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He teased her lips open, and she let him in, welcoming him with a breathy little moan.

“If I were another, I’d be horrified, but I’m not a proper gentleman, Marcia,” he whispered harshly between each glide of his tongue against hers. “You think we are friends, but you should know precisely the manner of man that I am.”

“I do, Andrew,” she said, those enormous, saucer-sized eyes blinking slowly.

Terror filled him at the absolute trust and adoration he spied in her innocent eyes.

Determined to repel her, he gripped her hip and caressed her roughly.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and then shifted towards him.

And he was lost all over again.

Andrew consumed her mouth, making love to that flesh as he’d longed to, at last acknowledging that want in this moment.

He slanted his lips over hers, harsh and unforgiving in his kiss, and she only moaned her pleasure.

Taking advantage of that slight opening, he slipped his tongue inside and tasted even more of her, dragging her skirts up, and capturing her ankle, he brought it about his waist, anchoring her to him.

Their kiss grew frenzied, a primal mating he was hopeless to gentle, and given the way she thrust herself against him, as if attempting to climb inside him, Marcia didn’t wish him to gentle it.

Andrew caressed the bare calf he still gripped in his hand, reveling in the satiny softness of her skin. Had he ever felt skin so fucking soft? Like the finest of spun silk.

There came the click of a door opening, and a surge of noise spilled into the street and into this moment, and he yanked his mouth from Marcia’s. The harsh rasp of his breath blended with Marcia’s equally noisy, raspy pants.

They needn’t have worried. The pair of blokes stumbled past them as if it were the most natural thing in the world for two strangers to be making love against a wall in these streets.

And in truth, it was.

Only, respectable, young innocent women did not visit these places. That reminder was sobering enough to chase away Andrew’s powerful hungering to continue what they’d started.

“Come,” he said gruffly.

As he led her to his carriage, she didn’t speak a word.

Neither of them did through the length of the carriage ride.

Without so much as a parting goodbye, he deposited her near her household, following her with his gaze until she at last disappeared within the safety of her family’s fold.

He suspected this marked the end of Marcia’s self-edification on the matters of forbidden pleasures. He should be relieved, and yet, as his carriage took him back to his household, he couldn’t explain the wave of regret at this being the end of his time with her.

Chapter 9

Marcia was meeting Andrew.

It was just Andrew.

The same Andrew she’d known since age nine and with whom she’d swum and fished and played spillikins and lawn bowling. They’d executed endless pranks upon her parents’ guests when he’d joined them for summer house parties.

As she prepared to meet him that night for their latest rendezvous, she reminded herself nothing had changed just because he’d kissed her. Why, it hadn’t even been the first time. There’d been two. The angry kiss in his carriage. And then the lusty one.

Her heart tripled its beat.

She’d thought numerous times since she’d enlisted his help that he’d been disgusted by her.

Until his kiss outside the arena.

She froze with her fingers on the door handle. Would a man truly repelled by her continue to kiss her?