Chapter 2 #2
But…but…but she hadn’t felt his strong, capable hands on other parts of her yet.
He shook his head. “I’m not.”
How in control he looked.
How frustratingly in control.
“But, Mr. Cassidy?”
“Liam.”
“Liam?”
“Aye?”
“I’m such a very good girl and don’t good girls deserve to get what they want every so often?”
She spoke the words playfully, as Arabella. Yet secreted behind her playfulness lay a truth. For all her intellectual and business pursuits that were viewed askance by the ton, she was a good girl.
Liam Cassidy, arrested in place, searched her eyes. Gone was his lopsided smile and his charm. He was trying to understand her.
Well, she could help with that… “I’m four-and-twenty.”
“And?” If anything, he looked as if he understood less.
All right, then… “I’ve never been kissed.”
He blinked.
It was the truth.
She had never been kissed—and in this moment, it was all she wanted.
She couldn’t remember ever having wanted anything else in her entire life, only this—a kiss from Liam Cassidy.
It struck her groggified mind that while she wrote theoretical romantic words, she had no experience of them in practice—and here she stood on the precipice of necessary, empirical experience.
Not as Arabella.
But decidedly as Saskia.
“I must be kissed.”
“And someday—”
“Tonight.”
“—you undoubtedly will be.”
“By you.”
A bemused laugh escaped his beautifully formed lips that her gaze had been lingering on too long for politeness.
“Four-and-twenty is far too advanced an age to have never been kissed.” She lifted her gaze. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
He had the look of a man who’d been struck speechless. Still, he managed, “I…would.”
“There.”
His brow furrowed, as if he’d been tricked into confessing what was only the truth.
And Saskia felt not one whit sorry as she lifted onto the tips of her toes, slipped her hand around his neck, and pressed her mouth to his.
A flurry of impressions cascaded through her—of the feel of his mouth…
his scent of salt and citrus…the solidity of him against her.
Yet though she’d never been kissed—or kissed anyone, more like applied to this situation—a sense tingled through her, setting off little alarm bells.
This kiss wasn’t all it should be.
His lips, though perfectly formed, weren’t as soft as they should be.
And his solid body… It was too solid. Unyielding would’ve been a more accurate descriptor.
And his hands… They weren’t upon her. In the novels she wrote, for instance, the hero took the heroine into his arms. But Liam Cassidy’s arms remained rigidly at his sides.
So, though Saskia’s mouth was determinedly pressed against his, she still felt like she’d never been kissed.
Her eyes fluttered open and found his upon her, watching her as if from a remove.
Those alarm bells began clanging wildly inside her.
She broke the kiss, but not fully away. “Aren’t I…
” She searched for a word. “Kissable?” Tears threatened—or perhaps they’d already sprung to her eyes.
She could no longer account for herself.
“Of course you are.” The words emerged from his mouth with all the ease of an extracted tooth.
“Then prove it, Liam Cassidy.”
Her mouth separated from his by a scant inch, so close his sweet, whiskey-scented breath whispered across her lips, she watched a war wage behind his eyes and waited.
From the edge of her vision, she caught movement, and the breath caught in her lungs.
It was his hand…reaching up…caressing the side of her face…
then pulling her spectacles off and slipping them into the front pocket of his coat.
A shiver traced through her. If he was removing her spectacles, then…
His warm, calloused hand found the back of her neck and held her steady as she swayed forward onto the tips of her toes…as he angled his head…as his lips met hers.
From the first moment, this was an altogether different kiss from the one she’d given him.
This kiss was firm and soft and…purposeful.
A force inside this man drove this kiss.
A force that something inside her responded to with exuberance…
with heat…with urgency. Both her arms had now twined around his neck, her body stretched up the length of him.
His hand found her waist, squeezed, and guided her around so the doorjamb pressed against her back, so he was firmer against her as his tongue skated across her bottom lip, the tip touching hers, pulling a delighted groan from her.
So, this was a kiss.
Or, rather, what a kiss should be.
And, oh, it wasn’t only the hard length of his body against her, but the hard length of something else, too—his manhood.
She wasn’t such an innocent that she didn’t know that.
And, really, by the second, she was becoming less and less an innocent, for all her body suddenly wanted was that hard length inside her.
This body of hers…how newly awakened it felt—and ravenous.
Within the space of one second and the next, a woman could transform into a wanton, it seemed.
Her hand, bold and curious, traveled down his body, all those hard, corded muscles tensing and releasing beneath her touch. Then her hand was upon him.
She nearly gasped.
It was so…big.
Really, classical statuary had a lot to answer for, for she hadn’t expected this…this…girth.
And yet the knowledge of his size did nothing to diminish the hunger her body felt to have him inside her. If anything, she wanted him more—and not from curiosity. From the wantonness that had awakened within her…from desire, pure and urgent.
Gold-flecked green eyes flew open, then his hand was covering hers, halting its bold exploration, and removing it from…
him. His mouth tore away from hers, angling so his breath blasted hot against her neck.
He pulled back enough to meet her gaze. She opened her mouth to speak…
to ask him to stay…to join her in the bed that beckoned beyond the threshold…
All this she wanted to say—to beg.
He pressed his finger to her mouth and shook his head as he reached into his front coat pocket for her spectacles and carefully returned them to their customary perch upon her nose.
Then he wrapped a hand around each of her upper arms and guided her beyond the threshold and into her room, whereupon he released her and backed away—and shut the door in her face.
Leaving her stunned.
Leaving to her bed—alone.