Chapter 25
Alistair could not believe she’d said it.
Any of it. But she was standing looking at him, regarding him fearlessly in the face, just as if his appearance did not disgust her in the least, and he was not such a chuckle-head as to let her walk away from him, unkissed, after making such an extraordinary proposition.
It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that was likely to happen more than once, or not to him, at any rate.
‘Do you make a habit of kissing people, Miss Constantine?’ A foolish thing to say, perhaps, but it was all he could manage in the moment. And it might be useful to know, after all.
Her fascinating smile curved up the corners of her lips – her eminently kissable lips.
‘Not a habit. Not like brushing my teeth, or washing, or changing my book at the subscription library. But it’s been known to happen.
Once or twice. I did say I’d had several Seasons, I believe.
They would have been excessively dull, otherwise. ’
‘I always knew London was a hotbed of vice,’ he murmured, though his words were more like a groan that he’d have wished in an ideal situation, and then he reached for her.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, taking his hands in hers but stilling them, close to her breasts but not, in his humble opinion, quite close enough. ‘You’re not going to kiss me. I’m going to kiss you. If you are quite positive you want me to, of course.’
‘Why?’ he asked. Why, indeed? Why was he talking?
‘Because if you kiss me, and I merely let you, even if I participate, you will convince yourself afterwards that I was not fully willing. You will torment yourself with the silly notion that you somehow forced yourself on me, like the great ogre you plainly consider yourself to be. Whereas if I kiss you, and you merely… receive it, you will not afterwards be able to persuade yourself, even with your very feeble man’s brain, that I was anything other than entirely enthusiastic. Will you?’
‘I suppose I won’t. Very well,’ he said. ‘Do your worst, Miss Constantine. I would say be gentle, but actually—’
Her lips were on his, warm and wonderful, and the sentence remained forever unfinished.
She took his face confidently between her hands and deepened the kiss, and he, who’d never been passive in such a situation in his life but was realising with astonishing swiftness that he might easily grow to like it, no, to love it, opened his mouth a little and let her.
He’d have stood up from his marvellous log, his new favourite seat in all the world, to take her in his arms, or be taken in hers, but after a moment’s stupefaction, he realised that the best place for her must be close in between his thighs while he stayed perched as he was, and so he moved to allow her that greater intimacy, should she desire it.
She did, she moved closer still, and his arms went about her, encircling her.
She hadn’t specifically forbidden that, nor his legs closing tight about her as they did now.
He could hardly doubt that she would let him know in the clearest possible fashion, should something not be permitted.
This too was marvellous. He was a simple sort of a man; he’d always liked things to be clear.
Her hands were in his hair now, and she was nipping at his lower lip with her sharp, wicked teeth.
He might have moaned; yes, because she chuckled, and did it again.
And then her tongue was in his mouth, and he was carried away on a wave of pure, delicious sensation.
Their bodies were pressed together, along almost their whole length, her breasts soft against his chest, her thighs enclosed tightly by his.
She must be able to feel him hard against her belly through the thin fabric of her gown and under-things.
If she was shocked, she gave no sign of it, only wriggled still closer.
His hands moved down to cup her buttocks, and now, delightfully, it was her turn to moan into his mouth.
He squeezed a little, and then more. Perhaps he was an ogre, out here in the night. Perhaps that was perfectly fine.
It had been a long while since Alistair had held a woman in a close embrace, and that had been Charlotte.
He’d met her at a friend’s house party, one summer, and they’d spent hours talking and laughing together; he’d been bewitched by her delicate beauty, and she apparently fascinated by him, so that their intimacy had grown up quite naturally.
It had been the most straightforward thing in the world for him to ask for her hand, and for her to accept.
He had been faithful to her during the long months of their engagement and the inevitable separations, with no great temptation to be otherwise, even though their connection had always been entirely proper and honourable, and had not gone beyond kisses – kisses much, much less heated than this.
But then he had been wounded, disfigured and crippled, and her reaction had shown him that they’d never really known each other at all; their relationship had been entirely superficial, with no genuine feeling at the base of it.
Certainly not on her part. He had been hurt and lonely after she left him, unable to acknowledge that he’d had a lucky escape, and dreadfully low in spirits – too low even to lay hands on himself for comfort in the long, dark stretches of the countless sleepless nights.
He had felt himself unsexed, until very recently, and hadn’t even had the energy to regret it.
And so it was no wonder, perhaps, that Miss Constantine’s effect on him, warm and entirely wonderful in his arms as she plundered his mouth with fierce concentration, should have been…
explosive. Overwhelming and irresistible.
He’d become aware that his deplorable loss of control was about to happen just a brief moment before it did, but she was still kissing him with unbridled passion, her hands were still locked tight in his hair, his were still glued fast to her glorious buttocks, and…
he simply could not stop himself. He gasped into her hot mouth and shuddered helplessly in her hold, the feeling of release so intense that it was almost painful.
He was dizzy with it, the world reeling about him.
‘Good God!’ he murmured brokenly. ‘Good God in heaven!’ And then a moment later, ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Constantine, Cecilia. I… I swear I could not prevent it.’
She was silent, which was bad, but she did not pull away. Perhaps she did not understand. Perhaps she was frozen in horror. He could not know exactly how intense, how prolonged, how intimate those sinful London kisses had been.
‘Oh…’ she said. ‘Oh, you… I did not realise. Maybe I should be the one apologising to you, sir.’
She called him sir, when he had just spent himself in his breeches, hard up against her soft belly.
‘No, no, of course not. The fault was mine. I am horribly embarrassed,’ he told her, aware that this was true, and yet at the same time that he had not sounded or felt so cheerful in a long while.
‘Should I be too? I did not mean, or know…’
He became aware that he was smiling. Grinning, possibly. ‘If you feel you should apologise, if you really must, you might kiss me again, and I will take that as recompense. But only if you want to. You have nothing to be ashamed of, not the least thing in the world.’
‘Always only if I want to,’ she whispered, like a promise, to him and to herself, and then she lowered her mouth to his again.
This time, she was gentle, not hungry or urgent as before, her lips soft and tender, and he closed his eyes against the astonishing sweetness of it.
As she had said, even with his very feeble male brain, he could not possibly misidentify this, whatever this was, as nothing more than pity.
And what a gift she had given him in consequence.
Pity was poison, and this was nectar and ambrosia.
Manna in the desert. Water for a man dying of thirst.
After a little while, or an hour, or a lifetime, she pulled away a little, and he instantly let her go, not without regret.
‘Thank you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I cannot say, I do not have the words, but thank you, Cecilia.’
‘No thanks are needed, Alistair. I acted only as I wanted to, no more or less, as I am determined always to do from now on. This is a kind of freedom men are accustomed to having, and most women are not. But if I understand correctly, you owe me a debt, is that not right?’ She paused rather deliberately and said, outrageously, superbly, ‘A debt of pleasure. Be sure that I will not forget. And a gentleman always pays his debts, does he not?’