“I never went to them for Christmas after that, or for any other reason, and my aunt did not find it expedient to celebrate that holiday. Or any other.”
“I suppose that explains your distaste for the holiday.”
She swallowed the rising lump in her throat. “I’ve not had a Christmas for over a decade now. And the last I remember was not particularly joyful.”
Something heavy buzzed between them. She never talked about her family, not even to Sarah. She’d not received a letter from her mother since her aunt’s funeral, nor from any of her five sisters and four brothers, nor from her father. Once they realized the portion paid to them yearly—the benefit of handing a daughter over to a lonely old woman to be her heiress—would continue after Aunt Prudence’s death, they had disappeared once more. Before Aunt Prudence’s death, they’d visited now and then, presumably to ensure the old woman didn’t forget them. And now that they knew she had not, it appeared they intended to forget Georgiana.
“I invited them for the holiday,” she said quietly. “They declined and did not extend an invitation to me.” Were they all together now? Forgetting her in the same air and around the same fire? Loneliness rose on a swelling wave. She held her breath until it retreated once more.
She tried to look at Josiah but could only manage to focus on his hand resting on his thigh. His buckskins were tan and stretched tight over thick muscles. His hand was large and roped with veins and tendons, the knuckles scuffed. The hands of a man who used them to work. The details threatened to fill her up with sensation, memories of his body beneath her when they’d fallen to the ice, when she’d pressed her lips to his. The air grew thick, and her breath came hard.
She scowled. “Where have your gloves got to?” Scowling, picking, poking—familiar things flooded her lungs with air once more.
“Hell if I know, Lady Gee.” Then he huffed. “I can’t believe it has been over a decade since you’ve held a puppy. Criminal. They do have them in Town, you know. Here. Take this one.” He stuffed the one he’d been holding toward her belly, and her hands wrapped around it instinctually, and—oh—its fur was so soft, its nose so cold and pink. Every blade and edge of her completely melted away, and she felt raw, exposed, helpless. She clutched the puppy to her, dipping to nuzzle her cheek on its soft head and almost—almost—shed a tear.
For what? And why?
For herself. And for so many reasons.
“Georgie.” Josiah’s voice was hoarse and low. “I—”
A stampede of puppies tumbled into her lap, yapping for their brother, and she never got to hear what he would have said because they broke into laughter, and she fell backward. Into the hay, throwing the blanket beneath her askew, the puppies tackling her, licking her.
“Hell.” Josiah picked a puppy off her and put it aside. He picked another puppy up, and the first one he’d divested her of charged back into the fray, and Georgiana’s laughs came from so deep within that her belly ached. Every puppy he picked off her just returned again and again until he gave up and lay in the hay beside her, his laughter mingling rich and deep with her own.
He rolled to his side, facing her, and she would not have noticed. She’d flung one arm over her eyes ages ago, and the other over her aching belly. But his warmth. And his laughter had stopped, creating a cavern of silence around them both but for the scurrying puppies. So, she let her arm fall to her side and opened her eyes. He hovered over her, one arm braced by her head, the length of his body pressing near, his eyes intense and so blue she could not see past them. Except for that rogue lock of hair falling over one eye. She pushed it back and tucked it behind his ear.
She was still looking into his eyes when he spoke, and she did not see his lips move.
“I was dared, Georgie. Ihaveto.” He lifted his free arm to cup her jaw, her cheek, his rough, ungloved hand so very big on her face. She felt like a doll, tiny and fragile. On an inhale he closed the distance between them, nudging his nose against hers. And on an exhale, he kissed her.
A dare. Only a dare. He’d even said so.
Why, then, did it feel like so much more? Why did her arms wrap gently around him and find a groove that felt so right? Made for her. Why did her back arch up to press her belly against his hard, flat chest, a heaven of geometry, angles and curves? Why did he moan and tighten his hold? Why did his hand roam lower, down her neck and shoulder, and lower to smooth over her ribs, then upward to cup her breast?
She gasped, and he didn’t seem to care. Neither did she. Not a gasp of shame or anger. A gasp of shock, yes, but one that welcomed, too, especially when his thumb began to sweep left and right and left and right over and over again, a teasing of her nerve endings.
He slanted his kiss, parted her lips, and touched the tip of his tongue to hers. She followed his lead, exploring him as he did her, opening to him. As he did her. Where their lips met, all softness. Where their bodies met, hands and arms and the leg he swung over her skirts, all breathless expectation.
Only a dare?
When the kiss washed away the memories she had not wanted to drown in that day? When it had replaced the hollow sadness inside her with something like… hope? How long had it been since she’d felt that? And when had it gone missing?
And why was it Josiah who brimmed it full within her?
A creak from somewhere nearby shattered the eager silence between them. He lifted away with the sound, looking up, alert.
She couldn’t lose it, lose him, lose this new finding of herself, this moment of discovery. She wrapped her hands around his head, darting her fingers into the thick, silken strands of his hair, and pulled him back down for another kiss.
A third kiss.
A kiss not born of daring but of need.
“Mr. Evans? Lady Georgiana?” Miss Darlington’s voice, high and inquisitive, innocent yet knowing.
“Hell,” Josiah hissed, rolling off her. “Hell.”
The puppies scattered. Oh. Yes. The puppies. She’d quite forgotten them. But now she wanted to gather them all to her, hug them all at once.
