Now, his lips were covering hers, his head tilting to adjust the fit, the hand at her nape squeezing as he released a hoarse sound that ignited her blood, sending a river of fire through her veins. He was as tied up by their attraction as she was, this unbelievably handsome, brilliant man.
“Let me in,” he pleaded, his thumb drawing her bottom lip down until she had no choice but to follow his command. Follow every forbidden one whispering through her mind.
Step in until your hips meet.
Tangle your fingers in his hair.
Angle your head.
Touch his tongue with yours.
Clash, engage, explore.
It was a kiss unlike any she’d ever experienced—and she tumbled into it with abandon. It wasn’t born of domination or teasing flights of fancy, an effort to persuade or negotiate. An endeavor built around running from trouble or into it.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t gentle. A typical first-try experiment.
It wasn’t even perfect.
It was fierce.
His tooth bumped hers, the one with the chip. When she ran her tongue along the ragged edge, helplessly digging her fingertips into his scalp and bringing him closer, he reacted with a moan and a hip shift that brought his shockingly stalwart erection into play against her thigh. She shouldn’t have known what it was, a gently bred young woman, yet she did.
And it, he, felt magnificent.
She sighed in yearning as astonishing discoveries ripped through her. His breath teasing her lips as he repositioned his mouth over hers and dove deeper. The moist flush of his skin beneath her questing hands. Broad shoulders, muscular chest, lean hips. Brushed cotton caressing her cheek as he wrapped his arms around her. The enticing scent of spice and chocolate clinging to his hair, his skin, his clothing. His hands moving lower, grasping her hips and settling her against him as she went up her toes to secure the fit. The world spun, racing at high speed, and locking them in its fiery center.
What a kiss was all she could think.
What a man.
What a find.
She was sliding his brace off his shoulder, having already tugged his four-in-hand from about his neck when voices in the hallway suspended rotation of the clandestine world they occupied. With a wrenching, awkward movement, he gripped her shoulders and pushed her back, blinked hard, and met her gaze, presenting as bewildered an expression as she guessed she’d ever see from him. She watched, waiting. It was seconds, long, measured seconds, before the room they stood in, their being locked in each other’s embrace, before everything—good, bad, indifferent—came to him, riding on his sharp intake of air. “Fucking hell,” he whispered, brushing his knuckles across his lips as if they stung.
This won’t end well, her mind taunted. Not when such a grim expression was seizing his features, his eyes darkening to a thoughtful, complicated, hands-off indigo. He uncurled her fingers from his brace and slipped it back in place, then went to a knee to retrieve his necktie from where it lay crumpled on the carpet. Appalling, perhaps, but she, Victoria Lane Hamilton, disregarded daughter of an earl, had been in the process of undressing Finn Alexander, celebrated bounder, in his brother’s library.
Victoria took two steps back and slumped to the sofa they’d shared a mere twenty-four hours prior with their attraction admitted to but not acted upon. A disastrous difference. Finn was set to deny everything—she could see this from the stiff set of his shoulders, the downcast eyes, the way he yanked the tie about his neck, and created the ugliest four-in-hand she’d ever seen with fingers that, thank you very much, Tori darling, shook.
“Fine,” she whispered, dropping her brow to her hand and squeezing. She could play this game. She’d played any number of games with any number of gentlemen. Forlorn but fine in the end, she wanted to tell the Blue Bastard but didn’t dare.
In that fantastic world we stepped into, we were normal.
Did you feel it, Finn? Normal.
Maybe that was what unnerved him, because he looked unnerved crouching there on Julian’s faded Aubusson rug, collecting hair she’d clipped from his head and placing it delicately in his cupped palm.
After all, the poor man had never experienced normal.
“You’re a virgin in this area. Is this the source of your discomfiture?”
His gaze hit her, the ire in his eyes—and just who the devil he was angry with she’d love to know—a surprise. “What?”
She tapped her temple. “For the first time, you can’t steal someone’s thoughts. Did I like it? Was it better than the others? Do I suspect you’re a most extraordinary lover? You’ve bedded half of the women in London, so why the tumult over a simple kiss? Because you can’t read the mind of the accomplice? Join the rest of us who have to make an insecure guess, Mr. Alexander!”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. It’s far less than half.” He gave his neckpiece a solidifying jerk and rose to his feet, dusting at his shoulders, hair flying. She tried to ignore the bulge in his trousers, she really did. Inelegant of her, but it was too impressive to ignore. He was too impressive to ignore. “I’ll tell you this much, no simple kiss I’ve ever participated in included the accomplice removing my clothing one tantalizing piece at a time. That’s reserved for the complicated kisses. My bright idea, this whole debacle, true enough, but you ended it close to climbing atop me.” He dropped to the chair, dumped the hair on a stack of letters, and gave her spectacles a dink that had them sliding across the desk and against a ledger. His firm jaw was set like stone. “And if you’ve ever had better, I’ll eat my goddamn hat. I’ve seen a few of them, remember? Those graciously-offered-behind-pillar kisses extended to every loose-lipped fop in town. Truthfully, they looked inhospitable and not much else.”
“You don’t wear hats,” she snapped, insulted by his riposte when his reputation was beyond horrendous. Had she ever had a better kiss? Of course not. Not when she’d never dreamed there could be a kiss like this one. Inhospitable? True. The others had been boring and brief, no tongue or teeth, for heaven’s sake. No strangled breaths batting her cheek and clenching fingers curling around her hip. No full-body flush that was still warming her to her toes.
She straightened her spine and raised her chin, prepared to fight. Why save all her enthusiasm for her intended when the Grape couldn’t possibly put it to good use? If her technique was lacking, it would be excellent with a little practice. “Is this how charming you are after every romantic encounter? Why, I’m relatively faint with delight.”
He grunted and yanked his hand through his hair, sending the liberated strands into elegant disarray. He made a face that had his dimple swooping in, should she have forgotten about it, denting his cheek like she’d poked her finger against his skin. “Your hair looks like a bird built a nest in it, Tori darling, and I’m terrified to imagine what mine looks like. Did you even finish the trim?” He threw a circling glance around the room. “Never a mirror when you need one.”
Finn Alexander would be bloody gorgeous if he shaved his head, she seethed while struggling to reassemble a coiffure he’d ruined with his eagerness. She’d darling him. He’d almost pulled her atop his body. She wouldn’t have had to climb anything. Would he like her to point that out?
“We have to face Julian in fifteen minutes,” he said and dropped his head to the back of the chair, “and my hands are shaking. I’m not good at hiding things from my brother. He’ll know the minute he sees me that something happened. Kissing you, the blocking, the League, he won’t like it. I can just hear him, ‘Boy-o, this is a remarkable conflict of interest’.”