“What are you doing?” she managed.
He looked down at her. “Kissing you.” He took her mouth again, cupping her face in his hands, and she was ready this time and melted toward him. But he licked her lips, as if she were a delicious sweet, savored her, finally came to her like an old friend, like a cool drink.
That kiss…
The kiss changed Harriet. She could feel it, changing her sinews and her bones, changing the essence of who Harriet was: a sad, tidy little widow from the country. But with that kiss singing in her bones, she wanted to dance. It raced through her blood and made her want to scream.
She kissed him back.
And this time it was he who pulled back, breathing heavily. “Damn, Harry,” he said, whispering it, his voice a silken rasp in her ears. “Tell me—not that I’m fooling myself that it will make a damn bit of difference—tell me you’re not a virgin.”
She cocked up a corner of her mouth.
He kissed her again, hard, and she could taste his gratitude. She felt it too. It hadn’t been fun, being a virgin. In the first few months of marriage, she used to stay at balls and musicales until she had black circles under eyes, until Benjamin was tottering with drink. She challenged him to teach her chess and would listen for hours, prompting him to replay master moves with her, all to avoid the bedroom.
Because it hurt.
Even once it did get better, there had never been anything like the fierce desire that burned along her legs now, when Jem hadn’t even touched her.
So she pulled his head down to her and threw herself into learning the new sport, the kind of kissing that’s done with tongues and wet mouths and intimacy.
“It feels as if we’re talking,” she murmured some time later.
“We are,” he said, kissing her sweetly. And then hard, fierce, so that she trembled, felt all female, every inch soft and desirous.
And still he didn’t touch her.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “If you’re not a virgin, Harry, you sure as hell haven’t had much experience kissing.”
“I’m a fast learner.” She brushed her lips over his. How dare a man have that full lower lip? It tantalized her.
“So,” he said, “I just want to understand the rules.”
This was pure Jem.
“Useful knowledge?” she said with a raised eyebrow.
“No back talk from you, young Harry,” he said. “What is your name, by the way?”
“Harriet.”
She saw the name settle in his mind, grow into a smile. “I like it,” he said.
“I like Harry better.”
“You’re a virgin kisser,” he said, “but not a virgin otherwise.”
“I kissed before! Many times. Just not—not that kind.”
“That kind?”
She had to show him what kind she meant, and they got distracted. Still he didn’t touch her, though, so she brazenly pulled him close and put her body against his. He was speed and muscle and smooth skin. And she felt soft and curvy and delicious.
More so than ever in her life. More so than her wedding day, than her wedding night.
“Harriet,” he gasped.
“Harry to you.” She wiggled against him.
“I’m curious about the amount of experience you’ve had. That is,” he gasped a little as she managed to rub against something that was making a lump in his breeches. And it wasn’t a rolled-up sock either. “That is, are we talking about once or twice in a hay loft? I’m just wondering—”
He broke off, probably because she was tired of him not touching her and it occurred to her that no one said there was a law that she shouldn’t touch him. So she cupped him there.
“I was married for years,” she told him, loving the hardness, even through his breeches, the strangled noise he made in his throat, the way his hips arched a little toward her. “There’s nothing I don’t know about men.”
He froze. “Still married? Because I am absurdly old-fashioned…”
“You? You, the owner of a house known for its affaires?”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Luckily, I’m a widow.” She ran her hand down the front of his breeches again.
“Good,” he managed. “Excellent. I mean, I’m so sorry to hear about your loss.” And with that his hands came down from the door and slid down her back, leaving a trail of fire. “You are a beautiful woman,” he said. “I knew you were beautiful. I thought you were the prettiest boy I ever met. But then when I realized you were a woman I knew you were the most beautiful woman I ever met.”
It was so ridiculous that Harriet didn’t even listen. Besides, he was stroking her, dragging his fingers over her flesh in little circles and movements that made her shiver and gasp. Especially when he finally made his slow way to her breasts. He didn’t grab them with endearing, if puppish enthusiasm, the kind of caress she was used to.
Instead he stroked them with his fingertips as if she were made out of glass, as if her skin were the most delicate silk in the world. His fingers sang across her skin.
Just like that, she lost the strength in her knees, but his arm was there to hold her up. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “but I have to have a taste.”
“Ah—”
And then she was on the ground, being gently laid backwards on a little pile of discarded clothing: her ruined shirt, their jackets, his shirt. When his mouth touched her breast, it was as sleek and fiery as his fingers.
She moaned, head back, her fingers burrowing into his thick hair and pulling it free from its ribbon.
He paid her no mind, kissing her over and over, lips brushing her bare skin until the caress was too much, until she started feeling as if she might start begging soon, crying.
“It’s time,” she gasped, pulling him up.
He laughed down at her. “Married, and still so quick to draw?”
She arched backward and said, “Please. Jem.”
“How long were you married?” he asked, not touching her.
“Years,” she said impatiently.
“Years with no child?”
And she knew what he was saying. It was only a pulse of sadness: a second that passed. “No need for a French letter,” she said, making her voice cheerful.
So he came to her, braced above her, hair falling forward like silk around her face.
Harriet was used to making love: to the dry pull at the beginning that sometimes stung and hurt a little, giving way to a warming friction, to the delight of it. To the way a man’s body felt in her arms, hot and slightly sweaty.
This was entirely different.
For one thing—
“I’m not sure about this,” she gasped. “Wait a minute!”
“Anything for a lady,” he said, leaning down to capture her lips again.
But she raised her neck and peered down between their bodies instead. She was right.
“Um, Jem?”
He managed to capture her in a kiss so fierce and sweet that she almost didn’t notice what he was doing with his hips, but her body did.
“Stop,” she ordered. “Wait!” She was feeling—she wasn’t even sure what she was feeling.
She peered down there again. “What is that?”