Wilde in Love(31)

“Interesting.” There was a moment’s silence.

Then: “Neither one. Not a lord. Just a man who would very much like to kiss you, Evie. Not Willa, who is perfect in every way, but Evie, who is captivating. I think Evie wears spectacles, by the way. Willa has perfect vision.”

She met his eyes and had to freeze to avoid throwing herself into his arms. Damn it, the man was like a fine liqueur. He bent his head and brushed his lips across hers, making her shiver.

“Open your lips,” he said, his voice ragged. “Pretty Evie, open your mouth for me.”

His voice was a caress in itself. It made her feel wanton. She leaned forward and put her lips on his, her breath catching as his tongue traced the seam of her lips and then licked its way inside.

She dimly registered that he tasted of wintergreen. But it didn’t matter because her senses were bombarded and her skin tingled all the way down her back and belly, down her legs. Between her legs.

As Alaric’s tongue curled around hers and his arms closed around her, Willa melted against him. Her fingers curled into the hard muscles of his shoulders and then moved to wind into his hair.

Alaric kissed as if he could imagine nothing else he’d rather do. He didn’t move a hand to her breast, or pull her more closely against him.

Willa’s mind raced, taking note of his steely arms (good), his minty breath (good), his height (good), the silky feel of his hair (good) …

No other man’s kiss had ever pleased in so many ways.

A few kisses later, her brain was beginning to feel dull and foggy. He wasn’t pulling her closer; it was she who was pressing against him, her heart racing.

The taste and feel of him swept all intelligent thought aside, until she was moaning in the back of her throat and running her tongue over his white teeth. Clinging to him.

Lust, she thought dimly. Lust was flushing her skin and making her heart pound in her throat.

“Evie,” Alaric said, and the name slipped out from his lips like a pagan, carnal prayer.

The wonderful thing was that if he addressed her as Evie, she didn’t have to think about Willa’s rules. It made her feel like a young girl again, certain that the world was full of fascinating information merely waiting to be discovered. That little girl had no thought of rules, because her mama and papa loved her just as she was.

She pushed the thought away, her lips drifting along the hard line of his jaw.

Alaric turned his head and took her mouth again in a languorous kiss, one that sent aching sensation down her legs and through her body until she felt as if honeyed wine was running in her veins.

Everything about Alaric, from the low rasp of his breathing to the rock-hard muscles in his shoulders, enticed her.

“Evie,” he said again, some time later, his voice hoarse.

“Hmmm,” Willa responded happily. She wasn’t thinking at all. Every bit of her being was enjoying this moment.

“We must stop.”

“I could kiss you all night,” she said with a gasp. She threaded her hands through his hair and looked at him from under her lashes.

He groaned and caught her against him, his mouth coming hard down on hers as a rumble came from his chest. The sound made her head fall back so he could devour her mouth, his tongue curling around hers, his hands spread to hold her hard against him.

“No,” he said a time later. A minute or an hour. A kiss, or five kisses, or five hundred. Willa was pressing against him, trying to tempt him to run one of his hands down her back. Or, daringly, up her front. Or even through her hair.

He could loosen her braid and free her hair with his fingers. He could clasp her bottom with those strong fingers and jerk her against him.

She’d never imagined that thoughts like these would go through her mind. Dimly she remembered the bawdy freedom she felt when she and Lavinia laughed about that erotic book they found.

This was another side of that same person. A bold, lustful person. Possessive, too.

She jerked her head back, narrowing her eyes. Alaric had a dark flush, and his eyes were gleaming with desire.

Was she merely the last of many women to see him like this?

The thought was a dash of icy water.

“Have you kissed any other women at this house party?” she asked.

An expression she couldn’t interpret crossed his eyes. If it was amusement, she’d have to slay him.

“No,” he said.

“Are you certain?”

It was amusement, damn it. “There was a lady a few years ago,” he said musingly.

She gave him a little shove. “I didn’t think you were a saint. That’s not what I was asking.”

He snatched her up again, kissing her until she was breathless, her mind hazy again.

“Evie.”

“Hmmm?”

He laughed. “You are the most formidable, articulate woman I know, and at the same time …”

She traced the line of his deep bottom lip with her fingers, her eyelids growing heavy because the only thoughts in her mind were wild.

Imagining those lips caressing her body all over. Imagining moans coming from his throat as he …

“You’re dazed.”

“Hmmm.”

He was laughing and she didn’t care. He wasn’t laughing at her, anyway. He was laughing with her.

“We mustn’t do this,” he said regretfully.

She looked at him from under her lashes and sighed.

Sighed!

She never sighed.

But faced with a man like that, his eyes desirous, even sinful. His body beautiful …

How was she different from Helena Biddle?

She jumped back at the thought. All those women staring at Lord Wilde with lust in their eyes … wasn’t that precisely what she was doing?

“Willa is back,” he said, with something that sounded perilously like a male version of a sigh.

“I temporarily lost my mind,” Willa acknowledged, her voice husky. She stepped back, tightening the tie on her dressing gown. He hadn’t even loosened it, which distinguished him from the boys she’d kissed previously. They always sneaked a hand toward her bodice.

“As did I,” he said.

They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then he shook his head. “Saucy Evie … where does she go?”

There was no point in lying. He was no fool, and she’d exposed her true self in the last hour.

“She is private. You must leave.”

“If you insist.” He went to the door before turning.

Willa kept her chin up, absolutely certain that not a trace of emotion was revealed in her eyes. Those dark blue eyes focused on her, and something tightened and twisted deep in her belly.

“You are fearless, unafraid of me,” Alaric stated.

“I see nothing to fear. You would never hurt me. Or any other woman.”

He ignored her. “You respect my father, but you don’t want to be a duchess. You respect Parth, but you aren’t interested in him, despite the fact he’s the richest man in England.”

Willa shrugged. Everything he said was true.

He wasn’t finished. “Your mouth damn near kills me every time I see it because I want to kiss it until it’s dark red, the color it is now. It’s a mouth I want to kiss me, wrap around me, bark at me … love me.”

Willa couldn’t find any words.

She thought he was going to kiss her again, but he slipped through the door, closed it behind him, and was gone.

For a moment she stood motionless, hand pressed to her lips. Then she walked to the large glass on the wall.

She was still Willa, wasn’t she? Willa, who was extraordinarily competent, organized, curious?

Her hair had fallen from its braid in a way that suggested it had been rumpled by a lover.

And her mouth?

He was right. It was ruby red. Swollen by kisses.

He hadn’t touched her, but her body felt like the map of a foreign country, an undiscovered country that he had explored without touching.

Willa didn’t have absurd thoughts like that.

Evie did.





Chapter Twenty-one


Willa was rudely awakened by the force of a body landing on the bed beside her. “What?” she mumbled. She knew who it was. The scent of Lavinia’s pear soap announced her presence wherever she went.

“You must wake up,” Lavinia replied. “You’ve missed breakfast. Everyone is riding to a ruined abbey in an hour or so. Lady Knowe says that King Arthur is buried there, but I don’t believe her.”

“What time is it?”

“After ten o’clock. You’ve missed breakfast.”

Snippets of thick paper were falling over Willa’s face and hair. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked foggily, blowing a scrap from her lips. She sat up, sending a shower of scraps across the coverlet, and saw that Lavinia was wielding a pair of scissors, busy attacking prints. The same prints that she had until recently collected with the zeal of a true devotee.

“I have three of the new Lord Wilde prints, and I’m sacrificing the one I brought with me as well,” Lavinia explained, cutting busily.

“Why are you destroying them?” Willa swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Where’s Sweetpea?”

“Alaric took her for a walk.”

Willa spun around. “He came to my room?” She did that indignant tone fairly well, considering that she had never been any good at lying.

More bits of paper flew over the bed. “You were soundly sleeping, so your maid gave him Sweetpea.”

“Why are you cutting up prints?” Willa asked again, ringing the bell for tea.