Page 23 of Let Me Be Your Hero
They say that curiosity killed the cat, and it would certainly be the ruin of Isabella Astley. Unable to resist, she inched her hands lower… and lower… and lower, until she was stroking his shape through the wool of his breeches.
Dear God, how thick is he? was the last coherent thought she had before Archibald seized her wrists in an iron grip. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back on the stone bench, her arms pinned over her head by one of his hands. He held her in place with his hips and hovered above her, his eyes wild.
Oh, she liked this! She liked this a little bittoomuch, the notion of this powerful man wanting her to desperation.
She let her legs fall open and rolled her hips against the same bulge she’d been exploring with her fingers just moments earlier. “I can’t decide whether I want you to let me go or not,” she panted. “Part of me wants to keep touching you. But part of me likes thisso much…”
“God, Izzie,” he said, his voice shaking with a potent mix of desperation, desire, and despair. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Yes, but will you die a happy man?” she asked, giving a little moan as she found a particularly good angle at which to rub herself against him.
He gave a bleak sort of laugh. “The happiest man on the face of this earth, if we see this through to its natural conclusion. But I can’t take yourmaidenheadon astone bench.”
“I know,” she sighed. “But part of me really,reallywishes that you could and that you would hold my wrists while you do it, just. Like.This.”
He made a strangled sound, and his lips found hers, and even better, his free hand landed, firm and hot, on the side of her waist. Inch by agonizing inch, he slid it up, slowly, much too slowly, until his meaty palm covered her breast.
He released her wrists then, but she didn’t even mind because the reason was so he could draw her bodice down, exposing her straining nipple to the cool night air.
Without giving her time to catch her breath, he put his lips over it, andoh! ThesensationsArchibald was evoking in her! She threaded her fingers through his hair, nails scouring his scalp as she desperately tried to hold him in place. There was no need. He wasn’t going anywhere. He worshipped her with kisses and nips and long pulls that had her writhing on the bench, and it was a good thing his strong, capable hands were at her ribcage, holding her in place, or else she would have tumbled to the ground.
“So good,” she gasped. “So good! Archibald…”
With a growl, he came up and seized her lips, and she squirmed beneath him on the bench as he kissed her ferociously and touched every inch of her torso with his strong, warm hands. She was lost to everything but him. The only thing she could feelwas his touch. The only thing she could hear was his guttural breathing…
Wait… A hazy thought formed in the far reaches of her brain. Shouldn’t…
Shouldn’t she also be able to hear the orchestra?
He seemed to realize it in the same instant, because he stopped kissing her, pressed his forehead against the cold stone bench, and muttered a curse.
He immediately cringed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“That’s all right,” Izzie gasped. “My brother says that word all the time. I mean my brother Harrington. Not Edward, obviously.”
His expression was pained as he pushed himself up. “Obviously.” Taking her hands in his, he helped her sit up, too. “It sounds like the party has ended. You’ve got to get back inside before you’re missed.”
Sighing, she tugged her bodice back into place. “I suppose I should.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t suppose there are any circumstances in which your parents could be persuaded to let me marry you tomorrow instead of taking you back to Gloucestershire?”
Her heart skipped a beat. It was a little bit frightening how quickly she was falling for this man, although really, who could blame her? It wasn’t merely that he was the finest physical specimen in all of London. He seemed genuinely interested in her book, and he kissed her like he would die if he couldn’t possess her. It was a heady combination.
And she knew herself well enough to know that she had a tendency to rush into things, and that this tendency occasionally led to disaster. And she was well aware that she scarcely knew this man. And yet…
Archibald didn’t feel wrong. He felt…
Perfect. Perfect forher.
“Probably not,” she said in answer to his question. “In fact, my father departed for Cheltenham this morning, so he isn’t even available to ask.”
She sighed. It was most likely for the best that the end of the Season was about to push them apart, at least for a few months. It would prevent her from doing something rash, would force her to slow down enough to see if this glittering, gossamer-thin thread that had sprung up, tentatively binding her heart to his, would prove strong enough to hold.
He nodded, staring at the ground, then stood. “I am going to write to you. I’m going to write to you every day. And when we see each other again—”
“Yes,” she said. “However you were going to finish that sentence, the answer is yes.”
He framed her face with those hands that were so strong, yet so gentle, and brought his lips to hers. He touched her the way an archaeologist would touch a two-thousand-year-old Greek vase, as if she were rare and precious.
