The Reasons for Marriage (Regencies 5)
He swallowed hard. She had never looked at him like this before. It was as though she was waiting for something to happen. She was waiting for him to do something. She was waiting for him to kiss her.
Without thinking, he leaned over the chess table, rising slightly from his chair, and closed the remaining space between them, knocking o
ver a few of his pieces with his vest. His pulse thundered as his mouth edged toward hers. He paused, just beyond the heat of those full lips, and brushed them softly with his own.
The room spun and fell over on its side.
Her hands jumped to his face and held him lovingly in place, as if sensing he might fall over. Their lips parted in unison and the heat of their wet tongues connected and moved, the taste of brandy from her mouth overwhelming his senses.
He’d never known anything like it.
His mind blanked realizing she was kissing him. With her tongue. Christ, she was actually submitting to everything he had felt these past four years but had not seized for fear of rejection, of distrust, of eliminating all that they were to each other.
At first, their kiss was searingly slow and teasing and rhythmic and delectable. And then, it turned into a pulsing mess of savage need that made his very lips sting from the devastating pressure they both applied. Without breaking their moving mouths, they both scrambled around the chess table in an unspoken effort not to knock it and themselves over.
Still kissing and kissing her, he yanked her fiercely against himself, crushing her softness in place until those breasts pressed against his chest. He bit back an anguished groan as she erotically sucked on his tongue.
Why the hell had he waited four years? Why?
Her hands clambered up to his cravat. To his hazed, dazed astonishment, she unraveled the silk with expert haste as she continued to kiss him. May he never wake. Magdalene was undressing him. Him.
Soft, warm hands found his pulsing throat and pushed their way down into his shirt, frilling across his chest. His cock grew so hard, he almost staggered trying to hold on to her.
She suddenly froze. Jerking her lips from his, she wrenched herself out of his grasp.
His arms dropped heavily to his sides in a gloried glow. She loved him. That kiss and touch said it all. His chest heaved in an effort to remain calm as he reopened his eyes. “Magdalene.”
She stared up at him, beautifully flushed from lip to cheeks to throat. Glancing toward his exposed throat and half-hanging cravat, her astounded features twisted into what he could only define as anguish. “How could you? Thornton, how could you—” Her hand jumped up, smacking his face so hard his head snapped toward his shoulder.
He blinked rapidly in disbelief, the sting against his shaven cheek overshadowing the reality that she had just hit him.
His gaze lurched to hers.
She stepped back, covering her mouth with a hand.
The look in those haunting, dark eyes and in that face told him everything he needed to know. It was over. Whatever had induced her to step outside their friendship for that one brief moment, to kiss him and downright strip his cravat, was gone. Maybe it had never been there at all.
The sudden denial was an all-too-familiar ache. It felt as though he were married to Anne all over again.
He half nodded, acknowledging the very thing he had feared, reaffixed his clothing and turned away, wrapping his cravat back into place and tying it. Without a word, he left.
CHAPTER ONE
A month later—late evening
The Kent House
A GROUP OF TITLED YOUNG MEN, barely at an age to be called men, really, lingered within an elbow’s reach of her just beyond the crowds. They paused in between low, conspiratorial tones, their gazes drifting from the faces of passing women to their cleavages and back again with the stealth of spiders planning an ambush. Several of them inclined their heads toward unsuspecting victims, wishing to make their presence known.
This, from her own son’s peers.
And it didn’t even include the rest of male society.
Dowager Countess of Kent, Magdalene Evelyn Ryder, sidled herself closer toward the main entrance of the ballroom, angling herself out of view. At what age did men mature? If ever? And at what age did a woman cease having to deal with men acting as if they owned the right to lustfully indulge in a woman, be it with his eyes or hands?
There was more to a woman than a womb and breasts.
Drawing in a breath, Magdalene let it out, trying to focus on her guests. Countless individuals from every level of aristocratic society whisked forward and back across the dance floor, advertising their extravagant coifs and lavish ensembles. Refined smiles and glances flitted across those flushed faces as they elegantly turned and paired off one by one for the quadrille, floating effortlessly to the strains of the violin.