He gave a humourless laugh. ‘You can have no idea how much I envy you, Bella!’
She blinked at the strangeness of the comment. ‘Why on earth would you envy me?’ At the moment she had nothing. No past.
No future. No name. Even the dress she was wearing belonged to another woman.
Griffin’s hands tightened against her cheeks. ‘Because your lack of knowledge about your past means you have no memory of pain or loss, either. Or the mistakes you might have made,’ he rasped harshly. ‘Because the blank of that past allows you to start afresh. To decide what that past might have been, and to make the future your own.’
That was one way of looking at this situation, Bella supposed.
Except she would much rather know her past. Whatever that past might be.
To not know who or what she was gave her the constant feeling of walking along the edge of a precipice, when one misguided step or action would hurtle her over the edge of that precipice to her certain death.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. A movement Griffin followed hungrily, causing Bella’s heart to falter in her chest as she found herself suddenly unable to speak.
‘You are a witch,’ Griffin groaned throatily, no longer able to resist the lure of wanting to feel those lush and rosy-coloured lips beneath his own. He lowered his head towards hers.
Her gently parted lips felt as soft as rose petals beneath his, as he held back his hunger to plunder and claim but instead kissed her with restrained gentleness, her taste as sweet as the nectar between those petals. A nectar Griffin wanted to lap up greedily with his tongue.
Dear Lord!
Griffin groaned low in his throat, hungrily deepening the kiss as he felt the tentative sweep of Bella’s tongue against his own like hot enveloping silk, her arms now clinging tightly about his waist as she pressed the soft length of her body eagerly against his much harder one. So eager, so trusting.
Damn it, he had made a promise to Bella to protect her while she remained in his household. And she had left him in no doubt that she now trusted him to ensure her safety. Even from himself.
It took every effort of willpower on his part, but he finally managed to gather the strength to wrench his mouth from hers, breathing heavily as he put her firmly away from him before releasing her.
He hardened his heart against the look of pained rejection in Bella’s reproachful gaze. If he weakened, even for a moment, he would give in to the temptation to take her back into his arms. And he knew that this time he would be unable to stop kissing her, touching her, caressing her, and it would end with him craving more than she was ready to give.
‘It is past time I returned to my study,’ he barked before turning sharply to cross the room to the door.
Bella reached out a hand to grasp the back of the chair nearest to her, barely able to stand on her own two feet. The onslaught of emotions she had known in Griffin’s arms had left her feeling light-headed.
‘I will be going out for some time after luncheon, paying calls to some of my neighbours,’ the Duke—for that was surely who Griffin now was; that aloof and disdainful Duke whom she had met this morning!—informed her distantly.
‘Do you wish me to accompany you?’ Bella had no idea how she felt about leaving the safety of this estate. Fear, perhaps, at going out into a world she did not know?
As much as she felt a nervousness at the thought of Griffin being nowhere nearby for her to call to if she should need him?
‘I believe, for the moment, you should remain here, out of sight,’ he dismissed coldly, his back still turned towards her as he paused with his hand on the door handle of the bedchamber. ‘You may pick some flowers from the garden, and bring them into the house, if you wish.’
There was no doubt in Bella’s mind that he made the concession as an apology. Whether that apology was for his mistaken accusations over Arthur Sutton, or for kissing her just now, she had no idea.
Either way, Bella did not need to be humoured as if she were a child!
She had been a willing participant in their kisses just now, and she had revelled in the experience, in the rush of emotions she had felt at being held so tightly in Griffin’s arms: pleasure, arousal, heat.
His rejection just minutes later had been as if a shower of cold water had been thrown over her.
She gathered herself up to her full height as she stepped away from the chair. ‘I do not wish, thank you.’
Griffin gave a wince as he heard the hurt beneath Bella’s haughtiness of tone.
Because he had called a halt to their kisses?
Because she had enjoyed them as much as he had?
But what other choice did he have but to stop? She was a young woman staying as a guest in his household. A vulnerable young woman he had offered his protection to for as long as she had need of it. She said she trusted him.