Page 31 of The Truth About Lord Stoneville

“I told her she could keep her precious fortune.”

“Did you, indeed? I would have given my right arm to see that.” Maria was proving to be an endless source of amazement. No one ever stood up to Gran—except this American chit, with her naïve beliefs in justice and right and morality.

It amazed him that she’d done it, considering how he’d treated her. No one, not even his siblings, had ever defended him with so little reason. It stirred something that had long lain dead inside him.

His conscience? No, that wasn’t dead; it was nonexistent.

“I now understand why you’re determined to thwart her,” Maria went on. “She does have a hateful side.”

He stared down into the goblet. “I suppose you’d see it that way. She sees it as protective.”

“Yet you’re angry at her.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, will you stop harping on that? I’m not angry at Gran.” He stepped closer to her. “And if you intend to stand out here all night and plague me with questions about it, I’ll give you something better to do with your mouth.”

She gazed up at him, perplexed. “I don’t under—”

He cut her off with a kiss. Let her knee him in the groin. Let her slap him. Anything was better than having her ask him about things he didn’t want to discuss. Ever.

But she didn’t kick him. She stayed very, very still, but she didn’t fight him.

He drew back to eye her suspiciously. “Well? Aren’t you going to punch me in the kidney? Pull a knife on me?”

A smile curved her lips. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I kick your shin and march off in a huff, and you don’t have to answer me. But I’m wise to your tricks now, Oliver. I’m not going to stop asking just because—”

He kissed her again, dropping the goblet so he could drag her close and take advantage of her gasp to plunge his tongue into her mouth. Her sweet, silky mouth. So warm and innocent.

So dangerous.

Swiftly he retreated.

She did not. “What was that . . . you just did?” she asked in a breathless voice.

Such clear evidence of her arousal made something resonate deep in his chest. And that wasn’t good. “It’s another way of kissing.” He ran his thumb over her lower lip, unable to stop himself. “A very intimate way.”

Maria heard his explanation in a daze. Another way of kissing? There was more than one? Was it supposed to make her pulse jump and her heart thunder? And why had Nathan never done it to her?

Great heavens, Nathan. She had let the villainousRockton himself kiss her, without a thought for her fiancé!

Still, she wanted to know why kissing was different with Oliver. Was it her? Or was it just that Oliver had experience that the respectable Nathan could never have?

“Do it again,” she blurted out.

Oliver’s eyes, black as the mouth of hell, glittered in the moonlight. “Why?”

“Don’t you want to?” Her heart sank. Itwasher. She’d been so inept that even a debauched scoundrel like Oliver lacked any urge to kiss her again.

“Of course I want to,” he growled. “But I don’t fancy having your knee shoved in my groin.”

“I won’t hurt you. I just . . . want to see what it’s like. That’s all.”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Didn’t your Nathan ever kiss you?”

“Not like that.”

“Never?”

She tipped up her chin. “Not all men are as shamelessly wicked as you.”