Page 66 of The Rake’s Convenient Bride

He chuckled, a low, sensual timbre she felt in the marrow of her bones. “One of my first impressions of you was how graceful you were.”

She raised her brows at him, skeptical. “I don’t hear that often.”

“You move like a dancer, all slender limbs…” He ran his fingertips over her arm, and shivers followed in the wake of his touch. “And your long, delicate neck.” His touch grazed up her throat to rest at her chin. “And the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen.”

Her cheeks burned with the sincere praise, and she merely lifted her shoulders in shy acknowledgment of his words.

“I’ve wanted you since I first saw you,” he repeated in a low voice. “But you were as out of my grasp as an angel in the heavens.”

“Until now,” she said in a coy tone.

The corner of his mouth tucked upward. “Until now.” He swallowed. “Do you recall that time at Lady Gentry’s ball last season when you spilled lemonade on me?”

Mortified, she leaned her head back. “How could I forget?”

“You were so diligent in trying to mop up the mess, you weren’t paying attention to where your hands were going,” he continued.

She groaned in humiliation.

“Your touch was accidental, but still you inadvertently stroked your hand over…” His voice was almost a whisper in the silent room and tapered off rather than say precisely the part of his body he referred to. “It was an innocent touch, but it burned me all the same. I thought about you every night since. Wondering if it had just been the two of us, how you might have helped me out of my clothes. How I might have helped you out of yours. How I might make you moan in pleasure. The way you did the night of our engagement party.” His gaze wandered toward her mouth and lifted up once more to meet her eyes. “The way you sounded when your body released was even more exquisite than I had dared to imagine.”

Her nipples tingled against her stays, that low pulse thrumming to life once more, warm between her legs where her body recalled the feel of his skilled fingers all too well.

“I never knew a touch could feel like that,” she confessed. “I…have thought of it often. Of you often.”

“Every night, I hope,” he said. “The way I think of you.”

She nodded and licked her lips, and his gaze dipped to her mouth once more.

He reached for her, and she stretched up the length of his body so their mouths met. He kissed as he had done before, his mouth moving over hers, his tongue teasing against her own.

This time, she was bold as she kissed him back, exactly as she had imagined being if she should have the chance again. She wanted to explore all of him, to savor his mouth, his touch, and to let her hands roam over his body as his had done with hers. To bring him pleasure as he had given so selflessly to her.

Jasper groaned as she kissed him back with fervor, deeper and hungrier than the groans he’d weakly emitted earlier when she found him outside by the tree stump.

At that thought, she pulled back abruptly. “Jasper, your head. We shouldn’t…”

“We absolutely should,” he growled, and pulled her against him. A hardness pressed against her hip, evidence of his desire for her. She melted against him, her protests dying on her lips, being kissed away so they were nothing more than a distant memory.

“I want you, Elizabeth.” He spoke against her neck, amid a string of kisses that left desire prickling on her skin and shivering deliciously down her spine.

And God, did she want him in return.

17

Whatever ache had throbbed at the back of Jasper’s skull was nothing more than a distant memory. He was far more interested in quelling a different throb now, one decidedly lower than his head. One now pressed against the softness of Elizabeth’s body as she rocked against him with an innocent’s frustrated longing.

How he wanted to strip her down and take her, plunge deep within her and make her his.

Except she was a virgin.

And not his wife.

She hadn’t even said she loved him in return.

If he could think properly, that might have bothered him. But her mouth was sliding down his throat as he’d done with her, nipping at the skin as she raked her hands down his linen shirt so her fingernails grazed the skin beneath.

Good God, this woman was his undoing.