“I understand,” she rushed. “Better than you ever could. It is my life, you know. I’m the one who could end up married to a man like that because no one else will have me.”
“Jack,” he protested. “I can find…”
“You can find me old men,” she said. “Do you know how that feels, to be so undesirable that you would only be wanted by—”
“Jack,” he cut in, “you are not undesirable.”
“Yes, I am,” she insisted firmly, refusing to be humored. “It is very clear that you think so, otherwise you never would have limited my—”
“Jack,” he interrupted, his brow furrowing, “how do I explain it? When I see you, I see your passion, your spark. That glint in your eyes lights a fire within me that—”
She shook her head, hating being pacified. “That is very kind but you needn’t say such things.”
“And if they are true?” he challenged, his gaze falling to her lips. “When you are near me…all I want…”
She swallowed. “All you want?”
Hunger filled his gaze then, as if he allowed some gate within himself to rise and his desire for her to escape.
“You,” he growled. “All I want is you.”
With that, his lips swept down upon hers.
Jack gasped against his mouth. She closed her eyes, and she could not think, because the touch of his lips was the most magnificent, devastating, torturous, and delicious thing that she had ever known in her entire life.
Even more devastating than the “Moonlight Sonata.”
Chapter Eight
The kiss rocked James from the top of his head to the tips of his polished shoes. She was a tidal wave of unexpected perfection. Desire? Ha! The word did not even begin to encompass the way he felt with her in his arms. It was beyond description, beyond bliss, beyond his wildest dreams.
She filled him up and made him hunger in a way he’d not felt in his entire life, and it was a damned dangerous thing. He had never kissed someone he was matchmaking. He’d never had the desire to do it, and more so still, he knew that he should never kiss one of his best friends’ sisters.
It was an unwritten rule.
Yet here he was breaking those rules with aplomb.
James held her tightly to him, savoring the feel of her body pressed against his. He let his palms roam over her back as he proved to her that she was, indeed, desirable.
He knew that he had made her feel unwanted in the ballroom, and now he could alleviate that. He could take away that pain by showing her just how desirable she was, and bloody hell, did he desire her.
He wanted to take her mouth, claim it, seize it, seduce it with every ounce of his body, and then by God, he would take her skirts, work them up her perfect calves, slip them past her knees, then—
No, he could not think such thoughts.
Such thoughts led the way to sheer ruin. She was in his keeping to find a perfect match, and how could he go about doing that when kissing her with his hands under her skirts?
Reality crashed in on him like the frigid Channel waters.
He thrust her back suddenly, his breath ragged. “Forgive me,” he managed.
She blinked, her eyes hazy with desire. “Forgive you?” she repeated.
“Yes,” he affirmed, his own breath ragged as he tried to quell the hunger for her racing through his blood. “I never should have done that.”
“I thought it was quite enjoyable,” she pointed out.
He stared down at her, stunned, as her rather blithe words penetrated his passion. He thought perhaps the kiss might have upset her or made her furious at him. But no…