He lowered his head a little, bent low to murmur in her ear, “You’re so very welcome.”
He kept his head lowered to that angle and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he intended to kiss her. And that knowledge caused several heated anticipatory sensations to flow from the toes of her feet to the crown of her head.
“Lucia?”
The throaty tone of his voice seemed to stroke everything within her and was doing so effortlessly.
“Yes?”
He lifted his hand to cradle her chin and tilt her face up to his. Her pulse rate increased when a slow smile touched his lips the moment their eyes connected. “I need to kiss you.” And before she could draw her next breath, he lowered his mouth to hers.
He had kissed her that night numerous times in the throes of passion, but she immediately thought this kiss was different. The passion was still there, but unlike before it wasn’t flaming out of control. What he was doing was slowly and deliberately robbing her senses of any and all control.
His tongue eased between her lips on a breathless moan and he seemed in no hurry to do anything but stand there, feed on every angle of her mouth, every nook and cranny. His kiss burned her in its wake, sharing its heat. He tasted like the peppermint candy he’d obviously been sucking on earlier.
But now he was sucking on her—her tongue at least; and he wasn’t letting up as he probed deeply, gently but thoroughly, plunging her into an oasis of sensations as his tongue continued to sweep over her mouth.
She felt something roll around in her belly at the same time he moved his body closer, and automatically the cradle of her thighs nestled the hard erection pressing against her, causing an ache that was so engaging she couldn’t do anything but moan.
This was the sort of kiss most men left a girl with after a date and not before the start of their evening. But evidently no one told that to Derringer and he was showing her there was no particular order in the way he did things. He made his own rules, set his own parameters. Now she knew why he was so high in demand with women, and why fathers warned him not to pursue their daughters. And why heat could resonate off his body like nobody’s business.
But tonight he was making it her business.
He shifted the intensity of the kiss without warning and the hands that were already wrapped around her waist tightened in a possessive grip. The probing of his tongue deepened and she could only stand there and continue to moan while her pulse throbbed erratically in her throat. Her hips moved instinctively against his and the heat that spread lower all through her belly didn’t slow down any.
There was no telling how long they would have stood there, going at each other’s mouths, if she hadn’t pulled back for air. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, licking her lips and and tasting him on her tongue. The pleasure she felt just being kissed by him was almost unbearable. She slowly opened her eyes to calm the turbulent emotions inside her.
For the second time that night, his hand lifted to capture her chin, lifting her face to meet his gaze. The look in his eyes was dark, intense, sexually hungry. At that moment, he looked as rugged as the landscape in which he lived. Westmoreland country. She never realized until now just how much that had defined him. She continued to hold his gaze. Mesmerized. Falling deeper and deeper in love.
“You, Lucia Conyers, are more than I bargained for,” he said in a deep, husky tone that sounded intimate and overwhelming at the same time.
She chuckled unevenly while wondering if this was how a kiss could easily get out of hand. Was this how a couple could take a kiss to another level without realizing they’d done so until it was too late to do anything about it?