“That is not what I said,” Rebecca stammered, hastily retreating from his stalk. Her back hit the wall.
He stopped a hairsbreadth away from her. She could feel his presence invading hers, overwhelming, beckoning, to what, she could not voice.
“Would you have accepted me if I had courted you in your first season? You seemed to have eyes only for Langley.”
Well, yes, because she had daydreamed about her first kiss, not because she was in love with him. She could see how Wicke might have misinterpreted her. But would she have accepted him? She did not know. And she voiced as much: “The answer to that, Wicke, will remain a mystery since you never did.”
“I’m courting you now.”
“I cannot marry you.” There, she’d said it again. Clear. To the point.
The beast smiled at her. Wolf-like.
“What do you find so amusing?” she demanded.
“It occurs to me that what you say and what you mean are two different entities.”
“They are not!”
His hand came up to cup her cheek. “And yet you cannot seem to keep away from me.”
“That is not . . . I . . .”
“Let me respond to your refusal like a man,” he responded before he claimed her lips in a kiss.
Rebecca ordered her knees to stay strong. A futile demand. She grabbed onto Wicke’s shoulders, his skin warm beneath her touch, with the intent to shove away from him. Instead, she found her entire body pressed up against the hard expanse of his bare chest.
His tongue skimmed her lower lip.Lord above. His mouth was enthralling. Distracting. Entirely merciless as he sought to claim every inch of her lips. She hadn’t meant for this to happen again, had intended the complete opposite, but now that Rebecca once again found herself in Wicke’s arms, she kissed him back. She could never get back her first kiss. She could, however, still experience a true, first kiss.
Nothing could have prepared her for the force that struck the breath from her lungs. It pulled at the very edges of the nerves that connected her spine. All reservations fled in the wake of the warmth fluttering in her belly. Rebecca found herself floating on a cloud—a space between the life she had always known and one completely foreign to her.
The kiss was not like the first kiss Rebecca had received from Wicke, which had been turbulent in nature. It certainly was not like the second, which had all but exploded in her body. No, this kiss was wrought with tenderness, aching in its regret, rewarding in its possibilities. A kiss meant to convey a depth of meaning, a depth Rebecca could not begin to grasp.
His mouth tore away from hers.
“You still want a man?” he growled against her lips.
“Yes,” she whispered, not sure why, only that she didn’t want him to stop kissing her.
“Christ, Rebecca.” The fan of his breath warmed the strip of her collarbone. “When are you going to fall out of love with my cousin?”
I’m not in love with your cousin.
But she did not say this. Could not. Dared not. He only thought he wanted her, but once he learned of Knightley’s he would be scandalized. Wicke would never want to touch her again. And she wanted him to touch her, even if only in this moment.
He suddenly bent and hooked his arm around her legs.
“What are you doing?” she cried as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed.
“What any man would do when a young, beautiful woman enters his bedchamber.”
“W-What is that?” Rebecca sputtered. His words were jumbled in her mind, a rattle of syllables refusing to make sense.
He dropped her onto the mattress. Followed her down. “You cannot kiss me and claim I am like a brother to you. Do you think amanwould accept that?”
“Honestly, Wicke, I did not mean it like that.”
The devil danced in his eyes. “Then I am right, what you say and what you mean are polar opposites.”
