He swung to face her. “You call that good?”
“No. Not good. Fortunate, more like.” She swallowed. “You can’t deny there’s been a certain tension building between us. I thought the kiss might help.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Help.”
“Well, now it’s done, you see.” She turned away with a self-conscious shrug. “It’s over. And obviously it wasn’t anything special. We won’t have to worry about an attraction.”
It wasn’t anything special? Not worry about an attraction?
Remarkable, how this girl could slash at his pride. Perhaps he should hand her a letter opener and invite her to complete the evisceration.
She reached to retrieve the book she’d dropped and gathered it close to her chest, preparing to leave. “Good night, your grace.”
Let it go, he told himself. Let her go.
“You can’t judge on that kiss.” He took a step forward—blustering on past logic and common sense, tripping straight into pigheaded foolishness.
“I can’t?” she asked.
“No. That wasn’t a proper kiss. It was a mere collision of lips. If I kissed you and meant it, you’d have cause to worry, Simms.”
“I would?”
He approached her slowly, made his voice low and cool. “You would. A true kiss would stir you in your deepest places. It would keep you lying awake in your bed all night long. Restless, and beset by . . .” He paused, grasping for the female equivalent of an aching cockstand. “ . . . flutterings.”
Her brow lifted in amusement, and a sly dimple formed in her cheek. “Flutterings?”
“Yes,” he pronounced in a definitive tone. “Flutterings.”
She smothered a laugh.
Good Lord. This wasn’t happening. He could not be having this conversation. Flutterings? Stupid, asinine word, but he was committed now. He couldn’t back down. He was the duke in this room, he reminded himself. And she was just a serving girl. It was time they both remembered it.
Except she wasn’t just a serving girl. She was a serving girl with aspirations, keen business sense, shockingly good taste in poetry . . . and slight, enticing curves his hands ached to explore.
She was delectable. Ripe as berries.
Her, the whisper came again.
Leave off, he told it.
“Flutterings,” she mused aloud.
He nodded. He didn’t even mind that she was mocking him. He wanted her to say that word again and again, because each repetition came with an erotic flash of her tongue. It stoked a wildness in him.
She pushed her bottom lip forward, considering. “I don’t know that I’ve ever suffered flutterings, your grace. Perhaps they’re unique to ladies of the higher classes. I don’t possess that sort of delicate feminine nature.”
He slid his hand to the back of her head, plunging his fingers through the raw silk of her hair. “Now that’s bollocks.”
And then he pulled her into a kiss.
Ah. So these were flutterings.
And this, Pauline gathered, was his idea of a proper kiss. An embrace with heat and purpose, and one that remained entirely in his command. He controlled the angle of her neck and the closeness of their bodies—and the slow, maddening rhythm of his tongue, sweeping between her lips again and again.
He kissed her forcefully, relentlessly, as though he were meting out some punishment she deserved. Twenty lashings with a strong, wicked tongue. Little could he suppose it was exactly what she wanted. What she craved, with every bone and sinew in her small, slender frame.
Yes. Thank you. May I have another.
Those few moments after she’d kissed him had been among the most miserable of her life. He’d acted so horrified and disturbed. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking to try it. Only that she was so grateful to him for opening this vast, invaluable library to her, a common serving girl. For listening to her most secret dreams without mocking them—and what’s more, perfecting them by giving her that brilliant, naughty idea.
He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know how much it meant.
And then he’d performed that dashing, heroic maneuver to break her fall.
When she saw him up close, a flash in his eyes gave her the strangest notion. That this was scarcely the first night he’d spent haunting the corridors, staying up much too late and far too alone. That he wasn’t nearly so put out by the interruption as he would have her believe.
That he might need a kiss—and a little rescuing, too.
Of course he’d walk a bed of nails barefoot rather than admit such a thing. She ought to have guessed how he’d react. All men had their pride, and dukes worst of all. “Admitting weaknesses” must rank with “tickle fights” and “slug hunting” in his list of least-favored activities.
So he’d struck back at her with this. A kiss that was controlled, masterful, possessive. And Pauline couldn’t say she minded in the least.
He held her to him so tightly, twisting one hand in the linen of her shift and making a snarl of her hair with the other. Later, she’d be brushing it until her arm ached, but it would be worth every last stroke. The sensations racing over her scalp danced on that delicious edge between pleasure and pain.
His chest was a solid wall of heat, inflaming her and bringing her ni**les to tight, needy peaks. Nothing separated their bodies but a few tissue-thin layers of linen, but still she couldn’t get close enough. She rubbed against him, hoping to soothe the ache. Pleasure arced straight to her core.
When she stretched her arms around his back, he growled in encouragement. The deep, vibrating sound traveled through her body and settled as a seductive hum between her thighs. She nestled closer still.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her lips. “That’s right.”
It was. The way they fit together felt so, so right.
He wasn’t kissing her any longer. They were kissing each other. Taking pleasure. Giving comfort. Learning one another’s taste.
His mouth gentled over hers, and his movements grew languid, playful. Their tongues partnered in a slow, sensual dance. She gripped the skin-warmed linen of his shirt, letting it glide between her fingertips. So supple, with so much strength beneath. A wild, feral curiosity seized her. She wanted to know everything about him. Was his body bronzed to match his face, or pale like carved marble? Did he have hair on his chest, or was it smooth?
What powered that fierce, drumming beat of his heart?
She told herself to stop the inquiries there, struggling to tether her imagination before it ventured further downward.