Page 62 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Just a kiss,she thought, like the desert was just sand. Or the ocean was just water. Kissing Piers Gedrick Atherton was like standing at the mouth of the Nile and realizing the scope of it was beyond comprehension. That the beauty matched the peril, and in the awe-inspiring danger existed its own strange appeal.

He could break her.

He could protect her.

She feared him.

She needed him.

She wanted…this.

This sweet, languorous kiss. She wished it to go on forever. She felt the kiss in every part of her. In the places she ignored. It threatened the loneliness she’d so carefully cultivated. It stirred parts of her mind she’d kept dormant. The parts that had nothing to do with intellect and analysis. The darker places where she kept her young, fanciful desires hidden under shame and regret.

Perhaps shadows weren’t so bad,she thought as he brought both his hands to rest at the sides of her jaw. If creatures like him, both wary and kind, drew her into the dark and kissed her like this.

Little sparks and sparkles of light shimmered through her, lighting her up from the inside.

She could do this.

She could kiss him back.

Alexandra reached for him, placing her hands against his chest as she’d done before. This time, not as a barrier, but as a caress.

The sound he made vibrated through her. Through him. A soft growl of encouragement she felt in her lips, her throat, in the hands against his chest. He rumbled like a great cat, purring to be stroked.

His lips pressed further, his kisses taking on a hungry edge. He opened his mouth against hers, his warm breath flavored with something sweet, something seductive. His tongue hovered, but it never touched her.

He kept his word. How much did it cost him?

Her lips parted beneath his encouraging pressure, parted and closed again in a voluptuous rhythm with his. Their mouths danced, driven by a primitive instinct she’d never known she possessed. Compelled by instinct, she stepped into him, and only then did he enfold her in his arms.

She stiffened, but just for a moment before he distracted her with a nibble on her lip that thrilled through her.

Beneath the buttery soft material of his shirt, his body was hard as iron. And warm. So very warm, latticed with dizzying power she sensed rather than experienced.

He’d never used it against her. Not once.

She thought she’d feel shackled, captured, helpless in a man’s arms.

Yet here, surrounded by the scent of him, the strength of him, she felt… sheltered rather than shackled. Cossetted instead of captured.

And helpless, yes. Helpless against a beguiling, restless anticipation she couldn’t begin to understand.

A hunger. Yes, a hunger. To touch, to taste.

Her tongue ventured past his lips before she even realized what she was doing, rendering her the worst sort of hypocrite.

His breath hitched, and his great body seized, then shuddered.

She pulled back, and his head followed her briefly, retaining the seal of their mouths for as long as possible before she broke contact. “Did I—I shouldn’t—my tongue—I’m sorry.”

He rested his forehead against hers, his breath labored as though he’d run a league. “You can use your tongue however you want.” He leaned in for more.

She dodged his mouth. “But it’s not fair, when you can’t use yours. Because… that hasn’t changed. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.” He released a breathy chuckle, pulling her more tightly against him. “I’ll forgive you anything.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. Her cheek. Her jaw. “Now let me carry you to bed.”

She stilled, her silent war tearing her apart. She liked what he was doing. Liked the scratch and tickle of his soft beard against her neck and the contrast of his smooth lips.Liked his tendency to warn her before he was about to do something.