Page 27 of After the Spy Seduces

“Oh, I realize that,” he murmured. Because there wasn’t a passive bone in her body now as her hand at his chest slipped slowly upward until her fingers tangled in the hair at his nape. “I know exactly what you are, Diana.”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and her lips parted in a tantalizing invitation to be kissed. “And what is that?”

“Trouble.”

He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her up against him as his mouth came down over hers.

Her mind swirledbeneath the intensity of his kiss—no,allof her swirled as he twirled her in a quick circle, then stepped her backward to press her against the wall. As if he were afraid she might slip away even now. But at that moment, leaving his arms was the last thing she wanted to do.

He feasted on her mouth as if he were a starving man who needed this kiss to survive. So much so that when he cupped his hand against her jaw to gently lift her head and guide her mouth more openly against his, his fingers trembled against her cheek.

Letting herself surrender to the moment, she wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself into his kiss. She wanted this as much as he did—perhaps even more—because the desire she tasted in him was a sweet ambrosia that she didn’t realize she’d been craving so desperately until that moment. His hard body pressed along the length of hers, chest to chest and hips to hips, and the contact made her feel feminine and alive. Electric. And just as beautiful as he’d claimed she was.

“Christopher,” she whispered against his lips, having to say his name in order to make herself believe that this was really happening.

He smiled against her mouth, then pulled back only far enough to break the kiss. When he outlined her lips with his fingertip, she closed her eyes and sighed, only to gasp when he hooked his thumb over her bottom lip and gently tugged it down, opening her lips as he once more captured her mouth beneath his. But this time, he slid his tongue inside, to take sweeping plunges and explore the depths and recesses she willingly offered to him.

When he’d plundered her kiss so thoroughly that she lost her breath, she tore her mouth away from his to gasp for air. Her arms still clutched her tightly to him, so tightly that his hard muscles flexed beneath her fingertips as she splayed her hands over his shoulders in an attempt to feel all of his strength.

His lips went to her neck and placed hot, open-mouthed kisses against her throat, and his hands swept along the sides of her body. She knew he could feel her racing pulse beating against his lips, which sent an answering throb shooting wantonly down between her legs.

From the hallway right outside the door, a woman laughed.

Diana jumped in his arms, startled. The interruption suddenly shocked her back into the reality of what she was doing. And with whom.

“We should…stop,” she panted, desperate to find sense in her kiss-fogged brain. But her voice wasn’t at all convincing, even to her own ears, especially when she moaned out, “Probably.”

He smiled against her throat. “Why?”

Why?She blinked, not at all prepared for that logical question. “Because…because…” Sweet mercy, she couldn’t think of a reason. Except the one she could never utter aloud. “Because it isn’t at all proper.”

“Oh, yes, it is.” His mouth returned to hers, to tease the tip of his tongue at the corner of her lips as his fingertips now traced tantalizingly along her ribs. Goosebumps sprang up everywhere he touched. “It’s a very proper little kiss.”

That was the problem. Little kisses had a way of growing into so much more—especially aproperkiss. And how would she find the strength to resist him then? “Someone might see.”

“Not behind a closed door.” He nipped at her jaw, the act oddly more possessive than passionate, and all the more disorienting because of it. “And not in the darkness.”

Damn him for being logical! And double damn herself that she enjoyed being in his arms and at the center of his masculine attentions, that even now her belly fluttered with excited anticipation for his hand to travel upward to her breast and tease at the nipple that had already grown taut beneath her corset. She craved his touch, the way men in the desert craved rain.

Biting down a groan as she fought the urge to surrender, she forced out, “I’llknow, even in the darkness.”

He stopped and shifted back to look down at her. “You don’t like my kisses?”

Oh, so much more thanlike! “Your kisses are—” A burst of light caught the corner of her eye. “Fireworks.”

He grinned with a charming arrogance that sent her heart somersaulting. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say—”

“Not you. The party.” Slapping his shoulder lightly with her open hand to drag his attention away from her, she pointed at the wall of French doors that gave a perfect view of the front lawn and of the fireworks now being set off there to mark midnight. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “The footmen are lighting the fireworks.”

A predatory gleam lit his eyes. “I don’t give a damn about the party.” He gazed down at her with a look of such intensity and desire that she shivered. “I only want to keep kissing you.”

Her belly fluttered at the sincerity of that rakish admission. Had it been at any other moment, had he held any other expression on his handsome face, she would have accused him of empty flattery. But this…

Oh, this was a grand mistake!

“You’d better care.” She slipped away from him and instantly missed being in his arms. “Because everyone from the ballroom is about to come rushing in here to watch the fireworks through those windows, and we’ll be caught. You have to leave before they find us together.”Before I find myself back in your arms, and this time without the willpower to stop…“Go. Please.”

He stifled a curse and ran a hand through his hair.