Page 42 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
“I will if you do me one favor.”
He eyed her askance. “What?”
“Kiss me again.”
His expression fell to abject regret. “No more.”
She knew full well that every honorable inch of his body and his soul were his superb qualities. She clutched him close. Her nipples inside her layers and layers of clothing beaded. Her body flooded with wet desire. He hadn’t done more than brush her lips and hold her near, yet she blossomed at his proximity. “One.”
His eyes told her no. “What draws us together, Wills, is not kisses.”
She was being a witch, but when she left she needed to take memories with her. “I’ve never kissed any other man. Only you. You owe me one more.”Many more.
“Stop this, Wills. You cannot have more.”
“Why not? Are yours rationed?”
“You must kiss other men. Men you might wed.”
“I want no others.”
“But they, I am certain would want you, my darling.” He threaded two fingers through an escaping curl. “You must let them. Learn what it is to want and be wanted.”
He was too kind, too courtly. “I know what that is with you.”
He crushed her closer. “This is wrong.”
Beneath her derriere, his obvious physical desire made her proud and greedy. “Or oh, so right.”
He groaned. In two deft moves, he pulled her ridiculous hat away and dropped it to the rug. Sinking his hands in her hair, he bent her to him and took her mouth in the kiss she’d been fashioning in every dream of a life with him. His lips were hot and demanding, exactly as she hoped. She kissed him back, ravenous for more.
He lifted her chin and trailed hot kisses down her throat. “You are so lovely. I think of you, imagine you here with me. I wanted you to come. Glad you have. If you hadn’t, I would have come to drag you here.”
She laughed, her hands fluttering over his shoulders and up his throat to his strong jaw. “I would have liked to see that. Papa would become apoplectic.”
Charlie continued his journey down to the hollow between her breasts. And he slid the fichu away. “Hmm. No pins. How kind of you.”
Chuckling, she caught his chin. The dimples in his cheeks appeared. “I don’t want to make this harder.”
“Hard? My sweet woman, being with you—and not being permitted to have you will forever be difficult.” He brushed hair from her cheeks as she let out a hoot at his doubleentendre.“Let us laugh, darling. Laugh and giggle.”
She fought down the lump in her throat. “Ba, Reverend! You do not giggle.”
“But you do!” He tickled her ribs and she squirmed, squealing like a piglet.
“Stop, stop, stop!” She caught his hands. “Just kiss me again.”
His expression fell to despair. “Would that I might all my life.”
Tears burned her eyes again.
He cradled her close, tucking her face into the crook of his shoulder. “I will be good. I promise.”
They sat in silent communion for long minutes, he with his lips in her hair, she with her hand on his pounding heart.
“Gossips have it,” he said at last, “that your papa will not give up his quest to gain you a husband.”
“A proper earl’s family, drowning in money and swimming in land.”
