The First Proposal - Chasity Bowlin Page 0,23

palm, his fingers spearing into her hair. It wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t domineering. But it was masterful and powerful. And from the way he kissed, it was glaringly apparent that he was well versed in such matters. But that thought did nothing to sway her from her present course. All that mattered was that she wanted that kiss never to end. With that thought, Percy felt herself falling, her body going lax and sinking against him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He hadn’t intended to kiss her. But the road to hell was paved with the best of intentions and if this was the path to Lucifer’s gate, he’d happily follow it. One taste of her sweet lips, the sensation of her velvet skin beneath his finger tips, of her silken hair wrapped in his fist, and every carnal impulse within him had roared to life. And heaven help him, her sweet response was doing nothing to abate his desire.

Unable to resist, he pulled her closer. Close enough that he could wrap his arms about her and feel the lushness of her curves pressed against him. She gasped against his mouth and it was an opportunity so divine it could not be ignored. He deepened the kiss, sweeping his tongue past the softness of her lips, stroking against her tongue with his in a sensual dance that had her gasping. Her response was untutored, sweetly innocent, but bold nonetheless, when she matched those strokes, when she kissed him back with equal ardor.

It might have lasted seconds, minutes or even a lifetime. Whatever the duration, it was not enough. Kissing her once proved to him beyond any shadow of doubt that she had marked him for the rest of his life. No woman had ever made him feel as she did, not even in the wildest and most reckless days of his youth.

She clung to him, her arms wrapped about him, just as he held onto her. Her fingers dove into the hair at the nape of his neck, not to pull him away but to bring him closer. And Algernon was helpless to do anything other than give into their mutual desire no matter how ill timed it was.

Dragging his lips from hers, he kissed the softness of her cheek, her ear, along the delicate line of her jaw and then down her neck to where the pulse beat erratically. Flicking his tongue over that spot, he followed the caress with a gentle nip that drew a gasp from her. As he repeated the gesture, that gasp faded into a soft moan that sharpened his need until it cut like a blade.

His hands drifted over her shoulders, fingertips sliding over fabric and occasionally the satin of her skin. When he reached her waist, he guided her down onto the blanket until she was lying there, stretched out before him. Algernon drew back for a moment, his gaze sweeping over her from head to toe. She was like a goddess in repose.

“You’ve done me in,” he said.

“Me?”

“Yes. Here I am, a man of six and thirty, struck down by a self-styled spinster who has the face of an angel and the body of a goddess… Have you no notion, Persephone, how aptly named you are?”

“Don’t talk. Just kiss me again before I come to my senses and go running home,” she whispered.

He whispered an epithet and then did as she bade. Why wouldn’t he when there was nothing more he wanted in the world?

The first kiss had started a fire in them. The second fanned the flames to new heights. It roared inside him and he wanted nothing more than for her to feel it too. The need to see her in the full flower of passion, to know her pleasure, it was as basic and fundamental to him as the need for air or water.

As his lips played at hers, teasing and seducing, his hands roamed her body. Stroking, alternately soothing and arousing, he touched her but not where she needed to be touched. Not where her body ached for the weight of his hands of the press of his lips. And yet he knew she didn’t fully comprehend it, she didn’t understand why she strained against him.

At last, unable to resist the sweet temptation any longer, he brought one hand up to cup the softness of her breast, to test the weight of it in his hand as he brushed the pad of his thumb over the hardened peak of her nipple. She broke