Page 7 of The Secret to Swooning
“Pardon me?” he asked, leaning lower.
“Get me out of here.” Every word ground to mulch between her teeth from behind barely moving lips.
He rearranged his arms and hefted her up, cradling her like a babe. “Lady Ann is unwell. We must get her air.” He strode for the exit.
“Put her down, you brute!” An ear-piercing demand.
“Your mother’s angry,” he whispered.
“Get me out of here,” Ann repeated.
“She’s chasing us.”
“Run faster, Lord Dartmore.”
“Sorry, love. This is as fast as I can go while carrying an entire adult human. And I think you should call me Everette since I’ve absconded with you and all.”
She turned her face into his chest and groaned. Or was it a laugh? Hard to tell. His heart beat faster, an increased rhythm that had little to do with his increased pace.
“Aha. Lady Catherine is bellowing for your mother. And your mother, it appears, is turning around. Would never have thought to feel grateful to that dragon.”
At the end of the hall, a door stood slightly ajar. He kicked it open and slammed it shut with the bottom of his boot. “Whew. We’re safe now, love.”
She lifted her face from his chest and studied the room. “A library.” She’d wrapped her arms around his neck sometime during their escape, but they stiffened now, as if she only just realized what sort of position they were in—a compromising one. “You can put me down now.”
“Yes. Of course.” He strode across the room and sat in an armchair, settling her in his lap. “There. We’re down.”
“Me. Putmedown.Youmay remain standing.”
“Why would I do that? I did all the running. I deserve a rest.”
She parted her lips, likely to lecture. He wanted to kiss them. And so he did. Leaning low, tilting his head to find the perfect angle, he pressed his lips to hers. She sighed, a small thing, as her arms tightened about his neck. From stiff to pliable in less than a breath, and him the exact opposite. Hard need—kept at bay too long—roared through him, and he deepened the sliver of space between her lips with his tongue.
She gasped and let him explore further.
He broke the kiss, just barely, and spoke into the tiniest of fog-filled space between them. “You can explore, too, love.”
Her eyes, gray and green around the edges, sparked, fired, burned him to ash. That incendiary gaze darted to his lips, stuck there, and with the speed of a snail of a sunny day, she raised her lips to his and kissed him back. The first time she’d kissed him, her eyes had been on another fellow across the room, and Everette had wanted to push her away as much as he’d ached to pull her closer. Today, she saw only him, touched only him, and he never wanted it any other way.
He let his hands explore as her tongue did the same. They wandered over her ribs until they found the subtle, soft slopes of her breasts beneath gown and stays and chemise. The edgeof her bodice, too high for his lusty curiosity, skimmed a filmy fichu. He tugged at it until it gave way and fluttered from his fingers to the floor.
She gasped, ripped her lips from his and jumped out of his lap. Her hands fluttered to her now revealed decolletage, and he could not look away. A treat. He wanted to eat her up.
She looked at him as if he were a hungry wolf.
He was. The only woman he wanted was right where he wanted her. So near. He could still smell her on his clothes. He inhaled deeply. Some flower and whatever tea she’d had that morning.
“Mama was right,” she said, stumbling backward until she hit the door. “One must be entirely careful whose arms you swoon into. I… I must return to the parlor.” She turned, grasped the door handle.
“Ann.”
She froze.
“Come back here.”
Slowly, she turned and met his gaze, and in her wild, round eyes he could not tell—would she run to him or away from him?
In Which Our Lovers Prove True Proficients
