Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels #2) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,6
like a child. In the next moment, he had hauled her firmly against him.
“Hush, now.” His voice dropped to a deeper octave, a brush of dark velvet against her ears. “Hush, bychan, little one, my dove. Nothing is worth your tears.”
“You are.”
Mr. Winterborne went very still. After a minute, one of his hands came to her jaw, his thumb erasing the wake of a teardrop. The cuffs of his shirt had been rolled up to his elbows, in the manner of carpenters or farm workers. His forearms were heavily muscled and hairy, his wrists thick. There was something astonishingly comforting about being wrapped in his sturdy embrace. A dry, pleasant scent clung to him, a crisp mingling of starched linen and clean male skin, and shaving soap.
She felt him angle her face upward with great care. His breath fanned against her cheek, carrying the scent of peppermint. Realizing what he intended, she closed her eyes, her stomach lifting as if the floor had just disappeared from beneath her feet.
There was a brush of heat against her upper lip, so soft that she could scarcely feel it. Another touch at the sensitive corner of her mouth, and then at her lower lip, finishing with the hint of a tug.
His free hand slid beneath the fall of her veil to clasp the tender nape of her neck. His mouth came to hers in another brief, silky caress. The pad of his thumb drew over her lower lip, rubbing the kiss into the tender surface. The abrasion of a callus heightened the sensation, stimulating her nerve endings. She was suddenly lightheaded; her lungs wouldn’t draw in enough air.
His lips returned to hers, and she strained upward, dying for him to kiss her harder, longer, the way he had in her dreams. Seeming to understand what she wanted, he coaxed her lips apart. Trembling, she opened to the glassy touch of his tongue, helplessly taking in the flavor of him, mint and heat and coolness, as he began to consume her with a slow hunger that unraveled runners of feeling all through her body. Her arms went around his neck, her hands sinking into his thick black hair, the locks curling slightly around her fingers. Yes, this was what she had needed, his mouth taking hers, while he held her as if he couldn’t draw her close enough, tight enough.
She had never imagined that a man would kiss her as if he were trying to breathe her in, as if kisses were words meant for poems, or honey to be gathered with his tongue. Clasping her head in his hands, he tipped it back and dragged his parted lips along the side of her neck, nuzzling and tasting the soft skin. She gasped as he found a sensitive place, her knees slackening until they could barely support her weight. He gripped her closer, his mouth returning hungrily to hers. There was no thought, no will, nothing but a sensuous tangle of darkness and desire, while Mr. Winterborne kissed her with such blind, ravening intensity that she could almost feel his soul calling into her.
And then he stopped. With startling abruptness, he tore his mouth free and pried her arms from his neck. A protest slipped from Helen’s throat as he set her aside with more force than was strictly necessary. Bewildered, she watched as Mr. Winterborne went to the window. Although he was recovering from the train accident with remarkable speed, he still walked with a faint limp. Keeping his back to her, he focused on the distant green oasis of Hyde Park. As he rested the side of his fist against the window frame, she saw that his hand was trembling.
Eventually he let out a ragged breath. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I wanted you to.” Helen blushed at her own forwardness. “I . . . only wish the first time had been like that.”
He was silent, tugging irritably at his stiff shirt collar.
Seeing that the hourglass was empty, Helen wandered to his desk and turned the timepiece over. “I should have been more open with you.” She watched the stream of sand as it measured out second after yearning second. “But it’s difficult for me to tell people what I think and feel. And I was worried about something Kathleen said, that you thought of me only as . . . well, as a prize to acquire. I was afraid she might have been right.”
Mr. Winterborne turned and set his back against the