One kiss seemed small price for escaping this room that bristled with promises of intimacy. “How do we measure your satisfaction?”
The seductive glint returned to his eyes and he reclined against the tumbled sheets with an irritating confidence. “Bella, I don’t expect satisfaction,” he purred. “Just a good-morning kiss. Nothing to scar you for life.”
He used “scar” to flaunt his disfigurement. But she’d long moved past the stage where his scars struck her as anything other than tragic misfortune.
“Speak for yourself,” she muttered, even as she gingerly kneeled on the bed. The mattress sagged, overbalancing her until she placed one hand on his chest. Heat sizzled from the contact, made her heart pound like a drum. His eyebrows rose in silent mockery as she snatched her hand away.
She trembled as he ran one hand down her plait. His fingers lingered tantalizingly on her breast before he withdrew. Her nipples tightened to tingling hardness.
“Good morning, Sidonie,” he said with a tenderness she mistrusted.
Tenderness was the invincible enemy. The wave of feeling this morning demonstrated that inescapable truth. She could deny seduction. She couldn’t deny his vulnerability. Except she couldn’t deny seduction either, she admitted reluctantly, noting the slumberous light in his eyes.
He released her hair and folded his hands behind his head, tightening the lean muscles of his arms and chest. He looked like a sleepy pasha contemplating his nightly selection from the harem. For an electric moment, they stared at each other. Suspense coiled through her. He seemed content to let minutes dwindle like the bubbles in yesterday’s champagne. She read expectation but nothing deeper in his eyes. He’d raised the drawbridge against incursions into his soul. The day’s clear light proved less revealing than the shadows when he’d woken.
“Well?” She could no longer bear sitting like a mouse in a hollow, waiting for the hawk to swoop.
His eyes flared with unholy amusement. “Well, what?”
She clenched her teeth. “I’d like breakfast before it turns into lunch. Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
Humor lines deepened around his brilliant eyes. “No.”
Shock made her rock back on her upturned heels. “No?”
“You really pay no attention when you make a contract, do you, bella? That could get you into trouble.”
At his superior expression, her hands clenched at her si
des. She was in such turmoil, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to clout him or kiss him or run screaming from the room. “It’s got me into trouble already. If I kiss you, can we dress and go downstairs?”
“A kiss in exchange for breakfast? How prosaic you are under that extravagant exterior, tesoro. Disappointing.”
She ignored the compliment. She wasn’t extravagant. She was perfectly ordinary. “Disappointed enough to send me away?”
“One would think you wanted to return to your humdrum life.”
She frowned, again wishing she hadn’t been quite so confiding in his sultan’s bower. “I was safe there.”
“Not if your sister’s folly lands you in such straits. And with a man less… accommodating than myself.”
“This is the first time she’s done anything like this.” Sidonie had long come to terms with her anger at Roberta. She merely needed to remember the way her sister concealed her bruises with a shame that wasn’t her shame at all. She remembered William’s unchecked rages. She remembered Roberta’s two young sons. Sidonie had no choice about offering herself in exchange for Roberta. But Merrick was right; she was lucky. If he’d been the villain her sister described, the torments would be intolerable.
He smiled at her as though she were precious. Lying, lying smile. “You said it yourself—if you kiss me. Note the wording.”
Nervousness made her stammer. “I won’t. I can’t. I… I don’t know how.”
More of that dangerous tenderness before a downward sweep of long black lashes veiled his expression. “You had several thorough lessons yesterday. I can’t imagine the girl who sent me to the devil quailing at a little kiss.”
She’d survived his kisses before. Scoffing laughter echoed in the recesses of her mind. Survived? Yesterday she’d positively thrived on his kisses. Meeting his gleaming silvery eyes, she shifted close enough for her leg to brush his flank. “All right.”
It was just a kiss.
Chapter Eight
It was just a kiss…
Jonas struggled to maintain his careless air while his heart performed a Highland fling. However much he ached to grab Sidonie, he kept his hands by his sides as he stretched before her. If she guessed the pitch of his hunger, she’d flee the room. Hell, he wouldn’t catch her before she reached Sidmouth. Deliberately he avoided dwelling upon that deplorable moment when she stared with unabashed curiosity at his nightmare of a face.