Chapter Eleven #2
“This,” he said, and brought his mouth down on hers to kiss her with a crushing depth of yearning that surprised even himself.
He had never thought to feel this way again.
He put all of his heart into this kiss, not bothering to keep it gentle because Gwendolyn needed the very passion in her life that had been denied her by her absent betrothed.
That wretch still had her heart entangled, and James meant to cut every last one of those entangling threads with this kiss.
Gwendolyn was ready to shed that oaf from her life, he knew. He felt it in her avid response to him, in the warmth of her lips on his.
Her hands rested on his chest. She leaned her entire body into him.
Oh, that soft, sweet body of hers that had him in agony every time he looked at her.
Their lips seemed to melt into each other, seemed made for each other.
The kiss went on endlessly, neither of them ready to end the entanglement of their mouths and tongues until he felt her shudder and knew her feelings of guilt over breaking away from her betrothed were creeping up on her again like a noxious fog.
He drew his lips off hers, but continued to hold her close. Gwendolyn’s eyes remained shut, but her expression appeared dreamy, as though she had liked their kiss and wanted to savor it.
As for him, he wanted to carry her onto the grass and…blessed saints, the things he wished to do to her.
Seduce her. Mate with her in the wild. He knew when a woman was receptive, and Gwendolyn’s body was receptive.
But her heart was not ready for more just yet.
Too bad—yet he would never push her to do anything she wasn’t ready for yet. This was a step too far. A step too soon.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered.
“I dare not.”
“Be brave and look at what is before you.”
Her lids flickered open. “You are before me.”
“As I am meant to be.” He took a deep breath. “As I wish to be.” Having made his declaration, he took another deep breath and let it out slowly. “We are right for each other, Gwen.”
He dared not say more.
Perhaps he had already said too much. She appeared as skittish as a filly.
“Right for each other?” she repeated.
She sounded so uncertain. Over the years, she had woven a dream in her mind of marrying her first love. The threads of that dream still held her tightly bound to the past.
“Yes, Gwen. Not just for one night. Not merely in passing. As your husband, if you will have me.”
Gad.
Arse.
How could he have let that slip out?
“Husband?” She gasped. “But…but…that isn’t how these matchmaking plans are supposed to work.”
Well, he’s said it, and there was no taking it back. “Where does it say that I am not permitted to choose the matchmaker as my bride?”
Her eyes were wide as saucers as she stared at him. “That is not the way it works.”
“It? What is it?”
“Our arrangement. It was supposed to be business only.”
“Is this what you want, Gwen? Arm’s length? Formal? Sharing a few steamy kisses but no hearts engaged?”
“Isn’t it for the best?” She took off his jacket and tried to hand it back to him.
He placed it back around her shoulders. “Keep it. You’re still shivering.”
Right, she wasn’t ready. She was preparing to bolt. He had pushed it and now had to deal with the damage he had created.
“Gwen, just hear me out. What have you got to lose? I was never trying to be difficult. I wanted to make a match for myself. The problem was, I realized early on that you were the one I wanted.”
“From the very start?”
“No, not at first. Well, maybe I realized it unconsciously, but I was in too much of a fog to understand what I was feeling. Once that fog lifted, there you were. However, your heart was taken, and I was not going to accept a wife who considered me second best.”
“You are an excellent man and second to no one.”
“Says the woman who holds me second in her heart. Unfortunately, the more I saw of you, the more deeply I fell in love with you.”
Gad. Had he just said he loved her?
What was wrong with him? She was going to run out of here like her tail was on fire.
To his surprise, she did not. “You love me?”
“Of course I do. Achingly and helplessly so.” He held his breath as the silence stretched between them.
A dozen scenarios raced through his mind while precious time passed. She was going to slap him. She was going to run up to her bedchamber in tears.
She was going to insist her heart would only ever be bound to Andrew Clement.
“James, are you certain?”
“Yes, not a doubt.”
“Oh, James,” she said in an agonized whisper.
He gave her cheek a light caress. “What are you thinking, Gwen? Tell me. I’ll understand, no matter your response.”
She nibbled her lip, and then stared up at him for another long moment, looking achingly lost and vulnerable. “I think… I think I would like you to give me another kiss.”
He hadn’t expected that answer.
“With pleasure,” he said, and captured her cherry-sweet mouth again with possessive heat and a commanding determination to break through her defenses, through everything that bound her and held her back from finding her true happiness.
She was here with him now, surrendering to his kiss and wanting to open her heart to him. He felt her desperation to move forward, felt it in the way she clutched his shoulders and raised herself on tiptoes to better press her lips against his own.
A dam burst within him. All his pent-up yearning came flooding out.
He lifted her up against him, wrapping her in his embrace and deepening the kiss with a slow and scorching grind of his mouth upon hers. He wanted her to know he would always care for her and protect her, and that theirs would always be a loving marriage.
A true marriage.
He drowned himself in this kiss and felt her body turn to liquid heat.
But he had yet to do anything beyond this one, searing kiss when she suddenly pulled away with a soft cry. “I cannot do this!”
James felt his heart hammering within his chest. Fire roared through his veins.
Gwendolyn would never have kissed him with such riotous abandon unless she cared for him. He wasn’t about to let her leap back into the safety of the past.
The past was not safe for her at all. Holding on to it as she was trying to do would leave her old, alone, and lonely because that wretched Clement was never going to return for her.
“What is it you supposedly cannot do? Kiss me? Give your heart to me? Be my wife and share my bed? I have no wish to bed you outside the bonds of marriage.”
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He yearned to have her anywhere and any time she was willing, but always with the intention of marrying her.
She was no mere dalliance for him.
“Marriage, James? Why do you keep bringing this up?”
“Why do you resist? Do you not wish to make a happy life for yourself? One with me in it…and my sons, too.”
“I adore your sons.”
“I know,” he said, casting her a soft smile. “Gwen, would it be so awful if we were husband and wife? If you do not like me in that way, then just tell me so. I’ll leave you alone. But whyever tell me that you wanted to kiss me if you had no feelings for me?”
“I was drunk and did not know what I was saying.”
“And kissing me now? You aren’t drunk tonight. You kissed me back twice with as much ardor as I kissed you. Perhaps more. What was that about?”
She put a hand to her lips. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
He was not going to let her slip back into her turtle shell and hide from the truth. Love was not meant to be safe. Love played havoc with your heart and laid it bare.
“Gwen, I am no coxcomb. But I know when a woman is attracted to me. Hot for me. You are showing all the signs.”
“I do not even know what that means,” she said with a pained laugh. “I was merely curious because I have never been kissed with such passion before.”
“Not even by your betrothed?”
He saw nothing but anguish in her eyes. “I do not even remember his kisses, they happened so long ago. There were never many of them…or ever like these. I mean, he did kiss me. I did not understand where such kisses were meant to lead back then.”
Because Andrew did not stir her passion. Was she just starting to understand this now?