Chapter 11 #2
She looked him up and down. He looked both delicious and dangerous, leaning back against the balustrade. “And now, I find myself out here alone with you. Am I out of the frying pan and into the fire, then?”
His grey eyes flashed in the moonlight. “Not at all. Unlike Lord Pritchard, I don’t need to use force to get a woman to touch me.”
“I’m sure that’s true.” She found herself taking a step closer to him, proving his point. Like a moth to the flame.
She gripped the railing in order to stop herself from drifting forward. “I suppose you never answered my question.”
He arched a brow. “Your question?”
“From the other night. About why you would bother to seek out my company. I thought I knew the answer—that you were making sport of me. But now, I’m not so sure.”
He was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the soft thrum of a nightjar from somewhere deep in the gardens below.
He attempted his signature flippant smirk, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What reason does a man usually have for wanting to speak with a beautiful woman?”
Just like that, Rosalie’s heart was thundering. She felt terrified, but also strangely powerful.
She attempted to make her voice light. “You expect me to believe that the devil himself was laid low by an innocent debutante?”
He snorted. “Innocent? You?”
She shrugged, taking a step closer. “I’m certainly not your usual type.”
He stayed where he was, neither approaching her nor retreating. “Ah, but that’s just it. You, Rosalie de Lacy, defy type. You might, strictly speaking, be a blushing debutante. But you are unlike any blushing debutante I have ever met.”
She gave him a scolding look. “You expect me to believe that you took one look at me and, what? Fell in love at first sight?”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said, his voice full of scorn. “What sort of naive fool believes in love at first sight?”
Suddenly, Rosalie had to work very hard to keep her posture from crumpling and her lip from starting to quiver. Oh, blast! She had gone and allowed herself to hope, fool that she was.
Lucian stepped forward, closing the distance so they were separated by mere inches. Although he did not touch her anywhere, he was standing close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
When he spoke, his voice was as dark and as deep as the starry sky overhead.
“What happened, Rosalie, was that you opened your mouth. And you were strong, and you were bright, and you were sharp. Like a fucking diamond. And, most of all, you were unexpected, in a world where just about everyone is deadly dull. And I found myself wanting to hear what you would say next. Is that ‘love at first sight?’ Of course not.” He cast a contemptuous glance toward the heavens before fixing his eyes once more upon her face.
“Fascination at first hearing, I will grant you.”
Oh, dear. This was good. Which was what made it so very, very terrible!
To say that she was strong and clever and fascinating was a much better compliment than to merely praise her fine cheekbones or her rose-pink lips.
It was, in fact, precisely the sort of compliment Rosalie would most have wanted to hear, and precisely the type to which she was the most vulnerable.
She could almost feel the icy walls that guarded her heart crack straight down the middle.
But he was Lucian Deverell! The rakiest rakehell to ever rake his way across London!
He was going to break her heart. It was a matter of certainty.
This was an alarming thought, because in order to be capable of breaking her heart, he had to have wormed his way inside it.
Which, Rosalie discovered to her horror, he had successfully done.
Yes, the situation was dire.
But, if she was being honest, it was also thrilling.
Rosalie would never know where she found the courage to do what she did next. “Is that so?” she asked in a breathy voice as she placed her hands on his shoulders.
“It is,” he said, his voice full of quiet conviction. His hands, warm in the cool night air, settled on her waist, but they remained gentle. She could have brushed him off easily had she wished.
But she didn’t want that.
Her hands slid up his shoulders until they were looped around his neck. “There’s something you owe me.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Well. You see…” She swallowed, gathering her courage. “Before you intervened with Lord Pritchard, it seems that I was on the cusp of receiving my first kiss.”
He snorted. “If I stopped that from happening, I would say that you are the one who owes me.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “True. But you cannot deny that there is a certain logic. You deprived me of my first kiss. It is now incumbent upon you to make up for it.”
His hands came up to frame her face, and Rosalie’s heart started thundering like a cavalry charge. When he spoke, his voice was pitched half an octave lower than usual. “My darling Rosalie. If you want a kiss, there’s no need to resort to semantics.”
“No?” she asked, her voice emerging as a bit of a squeak.
“No,” he purred, stroking his thumb across her forehead. “All you need do is ask.”
He kissed her then, and—Lord help her!—it was a good thing she had looped her arms around his neck, because they were the only thing that prevented her from collapsing in a heap on the flagstones.
Why did his lips upon hers feel so good?
She touched her lips all the time. With her napkin.
To apply some lip salve. When she took a bite of food.
So, why had she not known that her lips were capable of feeling like this?
She realized she was trembling, which was embarrassing, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
Lucian promptly made things worse by emitting a growl, tilting his head to the side, and opening his mouth over hers.
Rosalie was so startled that her mouth fell open, and the next thing she knew, his tongue was tangling with hers.
He tasted like sin. Well… strictly speaking, he tasted like brandy and citrus with a hint of woodsmoke. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that he felt like sin, and more accurate still to say that he made her feel like sinning. That he was temptation incarnate.
He slid his hands downward, stroking down her neck, traversing the length of her spine, and caressing her sides until they curved around her bottom. In any other circumstance, she would have protested, but it felt so good, the word she gasped into his mouth was, “Please!”
Seizing her hips, he pulled her flush against him.
This was a good thing, because Rosalie’s body suddenly felt very loose, as if she were held together with string and the slightest breeze might cause her to crumple to the floor.
She somehow knew that if this were to happen, she would come to rest flat on her back with her thighs parted.
Speaking of her thighs, they seemed to be the radial point around which the magical sensations coursing through her body were based.
She felt strange and out of control of her own body, but in the best possible way.
While she had gone floppy as a rag doll, Lucian seemed to have turned to iron.
His arms were like steel bands around her.
His spine was rigid, holding her up. And then there was the part of him that was currently pressed against her stomach.
Rosalie probably wasn’t supposed to know what that was, but she had always been curious by nature.
In addition to learning how to knee a man in the groin the summer before her come-out, she had interrogated her cousin, Daphne, who was five years older, married, and best described as “too forthright by half.” So Rosalie had a fair idea what the thing pressing into her stomach was, and what Lucian would like to do with it.
A cry of disappointment burst from her lips as he broke off the kiss. “Come on,” he said, breathing hard and tugging at her hand.
Rosalie offered no resistance. “Where are we going?” she asked, even though the answer was fairly obvious; they were already jogging down the stone steps that led down into the garden.
He turned to look at her, and his eyes glinted with something dark and dangerous. “Somewhere we can finish this.”