You May Kiss the Bride(66)

She felt him go rigid.

Desperately she gripped his hair—all wet and silky to her touch—and tugged at him. But easily, so easily, did he pull his mouth away.

Even in the murky dimness she could see that in his eyes, so often hard and cold, was a new glow.

Gone was the uncertain schoolboy.

Here was a man, sure and confident.

“No,” he said, deliberately echoing her. “Like this.”





Chapter 11




Gabriel took a step back.

He stripped off his gloves without haste and put them into a pocket of his greatcoat. Then he untied the silky ribbons of her soggy bonnet before lifting it gently from her head. He tied the ribbons loosely and hung the bonnet over the same nail on which his hat was suspended.

He turned to Livia. Her green, green eyes were wide, and he could see the quick rise and fall of her breast.

A kiss.

There was no harm in it, surely.

They were an affianced couple, and they had to seek shelter, and the storm would soon stop.

It wasn’t entirely proper, of course, but she was cold, and the least he could do would be to warm her up.

He was, after all, a gentleman.

Yes indeed, he was fully in control of the situation.

With that same slow deliberation he brought his hands up to her face. His fingers were warm, her cheeks still chilly. He leaned down.

Just a kiss.

It felt so good to be master of himself.

Gabriel touched his lips to Livia’s, lightly, teasing, and then shifted his mouth so that he was kissing, softly, that tender, exquisitely sensitive area just above her upper lip. He heard with satisfaction her sharp intake of breath; her hands crept up again, to convulsively clasp his shoulders.

Slowly he slid his tongue across her upper lip.

Ah, God, it was good.

There was a distinctive taste to her: a faint note of sweetness and the tang of citrus, and from her skin came also an elusive scent of cinnamon, spicy, tantalizing, stirring his senses in a delicious way, rousing him to an appetite, a raging hunger for her mouth, for . . . her.

But no.

Just this only.

There was a foot of space between them, and he intended to keep it that way.

Gently he moved his hands to the back of her head, cradled it in his palms, his fingers caught in the thick silken mass of her hair. Gently he tilted his hands, guided her head so that he could slowly deepen the kiss, his tongue a leisurely caress, hot and damp and sure.

She received him with an unmistakable willingness, her lips, so soft, parting for him. And then—and then her own tongue touched his, sending desire blazing through him, through every part of him, and that space which separated their bodies—her breasts, her hips, her sex, her long legs, his legs, his now-hard shaft, his chest—seemed ridiculous.

Besides, he had promised to keep her warm.

Very sure of himself, sure of his comfortable sense of control, slowly Gabriel drew Livia to him. Just as their lips, their mouths, had intimately met, they now met body to body. Almost were they one; with a hot pulse of awareness he realized that between their nakedness was mere clothing, and he wasn’t prepared for his own feverish response. The thrust of his tongue intensifying. A groan being wrenched from him. His hands sliding down her back to her slim waist and then to her hips, gripping them with blatant urgency and pulling her roughly against him.

He was playing with fire, he thought, conscious of a new alarm within him.

They seemed to have suddenly moved well beyond a simple kiss.

And this wasn’t part of his plan.

He struggled to remember the plan. It took, in fact, a major effort of will to recall it.

Sternly he reminded himself.

They were getting married in a fortnight, and Livia was going off to the Hall, and he had rooms reserved for himself at a Falmouth inn, and a passage booked to Porto de Galinhas. The sea there was famous for its vivid colors and wide swathes of beaches. The weather this time of year was said to be pleasantly warm.

Which reminded him.

Livia was certainly warm enough by now.

He broke the kiss at last, breathing heavily; stepped back from her, raked his fingers through his hair.

“Well,” he said, with what he hoped was an appearance of calm, “I do trust that you . . .”

He trailed off.

What the devil could he say?

He tried again.

“You are, I trust, feeling appreciably more—that is, I trust that that now, after our, uh, interlude, that you are . . . well—I mean—”

Without a word she reached up and stopped his mouth with her own. Only this time, it wasn’t a maladroit peck of a kiss. It was warm and moist and confident and infused with so much deliberation that he groaned again, all thoughts of his wonderful plan vanishing in a single beat of his heart.



He’d been just about to put on the Penhallow Mask (even though his hair was disordered in an entirely appealing way), and Livia didn’t want it to happen. She hadn’t wanted that kiss, that embrace, to end. Kissing him seemed to be the most effective way to achieve both her ends.