Before he could do more than suck in a breath and tense every muscle he possessed, she wriggled around until she faced him and looked into his eyes. “Thank you.”
Then she stretched up, set her lips to his, and kissed him.
It wasn’t a thank-you peck but a full-blown kiss—lips to lips, alluring pressure, more than a whisper of heat and hunger.
He was far more experienced than she could possibly know; he understood—with a leap of intuition that he knew in his bones was accurate—just why she’d kissed him.
Why she was still kissing him, her lips exploring his, even as his arms slowly tightened around her and, equally slowly, he angled his head.
Then he took over—took charge—and kissed her back. And answered her questions. The ones that had prompted her to act so impulsively—to kiss him and seek answers.
Curiosity was the principal cause, but simple curiosity had been prodded by her meeting with Frances Halbertson into transforming into something more.
Something he wanted and was more than willing to stoke.
Something wildly ingenuous, innocent yet not.
An inquisitive desire, a need to experience, to sensually know.
There was no possible way to answer such demands other than through an actual kiss. She’d given him the opportunity, and he seized it with both hands.
Seized her, one hand at her back holding her flush against him, the other cradling her head as he artfully parted her lips and slid his tongue between and steered them both into deeper waters.
She didn’t resist but followed; he sensed she wasn’t a complete novice—she’d definitely been kissed before—but that only heightened the challenge. He lured her on; their tongues tangled as he traced the contours of her mouth and, with assured arrogance, claimed.
Her hands had, until then, rested splayed against his chest, their warmth and delicate pressure another, subtler goad; now she sent her palms skating upward, feathering over his shoulders, then rising to clamp about his head and hold him. Then she kissed him back.
She opened some door inside her, and passion poured forth. Hungry and greedy and wanting. Desire ignited, hers and his, and what had started as an exploratory kiss turned voracious.
Heat flowed between them. They traded kiss for achingly needy kiss, then dived into the next.
The tide rose, and he couldn’t step away, couldn’t hold back, couldn’t not answer her siren’s call; he fell into the exchange, and she fell with him, and desire and passion reared in a wave and dragged them under.
Through a thickening fog of desire, distant voices reached his ears.
Self-preservation spiked; desperate, he seized its reins and wrenched back from the surging swell of a passion more powerful than any he’d previously known.
He raised his head and looked into Stacie’s face, at her lips, swollen from his kisses.
Her lashes rose, and her eyes—wide and very blue—met his. She blinked, then blinked again, then searched his eyes, his face. He had no idea what she saw there—whether the stunning revelation that had rocked him to his bedrock showed.
His pulse still hammered in his ears. He wanted her, desired her—how much, he hadn’t realized. Until that moment, he hadn’t understood how hungry for a woman he could be.
Still-surging passion kept him anchored where he was; if he moved, toward her or away from her, it might break free.
Stacie couldn’t help but stare; her entire awareness was consumed by what she’d just learned, what she’d just experienced, and most of all, by the feelings that had risen and were still spilling through her—a yearning for more, for an even closer connection with a man… No, with this man. Others had kissed her, and she’d never felt like this, as if she needed so much more—more kisses, more contact, more of him.
It was a shock to realize she’d never felt desire before.
And if this was it, she neede
d more.
But they weren’t actually engaged. They couldn’t, shouldn’t…
The very fact she was thinking along such lines shook her to her core.
Others were nearing, coming up the steps.