Page 48 of The Wedding Challenge

Callie rose and followed him, reaching out to take his hand in both of hers. “What sort of mood? Can I help in any way?”

“Would that you could.” He turned and looked down at her, his eyes roaming over her face hungrily. “I have been thinking of you ever since our ride to Richmond Park. Indeed, ever since I first saw you. Sometimes I think you have bewitched me.” His voice was hoarse, the words seemingly pulled from him.

Heat spread through Callie, and she thought that he must feel it in her hands.

“I did not mean to,” she told him, her voice a trifle shaky.

“I know. That is part of your allure. You are unstudied, natural, yet you pull a man toward you with only a look.”

“I have never noticed that I was so irresistible,” she remarked, struggling to retain a light tone.

“Then perhaps it is only I who feels your power.” He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. His lips were like velvet on her skin, sending a shiver through her. “In truth, I would be glad for that.”

He turned her hand over and laid a kiss in her palm. Unconsciously, Callie’s hand curled into a fist, as if enclosing his kiss there. She was very aware of the blood pulsing through her veins. She could feel it pounding from her heart and thundering through her.

She wanted his arms around her again. She wanted to taste his mouth, to be enveloped by the warmth and scent of him, to feel his hard body pressing into hers as it had the other day at the park. She had not known temptation with any other man, but with this one, she felt consumed by it.

He lifted his head and looked at her.

In the next instant Callie was in his arms and their lips were melded together. Fire flashed to life inside them, fierce and demanding. He crushed her to him, his mouth digging into hers, and Callie wrapped her arms around him, wanting only to be closer and ever closer. He groaned, and she could feel the tremor that ran through his hard body. His lips left her mouth and trailed across her cheek to her ear, nibbling at the sensitive lobe and teasing it with his teeth.

He murmured her name, his voice thick with desire, as he kissed her ear, her face, her throat. Her skin flamed to life wherever his lips touched, and she trembled, full of inchoate yearnings.

With some last vestige of reason, he broke their embrace and pulled her off the path and deep into the shadows. Callie went with him easily, driven by the hammering pulse deep in her loins. They kissed again and again, and his hands slipped beneath her domino, roaming over her body. She could feel the heat of his skin even through her dress, and when his hand slid up onto the rise of her breasts above her dress, his touch was searing. He caressed the soft orbs, his fingers sliding between her skin and her clothes, and Callie wished fiercely that she could feel his hands all over her body in the same way.

He spread the sides of her domino apart and laid his lips against the soft, quivering flesh of her breasts. Callie sucked in a quick breath of surprised pleasure, and she dug her fingers into his coat, holding on as though anchoring herself in the world that was now spinning around her. Her own body was a stranger to her—her loins throbbing, and a hot damp ache growing between her legs, so pleasurable that it was almost painful. She wanted to be with him, to know him in some deep primitive way. She realized that, shockingly, she longed to wrap her legs around him and press herself against him in the most intimate manner.

Bromwell’s hands went down her back and curved over her buttocks, his finger digging into the soft mounds of flesh and pushing her against the hard ridge of his desire. Callie trembled, her breath rasping in her throat, aware that she was teetering somehow on the brink of a precipice, eager and uncertain and just a little frightened all at once.

He made a low, frustrated noise and broke from her. “Sweet Lord, Callie…”

Wrapping her domino tightly around her, he pulled her to him and tightened his arms around her, leaning his forehead against her hair. She could hear his breath rasping harshly in his throat; she was enveloped in his heat. They stood for a long moment, their pulses gradually slowing.

“If we continue this,” Bromwell said at last, “I shall forget all honor entirely.” He pressed his lips into her hair. “I must take you home.”

He was right, she knew, and yet Callie did not want to leave. She wanted this moment to go on forever. She wanted to race onward to the finish that her body so ardently desired.

It occurred to her that she had been standing outside, hidden only by the shadows, kissing Bromwell in a way that anyone would label as far bolder than any of the behavior of the other women in the supper box tonight. It was hypocritical of her, she supposed, to have been so shocked at Lady Daphne’s public display with her swain, yet fling herself into passionate kisses with Daphne’s brother.

She had acted in a most immoral way, she was sure. Yet she could not bring herself to regret it. Indeed, at the moment the only regret she felt was that she could not continue to kiss him.

Callie opened her eyes and leaned her head back, looking up into Bromwell’s face. His lips were slightly reddened and sensually relaxed, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded. Just the sight of his face, so clearly stamped with desire, stirred her.

There was a difference, she thought, between her and Lady Daphne. Daphne had been playing fast and loose with a man she barely knew; Callie suspected that almost any man who had passed by would have served. But Callie could not imagine feeling like this with any other man in the world. It was Lord Bromwell, and he alone, who sparked this passion in her.

She took a shaky breath and let it out, feeling once again that she was teetering on the edge of something, and that, she thought, was even more frightening. For if she fell here, she knew, it was not her virtue that would be lost, but her heart.

BROMWELL AND CALLIE SAID LITTLE on the ride home. Uppermost in their minds was the passion that still hummed between them. It was not something that either wanted to discuss, and it required a careful concentration to keep it at bay.

He walked her to Francesca’s door, stepping inside only to take his leave of her. Then he turned and trotted back down the steps to the hansom cab, his face settling into grim lines. A few quick words to the driver sent them back to Vauxhall Gardens at a fast pace.

When they reached the gardens, Bromwell headed purposefully toward his sister’s supper box. He was greeted by the sight of several intoxicated young men, as well as the decidedly tipsy Miss Swanson and another young woman he had never met. His sister was sitting on the lap of a man he had never seen, the fellow boldly nuzzling her neck.

Once again he cleared the front wall of the box in a lithe jump rather than taking the time to enter through the rear door. Walking straight to his sister, he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and pulled her to her feet.

She let out a gasp, turning toward him with a snarl before she realized who he was. “Brom! Hello, dearest. I wondered where you were.”

“And did you wonder where Lady Calandra was?” he asked, his voice hard and clipped.