Scoundrel Ever After (Secrets and Scandals) by Darcy Burke Page B

allowing him to kiss her but not responding in kind. It wasn’t enough. He wanted her to give what she was getting, to share in the rapture he felt.
    He skimmed his left hand up her spine and fingered the curls that had escaped their pins and grazed the back of her neck. They were as soft and silky as he’d imagined. He wanted to twist his hands in them as he probed her mouth. And why not? He might never get this chance again.
    He speared his fingers into her hair beneath her bonnet until he palmed the back of her head. Then he deepened the kiss, stroking his tongue into her mouth with mad possession, demanding her response.
    Now she flinched. Or did she shiver? Whatever she did, she didn’t pull away, and that was all he needed. He tugged at her hair, pulling her head slightly back and arching her neck. He nipped at her lower lip. “Kiss me, Audrey.”
    He’d looked at her shuttered eyelids as he’d spoken. Her eyes flashed open, their aqua depths sparkling like jewels. She stared at him the barest moment before pulling his mouth back to hers and doing exactly as he’d instructed.
    Her kiss wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t graceful. Her teeth grazed his as their mouths connected, but the ferocity with which she clutched him to her and pressed her tongue into his fired his need better than any lustful imagining. But she was no dream. She was real and wonderful and everything he never knew he wanted.
    He massaged her scalp as he plundered her mouth. The kiss burned through him. His cock grew hard as it had been the other morning when he’d rolled on top of her. That he could explain away as a typical morning problem. But he could no longer deny he wanted Audrey. He wanted her naked and moaning beneath him. On top of him. Every way he could have her.
    Her fingers dug into his neck. She copied him and nipped at his lower lip. His lust roared and he pulled her head back farther, exposing her neck, then put his open mouth on her flesh. He sucked and nibbled beneath her jaw, then licked a path to her ear. He’d just lightly closed his teeth over her sensitive lobe when a cough behind him froze his desire.
    “Oh my goodness, is that Audrey Cheswick?”

    A UDREY’S EYES FLEW open and she stepped backward. Ethan let her go—there was no point in trying to think of him as anything other than Ethan now—and her knees wobbled. She managed to focus on the couple gaping at them from maybe five feet away, standing between them and the street. She recognized them of course, as they were the people she and Ethan had come to find.
    “Lady Foxcroft.” Audrey strove to keep the apprehension from her tone. She curtseyed, as one would do in the presence of the daughter of a duke. Then she repeated the action for her husband. Though he wasn’t a peer at all, he still deserved a curtsey, she reasoned. “Mr. Foxcroft.”
    “Good evening, Miss Cheswick,” Mr. Foxcroft said. He gave both Audrey and Ethan a thoroughly assessing perusal. “You are, ah, a bit underdressed for the assembly.”
    Audrey and her friends had known Lady Foxcroft as Miranda before she’d been expelled from London two and a half years prior for exhibiting scandalous behavior. Her exploits had, in fact, inspired Audrey to launch her own ill-fated adventure with the blacksmith’s son.
    Miranda smacked her husband playfully on the arm. “Fox, they are clearly not going to the assembly. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be skulking about the window. What are you doing out here?”
    The fear that had shot through Audrey when she’d heard the cough returned tenfold. She glanced at Ethan and hoped she didn’t look as panicked as she felt. He, on the other hand, looked calm and cool, not at all as if they’d just shared an incredible embrace that had been tragically interrupted.
    “We’re actually looking for you.” Ethan smiled and the effect caused Audrey’s knees to wobble again. The man possessed devastating charm when he wanted to, and probably even when he