Page 120 of A Perilous Passion

She needed to catch him. There were so many questions she wanted to ask. He hadn’t told her everything last night, and she meant to find out what he’d omitted.

Seizing an umbrella from the old Delft vase beside the door, she picked her way over the puddles in the flagstone path and sped off in pursuit of the swiftly retreating figure. However, her much shorter stride couldn’t match his, so she called out, “My lord! Wait!”

He spun round, and before she had time to react, he had her securely in his grasp, and half pushed, half carried her behind a thick laurel bush growing amidst a hawthorn hedge. “Never call me that!”

Buried deep within its thick foliage, they were hidden from prying eyes, the only clue to their presence the umbrella she’d dropped in the lane, lying there like a collapsed crow. There was so little room behind the laurel, she found herself pinned in place, with Rafe’s legs pinioning hers, his hands pressed against the prickly hawthorn hedge on either side of her head.

Despite her shock at his dramatic reaction to her call, she couldn’t stop staring at the way the rain plastered his shirt against the superb musculature beneath his unbuttoned coat. His long hair was flattened against his head and hung in dripping tendrils over his brow. Raindrops glittered amongst his lashes.

Her heart leaped to life in delicious anticipation.

Of what, she couldn’t begin to guess.

Their mouths were very close. He hadn’t said a word, but there was something in his eyes that filled her with wild imaginings, and made her knees go limp.

What had happened to the sangfroid she’d mustered last night? Could she devise no clever speech, no disarming put-down? Not even a complaint at having been manhandled behind a laurel bush?

What was wrong with her?

His eyes darkened. What was wrong with him?

As if claiming a fundamental right, he bent his head and kissed her.

His face was cold and wet against her cheek, but his mouth was warm, and his tongue—which soon found entrance to her mouth—was so hot it seared her soul. There was no escape as he pressed his kiss deeper. Not that she wanted to escape.

His hands slid down to grasp her shoulders and his body angled forward, molding itself against her. Her thin muslin gown glued itself to her breasts as the rain soaked from his clothes into hers, but it didn’t matter.

What mattered was the sweet sensation uncurling deep in her belly that his kiss awakened. What mattered was the ache in her fingers that made her want to touch him, to smooth the damp cloth over his muscled chest and explore the masculine flesh beneath.

Sweet heavenly bliss.

Justin had never kissed her like this. With such single-minded intensity. He’d teased and stroked and tentatively experimented but always stopped short of taking what she was too shy to offer.

Beckport, however, knew exactly what he was about—exactly what he wanted to take…and what she wanted to give.

Suddenly, he pulled away from her, his chest heaving, and shook his head.

“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely. “I—I needed to make sure you wouldn’t call after me again, or cry out.”

She gazed up at him, her mind in a muddle. Why had he stopped kissing her?

“I wouldn’t have acknowledged you, but I feared you might make a scene. That wouldn’t do. Understand?”

She blinked. No, she didn’t understand.

“I seem to have silenced you.”

“What?” She finally came back to herself. “No, I was listening—honestly.”

And thinking about that kiss, and how good he smelled this close. All rainwater, sea salt, and freshly mown hay.

“Do you understand the kiss was necessary?”

She ran her fingers thoughtfully over her mouth and nodded dazedly. “Quite necessary,” she dreamily agreed.

Then words failed her again. It was far too hot in this dark, confined space, a miniature world containing just the two of them and the runnels of rain that found their way through the thick leaves.

“Miss Allston?”