They were so beautiful, a clear gray once again, now that the lake was not in sight.

But more than that, they were the most honest eyes he’d ever seen. True eyes. Eyes that had never lied to him, even when most women would have pretended to have had tender feelings during their betrothal, in order to please him.

More fools they, because that implied he had no thirst for the chase. He loved a chase. There were battles he would never again undertake, and there were others that he welcomed joyously.

“I was in love with you,” he informed her, deciding that he might as well make everything very clear. Her breath was warm against his, but she didn’t say anything, just regarded him with the same peaceful silence that enveloped him last night, and the night before. Did she understand that she was his only source of comfort?

Her silence was an invitation. If Diana didn’t want to be kissed, she would tell him. If she hadn’t wanted to comfort him, she would have thrown him out of her chamber instead of offering him toast.

When her mouth opened under his and her arms went around his neck, he felt a distant pang of triumph. It was distant, because the touch of her tongue sent his brain into some other place. His body took control and he relaxed into the warm dregs of the afternoon and the gentle rocking of the boat.

They kissed like explorers this time, learning taste and sound. He memorized the small squeak that came from the back of her throat whenever his tongue tangled with hers. The shudder when he licked her neck. The whimper when he gave her more weight, pinning her hips to the bottom of the boat.

He loved kissing the freckles she hated, pressing kisses on her eyelids and her cheekbones and her finely wrought jaw.

But he kept returning to her mouth and crashing inside, tasting her the way no other man had. His heart was beating so rapidly that he could hear it in his ears.

Her hands were twisted in his hair.

When her hands moved, sliding down his back, sending waves of feeling down his body, he no longer needed to be held to the earth. Everything in him was embodied, pressing her to the bottom of the boat.

She seemed to like it, nipping back at him, combating his tongue with hers, kissing him as deeply as she could, her body arched against his chest.