Was he being poetic? she wondered, and wished she had a way of knowing. She’d never inspired poetry in a man before—confidence perhaps, and friendship certainly, but never the pretty words that were invariably reserved for beautiful women. The fact that she wasn’t a beautiful woman answered the question well enough, she concluded.
“First you tell me I have hair the color of bark, and now I’ve chocolate eyes.” Her lips twitched with humor. “I’m a cacao tree.”
“Do cacao beans grow on trees? I rather thought it was bushes.”
“Trees,” she assured him. “At any rate, my eyes are the color they’ve always been. Maybe they’re a slightly different hue when I’m angry.”
“And I’ve only ever seen them angry,” he said with a nod. “Why is that, imp? Why have we never gotten on at all before now?”
“You said once it was fate,” she reminded him.
“Ah, yes, the divine ordinance argument. Clever of me.”
“Quite.”
He stopped the horses suddenly, and turned in his seat to look at her. “I don’t believe in fate, actually.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Aside from the inescapable realities of birth and death, we’re responsible for the paths our lives take. We each make our own choices.” He bent his head and whispered against her lips. “And I choose to do this.”
It was Mirabelle’s very first kiss. She was the eldest of her friends, but until this moment, she was the only one of them to have gone unkissed. Even Kate had stolen a kiss with Lord Martin—her heart’s greatest desire at one time—during her first Season. Kate had decided shortly thereafter, for reasons she kept to herself, that her heart had been sadly misinformed.
Mirabelle wondered if hers was as well…until Whit’s lips met her own. Nothing, she decided then, absolutely nothing could possibly be wrong about kissing Whit.
It was everything she imagined a kiss would be—and absolutely nothing like she would have expected a kiss from Whit to be—not that she ever allowed herself to imagine kissing Whit. But if she had it would have been forceful and—
Whit pulled back until he could see her eyes. “Stop thinking, imp.”
She reached out, took hold of his cravat, and brought him closer.
“Stop talking, cretin.”
He grinned against her mouth for a moment, and then he was kissing her again. Despite her eagerness, he kept things soft and gentle, a tender brushing of lips and breath. Her hand relaxed against his chest, and his own came up to lightly cup her face.
He kissed her as if she were an unfamiliar treat, in small careful tastes that had a pleasant warmth spreading in her chest.
He nibbled softly on the corner of her mouth, and the warm sensation bloomed and spread until her limbs felt heavy and her head felt light. His tongue swept her bottom lip and that pleasant warmth turned to an aching heat. She squirmed on the cushions, wanting closer, wanting more, wanting something she wasn’t certain how to ask for.
Whit’s thumb brushed down her cheek to press gently on her chin.
“Open for me, sweetheart.”
When she did, and his tongue darted inside, the ache became a demand.
Her hand fisted again and she heard herself whimper into his mouth. He stilled for just a second. Then in one quick move, he wrapped an arm around her waist, another in her hair, dragged her hard against him…
And took.
Later, much later, she would think that this was what she expected a kiss from Whit to be like. It was demanding, frantic, a battle of tongues and lips and teeth. But for now, thought was lost to her. She could do nothing more than grab handfuls of his coat, hold him close, and take in return.
His mouth slanted over hers again and again, until she was lost in the taste and feel of him. She struggled closer, her hands moving to his shoulders, his hair. Her mouth moved under his in desperate need. She wanted more. She wanted closer. She wanted something she hadn’t the name for.
But to her frustration, his own hands and mouth gentled and slowed to the easy tastes he’d started with.
And then he pulled away, leaving her breathless and thrilled and confused.
“I’ll not apologize for that,” he whispered.
“All right.”
“I’m not sorry I did it.”
“Neither am I.” But she was more than a little sorry he had stopped. “Why did you? Kiss me, I mean?”
He tilted her chin up with his finger. “Why did you?”
“I…” It was a fair question, she’d been kissing as much as she’d been kissed, but she wasn’t at all sure how to give it a fair answer. Not when her heart and mind were still racing.
“I kissed you for the same reason,” he said, straightening fully. He smiled just a bit and took the reins again to start them forward. “That gives us something to think about, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does.”
It was, Mirabelle thought, a very good thing the curricle pulled into the drive just then because for the life of her, she couldn’t think of another thing to say to Whit. She was rather surprised she was capable of thought at all.
At least nothing beyond—