His hand cradled the back of her head, tilting her face to his. He drew her close to his chest and deepened the kiss, exploring her mouth with bold sweeps of his tongue. All Clio could do was cling tight.
Her senses opened wide to take in everything. The firm beat of his heart. The faster pulse of her own. His sweet taste, and the spicy wintergreen scent of his skin.
It intrigued her, that scent. Some kind of aromatic shaving soap, perhaps? It wasn’t cologne.
Curious now, she slid one hand to touch his jaw. Though it was barely afternoon, and yes—he had shaved that morning—the faint beginnings of whiskers rasped against her fingertips. She found the texture wildly exciting. So foreign to her, and so masculine.
So real.
To her surprise, he didn’t press her for more than kisses. Didn’t stroke or grope in any of the ways good girls were warned that wicked men would try to do. Oh, she could feel the power pulsing through his body, the need coiling hot and tense in his muscles. He wanted more. He wanted everything.
But he only kissed her. As though this were enough.
As though it must be enough, and God help them both if it wasn’t.
“The rain stopped,” he said, sometime later.
She nodded drowsily. So had the kisses.
His hands slid from her face. He turned his back to the wall and let his head fall against the stone with a soft thunk. “I’m a bastard.”
“If you’re a bastard, I don’t know what that makes me.”
“It’s nothing to do with you.”
Her chin ducked. “It isn’t?”
“Well, it is, of course. It’s a great deal to do with you. If I try to explain, I’ll make a hash of it.”
“Try anyway.” She waited, still cocooned in his scent and the warm, lingering glow of his embrace.
“I should have outgrown this by now,” he said. “I thought I had, curse it.”
“Kissing?”
“Envy. I always envied my brother. His playthings, his accomplishments. The praise he earned. From the earliest time I can remember, I wanted whatever was his.” His jaw tensed. “You were his.”
“Oh.”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “What the hell am I saying? You are his.”
Clio didn’t know quite how to take this. Rafe wanted her. He’d wanted her for ages, but not because he found her especially desirable or attractive. He wanted her because she belonged to Piers. Apparently, she could be a hideous, troll-faced lump, and it wouldn’t matter. He would still want to kiss her for hours in the rain.
That warm, lingering glow began to fade. Rapidly.
“This won’t happen again,” he said. “Ever.”
And . . . there it went. Glow extinguished.
“Well,” she managed, after an uncomfortable moment spent piecing together what little remained of her pride, “I see why you’re so popular with the ladies now, Rafe. You truly know how to make a girl feel exceptional.”
She tried to untangle her sodden skirts.
He put a hand under her elbow, scooping her off the stone and setting her on her feet.
The nerve of him, acting so chivalrous less than a minute after rejecting her, and that less than a minute after kissing her with abandon. Was he dizzy from all these about-face maneuvers?
“At least this means I win,” she said.
“You win what?”
“You’ll have to sign those dissolution papers now. They’re in my dressing table. Now that it’s stopped raining, we can go back at once.”
“Wait, wait. You do not win. I’m not signing those papers.”
“How can you refuse after . . . ?” She gestured lamely at the spot of floor where they’d kissed. “ . . . after that? You’re still going to encourage me to marry your brother?”
“Of course I am.”
“You kissed me.”
“Don’t make so much of it. A kiss is nothing.”
Nothing? To him, perhaps. But that kiss hadn’t felt like nothing to her.
“I’ve kissed a great many women who moved along and married other men,” he said. “Sometimes the same day.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“And as for you,” he plowed on, denying her an explanation. “If you’d had the experience of a proper season, you wouldn’t make anything of this, either. You’d have been kissed by a dozen randy scapegraces on verandahs and in follies, and you’d have realized on your own that marrying a man like Piers is for the best.”
Clio knew better than that. There was a reason she’d been known as the luckiest debutante of her season. Because not only had she become engaged to the most eligible bachelor of the ton, but everyone knew she would have had no chance at him, had their fathers not arranged it years ago. If she’d had a normal season, she might not have been kissed at all.