The Kiss

by Sophia Nash

  Rosamunde glanced from Quinn to Georgiana knowingly. “Hmmm. Perhaps it would be best if Fairleigh returns to Penrose with me? By the look of it, I feel certain you have some things to discuss…and by the by, my lord, you might want to ask Ata about the brandy. I think she’s made friends with a reliable smuggler in the area.”

  Fairleigh appeared so grateful for the diversion, she went along with Rosamunde with nary a peep of protest after quickly kissing her father on the cheek.

  Soon only the crickets could be heard breaking the tension of this late summer night. Georgiana turned away from his view and plucked at her gown, attempting to detach it from her wet underclothes. “Did you strike Luc and Fitz?”

  “This is a matter best left alone. I shall make the necessary reparations.”

  “Well, I’m guessing you struck Fitz, because if you had punched Luc he would have pulled a pistol on you without hesitation. But why would you hurt Fitz?” Before he could answer she continued, “And who struck Luc?”

  “Probably Fitz.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “You’re changing the subject. I require your word that you’ll never again take my daughter anywhere without my express permission.” He picked up his evening shoes and coat, the only items he’d shucked before going into the lake.

  “I’d never have suggested swimming if I’d known you’d forbidden it. Or if I’d known she couldn’t swim.” She was hurt. “You know that.”

  He slowly perused her form.

  There was something about his cold silence that unnerved her. She couldn’t stop herself from forcing the issue. “But I do think if you’re going to live here, so close to the sea and Loe Pool, it might be a good idea if Fairleigh learns how to swim.”

  “Ah,” he said with a terrible tone. “You know what is best for a young girl, do you?”

  “I know what is harmful. Your governesses used humiliation and hurt her tender sensibilities with such nonsense. They insisted she was stupid and lazy—all because she wouldn’t read Fordyce’s sermons, play the pianoforte with skill, or make lace.”

  “Religion and needlework and music were always wasted on you, Georgiana. But perhaps you’re wrong. If a lady is to make her way in life, knowledge of feminine skills is an asset, not a detriment.”

  “Not if the lady in question will never reach any sort of impressive proficiency in those arts. Quinn, don’t you see she needs to succeed in at least one endeavor so she can gain the confidence to succeed in others?”

  He shook his head. “Are you suggesting that if she learns how to swim she will also develop a sudden taste for philosophy?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous…I won’t argue with you. You always could win any dispute—but this isn’t a debate. This is about your daughter. You can’t make someone into something they are not. You can’t force someone to like something they cannot.”

  You can’t force someone to love someone they do not.

  She suppressed a sigh. “Look, I’m sorry I took her swimming and I shall never again distract her without your express permission. In any case, I won’t be here for many more weeks. I’ve decided to begin the search for a cottage for my family.”

  In the vacuum of silence that followed, Georgiana’s skin prickled with nervousness despite the heat in the air. She was clammy from the wet garments and the heated conversation and she became even more discomfited when Quinn advanced toward her.

  “Georgiana,” he said sadly, as he grasped her hands. “This is a fine renewal of our friendship. And I’m wholly to blame. Will you accept my apology? I let fear for Fairleigh’s safety cloud my judgment.” He shook his head. “I seem to do nothing right where it concerns you these days. Well, I intend to defer to your good judgment from now on.

  “What?” she said in disbelief.

  “For the first time someone has said something of sense concerning my daughter, and I must thank you. You are entirely right. I know better than most that you can’t change someone.”

  “Well…I don’t know what to say. It’s so rare when anyone agrees with me.” She looked into his eyes. “Especially you. Especially recently,” she said, so quietly he leaned in to catch her words.

  Her heart hammered in her breast and a chill ran up her damp arms. “I’m sorry, Quinn, about your wife. I didn’t know she’d drowned. I know you were very much in love with her and of course you were worried when you saw your daughter…” She stopped when she dared to glance at his expression.

  He raised her chin and she met his dark, mysterious gaze. She swallowed.

  “You’re entirely wrong.” He released her and moved away. “Cynthia was bedazzled by the diplomatic circles in town and was convinced I would rise far and fast when we married. Soon after she went through my meager earnings, she discovered drink and other distractions to soften her disappointments. She drowned while boating on a lake with one of her long string of lovers late one night.”

  Georgiana stood stock still, horrified beyond words.

  “Yes, well…now you know the truth, so you can stop consoling me for my loss. The effort is completely wasted on me.”

  For the first time in her life Georgiana did not rush to fill the void with words. There was absolutely nothing she could think of to say—nothing she could do.

  Oh, but there was.

  She stepped so close to him she could see the shadow of the line of his beard on his taut face in the moonlight.

  She stretched her arms up high and around his neck and laid her head over his pounding heart. He remained motionless, his arms at his sides.

  She gently stroked the skin above his shirt collar and breathed in his scent that left her melancholy with longing.

  And then she took her decision. A decision that would unbind the secret she had bound tightly to her soul for so very long that it had seemed impossible to reveal.

  She would do it for him—unselfishly, expecting nothing in return, because she loved him and he needed to understand that someone loved him for who he was, and had always been. He deserved to hear it. It was painfully obvious he needed to feel love. Anyone’s love. Even someone who hid hideous deformities under many layers of shifts and gowns.

  She tried to speak three times, opening her mouth in the darkness, her arms still gripping his impossibly broad and motionless form.

  The fourth time she succeeded in making a strangled sound.

  “What is it, Georgiana?” he asked quietly. “I told you I won’t have your pity. We’ve known each other too long for the niceties.”

  “I-I don’t pity you. My heart aches for you, that’s all. I’m allowed, for I’ve known you forever and I hate that you’ve suffered.”

  His arms moved to encircle her like iron bands. “Now is the moment for you to disentangle yourself from me, Georgiana,” he said into the top of her head. “Do it. Do it before I make an ass of myself and something happens you’re sure to regret.”

  She damned her cowardly silence and stroked the damp cloth on his tense back, unable to bring a word to her lips. Unable to tell him of her great love. Yet also unable to let go of him.

  But it seemed Quinn had a stronger sense of propriety than she. He finally pushed away, allowing the heavy night air between them. “Come, I shall walk you back. Perhaps not everyone has left, although most were departing when I went out in search of you.” He tugged on her arm and she reluctantly stepped away from the sandy spit. At the last moment she stopped and he turned to her, a question in his eyes.

  Without a word she laced her fingers through his and pulled him toward the nearby thicket, which only a very few knew secreted a small mossy clearing in its center. At the perimeter she dropped his hand and glanced at him again before turning to enter the leafy enclosure. She was very unsure if he would follow. For long moments she heard only the threshing sound of her own body moving past the branches.

  She entered the private domain, her heart in her throat as she realized he had not followed her. Then suddenly, he was beside her.<
br />
  It had been the place where Anthony, Quinn, and she had gone when they chose to hide themselves from the outside world. Where they had dared each other to perform outrageous feats. It was here the trio had met as friends the morning of the very last day they were together—before disaster had struck.

  Right now, she wished with all her heart he would just swoop in and take her into his arms. But she knew instinctively that he was probably ever too much the gentleman to do it. He had always possessed an uncompromising moral compass. It was one of the reasons she loved him.

  “Quinn,” she said quietly. “I—” But words were useless. Had he not said so himself? She would show him her love, she thought, all the while knowing she was as craven as a person facing a tribunal.

  She moved forward and slipped her hands under the folds of his damp coat, the wet had seeped from the fine shirt underneath. And suddenly his arms were surrounding her, enveloping her. She was unnerved by his strength, unnerved by the desperation she sensed.

  “Georgiana,” he said roughly, “this is madness.”

  “No,” she replied, “you’re very wrong. This is everything right.”

  His mouth found hers and he pushed past her lips to taste what lay beyond. All the while her heart raced with longing.

  A maelstrom of potent desire swept from her fingertips to the core of her body and then reversed direction. Emotions tumbled inside of her—wonder, the rightness of it, and above all an unquenchable wanting—all while his strong hands gripped her and brought her hard against his body. His ragged breathing echoed in her ears, begging her to take him, comfort him.

  Yet he pulled back, her face in the cradle of his hands. “Oh God, Georgiana,” he rasped. “Tell me to stop. Please.”

  She cupped the harsh plane of his cheek. “No. I want to hold you,” she whispered. “Be with you.”

  She was still shocked that he had opened his utterly impenetrable façade and let her in. Perhaps she had been wrong before. This was not lust—this was a long-denied need for comfort, for reassurance that someone truly cared for him.

  His lips never left her face for a moment after her passionate benediction. His hands explored her arms, her sides, face—and stroked her hair, brushing it away from her eyes.

  Not another word passed between them. Oh, but what she saw in his eyes when he looked down at her through the night shadows.

  Desperation combined with vulnerability.

  There was never any question where this was leading. If anything, she was impatient. She pulled at his coat and damp linen shirt, slipping her hands underneath to feel the heat of his skin and the sleek power of the muscles on his back when they bunched and released. He tore at his articles of clothing as well as her damp gown in his desire to meet her skin to skin.

  His ardor brought a secret smile to her lips and she knelt on the discarded clothing, ignoring the pain in her knee. The heat of a blush chased along her skin and she was grateful for the darkness and her overly long shift that hid her gross deformities from him.

  She would somehow keep his hands from her lower limbs and perhaps he would not notice. But all rational thought disappeared when he knelt before her to untie the lace tapes of the shift. He eased the bodice from her shoulders and lowered his head to her breast. Her back arched in wordless supplication at the first silken swirl of his tongue on the sensitive tip of her breast. Like a falcon guarding its sustenance, his hulking shoulders and long arms swept around her.

  God. This was Quinn. She was alone, on a hot August night with the man she had loved for as long as she could remember. She felt as if she were in a dream.

  He suckled and nipped her flesh, then traced an unbearably erotic pattern on the side of her breast. Something was building way down deep inside of her, in the nurturing, feminine place—her womb. A place she had never been aware of until now. It seemed to ache for him—for his essence, which should bond with her own.

  In the veil of moonlight, she drew her trembling hands down the vault of his ribs. She marveled at his strength and then shivered uncontrollably when his scent invaded her senses. Rosemary and sage melded with moss and his heated skin still damp from the lake waters. The combination overwhelmed her.

  His fingers peeled her shift down further, his mouth trailing behind—down the sensitive path to her navel. He moved aside and arranged her body in the nest of clothes.

  She wished for the hundredth time that she wouldn’t ultimately have to fully disrobe. He seemed to sense her thoughts, because a moment later he was bunching her shift and moving it past her hips and limbs. She fought the urge to stop him. Now she was completely bare before his gaze. She turned her head away, humiliated. She couldn’t face the disgust she was sure to find in his eyes.

  She sensed rather than saw him removing the last of his own clothing and thanked the Lord he had not been so revolted by her ghastly scarred limbs as to actually stop what had begun. His elbow dragged past the side of her head and he leaned toward her.

  “Georgiana, your femininity takes my breath away,” he murmured.

  She turned her head quickly into the comfort of his shoulder. “Please, no lies between us. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I would never lie to you. But I see words will not prove the beauty I see in you.”

  Before she could catch his beautiful broad hands with her own he stroked the top of one of her scarred legs. She knew she was as stiff as the planks in the barnyard, and as cold. She moaned, “Please don’t touch there.”

  “Georgiana, it’s what I want to do most. I must touch you. All of you. Especially here”—he dipped down and kissed the length of the most hideous gash, from her hip to the inside of her thigh—“and here”—he stroked her swollen knee and bent to lovingly kiss it over and over again.

  She inhaled in shock and felt tears coursing past her temples. “You don’t have to do that,” she whispered.

  “I want to,” he said in his hauntingly familiar voice, now gravelly. “And it would be unfair of you to deprive me.”

  And suddenly he slipped his wide shoulders between her legs and framed her hips with his large hands.

  Oh God. This was her worst nightmare and fondest dream all balled into one impossibly tense moment. He was starkly staring at all the ugliness, inches from his face, and she was trapped, unable to move.

  His fingers slipped under her knees and he drew them farther apart gently.

  She refused to resist him. Let him see me then, she thought in sadness. Let him see every last terrible detail.

  For long moments he traced his fingers over the myriad silvery lines that mapped out the horrors of the accident that had disfigured her. He massaged her knee, and the last of her resistance melted. No one had ever bothered to try and ease the stiffness from the permanently swollen joint—not her mother or her father—and it felt simply heavenly.

  He kissed every scar, and each time she thought he would retreat, he returned his fingers and his lips to her knee, murmuring his desire. And here, she thought, she had meant to comfort him.

  She closed her eyes at the wonder of the loving way he addressed every reminder of her disgrace, erasing momentarily her immense mortification.

  Until he…

  Until his tongue moved too high along her inner thigh and almost brushed against…

  She inhaled sharply and opened her eyes, simultaneously trying to close her legs despite his great bulk between them.

  “No, Georgiana, stay still.” He refused to ease away from her.

  “But, you can’t mean to…”

  “Yes—if you’ll allow me the privilege.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me,” he whispered, staring at her through the darkness.

  She would trust him with her life; she’d already entrusted her heart to him. She relaxed her limbs and stopped squirming against him. Her cheeks felt hot and swollen from the dried tears and a flush she knew was upon her. She was certain that when he touched her she would burst from all the emotions
and sensations pouring through her body.

  And suddenly she sensed the heated brush of his breath on her trembling thighs and his mouth descended, his tongue tentatively tasting her. She arched off the mossy bed.

  What began as soft and soothing soon changed to hot and demanding as he patiently yet ruthlessly held her in place and stroked the tender folds at her jointure deep and deeper until a thin, high line of pleasure bordering on pain began to keen within her. His fingers caressed her breasts and lightly pinched the tender ruched buds, and she tried mightily to stay still under the onslaught.

  He slipped a hand between her legs and probed the entrance to her. At the same agonizing moment his tongue sought and found the peak of her sex and paused. She thought she might burst from wanting.

  He then suckled her deep within his mouth, sweeping against that sweetly sensitive spot and pulsing his finger within her. Her mind instantly shattered into whiteness and her body involuntarily clenched and released, seizing something she could not name. Rapture flooded her, sending pulsing waves throughout her body, unfurling a spiral of lush pleasure.

  She went utterly still to experience every last moment of this unknown ecstasy. “Oh…” she breathed, in complete awe. “Oh, Quinn…” She exhaled and closed her eyes against the shock of returning to reality. She knew she could never feel like this ever again.

  She forced herself up on her elbows and saw his head bowed to her navel in rest. She reached a hand to entangle her fingers in his soft, cropped hair. “Quinn,” she murmured, “I never knew…” She was too shy to continue. “Please.” She tugged gently on his shoulder, urging him to cover her body fully with his own. The gentle roar of ocean waves crashing echoed in the distance.

  His eyes were hooded and glazed as he moved up the length of her; his heavy arousal brushed along the inside of her thigh. He kissed her breasts one last, long instant, and Georgiana felt protected in his hawkish embrace.

  He drew face-to-face with her and his darkened, mysterious eyes looked into hers. “Are you certain you want this?” he asked quietly, belying the rock-hard tenseness she felt surrounding her.