A Kiss at Midnight

The tongue swept to her neck and she couldn’t help it, she squirmed against his hardness and a little whimper broke from her lips.

“Are your kisses like your hair?” The question was so soft that she almost didn’t hear it, lost in a sensual haze. “For one man only . . . saved for the man you’ll marry?”

“Yes, I’m saving both of them,” she said, gasping a bit, trying to pull herself together. Somehow her arms were caught between them so she couldn’t push him away the way she meant to.

“What about licks?” he asked.

She scarcely heard him over the wild beating of her heart. The very smell of him was intoxicating. Who knew that men—or was it only princes?—smelled like this, like secret spice with a touch of leather and soap?

“It’s preposterous to think that my seeing your hair will delay your future domestic bliss,” Gabriel was saying into the curve of her neck. “It’s absurd.” His whisper burned her skin, sending little quakes down her body.

“Isn’t it?” he said, raising his head and looking down at her. His eyes shone with a kind of dangerous pleasure. She knew it was dangerous, and yet—

“I suppose,” she said, wondering what exactly she was agreeing to.

“Rank superstition,” he said. His lips feathered along the curve of her cheek. “And don’t think this is a kiss, Kate, because it’s not. It’s rot to feel that you can’t show your hair to anyone until you’re trotting about under your own name.”

She gasped. He was, his lips were, caressing her ear. “Oh!” She couldn’t help turning her head to the side so he could . . .

“You like that,” Gabriel said, his voice husky, melodic. The voice of the devil, Kate thought dimly, but she didn’t care. “If I promise not to corrupt you, Kate, may I kiss you? Please?”

He was all enticing male weight and sweet voice, but Kate fought to think clearly. Did it matter if she kissed a prince in a garden? Would it change the fact that she was going to find a good man and marry him?

She didn’t think it would. Not a kiss. If it stopped with a kiss.

“You mustn’t seduce me,” she said, and then stiffened at the sound of her own voice, somehow dropped into a deep and sensuous register that she’d never heard before.

He reacted to the sound too. His body seemed heavier on hers all of a sudden. He pushed up on his elbows, and her arms were free, but she didn’t strike him, or push him away. Instead they just stared at each other, there in the sunlit cloister surrounded by tangles of wildflowers and a few half-eaten meat pies.

“I do not want you to seduce me,” she said, drawing on years of striking clear bargains with tradesmen. She had to make it clear so that he didn’t just swoop over her with all that princely beauty. “I am—I am a virgin and I intend to be so on my bridal night.”

Gabriel nodded, and a lock of hair fell over his eyes again. He was so beautiful, so starkly masculine, that her throat closed and she couldn’t remember what else she had to say.

“I will not take your virginity,” he said, his deep voice steady. Then his mouth quirked and he brushed his lips over hers again. “Even if you beg me to.”

“Arrogant pig,” she muttered. “I’m not your entertainment, Gabriel. I can’t imagine why you’re here with me, but I know that you should be in your castle with your guests.”

“For some reason, I’m mad about your kisses, Kate.” His eyes caught hers, and she stilled the way a rabbit does in front of a cheerful fox. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t stop thinking about you. Kissing you was the first thing I thought about this morning when I woke up,” he said conversationally.

She blinked at him.

“I had been dreaming about our kiss in the boat, when you were wet and cradled in my arms.”

“You make me sound like a prize trout!”

“I would have liked to lick off every drop of lake water,” he said, his lips feathering along her cheek again. “If you were mine, I would have bundled you up and then slowly unwrapped you by the fire.”

Kate tried to find words, but they seemed to be lost in a storm of sensation: the rough timbre of his voice, the thrilling pressure of his body, even the random tune of a lark woven together into a spell that kept her still.

“I woke up this morning,” Gabriel said, “thinking of nothing more than rolling over and pulling you into my arms and kissing you again. Kissing: only kissing. As if I were a green boy of fourteen. In case you don’t realize it, Kate, kissing is not a man’s usual inclination in the morning.”

She frowned at him.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he said, “what a virgin you are.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin,” she said stoutly. “Now if you’re done with reminiscing over your bawdy nightmares, would you mind getting up? You’re treating me like a feather mattress.”

“If I were treating you like a feather mattress, Kate—and believe me, there’s nothing I’d rather do—you’d be crying out with pleasure.”

Kate snorted. “Is there no limit to your vanity?”

“Are you daring me to prove myself?”

“No!” she said instantly, and gave such a decisive shove that he rolled to the side and she managed to scramble away.

Twenty-four

G abriel didn’t bother to rise; he just sprawled at her feet, a boneless, laughing man. He didn’t look like a prince at the moment. He looked as eager and alive as any Englishman gone a-courting.

“You—” she said, and stopped, shaking her head.

“Lost my mind,” he supplied. “Wick says so too.” He put his hands behind his head and grinned at her. “All I think about is you.”

“Absurd.” She bit her tongue rather than point out that she was skinny and old. “I don’t mean to concur with Wick’s assessment, but your castle is full of women who are ten times more beautiful than I. I’m sure your bride will rival them. Why aren’t you thinking about Princess Tatiana?”

“Because there’s something wickedly seductive about you, Kate. I’ll bet you’re more beautiful than the plump and powdery Victoria. And she was the most beautiful girl on the market this spring; everyone has told me so.”

“In the midst of lamenting over how poor Victoria has lost her looks,” she pointed out.

“They’re fools. You’re ten times more lovely than that angel over there. It’s not just because I snatched off your wig either. Do you know that your lips are the precise color of a raspberry?”

“Very nice,” she said, pretty sure that she ought to stop his compliments, but unable to do so. They felt like manna after the humiliations and fears of the last years.

“I love raspberries,” Gabriel said dreamily. “I like to nibble them, and suck them into my mouth until they explode in a burst of flavor. I like them every way, fresh, baked, in a pie.”

“Are you suggesting that I would taste good in a pie?” she asked, laughing a bit. She sat down on the very edge of the picnic cloth and picked up her wineglass.

“You would taste good in any fashion at all,” Gabriel said. “I am particularly fond of raspberry syrup.” There was sinful laughter in his voice.