Chapter 13 #2
She tilted her head as a frown appeared on his face, as though he wasn’t expecting to say that, either. “So, according to you, I am a woman under your care.”
“I suppose you are.”
She turned so she was looking up at him. “And what is my role?”
His eyes searched hers. “What do you mean?”
“Your role is, according to you, to protect me. So what is my role? What may I do for you?” Daringly, thinking of all the whispered advice Eliza had given her, she reached up to cup his face. “Let me help you, Alexander,” she murmured.
He froze under her. They were so close, her chest skimming his, and his face warm under her palm.
Freshly shaved, but with the ghost of golden stubble under his skin.
In the dim light, his eyes looked endlessly dark.
Here, he was all shadows, and she wanted to sink into him and never find her way out again.
Then his hand came to her waist, spanning almost to her ribs, and her head spun.
“I have never kissed a man before,” she confessed, hearing the words as she said them and wishing she could take them back.
How desperate that sounded—and perhaps he would not want an inexperienced partner in this.
Perhaps he wanted to feel as though she knew precisely what she was doing and could please him in this.
But Alexander’s chest rose and fell in an unsteady breath, and his other hand tilted her face to his as he bent to crush his mouth against hers.
The kiss felt as desperate as her statement had, and one thing became abundantly clear.
Now—now—she had most certainly kissed a man.
Now, she had kissed her husband.
His hand slid from her jaw to her neck, and she braced both her hands on his shoulders as she leaned up, kissing him more thoroughly.
His mouth opened, tongue skimming her bottom lip, and she mimicked him.
Hot, slick, wet, all in ways she might have thought she would dislike until it was Alexander providing the sensations.
Now, the heated press of his lips satiated a desire she hadn’t even known she’d possessed.
Finally, after all her years of harboring this small, unrequited preference for him, she knew how it was to kiss him.
Her knees felt weak, as though they were made of butter, and he slid his arm more firmly around her waist to hold her up.
In a burst of enthusiasm, Lydia wrapped her arms around his neck.
He made a small noise in the back of his throat at that, his tongue sliding luxuriously against hers, and the sound went straight to the liquid heat beginning between her legs.
Yes, this. Just this. Just them.
His back collided with the wall, allowing her to push up against him, and she did. Her body didn’t quite feel like her own anymore; under his tutelage, she had become something new. A sensual being who could compel a man into madness.
A siren.
For once—for the first time with Alexander—she felt power. Desirable. So very wanted. The insistent ridge against her stomach told her that. A bulge, just as Marie had commanded her to look for.
All was not lost.
But heavens above, she was. With his arms around her in such a passionate embrace, she was forced to confront the reality that she had been lost until this very moment.
He tasted of tea and, amusingly, kippers from breakfast, and she wondered if she would ever be content to live without it.
She did not merely compel a man into madness—she brought herself to the very brink.
Teetered along the edge and welcomed it in like an old friend.
With every stroke of his tongue and press of her palms, she understood more of herself, and it was this: that she could not live alone for the remainder of her life.
She could not go without this kind of intimacy and affection for the rest of her days.
When he finally broke free, looking down into her shadowed face, his breath quick and heavy against her damp lips—she knew for certain that she would do whatever it took to have him still in her life.
Perhaps she would never be able to forgive him for all the ways he had hurt and abandoned her. But she wanted this enough not to care. They could live as husband and wife in every sense—including Biblical—and her heart would remain intact, but her body would know every touch of a man.
That was what the list was about.
He brought one shaking hand to her lips. “I am sorry,” he whispered, and she shook her head, stepping back, freeing herself from his embrace.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t tell me you are sorry or you didn’t mean for this to happen or that it was a mistake.” She sliced a hand through the air. “There is nothing wrong with a husband and wife kissing. Surely you wouldn’t want me to kiss anyone else?”
“By all accounts, you haven’t.” There was a rough note in his voice, as though that notion still plagued him somehow. “I hadn’t thought that possible. Weren’t you being actively courted when I married you?”
“He was—” What could she say to describe the baron?
At the time, he had seemed an eminently sensible option.
Not exciting—as Penelope had so often reminded her—but steady and reliable, and she was old enough to know the value in such things.
But her heart was racing, her body had been brought alive by the touch of a man she couldn’t even in all honesty say she liked, and she no longer had the same taste for sensible.
“He was reserved,” she managed.
He gave a short laugh. “You shouldn’t have told me that.”
“Why?” she pressed. “Because then you wouldn’t have kissed me?”
“I would have—” He inhaled sharply and ran a hand through his hair. “I must be going mad,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “I can’t say what I would have done,” he said finally. “And I can’t say exactly why I brought you here. I knew you hadn’t drunk the wine.”
“Curiosity,” she offered.
“Perhaps.”
“It is why I came. Aren’t you curious how it would be between us both?
You were gone for so long, and in that time, I became a lady.
And we are married.” She held his gaze, and as though he couldn’t help himself, he dropped it down her person then back up.
“I’m not sorry,” she said. “That I provoked you into kissing me.”
“And how did you find it? Your first kiss?”
She gave him a secret smile and sauntered back towards the stairs. “I suppose you’ll have to keep wondering, won’t you, Alexander?”
His muttered curse followed her up the stairs.