The music had changed inside, signaling that the dance was changing as well. They ought to go in, just in case someone had noticed they were both missing, but she didn’t suggest that and neither did he.
Then came the moment when she tried to teach him how to join their right hands above their heads while they slowly turned. Somewhere they lost track of the turning.
Someone initiated the kiss—probably him. Later she couldn’t say whether it had been the moonlight or the close proximity or even the scent of jasmine in the air. All she knew was that when he kissed her, it seemed utterly natural.
This time she wasn’t surprised by how he thrust his tongue into her mouth to advance and retreat, much as they had done in the dance. With flagrant abandon, she gave herself up to the act of intimate kissing. Before long, they had stopped moving their feet, so they could move their hands, their heads, theirmouths. So they could concentrate on the excitement building between them.
The way he kissed was glorious. Taking her by surprise, he backed her up against the low terrace wall, not even stopping his kissing of her, and lifted her up onto it. She’d thought she’d imagined how good it felt to be with a man, sharing an intimate moment like this, but no. It was him.Hemade her want . . . and yearn . . . and burn. All day, they’d been avoiding this moment, so it felt incredible to be kissing again at last. She loved that they were . . . they could finally . . .
Heaven help her. She’d never known kisses like these. The lazy sweeps of his tongue. The taste of port on his lips. The very scent of him, bergamot and musk. The way he made her feel, so . . . so like a woman . . . as he delved over and over inside her mouth.
As his kisses grew more needy, more frenzied, he cupped her head in his hands, enticing her into doing the same to him. Then he swept his large hands down to her shoulders and trailed kisses from her mouth to her neck and throat, then lower to nuzzle the tops of her breasts.
“Ohhh, yes,” she whispered as he ran his lips along the edge of her bodice. She craved his hands on her, caressing her breasts, kissing them and kneading them the way she’d imagined in her dreams. “Touch me,” she said, then froze when she realized she’d said it aloud and not in her head.
He pulled back just enough to cover her clothed breast with one hand as if he’d read her mind. “Here?” he rasped.
“Yes.Please.”
“Whatever the lady wants,” he murmured, his eyes shining in the moonlight as he filled his hands with her breasts.
She closed her eyes and clung to his shoulders, letting the exotic sensations wash over her. For a man of his strength, he was oddly gentle with her. Knowing he was being careful excited her beyond measure.
And when he thumbed her nipples through her gown, she nearly leaped out of her skin. She’d had no idea that a man could make . . . could do something so . . . so . . .
“Can I suck them?” he asked hoarsely.
“Heavens, yes,” she said, before realizing he meant to bare them. “But won’t . . . someone see?”
A harsh laugh escaped him. “Not unless they can see through me.” He pulled her cap sleeves from her shoulders and down her arms. That enabled him to drag down her bodice and the top of her corset enough to free one breast, then the other.
He made some guttural sound, befitting of a wild beast, then knelt on one knee to take her breast in his mouth. This time the lashings of his tongue roused something deeper, fiercer in her. Like a boat at sea, she’d lost her moorings. Because nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
“Geoffrey . . . oh,Geoffrey, that feels . . . that’s so . . .”
“Yes. And you, my dear goddess, taste like heaven.”
He lightly seized the tip of her nipple between his teeth, and she moaned, so eager for more that she pushed her breast into his mouth. That prompted him to use his hand to caress the other breast, going back and forth between them with a hungry growl.
She buried her hands in his thrashed-into-wildness hair, and thrashed it even more as she clung to him, pulled him into her, swayed forward. Just as she felt herself sliding off the wall, he rose to catch her about the waist.
“Careful there, sweetling.” He kissed her deeply once more, but this time too briefly for her liking before he lifted her fully off the wall and set her on the terrace floor. “Forgive me, I went too far. It was wrong of me to—”
“Not one word more.” Already feeling the shift in him from heat to guilt, she pressed her finger to his lips. “I don’t regret it, so why should you?”
“Because we aren’t married.” He attempted to pull her gown into place, but he was making a hash of it, so she took it over. “Because I’m not even free to marry.”
Her hands froze on her bodice. She couldn’t look at him. “You’re engaged to be married?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“But you’re not free.” That meant only one thing—some woman was waiting for him somewhere. She pushed past him. “I have to go. Eliza and Verity will be looking for me.”
“Diana . . .”
“No, I don’t want to hear your excuses.” She hurried away, fighting back tears, struggling to straighten her gown, and praying that no one had seen them.
A pox on the big oaf. She wasn’t about to become involved with a man who’d already made a commitment to another woman. She’d seen how badly it had hurt Mama every time Papa had gone off with his mistress. She couldn’t endure that pain herself. She’d always refused to be some man’s mistress, and that had not changed.
