Page 22 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
His hand traveled into her hair, locking there and tilting her head back so he could kiss the hollow of her throat. Isobel gasped, meaning to tell him to stop.
Instead, she dropped the candle, the flame snuffing out before it hit the carpet. Darkness fell over them like a shroud, and she reached for his neck, digging her nails into the skin there.
He growled against her neck and jerked her mouth back to his. This kiss was punishing, and she tugged him closer. Her hips slotted against his, and she felt something hard pressing against her stomach.
Everything in her body went tight and loose all at once.
She was not experienced, but she knew enough about gentlemen and their bodies. She had spoken to enough girls, married and unmarried, who had experience with a man’s arousal. He might pretend to be indifferent to her, perhaps even claim that the kiss was his way of teaching her a lesson, but she knew better. She could feel the way he wanted her.
No matter what he claimed, perhaps no matter what he thought, hewantedher.
But even as she thought that, she knew the heat in her own body, the throbbing in her core, was evidence ofherarousal. She wanted him, too.
When he took her bottom lip in his teeth, biting down hard enough to make her gasp, she arched her hips into him. Wanting had never felt like this before, liquid and aching and needy.
All from a kiss.
“Adrian,” she panted.
It was the first time she had used his name, and he pulled back, staring down at her, invisible in the darkness. Still, she could feel his eyes on her, the heat from his gaze traveling across her face.
Her lips felt swollen, bee-stung, slightly damp. Her chest heaved with every breath.
He stepped back, and cold air rushed between them.
“This was a mistake,” he said.
Hurt crashed through her desire. He was right, of course. Thishadbeen a mistake. One she never should have given into. And yet, hearing him say the words, uttered so coldly, was akin to driving a knife between her ribs.
She tilted her chin up, although he couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she said.
“I should not have?—”
“Let us put it behind us and forget,” she said, still doing her best to keep her composure. “Allow me to go to bed, Yer Grace.” Even as she said the words, she winced.
That sounded far more suggestive than she had intended.
Still.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat and she heard fabric rustling as he bent. “Here,” he said, pressing her candle back into her hand. A match flared, and he lit her candle again. The light illuminated the harsh line of his brows, the tight pull of his mouth.
“Goodnight, Yer Grace.”
“Goodnight, Lady Isobel.”
Her heart pounding, she all but ran back to her bedchamber. The door firmly closed behind her, she sat on the bed and pressed a hand against her chest.
The remnants of the kiss still pulsed lazily inside her. No gentleman had ever kissed her like that, as though he was starving and she was the antidote to his hunger. Yes, she hadbeen kissed before by a young lord who knew very little of what he had been doing.
The duke had known precisely what to do.
She touched her lips with trembling fingers. No, she should most certainly not have let him take such liberties, no matter what she might have wanted at the moment.
She could not trust him; her chance for salvation lay with the duchess and any future husband she could find. Not the mysterious duke with his carefully leashed temper and the hunger in his eyes.
The desire in his kiss.
No, she could not trust him.
