He gave her a wide smile and she knew, just knew, he was going to say something outrageous. ‘Kisses, Elisabeth. We’ll play for kisses.’
That delicious tremor made a return journey down her spine. Why not? If anyone found out she’d been alone in a closed carriage with a man, no one would care what they’d done in it. The sin was already committed if they played for kisses or not. She might as well go the distance. In the last twenty minutes she’d committed almost every sin known to debutantes.
It seemed a very short fall to include this one to the list.
Elisabeth smiled. ‘Ask your first question.’
Chapter Three
‘What colour are your eyes.’ The question caught her by surprise. She hadn’t expected it to be so simple. But perhaps that was his strategy: lull her into complacency and edge gradually towards what he really wanted to know.
‘My eyes are brown.’
Dashiell shook his head, a disarming grin on his face. ‘No, they’re not.’
‘I beg your pardon? I should think I’d know what colour my eyes are.’
Dashiell chuckled. ‘A woman who climbs out windows cannot merely have brown eyes.
Whisky perhaps, sherry, cognac eyes maybe.’
‘Are you suggesting she must be a drunkard to climb out the window?’
‘No, she must be unique. Anyone can have brown eyes. Only a few can have eyes the colour of aged port.’
After four Seasons, she should be immune to such flattery. More than that, she should know such flattery for what it was: empty words. But it was too tempting to play Dashiell’s game and far too much fun. More than that, a very curious part of her wanted to see where it would lead.
‘Unique is so very close to odd, we must be careful,’ Elisabeth ventured. She was flirting boldly now, far more boldly than she’d flirted with the young men of London. She tried to ignore the skittering sensation settling in her stomach. He was studying her intently, his eyes roving her face, resting on her lips in a manner that made her feel utterly feminine and powerful. Perhaps she’d decline the next question simply to explore his unspoken invitation.
She ran her tongue over her lips, her mouth having gone dry at the prospect of her audacity.
‘Ask me another question.’
‘What were you doing climbing out the window?’ His voice was quiet, his gaze focused on her, making it clear he didn’t want her to answer the question any more than she did.
‘You know I don’t want to answer that,’ Elisabeth said softly.
‘That’s why I asked it.’ His answer was hoarse. ‘It’s not nearly far enough to Greenwich to ask questions you’ll answer when all I really want to do is kiss you.’
He leaned across the carriage, closing the small gap of space between them, with a guiding hand at the nape of her neck, drawing her mouth to his, her body to his. Never had she experienced a kiss like this. Elisabeth gave herself over to the seductive pressure of his lips, to the sensation of being in a man’s arms. This was no chaste peck on a closed mouth or a turned cheek. This was the kiss of a man who desired her, the very proof of that desire evidenced in the hardness of his arousal where it pressed against her trousers. His hands cupped her bottom and she was suddenly, keenly aware of her position on his lap, her legs on either side of him.
He deepened the kiss, his hands moving upwards to pull the tails of her borrowed shirt from the waistband. His hands slid under the material, warm on her skin, moving upwards to take her breasts. A little moan escaped her as his thumbs caressed the tender skin above her nipples, sending a stab of white heat to her belly. This was absolute wickedness. She was entirely wanton in his arms, pressing herself ever closer to him in her determination to assuage the need he so adroitly aroused in her.
This was absolute madness. He needed to call a halt to it before it got out of control. His last vestiges of rational thought laughed at him. Before it got out of control? He had his hands under a woman’s shirt while she moaned into his mouth and pressed her provocative hips to his erection. By any standard, it was already out of control and likely to remain that way if she so much as wiggled those hips one more time. He’d have those delectable trousers off and her beneath him on the carriage seat in a matter of moments.
Elisabeth of the trousers and the cognac eyes was driving him mad. She smelled of lavender and he had the wild idea that if he could sink himself in her he would find something he’d been looking for, something he’d lost eons ago. Dashiell’s hands worked the flap of her trousers open and came to a frustrating halt. The carriage had stopped.
Dashiell breathed a ragged curse and drew back. ‘It seems we have arrived.’ Perhaps later he’d think on this as a timely interruption which had spared him no end of worries but right now the interruption was nothing more than a deuce inconvenience that left him in a rather heightened state of unfulfilled arousal.