“Elias,” she sighed, and it was his turn to shiver with pleasure. Through the storm of kisses, she’d inflamed him with wordless murmurs, but this was the first time she’d spoken his name.
“My love,” he whispered and kissed her mouth again. Her heat was more addictive than opium. Her generosity was as arousing as the touch of her skin.
Kissing had been wondrous enough, but her swift capitulation tested the leash on his hunger. The devil inside him whispered that it would be easy to push her down onto the chaise longue behind her and achieve an incendiary end.
But he didn’t want her to regret what they’d done. Despite her passionate response, he didn’t fool himself that tonight’s encounter meant wholehearted surrender.
Dear sweet God, what he’d give for such a surrender.
Until she offered that, he had to stay on the side of innocence. Despite the burn of her mouth against his. Despite her incoherent murmurs goading him on.
Her kisses turned into the most exquisite torture, but he’d rather face the hangman than curtail this chance to touch her. These kisses might be all she ever granted him. He plundered her mouth, reveling in her unfettered response, her muffled sighs, the way she tugged him nearer.
Breathing roughly, she withdrew a fraction. He felt that distance like a chasm.
“Elias.”
This time triumph didn’t stir his blood. He already knew what the next words would be.
“Elias, please…” The broken plea emerged as she raised a shaking hand to his chest. “Please stop.”
For one sizzling instant, he pretended not to hear. She liked their kisses. He didn’t mistake that. He could coax her into yielding more.
But she was trembling and while he wanted her beyond endurance, he also loved her. He couldn’t make her less than she was. That wasn’t love.
He felt like he scraped away his skin with a blunt ax when he forced his arms to loosen and his feet to retreat a pace.
Her blue eyes were hazy with arousal when she raised them to his. “Thank you,” she whispered, lips red and swollen after his voracious kisses.
“For kissing you or for stopping?” Despite his best efforts to edge back from the precipice, his hands curled against her waist. It would take so damned little to give passion its way.
“For stopping.” To his admiration, that alluring mouth curved. “And for kissing me.”
She remained within his grasp. After such long and wounding discouragement, he wasn’t about to give up the privilege of touching her until she made him. Even if this wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy the beast stirring after those untrammeled kisses.
He was as hard as a ship’s mast and only the most painful exercise of restraint stopped him from taking advantage of her willingness. She didn’t know how close he’d verged to ripping away that pretty dress and showing her how much he wanted her. The craving to push onward beat like thunder. He was hellish near to shoving her against the wall and proving in the most basic way that they belonged together.
Of course she didn’t know. She was an innocent, despite her courage and cleverness. Tonight her innocence kept her safe.
Her innocence and his love.
The words “I love you” hovered so close, but her reaction the last time he’d expressed the full extent of his feelings kept him silent. “I’d like to kiss you again,” he said gruffly.
“I’d like that, too, but it would be wrong.”
The regret in her voice made the beast strain against its bonds. Her admission that he didn’t yearn alone fed dangerous appetite. “Why?” he asked with sudden heat. “You’re twenty-five, Marianne. A lovely woman shouldn’t be a stranger to pleasure. It’s such a damned waste.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Pleasure?”
“Yes, pleasure,” he snapped. “More than you’ll find in a few kisses, however heady.”
She raised a shaking hand to glistening lips. They were so physically attuned, he felt like he touched her at the same time. “That’s wicked.”
He smiled. “No, merely human.”
“I should go,” she murmured without moving.
Elias stared down into her perfect face. The widely spaced eyes. The gentle arch of her brows. The voluptuous mouth that had always lured him. Now he’d tasted that mouth, he feared no wine would ever compare.