His eyes shot behind her again, his lips twitching somewhat before he shifted, bringing them just slightly closer on the loveseat.
“There’s nothing to say that it couldn’t be,” he murmured, his gaze falling back upon hers with an intensity that sent her heart racing.
“I – You – What?”
Josephine could hardly form words.
He was looking at her lips again.
His hand, which had been holding hers, had lifted, the tips of his fingers brushing over her cheekbone and causing the blush there to deepen even further.
He couldn’t be suggesting that it could be.
But he was.
She knew him well enough to know that he was. The heat in his gaze was undeniable as he leaned in, his breath fanning out over the lower portion of her face.
How was his simply breathing on her so attractive?
Her breath caught in the back of her throat, her eyes dropping to his lips as she tried to imagine any reason she ought to tell him no. But practicality and reason had taken a backseatin her mind, emotion and desire galloping to the forefront as those fingers drifted down her cheek to hold her chin in place.
“You are allowed to say no,” he whispered, his lips so close that she could feel their phantom press against hers with each syllable as he spoke.
“I don’t think I want to,” she whispered.
And he took that as permission enough.
His lips slanted over hers, the barest pressure behind them as she quickly shut her eyes and tried to think beyond the rush of blood that rushed to her head.
He tasted like a deep, woody citrus and port, his lips parting slightly as he moved them expertly over hers.
Tentatively, she returned the pressure, her hand lifting to fall uncertainly on the wrist in front of her face.
But as she attempted to kiss him back, something shifted between them.
She felt more than heard his ragged inhale, his lips pressing harder against hers, and the way that he held her face shifting. His lips weren’t tentative or gentle, a pressure behind them that took the very last of her breath away as he madeher head spin. Her blood pounded, her stomach tightening inexplicably as he pulled her bottom lip between his two, tugging at the skin until she felt something deepen within her.
Her gasp was swallowed by his lips, her fingers tightening around his wrist as his passion carried both of them away.
She didn’t recognize the soft sound that left her lips as he pulled away, his green eyes wild as he stared down at her.
She knew she was leaning forward and had followed him as he pulled back. And by the way he was looking at her, he knew it as well.
And he didn’t seem any more eager to end what he had just started.
Only the sound of her mother’s oblivious laughter from the other side of the room kept her from attempting to do something very unladylike and trying to initiate such a thing again.
Chapter 14
Watching Josephine’s carriage disappear into the distance, Henry thoughtfully rubbed his jaw. It had been a long time since he had laughed so freely – even longer still since he had been so close to acting so rashly.
God save him, but he had been so close to forgetting decorum and her parents in the room entirely when she had started kissing him back in the sitting room after dinner.
She’d tasted of vanilla and cinnamon, the red wine still on her breath, a heady flavour that he had already been having a hard enough time ignoring before she enticed him so much further.
Kissing her alone had been risky. An impulsive, uncharacteristically impetuous action that had been driven by desire alone. She’d mentioned that she’d never had any entanglement, and the basest part of him had been pleased. And then she had joked like she had about it being so entirely separate from the tour of the manor that he had given her, and everything after that had been a chain reaction of events.
He had wanted to kiss her. So he had.
