Her mouth fell open. She could not help but stare at his lips. Was that the reason he’d never tried to kissed her?
“I’ve shocked you,” he said, nodding to himself.
“Well, yes.” Matilda shook her head. “I knew you harbored concerns about resuming your old life after your difficult recovery, but I had never considered you could have doubts about such a personal thing. Of course you can kiss.”
“Soup is problematic, and I cannot whistle, though I could from when I was very young.” He drew close again but stopped behind a chair facing hers. He leaned onto the back, clasping his fingers before him. “I want to know if kissing is something a woman would still enjoy with me. I would not like… I do not wish to horrify the one I kissed if I am bad at it.”
Matilda faltered. She’d bullied him back to life, forced him to accept the reality of his altered looks. Helping him relearn how to kiss a woman had never occurred to her. She didn’t know how to answer him. She’d never actually been kissed before, and that one excuse gave her a valid reason to refuse. “I would not know what constituted a good kiss.”
His eyes widened and he straightened. He gripped the back of the chair until his knuckles turned white. “Why is that?”
She glanced toward the fire, blushing furiously. “I’ve never.”
“Not even one stolen kiss, Mattie?”
She pasted on a smile, wishing he would go to bed and leave her to undress herself. He would mock her. Harry had teased h
er about her inexperience too, and she’d still refused to oblige him. She had told him that kissing was personal and only something she should do with a husband. She had waited for Harry’s return for that. “Never on the lips, so you should probably ask someone else for their opinion. I learned tonight that Lady Piper was very interested to discover if your skills in the bedchamber had waned.”
“And she would tell everyone about it, especially if I fail to please.” He moved to her side and held out his hand. “You would not embarrass me that way. I would like to try with you.”
“Why now?”
“The conversations we have shared about our desires occupy my thoughts. They distract me. Consume me. If you have never been kissed, it explains so much of your reactions to me. Having never been tempted before, you would of course consider what I did to you last year very wicked and wrong.” He swallowed. “You seem to have skipped several important experiences with intimacy. Understanding desire, the comfort and excitement of being touched, those should have been your first experience of passion, and I am sorry that you were not ready for me. But I can rectify your inexperience now if you would allow me the privilege of a kiss.”
He slipped his hand under her chin and lifted her attention from the flames. He left her chin in his palm, studying her face. “If I’m to kiss anyone, it should be my wife.”
He leaned down, and his lips brushed hers before she could talk him out of it. Matilda froze, uncertain of what to do. Having never been kissed before, it seemed a momentous occasion, except for the fact that her unwilling husband was experimenting on her mouth. He drew her to her feet and gently pressed their lips together.
The impact of the dry brush of his skin against hers, a soft kiss, was quite unlike anything she’d expected. There was a gentleness to William now that made her breath catch. The support of his hand around her face made her skin tingle with warm sensations.
“Part your lips,” he ordered when they separated briefly.
His voice came out as a gruff command, and she knew that tone well. It was the same one he’d used before spanking her, and the tender moment changed instantly. She opened her mouth, and her husband’s tongue brushed over her lips. She swallowed quickly, tasting him, then pushed her tongue forward to brush his.
A moan escaped her.
William caught her head by her hair, dragged her body flush against his, and plundered her mouth, brushing his tongue against hers. She squirmed under his passionate assault, pressed her hands against his chest for support. He growled but then gentled and drew back enough that kissing him wasn’t so overwhelming. His tongue and lips worked against hers and she whimpered, not afraid but definitely uncomfortable with what they were doing. This was more than she’d ever bargained for as William’s temporary wife. She felt herself utterly overwhelmed with feelings and sensations she couldn’t begin to describe.
She clutched at his expensive waistcoat. The scarred part of his lips was just a little rough against hers, not unpleasant, but noticeable when she thought about it.
He lifted one of her arms to encircle his neck and drew her in closer as he continued to experiment with her mouth.
She held on to him firmly, feeling the muscles of his shoulders shift under her hands. He groaned and slipped his hands down to clutch her backside. He was warm and utterly, overwhelmingly male, something she’d been able to push to the back of her mind while he’d been ill. Now, though, his masculinity was shockingly obvious. He was clearly skilled at seduction and comfortable with desire. However, given their arrangement, he had no business kissing her like this. Actual intimacy was not part of their deal, and they both knew that.
She pushed against his chest, and he eased back even more. The kiss lightened, and his lips clung to hers as if he did not want to stop kissing her. She shivered as just the tip of his tongue lightly skimmed her lips in a fleeting brush, so gentle and so wicked that she grew flushed.
Matilda closed her eyes as he did it again, and that time she grew aware that her response was more than she was prepared for. She had become aroused by him.
Eventually he ceased kissing her, and she opened her eyes to a broad smile spreading over his face.
So that was kissing. That was what a kiss from William Ford felt like. Not quite the dry claiming she’d imagined a kiss could be, but something entirely more eloquent. Everything about William’s nature had been in his kiss. He demanded, he took, unless she stopped him.
He swiped his thumb across her lips from one side to the other, and again that strange sensation between her legs returned. “Well?”
The man could be gentle, but he could also be cold. How could he turn on his emotions so quickly? Would he be so open with her tomorrow?
She put her hand to the base of her throat over the necklace he’d given her, uncertain how to answer him. She never knew from one moment to the next which side of him she would meet—the man who spoke of being her friend or the one who would punish her if she displeased him.