Page 9 of Sir Hugo Seeks a Wife (Cinderellas of Mayfair #1)

Come kiss me, sweet, and make me love

And show me every pleasure bright.

Let’s dance and laugh and revels prove

And cling together through the night.

Athene tasted astonishment on Sir Hugo’s lips. Lips that were cold on this wintry night. Firm lips that held a trace of salt. Then those lips opened beneath hers, and she lost control of the kiss in a flaring second, hot as lightning.

Vaguely through the passionate melding of mouths, she felt him gather her closer, angling her across his body.

When his tongue slipped through to explore her mouth, she gasped in surprise.

Then made a long hum of encouragement, while a deluge of sultry pleasure swamped her.

Her shaking hands formed claws in his thick coat, as her head reeled with the onslaught of powerful sensation.

He made a soft growl against her lips, as his tongue danced around hers.

She couldn’t ignore the invitation and she responded with avid enthusiasm.

A deep throb set up between her legs, as the craving rose to fling off the inconvenient clothes that kept her away from that big, powerful body.

She squirmed in his lap and pressed nearer as their mouths clung.

Athene lost herself in a realm of lush heat. Of provocative nips and deeper incursions. Of pounding desire and surging passion.

Sir Hugo was the first to raise his head. Dazed, she stared up at him through the dim light of the carriage’s lamps. “More,” she said in a throaty voice that she didn’t recognize as her own.

His soft laugh felt like a continuation of that miraculous kiss. The pulse in her sex intensified, making her shift again. Even through his winter clothing, she could feel how he swelled against her hip. This proof of hunger made her shut her eyes and whimper.

He gave a frustrated grunt and reached up to rap the panel behind the driver. “Go round once more, my good man,” he said before the cabbie could slide the panel open. “I’ll knock when I’m ready for you to go to Blackfriars.”

“Aye, guvnor,” the man said.

Athene battled to focus her hazy vision on the man who had just kissed her to heaven and back. The golden skin was flushed. The blue eyes were almost black. His mouth was slick after those voracious open-mouthed kisses that made no allowance for innocence or reluctance.

He must have guessed that she was neither innocent nor reluctant.

It was a long time since Athene had kissed anyone.

She’d forgotten how lovely it was. Or perhaps kissing Hugo Brinsmead was especially lovely.

George’s kisses had snared her in sin, but she couldn’t recall George’s kisses being quite so intoxicating.

For a while in Hugo’s arms, the entire world had tumbled away to nothing and she’d soared through fiery space.

So when Hugo’s hold tightened and his head descended toward hers, she arched up to meet him halfway. This time, the pleasure didn’t surprise her. She surrendered in immediate delight. His mouth plundered hers, making her want. And shake. By the time the kiss ended, she was wild with need.

Sir Hugo smiled down at her with a lazy appreciation that had her toes curling in her sensible leather half boots. “By all that’s holy, you’re beautiful.”

For truth’s sake, she should protest, but she couldn’t summon the will. Instead, she raised a gloved hand to stroke the back of his neck. “Kiss me again.”

A smile of pure male satisfaction flashed across his face as he brought her closer. His mouth was so hot that Athene feared she’d ignite into a column of flame. Her breasts swelled in painful longing. She wanted his hands on her more than she wanted her next breath.

When she wriggled against his thighs to ease the pressure between her legs, pleasure sparked. A pleasure that she thirsted to follow to its incendiary end. Her hand closed upon his nape, as she strained upward, frantic for more. How she wanted him.

She wanted him…

Fear sparked.

Since leaving George, she’d remained chaste. Now she was within inches of abandoning all that carefully shepherded virtue and asking a man to take her. In a shabby public conveyance, no less.

She couldn’t let it happen, no matter how her senses starved.

Before she could ask him to stop, Sir Hugo pulled away. This proof of how attuned he was to her was alarming rather than reassuring.

“You’re thinking again, I can feel it,” he said with that wry humor that she liked so much. To her regret, she liked far too much about this handsome Yorkshireman.

“I must.” Regret weighed her voice. She should move away, but she felt so right curled around his body that she couldn’t muster the willpower.

“Must you? I’d be happy to spend the rest of my life in your arms.”

Her short laugh splintered, sounded like a sob. The idea of a life with Hugo was agonizingly tempting, even if it could never happen. “The driver and his horse might have something to say about that.”

Hugo dived in to kiss her quickly before she could think to defend herself.

If such a thought might arise, which she doubted.

“Seducing you in this ramshackle vehicle, Duke of Devonishire or no, wouldn’t do you justice.

I want privacy and time. You’ve kept me awake and yearning for the last few nights. ”

He’d thought about her? Warmth burgeoned in her heart. She’d thought about him, too, even if she knew that way lay only trouble. “You make seduction sound like a certainty.”

How on earth had she reached this point with a man she’d met mere days ago? She’d been swept up in a riptide and washed out into a stormy ocean. Land – and common sense – were out of reach.

“We could make magic together.”

Yes, they would. Even after those few kisses, her body had softened and turned liquid. However long it might be since she’d had a man, she knew what this restless heat meant.

It meant that she was on the brink of disaster.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” she said flatly.

At last, she carried through her mind’s command to shift away.

To her relief, he let her go. She needed to bring this giddy interval to an end.

By heaven, she shouldn’t have started it.

Before this, it had been onerous to banish thoughts of the attractive baronet.

Now she’d tasted that clever mouth, it would be nigh on impossible.

“If you hadn’t, I’d have kissed you. I wanted to kiss you the moment I first saw you.”

She crushed into the corner of the seat, although he hadn’t tried to keep hold of her.

If he had, she’d have something tangible to fight against. She didn’t like bullies.

She didn’t like people telling her what to do.

Sir Hugo must have realized that. She was clear-headed enough now to recognize that letting her initiate the kiss had been a matter of strategy.

He knew that she floundered against her own powerful impulses.

“I think…I think you should take me to Sylvie’s.” Her voice was thready.

To her relief, he nodded. “Very well.”

When he knocked on the ceiling, she heard a muffled response from the driver. Sir Hugo’s swift cooperation surprised her. She’d expected an argument, persuasion, perhaps more kisses. Absurd to be disappointed.

Absurd and dangerous.

But she couldn’t help feeling let down, as in silence they covered the short distance to Sylvie’s home.

Athene really shouldn’t have kissed Sir Hugo.

Not just because when she sent him on his way tonight – she hoped for good – she’d have trouble persuading him that she wasn’t interested in a flirtation.

But also because she was het up and alive in a way that she hadn’t been since her earliest days with George.

She’d forgotten what it was like to want a man with this greedy intensity.

Most memories of her lover were tainted with disappointment and anger.

With herself more than him. But kissing Hugo reminded her that before the shame and loneliness and struggle to survive, there had been pleasure. Pleasure that had made her mad.

She couldn’t afford to go mad again. It had near killed her to rebuild her life, after everything with George went sour. She couldn’t face doing that again.

Sensible words. True words. But words with no power to cool the turbulent rush of her blood.

She really shouldn’t have kissed Sir Hugo.

***

After the lumbering hackney pulled up before a discreet black door beside a stationer’s shop, Hugo stepped onto the dark street.

This part of London was more workaday than Mayfair, and nobody had taken the trouble to light it.

He offered his hand to Miss de Smith who was clearly torturing herself about what they’d done in the carriage.

He wasn’t. He was as pleased as punch. He’d imagined kissing her. He’d imagined more than that. But tonight proved several things. One was that she turned into living flame in his arms. A sensual miracle of a woman. The other was that while she didn’t want to want him, she undoubtedly did.

She accepted his help out of the carriage, then released him with betraying speed. “Thank you,” she said with the perfect aristocratic manners that he’d noticed from the first. “Please don’t wait. Sylvie will look after me.”

Hugo didn’t shift. “You’re not getting rid of me so easily.”

She stepped back. “Really, I’d rather you left.”

“And I’d rather you made your mind up, guvnor.” The rough cockney voice intruded on the rising tension between Hugo and Miss de Smith. “It’s a perishing night for a man to hang around.”

Hugo laughed. “Apologies, driver.” He turned to pay the man, as Miss de Smith knocked on the door.

It opened within seconds to reveal Madame Lebeau in a fetching sky-blue robe. She carried a lit candle. “Athene, what on earth are you doing here?” She sounded as English as Hugo did. “I saw the carriage pull up outside, but I didn’t expect it to be you.”

For once, Miss de Smith was stuck for words. She glanced between Hugo and her friend. “I’m…”