Page 67 of Why Do Rogues Fall in Love?

Her heart gave a wild, delicious leap. “Then perhaps,” she whispered, “you ought not to attempt it.”

His head lifted abruptly from her throat, where his mouth had been working such delicious havoc upon her senses. Their gazes collided, and something fierce yet achingly tender flashed across his face. For one suspended heartbeat, he simply stared at her, his silver-gray eyes darkening with an intensity that sent a shiver through her. Then he pulled her into his arms, gathering her against the hard, heated wall of his chest, and claimed her mouth with a passion that stole the very breath from her lungs.

A gasp barely escaped before his mouth swallowed it. His embrace tightened, one hand cradling the back of her head as his lips moved over hers with a hunger that matched the wild, bewildering need awakening within her. The world dissolved into a vortex of sheer sensation, until Cordelia could scarcely distinguish the frantic beating of her heart from his.

Her first kiss upon the lips.

Shock held her rigid, a statue in his arms. This was ruin. This was every warning from her sister about rakes and rogues made flesh. But then, oh, then, the pressure changed. The fierce, claiming passion softened, gentling into something achingly tender. His lips moved over hers with a reverence that unknotted her spine. The tension seeped from her muscles, replaced by a bewildering, molten warmth. A small sigh escaped her, a sound of surrender and want.

A low sound vibrated in George’s throat, and he coaxed her lips apart. The glide of his tongue was an intimacy so profound, so shockingly wet and warm, that Cordelia’s mind blanked. There was no more ton, no more rules, only this dark, sweet exploration.

Pleasure, unfamiliar and dizzying, blossomed low in her belly, unfurling like a secret flower in the night. She learned him. The taste of brandy and mint, the faint, clean scent of starch and him. Her hands, which had been trapped between them, lifted of their own volition. Her fingers slid into the silken hair at his nape, anchoring herself as the solid earth seemed to tilt. A moan, soft and utterly foreign, hummed in her throat. She was kissing him back, mimicking the slow, drugging rhythm and learning the cadence of this silent, devastating language.

“God, Cori,” he murmured against her lips, his voice wonderfully rough. “You have no notion how long I have wanted this.”

She opened her eyes, startled by the undisguised longing in his expression. “Truly?”

“Do you doubt it?” His thumb grazed her cheek. “I have thought of kissing you so often that I was beginning to wonder whether the reality could possibly compare with my imaginings.”

“And does it?”

“My imagination has proved woefully inadequate.”

He kissed her again, and whatever reply she might have made dissolved into another helpless sigh. Every nerve, once tightly laced with propriety, came alive with a startling new alchemy. The kiss ceased to be something he was doing to her and became instead a world they were creating together, a stolen, breathless world in which she was a woman, greatly desired by this man. And the pleasure of it, heady and forbidden, swept through her like a tide, pulling her under until she forgot everything but the press of his mouth and the thrilling, terrifying certainty that nothing in her life would ever be the same again.

Lost to his kiss, Cordelia scarcely registered the change in her surroundings until the cushions gave beneath her. He lifted her as though she weighed nothing, carried her a few unsteady steps, and laid her gently upon the chaise. She made no protest; no alarm sounded, her senses too entangled in the warmth of his mouth and the way his presence seemed to eclipse everything else.

He broke the kiss only long enough to draw a breath, his forehead resting against hers.

“God,” he murmured, his voice roughened by restraint, “you taste…” A faint, incredulous laugh escaped him. “Better than the sun-warmed peaches I once imagined might rival temptation.”

Her breath caught as his mouth traced along her jaw, down the graceful line of her throat, lingering where her pulse fluttered wildly beneath his lips. The attention sent a shiver through her, sharp and delicious, her fingers clutching at his shirt as though it were the only thing tethering her to the world.

She felt the brush of his hand along her leg, its deliberate slide upward making her keenly aware of herself, of him, of the intimacy of the moment. Heat pooled low in her body, unfamiliar and insistent, as the air between them thickened with promise and peril.

Some distant part of her knew this was a precipice.

But she did not pull away. The shock of cool air on her bared thighs was a fleeting thing, banished by the scorching heat of his hands. His touch was firm and purposeful as he guided her legs apart, and the implication of his descent drew her gaze toward the scandalous painting upon the wall, which depicted a couple in a similarly intimate position.

“Oh…” Her gasp was less a protest than a stunned revelation. He meant to kiss her there. “George!” Cordelia gasped, thoroughly scandalized.

A fierce blush swept over her entire body as she realized he could see her most intimate flesh.

“What a pretty pussy you have,” he murmured. “I wager you taste even sweeter than your mouth.”

Pretty pussy?

A powerful, primal wave of hunger gripped her, a yawning chasm of curiosity and need that eclipsed all modesty. It was a hunger to know, to feel the truth of what her body was. As if he sensed the final surrender in her trembling silence, he hooked his hands beneath her knees, opening her wider to the night and to his gaze.

The vulnerability was absolute, terrifying, and electrifying.

The first touch of his tongue was not a kiss. It was a slow, deliberate glide along her most intimate seam, and the pleasure was not a bloom but a devastation.

Oh heavens!

It shattered the last vestige of her civilized self. Cordelia’s back arched off the chaise, a sharp cry torn from her throat. It was a feeling too immense to name, a shocking, wet, wicked intimacy that sent lightning arcing through her veins.

And then he began in earnest.