‘Ellie, I should have thought. You do not have a mother or married sister to advise you, to make you feel comfortable about what will happen. Do not worry, please.’ He lifted a hand and laid it gently against her cheek. ‘I won’t… We will take it very slowly. Nothing will happen—not until you want it to.’
‘No, no, that isn’t it, Blake!’
Oh, Lord, now she must be crimson with embarrassment. What on earth had made her think that this rush of honesty would be a good thing?
‘I have absolutely no fears about that,’ she lied.
She couldn’t bring herself to say that she was aching for him, and neither could she find the words to tell him what had happened—the fear, the horror of that night when she had broken her leg and her stepfather had died.
‘I am afraid that I won’t…please you. That night, in front of the fire, you said that I’d bruised your arm because I was so bony.’
‘I am an idiot,’ Blake said. ‘I was worried about you—you were thin. Worried that you would make yourself ill. I meant to joke, perhaps to encourage you to eat more. I would not have hurt you for the world, Eleanor.’
Honesty, she reminded herself. I should tell him.
Tell him how she had made herself thin because she had started to become afraid of her stepfather. It had begun when she’d started to develop a figure, so she had tried to make those treacherous curves go away.
She looked at the horses, the trees, her gloved hands. Anywhere but into those concerned grey eyes.
‘I was not well after my accident,’ she prevaricated. ‘I lost my appetite and it was hard to get into the habit of eating again.’
‘Poor darling,’ Blake said.
He ran his fingers down the curve of her cheek until his thumb met her mouth. He lingered there, rubbing gently across the swell of her lower lip, until she raised her eyes and met his gaze.
‘You are very feminine, Eleanor. Lush curves are not everything—or anything, come to that. So long as you are not frightened of me then it will all be well, you will see. I promise,’ he added, his voice husky.
Without her conscious volition her lips moved against his thumb, in the whisper of a kiss, and then he slipped it into her mouth, rubbing across the sensitive inner flesh and she gasped, her tongue flickering out to meet the blunt thrust of Blake’s thumb.
‘Eleanor…’
A question, a statement, or a demand? She did not know, but she swayed towards him and Blake took her into his arms, brought his head down and kissed her. Hot, open-mouthed, urgent.
This should scare her, she knew. This was not how a gentleman was supposed to kiss his fiancée—not how any man was supposed to kiss a virgin. This was a quite blatant statement of desire as his tongue replaced his thumb in a way that left her in no doubt what that penetration symbolised. He tasted as she remembered from that kiss in the field, on the sheepskins, but the intent behind this kiss was different. She could tell that even in her ignorance. This was, after all, only her third kiss.
And then Ellie lost the ability to analyse, to treat this as a new experience to be carefully considered, to savour. All there was, as she leaned into Blake’s embrace, was heat and desire and the unexpected delight of creating pleasure with another person. He was not simply kissing her…they were kissing each other. When she pressed into his mouth with her tongue he growled, deep in his chest. When he pulled back a little and nibbled at her lower lip she followed, took her turn, learning the exact pressure on the firm flesh that made him groan, made her heart beat faster at the masculine, primitive power of his response.
The horses moved, jerking the curricle and breaking their kiss. They fell apart, both of them panting a little. Blake’s mouth looked swollen, sensual.
I did that. I kissed him back and I was not afraid. Perhaps I can do this after all.
‘Do you doubt,’ Blake asked, his voice husky, ‘that I desire you?’
*
Why? Blake asked himself as he worked to get both his reactions and the horses under control. He had just kissed an inexperienced young woman in the middle of Green Park and he was as hard as teak, aching to drag her down from her seat and into the shelter of that shrubbery and make love to her until they were both screaming. He had kissed Felicity like that and she had recoiled in horror, but Eleanor had kissed him back.
She blinked at him as though bemused, her mouth pink and swollen, her eyes wide, her pale skin flushed. Even a passionate kiss had not rendered her beautiful, simply rather sweet…endearing. Vulnerable. He had always demanded beauty in his lovers. No, he realised, not demanded, just expected. He was eligible, handsome, desired, so he could ignore the plain and the awkward.
Arrogant bastard, he thought, looking at himself from the outside. It didn’t happen often that he was forced to see himself as someone else might, and it was not pleasant. Was that how Eleanor had seen him when they’d first met? As some privileged, top-lofty aristocrat cutting a swathe through Society, taking what he wanted and ignoring the side-effects?
Felicity had been beautiful. Exquisite. It had been one of the things he had loved her for.
Blake winced, and the pair backed edgily.
He
always tried very hard not to use that word when he thought of Felicity—the woman he had loved without realising it, the woman he had alienated with his neglect, assuming she would still be there when he got around to snapping his fingers for her.