“Don’t you like it?” He stroked her again.
Her response was silence. Glorious, golden silence. Because she refused to lie to him. He moved his fingers to thetender skin behind her ear, and caressed her lightly. “Such pretty ears.”
She gave a kind of shrug, as if rejecting his compliment—she wasn’t comfortable with compliments, he’d noticed that before—but she didn’t move away. He bent and sucked on her earlobe.
She jumped. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” He ran his tongue around the delicate whorls of her ears. She shivered against him and hunched her shoulder up, pulling back a little.
“That’s very...”
“Very what?” he purred. “Pleasant? Agreeable? Delightful? Tantalizing?”
She gave him a baleful look. “Strange.”
He laughed softly and continued caressing her nape and the tender skin behind her ear. “But you like it, don’t you, George?” There was, he decided, a delightful contrast between the very down-to-earth masculine name and the deeply feminine response he was getting.
She stared at him, her eyes wide, her pupils velvety dark. She opened her mouth, seemed about to say something, then closed it. Her gaze slid over his face like an invisible touch. She stared at his mouth, met his gaze, then returned to his mouth.
It was an invitation he could hardly resist. But he forced himself to. He wanted her to come to him.
She bit down on her plump lower lip and he almost moaned. A faint shudder rippled through her. She turned her head away and looked resolutely through the window.
“What’s the matter? Changed your mind?”
“About what?” As an attempt to sound airily unconcerned, it fell sadly flat. She was aroused. Her nipples thrust hard against the smooth fabric of her bodice, making themselves known through who knew how many layers. He resisted the temptation to stroke the hard little nubbins.
“You know you want me,” he said.
She continued staring out the window. “Do I indeed?” Trying to sound indifferent.
He ran his thumb across her lower lip and she jumped as if scalded. “Stop that.”
“Why?”
George tried to think of some way to explain. She wanted and she didn’t want. She was determined not to let him see the effect he had on her. “Because—mmmff,” she ended as he planted his mouth on hers.
It had its usual effect; she lost all awareness, except the feel and the taste and the intoxication he created whenever he kissed her.
His hands moved to her breasts and she felt hot threads of sensation vibrating through her with each caress...
And then—deliverance! The carriage pulled over to change horses.
While the ostlers hastened to swap teams, George gathered her scrambled senses and pushed him away. “Stop it. This, this kissing and such is a problem for me.”
Hart frowned. “What kind of problem? You can’t tell me you dislike my attentions; it’s very clear you do.”
“I know. But I feel... I feel manipulated, somehow. You can turn me into a puddle, you know you can, and I’m helpless to resist. But I don’t like it.”
Hart stared at her. She likes it but she doesn’t like it? What kind of twisted female logic was that? Or was it some kind of ploy to keep him dangling? Drive him mad with frustration and wanting? He said in a hard voice, “I don’t understand.”
She gave him a troubled look. “All this”—she made a vague, frustrated gesture—“is just bodily sensations.”
“As is natural between a man and a woman. And your point would be?”
“You desire my body”—she blushed—“and I desire yours, but really, we know very little about each other.”
“So? We’re getting married. We have years in which to learn.”
