Chapter Sixteen #2
Yes; the sort of books she read—the romances she’d borrowed from Longthorpe’s library—had all been rather innocent.
The sort of book that ended with a declaration of love and perhaps as much as a chaste peck upon the lips, if the author had been particularly daring.
“Yes, well, gentlemen have access to a good many more books than are available to ladies. They’re not the sort of thing Mother would ever keep in her library, and they’re a fair bit more… evocative than those she does.”
“Evocative? In what way?” Her hands found his shoulders at last, and he regretted only that his coat was too thick to feel the warmth of her ungloved right hand through it.
“Rather lurid and explicit descriptions of certain intimate acts which many would judge to be unfit for publication. Corrupting, even.” Which was why they were not made available to ladies.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and the nails of her right hand needled his shoulder. “Could I…borrow one?”
Borrow one! “You’d be shocked,” he warned. “Right down to the tips of your toes.”
A delightful trickle of laughter tripped across her lips. “Elliot, I raise sheep. I’m well aware of what is meant by…how did you phrase is? Certain intimate acts?”
She didn’t know the half of it. A quarter, even.
Perhaps she had learned that lambs—and by extension, human babies—did not spawn beneath cabbage leaves, but he was reasonably certain that she hadn’t the faintest idea of the sorts of acts that were to be found in the kind of book she had asked to borrow.
Though she’d certainly acquire quite the education if he did lend her something.
“You’re familiar with that,” he said, “but not with kissing?”
“Sheep,” she said, with just a touch of exasperation in her voice, “aren’t known for their romantic natures.
Had I ever witnessed sheep kissing, perhaps I would have learned something from it.
” A little shiver coasted down her spine as his fingers toyed with a loose curl. “You really should hurry,” she said.
He didn’t want to hurry. He wanted to continue this intriguing conversation, and to have a dozen more in a similar vein.
And then, yes, to kiss her—but not for only the scant few minutes that remained to them.
For hours and hours, in a quiet place that belonged only to them.
When their time together wasn’t measured in hurried, stolen moments hastily scraped together; when the possibility of discovery was no longer a perpetual worry lingering at the fringes of their minds.
Someday. The hope of it still lived in his chest.
Her nails pricked his shoulder again. “Elliot.”
The rasp of impatience in her voice faded into silence as he slid his thumb across the plush, pillowy softness of her lower lip.
The clench of her fingers upon his shouldered loosened until they rested there, quiescent once more.
It took no more than the slightest nudge of his fingers to tilt her face up to his.
Kate’s breath hissed out on a shaky sigh as his lips touched hers. Just a brush, delicate, warm, and dry. She said, “Oh,” in such a soft voice, so muted that the pensive little sound had scarcely reached his ears before it was swallowed up into the silence of the room.
“Again?” he asked.
“Yes.” She drew in a breath, gave a little nod of assent. Her nails raked the wool surface of his coat. “Again.”
Another touch of his lips to hers, lingering a few moments longer. Her hands slid across his shoulders, fingers finding the lapels of his coat. A low sigh curled up from her chest. “This is…pleasant,” she said, her lips brushing his as she spoke.
“Only pleasant?” Another smooth stroke, provoking an unconscious sound of pleasure from her.
Her hip pressed against his as if she were trying—however she might, however awkward this particular position might be—to get closer. “I suppose it feels…as if there ought to be something more. Don’t you think?”
Christ. She had neither the words nor the experience to ask for what she wanted, what felt lacking to her.
He had had only books and the crude and coarse stories bandied about clubs for his own education.
But if he could manage this properly… “Don’t pull away,” he said, and his heart pounded in his chest. “Hold still a moment. It’s just—practice, yes? ”
She gave a little gasp as he swiped his tongue across the seam of her lips, and for a moment, as he touched his tongue tentatively to hers, she froze entirely, her fingers stilling upon his shoulders.
By slow degrees that tension faded, seeping away into a curious softness.
Kate listed closer, wilting toward him like a lily bending its head to the earth.
“Again,” she breathed against his lips as one of her hands continued its leisurely journey over his shoulder and around his neck.
Thank God. Could she feel the shudder that ran down his spine?
The longing conveyed from his lips to hers?
The love in the tender twirl of that dangling curl around his fingers?
In this moment, it didn’t matter if she had recognized any of it.
Not so long as he could feel the curve of her arm around his neck in the grip of a sudden passion that he suspected would have surprised her if she had had even a moment to consider it.
She tasted like sweet red wine and just faintly of the raspberry trifle that had been served for dessert. She canted her head just so, inviting a deeper taste as one hand slid down his chest to land right over his racing heart, and she made a soft, greedy sound in her throat.
Kate was an impossible dream come to life here in Richard and Rebecca’s drawing room.
All his life she’d been as elusive as morning mist, and yet somehow in these last few minutes, he had caught her.
For however long it lasted, this beautiful and fragile spell had woven itself over the two of them, and it was divine.
His head spun as she met the plunge of his tongue with her own, sighing into his mouth as his fingers stroked the nape of her neck and traced the frill of ribbon lining the neck of her gown.
Was she here with him still, or had she, behind the closed lids of her eyes, traipsed off into one of those romantic novels she so favored?
He had never imagined anyone but her. He had never wanted anyone but practical, sensible Kate, and if she could want him just this once—just for these few seconds—
“Elliot,” she whispered against his lips, and his heart raced faster still. Yes. This—this was everything he had ever dreamed of.
Kate wriggled, releasing the hold of one arm to shift her position upon the bench and…her elbow struck the keys of the pianoforte, producing a noisy, discordant jumble of notes that raised the hair at the nape of his neck. With a startled gasp, she yanked herself away at last.
Spell broken. Popped like a bubble in an instant.
His heart ached for the loss of it as she drew her hands away from his chest, settled them once more in her lap.
But the echoes of that magnificent kiss lingered on in the faint swelling of her lips, which she pursed, as if it might relieve the tenderness that remained.
“Well,” Kate squeaked, as she reached out with trembling fingers to snatch her glove off of the pianoforte, and struggled to stuff her fingers back into it. “That was certainly—certainly—”
Thrilling? Awe-inspiring? Mind-shattering?
Educational? He hadn’t any more time to wonder further, and she hadn’t any more time to speak; from outside the drawing room came the pronounced, deliberate click of Rebecca’s heels upon the floor.
Offered at exceptional volume, he was certain, so that they knew they would soon be interrupted.
A moment later Rebecca swanned in, her gaze sweeping the room.
Pleasure swept over her face to find them sitting, side by side, at the pianoforte.
“You see?” Rebecca said with a vague little gesture of her fingers to the pianoforte as she crossed the room to drop once more onto the couch she’d vacated half an hour before.
“I told you he’d be pleased as punch to teach you. ”
At this distance, probably she could not see the wild flush that had spread across Kate’s cheeks. Rebecca was, of course, correct. He had been pleased as punch to teach her.
But he wondered, now, what she had learned.