The Pirates Kiss...
From Chapter 1
“Last time we parted you kissed me goodbye,” Daniel
said.
There was a short, sharp silence. “I remember,” Lucinda
said, adding crushingly: “It was not a very good kiss, was it?”
She remembered that it had been sweet, though, despite
their lack of experience. And truth to tell, she had little more knowledge
of kissing now than she had had then. She suspected that Daniel’s experience
with the opposite sex, in contrast to her own, had increased in leaps and
bounds, a suspicion confirmed when he said:
“No doubt we could do better now.”
Lucinda’s stomach muscles clenched with a mixture of
nervousness and longing. She tried hard to ignore it.
“No doubt we could,” she said, “but such things were
over between us a long time ago, Daniel.”
“Then consider it no more than an expression of
thanks.”
“Most people,” Lucinda said, “would make do with a
handshake.”
Daniel smiled. “But not me.”
He drew her in to his body and the shadows merged and
shifted as his arms closed about her. His lips were cold against hers.
Lucinda had imagined that she would resist him but now she found that she
did not want to do so. Their bodies fitted together as though they had never
been apart, as though the intervening years had never existed.
Lucinda parted her lips instinctively and felt his
tongue, warm and insistent, touch hers. She had wondered how he would taste
and now she knew; he tasted of the sea and the air and something clean and
masculine and deliciously sensual. She felt shocked and aroused, and shocked
by her own arousal. It had been such a long time. She had thought that her
wild, wanton side was gone forever. Sensible Lucinda, who advised debutantes
against unruly passion, should not feel hot and dizzy and melting in a
pirate’s embrace.
She drew back a little on the thought and felt him
smile against her mouth, a smile that turned her trembling insides to even
greater disorder. She was afraid that her legs might give way if he let go
of her now.
“Was that better than last time?” He whispered.
“I… It was…” She grasped for words, grasped for any
kind of coherent thought.
“You do not sound very sure.”
He sounded wickedly sure of himself. Before she
could protest he had tangled a hand into her hair and tilted her face up so
that his mouth could ravish hers with a thoroughness that left her dazed.
She found that she was clutching his forearms, seeking stability in a world
that spun like a top.
Have some sense. Push him
away…
Instead, she
drew him closer, sliding her hands over his shoulders, feeling the
broadcloth of his coat rough against her cold fingers. His jaw grazed her
cheek; that too was slightly rough with stubble and the way it scored her
sensitive skin made her shudder with helpless desire.
