The Taste of Innocence by Stephanie Laurens Page B

his pick of every eligible, or even not-so-eligible, young lady in the ton, but he’d chosen her. And despite her ambivalence, her insistence on being wooed—her refusal to meekly fall in with his initial plan—he was still, indeed it seemed he was now even more, determined to marry her.
    Which either augered well or was simply a demonstration of his ruthless habit of insisting on having his own way.
    She rounded the bend in the path, and the summer house came into view. Whichever of those two options was correct, by following his script she would learn the truth. The truth of why he wanted her.
    He was waiting; she saw his tall figure shift in the shadows, pushing away from the archway against which he’d been leaning. Lungs tightening, she lifted her skirts and climbed the steps.
    Again they met before the sofa. He held out a hand as she neared; she gave him her hand, conscious of his strength as he grasped it.
    Smoothly, he drew her closer; lifting her hand, he brushed his lips lightly, lingeringly, over the sensitive backs of her fingers, then, holding her gaze, he turned her hand and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.
    Her pulse leapt.
    They had no need for words; they both knew why they were there.
    His lips, hot, trailed along the bare inner face of her forearm, sending sensation streaking through her, a prelude, a sensual warning as he raised her hand higher, releasing it to fall on his shoulder as he drew her to him.
    Fully against him, as he had the previous night, but this time his arm went around her, a steely band that held her trapped, that caged her as he bent his head. Eagerly she lifted her face and met his lips with hers.
    She inwardly smiled, savoring the firm pressure of his lips, then she yielded to his explicit demand and gave him her mouth. And let her wits slide away as sensation bloomed, as she sensed hunger flare, in herself and in him.
    They’d waltzed only once, and that months ago; this was a waltz of a different sort, where their senses revolved in time to a beat orchestrated by sensation. By the heavy stroke of his tongue against hers, by the whirling, fractured pricking of her nerves, by the escalating tempo of her heart.
    By the tensing of his fingers on her back as he tightened his grip on his control.
    Engrossed, enthralled, she savored the sensual slide into the familiar passion of the kiss, and willingly followed his lead.
    She was aware, yet not—acutely aware of him, his lips, his hands, his body, and the flagrant promise carried in his embrace, yet she’d grown strangely insensitive to the world around them, the shadows beyond his arms, the soft sounds of the night beyond the summerhouse, the distant babble of water over the lip of the weir.
    Here, now, with him; her world had shrunk, senses intently, intensely focused. On the next stage in his plan.
    She quivered, prey to building anticipation, to the shivery thrill of expectation. To the steady rise of a wanting she was coming to think must be desire.
    Sunk in the warm pleasures of her mouth, Charlie tracked her responses. He knew to a nicety, to a single shaky breath, just when to ease back enough to slide one hand beneath her shawl. Setting his palm to her waist, he swept upward, lightly tracing her side, then the outer curve of her breast.
    The shiver she’d been suppressing became a reality, a response that incited, that invited him to touch, to caress, so he did. At first gently tracing the swelling curves, then subtly stroking so that she heated and yearned; only then did he shape her flesh, curve his hand about the firm mound and gently squeeze, then more evocatively knead.
    Her mouth surrendered, her hands once more gripping his skull, her fingers twining in his hair, she arched against his supporting arm, gratifyingly pressing her breast more fully into his hand, offering and inviting—even demanding—his further attentions. The movement set her hips riding more definitely against his thighs.
    The latter