Instead she reached out blindly, snagged handfuls of his coat, gripping it in her fists. And he laughed, the utter bastard—he broke away from her to laugh at her discomfiture. But he let the clutch of her fingers draw him closer, and she felt him press against her, trapping her between him and the wall. It hadn’t been what she’d intended, but at least she felt certain she wouldn’t tumble straight off her feet with his chest crushing her breasts.
His breath skated across her temple, and his hand slipped inside the back of her gown, searing her skin. He’d removed his gloves at some point, and the feel of his hand beneath her gown made her tremble at the intimacy of it.
The back of her head hit the wall, and she managed to whisper, “You can’t do this.”
But he could. And he was. And his fingers curved over her bottom and dragged her up and against him, and something inside her went hot and liquid, as if a pool of molten metal had settled in her stomach.
“Darling Jilly,” he rasped in her ear, “do you truly want me to stop?” His fingers were possessive, sliding over her bottom like he owned her. Despite the proprietary nature of his caresses, despite the cloud of passion that had descended upon her, she felt certain that if she confirmed it, he would release her. All it would take was one word, and he would step back, and do up her buttons, and she could recover her scattered senses. Just one word. She could say it. She could make her lips form it, force it out from between her teeth.
“No.” That was surely some other woman’s voice. She couldn’t even recognize it as hers; it was breathless and plaintive, not at all the sort of sound she would ever let cross her lips. “No, don’t stop. Please.”
But it was her voice, and her hands curling into his hair as he brought his lips back down to hers. It was her, lifting up onto her toes to meet him, her heart fluttering in her chest at the strange sensations he evoked within her.
Until he had touched her, until he had kissed her, she hadn’t realized just how much she had felt like a decoration—a pretty, pleasant object to be trotted out and perhaps perform on command. She hadn’t been a flesh and blood woman in years; she had convinced herself that she could be satisfied with a thriving social life, that she was unplagued by emotion, by any sort of baser human impulses. And she had been right, for the most part. Until he had knocked her off her shelf.
She didn’t want to marry him. She had no intention of making a second horrible mistake. She was certainly not going to fall in love with him. But she adored the way he made her feel. She enjoyed feeling desirable, and kissing was worlds away better than champagne.
All too soon he was drawing away, carefully disentangling himself from her grasping hands, and she murmured her disapproval, frustrated that he resisted her efforts to draw him back.
“That’s enough,” he said, and his voice was rough, almost irritable.