“Why are you doing this?” she asked huskily.
His fingers shifted to trace the edge of her bodice, the light touch making her stomach clench again with a thrilling sense of exhilaration.
“Because I must know.”
“Know what?”
His mouth traced a path of kisses up the line of her throat. “If your skin is as smooth as I have fantasized it to be.” He nuzzled the hollow beneath her ear. “If your hair smells of jasmine.” He explored the heated skin of her cheek before hovering just above her mouth. “If your lips taste as sweet as they appear.”
“You must not…”
Her words were halted as he covered her mouth in a fierce, shockingly brazen kiss.
Leonida’s breath tangled in her throat and her heart forgot to beat as her lips parted beneath his insistent demand. Over the years she had occasionally been kissed by hopeful gentlemen. A few had even been quite skilled. But never had such a simple caress seared through her, melting her resistance with a terrifying ease.
His lips tasted of brandy, as if he had sipped the spirit before entering her room, and his tongue teased hers in an oddly erotic dance. She felt dizzy, his male scent stirring her senses as surely as the clever fingers that cupped her breast in a possessive gesture.
She shivered, her lips moving beneath his with a ready response she could not hide. This was precisely what she had desired from the moment she had laid eyes on the magnificent Duke of Huntley.
It was, at last, the achingly sweet excitement blooming in the pit of her stomach that sent up a shrill of alarm through her mind.
Mon Dieu.
She had devoted the entire morning to preparing herself to ignore Stefan’s intoxicating presence. Had she not paced her room at Hillside, listing all the reasons her attraction for the Duke was such a ghastly notion? Not the least of which was the risk of being distracted from her true reason for being in Meadowland.
And here she was, melting in his
arms, just minutes after her bags had been unpacked.
Pressing her hands against his chest, Leonida turned her face from his devastating kiss.
“No…this is…”
“What?” he rasped, stroking his lips over the line of her jaw.
“Dangerous.”
He pulled back to regard her with smoldering eyes. “Are you afraid?”
Afraid? Her heart was pounding and her knees weak, but she knew that it was not from fear.
“I would be if I had any sense,” she muttered.
He searched her wide eyes, a stain of color splayed along his high cheekbones.
“Do you have a lover waiting for you in Russia?”
She stiffened at the harsh question. “Of course not.”
“It would not be so shocking, little dove. You are an exquisite temptation that few men could resist.”
“Just because my mother…”
He frowned as she allowed her defensive words to trail away. “This has nothing to do with your mother.”
With a wiggle, she slipped from his arms, her hand pressed to her churning stomach as she regarded him with a wary gaze.
“Please, your Grace, Sophy might return at any moment.”