He gave a humourless smile. ‘My behaviour these past two days may have been tardy, Grace, but I assure you my memory is not.’
‘Then do not add insult to injury by so much as suggesting—’
‘Insult to injury?’ Lucian echoed softly. ‘You believe our betrothal to be injurious to you? You consider my kisses an insult?’
Grace was fully aware of the underlying edge to the huskiness of his tone, and of the sudden tension in the broad width of his shoulders. Like a cat about to pounce. But in Lord Lucian’s case not a cat of the domestic variety, that were so numerous on her father’s estate in Cornwall, but something much more wild and untamed. And dangerous.
She breathed slowly, carefully, aware that the slightest wrong move could result in her becoming mauled—verbally if not physically. ‘No, of course I do not, My Lord—’
‘Lucian,’ he grated hardly.
‘Lucian,’ Grace echoed obediently even as she continued to eye him warily. ‘They are merely unnecessary in a betrothal which is nothing more than a sham—’
Her explanation was cut off abruptly as Lord Lucian gathered her up into his arms and fiercely claimed her lips with his own.
Grace fought his assault initially, but as his mouth continued to plunder hers she felt her anger and impatience completely evaporate, to be replaced by a strange, yearning ache that threatened to overwhelm her in its intensity.
Her lips parted beneath his to allow the captive surge of his tongue into the heat of her mouth, and that tongue duelled with hers as Grace’s fingers clung to the broadness of Lucian’s shoulders. His hands were sliding down her body now, to grasp her hips and pull her in tight against his body. A hard, throbbing body that clearly indicated the force of his desire.
Lucian’s desire for her.
It was heady indeed to know of the effect she had on a man of Lucian St Claire’s years and obvious experience, and it increased Grace’s own arousal. Her gasp was only slight as one of his hands moved to cup her breast. That breast swelled against his palm, the nipple hot and throbbing, crying out for his touch.
Grace groaned in protest as Lucian wrenched his mouth from hers to look down at her searchingly. Whatever he read in her expression was enough for him to move back slightly and wrench off his jacket impatiently, to lay it down upon the grass at her feet.
‘Lie with me, Grace,’ he pressed urgently, the darkness of his gaze alone holding her captive now, glittering with satisfaction as, after the slightest hesitation, Grace moved to his bidding.
The muscled hardness of his body was soon against the length of hers as he lay beside her to once again capture her mouth with his.
This was madness. Insanity of the worst kind. And yet Grace had no strength, no will to deny the clamouring needs that swelled so uncontrollably inside her as she heatedly returned the demand of Lucian’s lips against hers, moaning low in her throat as his hand stroked and caressed the fiery tip of her breast.
Lucian could feel the response of that breast through the silk of Grace’s gown and chemise, and revelled in its softness, its heat. But he knew that he wanted more—that he wanted to touch her bare flesh, to suckle and lave her with his tongue, to taste her.
Would Grace allow it? Could she—could either of them—do anything to stop this now that it had begun?
Lucian dealt deftly, swiftly, with the buttons at the back of Grace’s gown, holding her gaze with his as he pulled the material over her shoulders and arms, before slipping down the thin straps of her chemise and freeing her breasts completely, only then lowering his gaze to drink his fill of her.
Grace was so tiny elsewhere—her waist slender, her hips narrow—but her breasts were full and firm, the nipples hard and thrusting, their very fullness crying out for his touch.
His hand looked very large, its skin dark against the paleness of her more delicate flesh, and Grace cried out softly as Lucian ran the soft pad of his thumb across her nipple, her back arching in invitation, thrusting her breasts temptingly upwards. Lucian accepted that temptation, that invitation, placing his lips about her sensitised nipple as he slowly laved that heated tip with his tongue, gently suckling as he felt the trembling of her body beneath his touch, the razor-edge of her nails as she clung to his shoulders.