Page 28 of Her Rogue to Ruin
An image of that moment he’d walked out onto the moonlit balcony brought back everything she felt in that moment.
“I’m afraid there’s very little technique,” she said and then reached up to place a hand upon his broad, muscled shoulder. “I ached to touch you.” She lifted her other hand and drew her fingers along the fine stubble at the edge of his jaw. “I thought if I dared to get this close…” Portia closed the inches between them until her breasts brushed his hard, warm chest. “That I could have a taste of you.”
Phin wrapped an arm around her to seal their bodies together. “Show me,” he repeated.
Portia ran her thumb across the lush curve of his lower lip and then arched up onto her toes to brush her mouth against the spot. He groaned and gripped her tighter. The sound emboldened her, and she tipped her head to kiss him again, flicking her tongue out to taste him.
Something lit up inside her, and all her senses were lost in that touch of her lips against his. The heat of his breath, the scratch of stubble against her skin. He tasted of cinnamon and a hint of his whisky, and suddenly nothing else mattered but this moment between them.
He let her take the lead, though she could almost sense what it cost him to hold back. A little growl low in his throat as she deepened the kiss. A tremor rippling through him as she stroked her fingers through the hair at his nape.
Portia wrapped her hands around his neck and asked, “Any advice to offer?”
He was as breathless as she and dipped his head until his lips brushed the length of her neck. He nuzzled and then ran his tongue along the spot where her pulse jumped wildly.
“Bergamot,” he said on a husky whisper. “Your scent. I’d decided it was violets.”
“You thought about my scent?”
“Far too often,” he murmured and then pressed a long, hot kiss against her neck.
When he straightened and looked down at her, his eyes glittered in the gaslight. “Portia,” he said her name in an awestruck tone and ran the backs of his fingers along the edge of her face. “I’m not certain you require any lessons. You’re quite the seductress already.”
His voice held a teasing tone, but Portia sensed uncertainty in him too. That he was holding back, even as she was finally setting her own desire free.
“Don’t you wish to teach me?”
“I want—” He drew in a sharp breath and looked at the painting she’d begun. “I want to very much. Shall we meet back here tomorrow night?”
“Yes. I’d like that.” Portia hadn’t expected him to depart so abruptly, but he smiled as if he was pleased with their plan to meet again the following evening.
Then he immediately released her and went to retrieve his clothing.
“Phin, is something wrong?”
When he emerged, his shirt half-buttoned and his coat slung over his arm, he strode straight toward her, took her face in his hands, and took her mouth in an achingly gentle kiss.
“You did everything right, I assure you.” He brushed another soft kiss against her forehead. “I shall see you here tomorrow evening.”
Portia watched him leave with a mix of eagerness and uncertainty. It had all felt so right, and yet something had given him pause.
She was determined to find out what the next time she saw him.
* * *
Phin toldhimself that a fencing session with Selkirk would set his mind aright. That he would lose himself in the exertion and competition, and all that had happened with Portia would make sense.
No, that wasn’t it. None of it was a mystery—it had been an unexpected gift—and yet he was at sixes and sevens.
That kiss had unraveled him. Before he’d walked into her art studio he’d been one man—worried about his sisters’ futures, his mother’s entanglement with a rotter, and winning some ridiculous competition to make Evelyn Grove his mistress—and now, after having Portia in his arms, he was another man.
And all he wanted—all he could think about—was her. And that was the part that terrified him. For much of his life, he’d been able to exert control over his feelings. Or at least he’d succeeded most of the time. Sometimes, true emotions leaked out, but that only meant it was time to take the reins up again.
Defiance and anger only stoked his father’s rage. So Phin had learned to stifle them. Feeling anything, expressing any emotion, sometimes even happiness, could set his father off. And in public gatherings, all of them—Phin, his mother, his sisters—had known that the main goal was to appear and behave flawlessly so as to reflect well upon Viscount Pemberton.
And now one beautiful widow was beginning to loosen all the control he thought he possessed.
When Portia asked him to teach her how to seduce a lover, he’d had a moment of striking clarity and realized thathewanted to be that lover. He didn’t want Mrs. Grove, and he sure as hell didn’t want to help Portia seduce anyone else.
