Untouched

Some of the tension seeped from his expression. “Then I’ll be gentle.”

Grace waited for him to fumble, perhaps betray traces of his earlier ferocity. But his touch was assured and light as he framed her cheeks with his hands and used his thumbs to angle her chin up.

Slowly, so slowly her heart had almost stumbled to a standstill by the time he kissed her, his head lowered. She felt his breath on her lips before he pressed his mouth to hers. Even after those travesties of kisses she’d forced upon him two nights ago, he tasted familiar.

His lips moved, clung.

The contact was poignantly sweet. Then it was over.

It had been a boy’s kiss although his eyes held mature speculation as they focused on her face. She didn’t know what he saw, but there was no hesitation as his mouth descended once more.

This time, he lingered, tasted, discovered, savored. Astonishing really, how quickly he mastered the basics. Her blood thundered in her ears. His teeth scraped across her bottom lip and the kiss deepened. Her lips parted to the delicious pressure.

Unbelievably she felt his tongue slide against hers, a hot invasion startling in its intimacy. Neither her few stolen kisses in the gardens at Marlow Hall nor her years with Josiah had prepared her for this.

The sensation was glorious, heady, frightening.

She gave a moan of protest. Immediately he released her, although he only moved a few inches away. He was close enough for his lemony scent, overlaid with the spice of masculine arousal, to tease.

“Grace?” He sounded shaken to his soul.

A deep breath did nothing to calm her chaotic senses. She raised an unsteady hand to her heated cheek. How could someone so untried make her feel what no man ever had?

“I think perhaps you overestimate my experience,” she said unevenly. “Josiah wasn’t…wasn’t physically demonstrative.”

“I see,” the marquess said slowly.

She wondered if he did. If she became his tutor in the preliminaries to love, he needed to know she was in many ways a fellow beginner.

“So we’re more equal in this than I imagined,” he said, because of course, he did understand.

As always, his rare smile made her heart somersault. How could she resist the man who smiled like that? How could she resist the man who now swept her into his arms with such confidence?

She’d never been so aware of his strength. She curved to fit herself to the hard planes of his body. When Josiah touched her, he’d always made her feel like a dirty secret. With one kiss, the marquess made her feel wanted, beautiful, a woman at last.

“My lord?” she asked shakily.

“Matthew,” he prompted.

“Matthew.” His name flowed over her tongue, smooth as warmed honey. And a hundred times sweeter.

“I like that. I’d like it even better if you put your arms around me.”

“We’ve gone far enough, my lor…Matthew.” She intended to sound repressive but her words emerged as a breathless appeal. His warm tormenting scent drove her as mad as he was supposed to be. “We should stop.”

“No,” he said with an arrogance befitting the great Marquess of Sheene.

His mouth swooped down on hers. She gasped astonished pleasure into his seeking heat.

This was no apprentice. This man knew what he wanted and how to get it. The restrained gentleness had vanished. In its place, she surrendered to power and need and demand.

Some long-constrained demon in Grace rose to meet him. Soon her mouth responded as hungrily, her hands clutched him as tightly. He tasted like forbidden joy. He tasted like everything she wanted. He tasted like rapture and passion. She strained upward, craving more, her fingers digging into his muscled back as if she meant him never to escape.

The kiss moved infinitely beyond anything Grace had experienced. Her breasts were tight and ached for the touch of his hands. Her loins throbbed insistently. With dismay, she recognized her wildness would only quiet if he filled her emptiness with his body.

How had a few kisses created this storm of desire?

Except it wasn’t the kisses, intoxicating as they were. The kisses were just an excuse to feed her ever-present longing. Now she’d liberated that longing and as a result, ruin loomed.