Page 19 of The Secret of Flirting
“I don’t pine for her, damn it!” He gritted his teeth. She was makinghimlose control. Forcing some calm into his voice, he added, “And if you think seducing me will buy my silence—”
“On what subject?” she asked in the silky tones he remembered only too well, the ones that had thrummed through his senses that night even when she’d been provoking him.Especiallywhen she’d been provoking him.
She trailed a finger down his jaw in a sensuous stroke that stirred danger in his blood. God help him. He should have known she would be an expert at temptation.
“I don’t need your silence,” she murmured. “Iamthe Princess Aurore, after all.”
“The Princess Aurore would not be touching me like this,” he choked out.
“Clearly, you know nothing about me. But since you persist in this nonsense, I might as well receive a reward from it,non?” She wrapped her hand about his cravat and fixed her gaze on his mouth. “Seduction would be going too far, I think, but perhaps a little... mutual enjoyment would not be amiss.”
Then she pulled his head down to her for another kiss. Bold. Hot. Yet somehow innocent. The way the real princess’s might be.
That’s when he realized his error. He’d assumed thathecould remain unaffected through this little dance, that he would be immune to an actress’s tricks. But the very smell of her—lilies and apples—seeped beneath his defenses. Her mouth was as delicious as he’d imagined, and her waist as tiny as he’d remembered it looking backstage.
If he had wanted her three years ago, despite her caked-on cosmetics and her outrageous gown and wig, he wanted her even more now that she was free of such things.
So this time when he kissed her, it was not on behalf of his country or his career. This time it was forhimand him alone.
Four
As he clutched her to him, Monique wondered if she’d lost her mind, attempting this. But he’d kept pushing and badgering her, trying to make her slip up.
So she must makehimfalter, make him question his dangerous suspicions. Monique Servais had treated him with contempt, so Princess Aurore must kiss him into oblivion.
She couldn’t just slap him and dart off; he might expose her to everyone. Or he might simply voice his suspicions to the count, who would see that as her not holding up her end of the bargain. She was supposed to convince people she was Aurore, and that was what she would do.
Looping her arms about Lord Fulkham’s neck, she flattened her body against him. And then everything got more interesting.
“Damn you,” he murmured against her lips. Then he took her mouth again with a shocking impudence, licking along her closed lips and inviting her to open for him.
So she did. And instantly regretted it. Because the moment he thrust his tongue into her mouth, she felt hot and aroused and so dizzy she had to cling to him for balance.
She’d been kissed in this manner a few times before, but never like this. His boldness made her body tremble and her mind swim as if through a fog. His tongue delved and searched, turning her into a quivering mass of wanting, and desire flashed over her like lightning through the sky, searing everything in its path.
The dark gazebo became their own private grotto as he kissed her more and more urgently, sending her up on her toes to enjoy his kisses to the fullest.
“God, woman, you have the most luscious mouth I’ve ever tasted,” he murmured in English.
She didn’t know that word,luscious, but she could guess what it meant. And the fact that she’d broken through his cool calm made her want to crow. “Do you taste many mouths?” she whispered.
“Enough to know that this is madness,” he growled against her lips before trailing kisses down her jaw to her neck.
“But pleasurable madness,non?”
He tongued her throat, sending exquisite shivers along her spine. “Oui.A very pleasurable madness.”
“Pleasurable enough to gain me a crown?” she asked, just to see what he would say. Or do.
He nipped her earlobe, and the tiny burst of pleasure-pain nearly made her swoon. She hated him for doing such things to her, for making herfeelsuch things. But she wanted him, too. Madness, indeed.
“That will show, curse you,” she murmured as she buried her hands in his hair to shift him away from her ear.
“No, it won’t.” He nuzzled her ear. “Though I wish it would. Actually, I wish I dared mark you somewhere more intimate, in a place no one would see but me.”
The words brought her to her senses and reminded her that her purpose had been to catch him off guard. Which apparently she’d done. So now she must extricate herself from this... increasingly dangerous situation.
She drew back to cast him a chiding look. “Now you are being ridiculous. I am not that sort of woman.”
