Wicked in Your Arms (Forgotten Princesses #1)(27)

She shook her head. This night had simply been too much. Her temper had gotten away with her.

She glared down at his hand on her arm. He followed her gaze before lifting his stare back to her face. “Perhaps Lady Libbie is a lady who doesn’t go about casting aspersions on those whom she does not know.”

“Perhaps,” she returned, not about to argue that she was more ladylike than the elegant Lady Libbie. Garbed in her silks and satins, Grier felt about as out of place as an elephant in the dowager’s drawing room.

The moment stretched interminably, so unbearably intense as they stared at each other that Grier thought she could hear the rush of blood in her ears.

She felt the clear shape of his hand, each press of his fingers on her arm. Awareness of their closeness, the shocking intimacy of the situation, came crashing down over her. Her gaze flicked around the empty music room with its lonely instruments.

Her skin snapped, awake and alive. In fact all of her felt alive.

More alive than she had felt in quite some time.

Her gaze drifted, settled on his perfectly carved lips. Temptation incarnate. A man’s lips should not look so beautiful. He was as seductive as the princes of all her girlhood fairytales. For a moment she allowed herself to forget that this prince lacked the heroic qualities to accompany such looks, that he thought her unsuitable, a mere nobody rubbing elbows with her betters.

With a deep breath, she let herself forget all of that. She let herself step outside her numb self and dive into life.

Before she could regain her common sense and think to stop herself—before she could let him think enough to stop her, she stood on her tiptoes and slid a hand around his neck, delighting in the sensation of his silky hair against her fingers.

This. She’d have this before sentencing herself to a cold marriage of practicality, to a life of loneliness.





Chapter Ten

Grier glimpsed the prince’s widening eyes as she pressed her lips to his. Her heart beat so fiercely she feared it might burst from her chest. Almost. If she allowed herself to think about what she was doing and allowed such a thing as fear to enter her heart.

She saw nothing anymore as her eyes fluttered shut.

In closing her eyes, she only felt. She surrendered herself to sensation, to the waking of desire within her blood.

She was no stranger to kisses, but it had been a while. The moment she tasted the prince’s lips, she knew he was the perfect cure for her numbness.

For several heartbeats he didn’t move, held himself still as marble against her, and she feared his rejection. That he would set her away from him.

Then his arms slipped around her and he was kissing her back, his lips parting against hers. She opened her own mouth for him with a small gasp. He swallowed that sound, drank it deep into himself. She pressed herself closer, tighter against him, her muscles straining to get nearer.

A shudder racked him when she tentatively tasted him with her tongue. She buried her hands in his hair, pulling him down just as he urged her up against him. He tasted her back and she moaned at the sinuous stroking of his tongue along her own.

His large hands roamed over her back, holding her tightly, fiercely. One of those hands slid around to span her rib cage, his thumb grazing the underside of one aching breast, and her body burned from the inside out.

There was nothing delicate or dandified in the way he kissed. She felt consumed. By her own desire and by the magic of his expert mouth on hers. Her hands delved deeper into his hair. With a hard tug on the strands, she forced his head to a different angle, repositioning his head for her and slanting her mouth against his one way, and then another. She didn’t know herself anymore, this woman, this stranger losing herself, taking, seizing what she craved as if it were hers. As if he were hers.

He groaned into her mouth, and the sound shuddered through her.

She relished the feverish movement of his lips on hers, the slide of his tongue deep in her mouth. He made her feel wanted, and that made her feel powerful. In that moment, she didn’t feel as if any of it could ever be enough—as if she could ever have enough of him.

Impossible as it seemed, the kiss deepened. They staggered together, clutching one another, stopping only when they collided with a pianoforte.

He nipped at her bottom lip and then sucked the bruised flesh into his mouth, clutching her closer for his starving mouth.

And still she wasn’t close enough. Her body hummed, alive and awake as she hadn’t ever felt before. That’s all that mattered. The extraordinary thrill of this moment.

She wanted to crawl into his drugging warmth, let it continue its waking heat through her. Nothing could ruin this moment.

Nothing except him.

As she dragged her lips to his jaw, kissing his bristly flesh, his voice rumbled in her ear. “My, my, Miss Hadley, I had no idea such a hellcat lurked beneath. Perhaps you’ve reconsidered my offer.”

She stilled, his words sinking in, reminding her where she was, who she was . . . who he was.

The fire in her blood cooled. The humming life that had so thrilled her slipped away until she was naught but the cold, numb shell again.

However nothing had doused his ardor. His hand drifted up from her rib cage to brush over her breast. The touch jolted her, sparked her to move, to react as any female of proper breeding should. As any unwed female who had not initiated a passionate kiss would do.

The crack of her palm against his cheek rang through the cavernous room. His arms dropped from her.