A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,19

of a feather, he bussed her lips with a soft kiss. Once. Twice . . .

So soft. Oh God, so soft. His eyes drifted closed. He dipped again. On the third pass, he remained right there, his bottom lip pressed to the crease of her mouth. He nibbled, gave a teasing lick.

Helena smiled, trying to follow along. Her eager innocence was his undoing.

He wanted to devour her. Everything about her—her confidence, her cleverness and courage, her ridiculous grandmotherly gown—made him ravenous. She was so deliciously unschooled, uncertain but intoxicatingly eager.

She let out a little sound, the noise of delight and desire, and he matched it with a groan. His hands moved, smoothing his palms from her waist up the curve of her back. He felt her braid against the back of his hand and fumbled for it, wrapping it around his knuckles. He tugged, ever so slightly. Lady Helena arched her neck and sighed.

She’d held her body taut and upright, straining for his lips, but now she moved in a languid sort of daze, coming alive under his hands. She turned her head to breathe and her cheek scraped the stubble of his beard. Her hands climbed from his neck and dug into his hair, squeezing, pressing his face down. She burrowed into his chest until there was nothing between them. The soft, slight weight of her imprinted on him like warm wind to a stiff sail. His chest swelled; she filled his consciousness. He was propelled while he stood stock-still.

The heartbeat in his ears accelerated, blotting out all sound. If every horse in the stable had been set free, he would not have heard. His vision was reduced to flashes of her skin and her gown and her. Every sense was alive with Helena Lark.

He tried to think, he meant to think, but he’d been plunged into a pool of desire, and he was too far from the surface to swim up. He wanted to drown.

She was such a quick learner. When he tipped his head one way, she canted the other. When he teased her with his tongue, she met him with her own. Her hands trailed from his hair, down his neck, off his shoulders, kneading all the way. When she reached his biceps, she dug in. Her right leg hooked behind his left knee, and Declan groaned into her mouth.

The embrace unspooled so slowly, so gently. It was like unwrapping a delicate, forbidden gift that belonged to someone else. He was no thief, but God, he wanted this. With shaking hands, he worked back layers of ribbon and tissue, careful not to unsettle what was inside.

All the while, she kissed and kissed and melted against him, and he went on basking in her until his bad idea felt like the very best idea he’d ever had.

Helena Lark should not have thought of her grandmother during her first real kiss. She knew this. Thoughts of Gran were distracting and strange and a waste of very precious time. Even so, it was Rosemary Lark’s voice she heard in the final lucid moments before desire swallowed her up.

Well done, Lena, said the sweet, aged voice. I should expect nothing else.

Or that was what Helena hoped she would say.

Gran had been a proponent of darkened stables, ridiculous nightgowns, and men of dubious, groom-spy distinctions.

Helena felt another swipe of Shaw’s mouth, and stopped thinking. Sensation shimmered over her like a net, and she knew only sound and feeling and breath.

How could she think when she was working so very hard to keep up with his mouth? His lips were there one moment, gone the next, there again. Oh, but the last kiss did not retreat; it was prolonged softness, then less soft, then not soft at all, but thrilling. His mouth canted slightly and they fit perfectly together, two halves of a whole; then he canted left and they fit again. It was soft and slick and fast and very, very slow. Desire filled her body like steamy water filling a copper tub: fogged brain, flushed chest, her insides a swirl of liquid heat.

While she melted, strength poured from him like a river over a wheel, and Helena spun and spun. Large hands roved her back. Her instinct was to fall back to be held, but she also wanted to climb him. He allowed for it all, holding her upright with muscled arms and thighs that felt like marble.

With concerted effort, she remembered to breathe. There was so much to feel.