Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The lesson should be simple. A taste of desire to sate her curiosity. But the moment she spoke, command in her voice and colour in her cheeks, Gabriel knew he was the fool in this arrangement.
The sooner he got it over with, the better. “Come here.”
He stood rigid, determined to keep a firm hold on his control, to make this no more than a demonstration. But devil take it, his blood surged like a fast-flowing river, pounding against every barrier he’d built.
Temptation approached, teeth sinking into her plump lower lip, each hesitant step stirring that same maddening urge to play her knight-errant. “I shall follow your lead, as I did at the altar.”
At the altar, he’d been one breath away from deepening the kiss, one step from wrapping his arms around her and summoning lust from its fathomless prison.
“A tender kiss should speak of restraint.” He would hold the reins tight enough to leave no room for manoeuvre. “It’s the promise, not the act, that kindles desire.”
“The promise? The promise of what, exactly?”
He stifled a curse. “The promise of coitus.”
“The prospect of making love?”
“Of indulging in carnal pleasure.”
She tilted her head like a curious scholar. “There’s a difference?”
He frowned. “Surely a woman as well-read as you understands the distinction between lust and love.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve read about a pleasure-dome in Xanadu, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been there.”
The minx. Her wit was every bit as enticing as her mouth. “Then brace yourself. You’re about to pay it a visit.”
He didn’t give her time to answer. One step closed the space between them, his hand rising to cradle her jaw as his mouth found hers. Her lips were warm and sweet, the nectar of the gods, and they stilled the storm within him.
Saints and sinners, he could do this every hour of the day: touch her, lose himself in her until nothing else existed. The thought alone was enough to make him break the kiss.
Their eyes met, and the faint disappointment in hers made him wish he’d plundered her lips like London’s worst libertine.
Then she said the one thing guaranteed to wound his masculine pride. “The poets are known to exaggerate. Perhaps one must be addicted to opium to appreciate pleasure.”
He wanted to remind her that friends did not mate with their mouths, but he knew the next time they crossed paths with Miss Bourne, his wife would look at her and wonder how things might have been different.
“Could we try again?” she asked softly. “The tender kiss, but this time with me as a participant? After all, one needs flint and steel to create a spark.”
The need to prove a point outweighed the need for caution, though he feared one more taste and he would combust.
“Certainly.”
Before he drew a breath, she reached out, her hand gliding over the smooth silk of his waistcoat as if touching him was the most natural thing in the world.
“You’re much warmer than you let people believe.”
“You have a talent for melting frost.”
The muscles of his chest tensed, hard beneath the lingering sweep of her fingers as they climbed to cradle his jaw. Heat tightened inside him, a deep, insistent pull that silenced reason. Their mouths met again, hunger rising from a place dark and long denied.
His restraint slipped the moment her breath mingled with his. When she rose on her toes to meet him fully, his control scattered like ash on the wind.
He traced the line from her cheekbone to the tender curve of her nape, fingers sinking into her hair. Silken strands caught around his knuckles as he drew her closer, coaxing her lips apart. She sighed into him, and that soft, helpless sound undid him more completely than desire ever could.
The lesson, the logic, the distance—none of it mattered. Only the heat of her, the taste of her, the sweetness that mocked his vow of indifference.
When she pulled away, breathless, he fought the sudden instinct to drag her back, to growl you’re mine, and drink from her like a man parched.
She touched her lips with trembling fingers. “If every kiss improves on the last, I can see why people become addicted to kissing.”
He tried not to stare, but watching her rediscover her own mouth was its own form of torment. Another kiss and he’d be prowling the corridors at night, desperate for another dose.
“You prefer being an active participant?” His mind leapt to the promise he’d made, to let her sample him hot from the pan and hoped she liked her food sizzling.
“Undoubtedly. It makes me wonder if it’s possible to have a marriage built on friendship and longing, while avoiding the other complications.”
She didn’t wait for his warning that passion was fickle and would wane, that when intimacy died, there was little left to salvage.
“Though you’ll find that a troublesome idea, I’m sure.”
Troublesome, and the most inviting prospect he’d ever encountered.
She smoothed her hands over her skirts, as if she’d dressed in a hurry after a fireside romp.
He stood rooted to the spot, a monument to contradiction. Bloody hell. He wanted to make love to his wife. In truth, he’d wanted to bed her the moment he’d placed that ring on her finger.
Perhaps she sensed his internal struggle. “There’s no need to escort me upstairs. I can find my way. Doubtless, you consider these naive experiments tedious.”
Logical Rothley would have seized the boon and quickly agreed, eager to put distance between them. The man before her had lost his wits somewhere between the chapel and the chancery.
“A husband should always honour his promises.” But wanting to leave his wife mindless with passion had little to do with honour and everything to do with pride. “And in the name of education, it’s better you understand the risks of indulging your impulses, so we may avoid them in future.”
She pondered his reply. “I suppose desire is like analysing a poem. A meticulous study of our body’s own lines and verses.”
Oh, he would be meticulous. He pictured himself nestled between her thighs, his tongue paying homage, utterly absorbed in the taste of her arousal.
He cleared his throat. “Quite.”
“Then hot from the pan implies urgency, surprise even.”
Good Lord. He was fast discovering there were crueller forms of temptation than touch. She wielded curiosity like a blade, and he was bleeding from every careful word.
“Yes, and requires a different skill set entirely.”
“But I’m a novice.”
Hardly. She was passion disguised in muted grey. That clever mouth aroused him as surely as any kiss, and her curious mind promised she would be a spirited lover.
“Passion is the art of ignoring thought and yielding to feeling.” He gestured towards the door. He needed to act before Mrs Boswell appeared to return his misplaced sanity. “Hence, I’ll need two things from you as we walk to your room.”
She led him into the corridor. “You’d rather I talked less?”
“No. I need your permission to touch you, to touch you until you tell me to stop.” He just prayed she said the word with conviction.
“You have it. What else?”
He paused, not wishing to sound like a needy young buck infatuated with his maid. “For the experiment to work, I need to believe you want me. You must say arousing things you might ordinarily keep to yourself.”
Would she blush and stammer?
Or approach the matter like a skilled academic?
“I see. I shall do my best.”
He heard the nervous thread beneath her resolve.
“Shall I begin?” he said as they passed his mother’s portrait. Those painted eyes would mock his lapse in restraint. Yet she would never understand the distinction. This was not indulgence but education. He would never permit another man to bed his wife.
“Please do.”
He braced himself, expecting the truth to shock her. “When I shielded you from the shooter tonight, it wasn’t death that set my pulse racing. It was your warmth, your softness, that made me hold you tightly against the carriage door.”
He could still feel it now, the press of her body, the swell of her breasts beneath his hands. The danger had passed, but the memory remained.
The seconds of silence stretched before she said, “And I wasn’t panting because I thought we might be shot. It was the feel of you, hard against me.”
Bloody hell.
He should stop there, but his mind refused to obey.
“You have the most marvellous breasts, Olivia.” He should know. He’d studied every curve during those poetry recitals. “I didn’t pack your corset because I wanted to admire you without restriction.”
The words had slipped out more boldly than intended, but there was no calling them back now. And he wasn’t sorry. Not when her lips parted on a sigh.
A blush rose to her cheeks, but her voice held firm as they mounted the stairs. “And I find myself thinking about your chest, and wondering if you’re just as magnificent beneath that towel.”
Heat coiled in his abdomen. The image her words conjured—her eyes on him, her curiosity unguarded—struck like a blow. He’d been half-hard since the first kiss. Now, every step was an act of endurance.
“You should know your nightgown does little to protect your modesty when you’re cold. And the shadow between your thighs is an exquisite kind of torture.”
She inhaled sharply.
Perhaps he’d gone too far. Yet the sight of her flustered and breathless was its own reward.
“I’ve always longed for independence, yet the thought of your strong hands on my skin draws me perilously close to surrender.”
Oh, she excelled at this game, as he’d known she would. It didn’t feel like a game at all, but the first steps of lovers on their wedding night.
“Then know I mean to touch you without apology.”
“That is what you promised.”
He quickened his pace, the ache in his loins a siren’s call luring him into dangerous waters. “And I’m a man of my word.”
They stopped outside her bedchamber. Candlelight flickered over the carved panels, catching the copper in her hair. He reached to smooth a loose strand behind her ear, his fingers brushing porcelain skin.