Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

T he first time Archibald had kissed her, it had been so good that Izzie wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing up.

She hadn’t. This time was just as good. Although it was… different.

It took her a moment to pinpoint what it was. His lips were still hot and greedy against hers, making her head swirl.

But he wasn’t touching her anywhere else.

She peeked down and saw that he was gripping the sides of the stone bench with white knuckles.

“Touch me,” she whispered, stroking her fingertips across his jaw, which felt smooth but was already showing a touch of shadow.

He was breathing hard. “I can’t.”

She trailed kisses up his jawline toward his ear. “You can. I want you to.”

He gasped. “I can’t. I want you”—he moaned as she nipped his earlobe—“too much. I’m afraid I’ll forget myself again, the way I did last night.”

She smiled against his cheek. “I liked it when you forgot yourself.”

“It wasn’t… wasn’t proper.”

She pulled back enough to give him a wry look. “Do I strike you as proper ?”

He didn’t seem to have an answer for that, which was just as well because she was already kissing him again. But this time, she had a new purpose.

She was going to make him break.

“You don’t mind,” she said between kisses, “if I touch you, do you?”

“No,” he gasped. “No, that’s fin—”

He moaned instead of finishing his sentence because that was the moment she slid into his lap, pressing her body against his.

He wasn’t wearing a coat, as he’d given it to her, which meant that his perfectly sculpted torso was separated from her eager fingers by only the thin linen of his shirt.

“Izzie,” he gasped as she explored absolutely every inch of his magnificent chest and arms. When she reached his forearms, she found them hard as iron as he clung to the bench for dear life. Smiling into his neck, she tickled the inside of his wrist, and he let go for a fraction of a second. But he managed to wrap his fingers around the edge of the bench again.

She was already moving on, sweeping her hands over his bulging biceps to the breadth of his shoulders. God , she wanted to see what he looked like without a shirt on. Just the thought had her squirming in his lap.

His waistcoat was in her way, so she unbuttoned it, leaving it to sag open. She trailed her fingers across the broad planes of his chest and down to his stomach, which was as hard as the stone bench and covered with fascinating ridges. By now, he was gritting his teeth and moaning as if he were in agony. And perhaps he was, but she hoped it was agony of the very best kind.

She tugged the hem of his shirt free from his breeches and slipped her hand beneath the linen. She could feel a trail of hair running down the center of his stomach, but otherwise his skin was warm and as smooth as satin. Fascinated, she shifted her leg so she was straddling him, all the better to explore this brave new world with both hands.

His eyes were squeezed shut as she slid her hands higher and higher, and his body had gone as hard as sculpted marble. When she found his nipples beneath his shirt and traced them with curious fingers, he made a sound that was more animal than human. She stayed there a moment, torturing him, then continued to sweep her fingers over his magnificent shoulders.

She stroked back downward, fascinated by the bulges that covered his stomach. Although… those weren’t the only bulges that interested her. From her vantage point in his lap, she could feel a certain part of him straining toward her beneath the falls of his trousers.

They say that curiosity killed the cat, and it would certainly be the ruin of Isabella Astley. Unable to resist, she inched her hands lower… and lower… and lower, until she was stroking his shape through the wool of his breeches.

Dear God, how thick is he ? was the last coherent thought she had before Archibald seized her wrists in an iron grip. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back on the stone bench, her arms pinned over her head by one of his hands. He held her in place with his hips and hovered above her, his eyes wild.

Oh, she liked this! She liked this a little bit too much, the notion of this powerful man wanting her to desperation.

She let her legs fall open and rolled her hips against the same bulge she’d been exploring with her fingers just moments earlier. “I can’t decide whether I want you to let me go or not,” she panted. “Part of me wants to keep touching you. But part of me likes this so much …”

“God, Izzie,” he said, his voice shaking with a potent mix of desperation, desire, and despair. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

“Yes, but will you die a happy man?” she asked, giving a little moan as she found a particularly good angle at which to rub herself against him.

He gave a bleak sort of laugh. “The happiest man on the face of this earth, if we see this through to its natural conclusion. But I can’t take your maidenhead on a stone bench .”

“I know,” she sighed. “But part of me really, really wishes that you could and that you would hold my wrists while you do it, just. Like. This .”

He made a strangled sound, and his lips found hers, and even better, his free hand landed, firm and hot, on the side of her waist. Inch by agonizing inch, he slid it up, slowly, much too slowly, until his meaty palm covered her breast.

He released her wrists then, but she didn’t even mind because the reason was so he could draw her bodice down, exposing her straining nipple to the cool night air.

Without giving her time to catch her breath, he put his lips over it, and oh ! The sensations Archibald was evoking in her! She threaded her fingers through his hair, nails scouring his scalp as she desperately tried to hold him in place. There was no need. He wasn’t going anywhere. He worshipped her with kisses and nips and long pulls that had her writhing on the bench, and it was a good thing his strong, capable hands were at her ribcage, holding her in place, or else she would have tumbled to the ground.

“So good,” she gasped. “So good! Archibald…”

With a growl, he came up and seized her lips, and she squirmed beneath him on the bench as he kissed her ferociously and touched every inch of her torso with his strong, warm hands. She was lost to everything but him. The only thing she could feel was his touch. The only thing she could hear was his guttural breathing…

Wait… A hazy thought formed in the far reaches of her brain. Shouldn’t…

Shouldn’t she also be able to hear the orchestra?

He seemed to realize it in the same instant, because he stopped kissing her, pressed his forehead against the cold stone bench, and muttered a curse.

He immediately cringed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“That’s all right,” Izzie gasped. “My brother says that word all the time. I mean my brother Harrington. Not Edward, obviously.”

His expression was pained as he pushed himself up. “Obviously.” Taking her hands in his, he helped her sit up, too. “It sounds like the party has ended. You’ve got to get back inside before you’re missed.”

Sighing, she tugged her bodice back into place. “I suppose I should.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t suppose there are any circumstances in which your parents could be persuaded to let me marry you tomorrow instead of taking you back to Gloucestershire?”

Her heart skipped a beat. It was a little bit frightening how quickly she was falling for this man, although really, who could blame her? It wasn’t merely that he was the finest physical specimen in all of London. He seemed genuinely interested in her book, and he kissed her like he would die if he couldn’t possess her. It was a heady combination.

And she knew herself well enough to know that she had a tendency to rush into things, and that this tendency occasionally led to disaster. And she was well aware that she scarcely knew this man. And yet…

Archibald didn’t feel wrong. He felt…

Perfect. Perfect for her .

“Probably not,” she said in answer to his question. “In fact, my father departed for Cheltenham this morning, so he isn’t even available to ask.”

She sighed. It was most likely for the best that the end of the Season was about to push them apart, at least for a few months. It would prevent her from doing something rash, would force her to slow down enough to see if this glittering, gossamer-thin thread that had sprung up, tentatively binding her heart to his, would prove strong enough to hold.

He nodded, staring at the ground, then stood. “I am going to write to you. I’m going to write to you every day. And when we see each other again—”

“Yes,” she said. “However you were going to finish that sentence, the answer is yes.”

He framed her face with those hands that were so strong, yet so gentle, and brought his lips to hers. He touched her the way an archaeologist would touch a two-thousand-year-old Greek vase, as if she were rare and precious.

She even felt his fingers tremble. How was it possible that she could make this hulking man tremble?

Suddenly, he stepped back. “Go on. I’ll wait out here a while. No one will know we were together.”

“All right.” Suddenly her vision was blurry. She didn’t want to, but she knew she had to go. “Thank you.”

She handed him his coat. Before she could change her mind, she spun on her heel and started toward the house, forcing herself not to look back.