have guessed he’d do this.”
Miss Jennings was entirely at sea. “Has he left you?”
“No, of course not. He thinks…oh, never mind. Here-do up my laces.” As Miss Jennings’s shaking fingers complied, Deliah added, “And don’t worry-I’ll be taking the gowns.”
She heard the young modiste haul in a huge breath, then her fingers steadied.
The instant the laces were cinched and tied, Deliah reached for her pelisse. As she shrugged it on, she heard a distant shout.
Grabbing her reticule, she dashed out of the dressing room and hurried to the window. She looked out. The street seemed empty, but she couldn’t see the pavement directly before the shop; an awning obstructed her view. All she caught were glimpses of a shifting mass of arms and shoulders.
Turning, she flew out of the open doorway and onto the stairs. Clattering down as fast as she could, she tugged her pelisse properly on, fumbled with the buttons.
Heart racing-what was going on outside the door?-she was almost at the bottom of the stairs when the door opened.
Breath catching in her throat, she looked up.
Del filled the doorway.
She tried to halt her precipitous rush. Her heel snagged in her pelisse’s hem, jerking one shoulder-she twisted, lost her balance.
Pitched forward.
Straight into his arms.
Del stepped forward to catch her. Heard the door he’d sent swinging shut snick behind him just as she landed flush against him, and every sense he possessed focused, intent and hungry-suddenly ravenously hungry-on her.
On her long, tall, undeniably feminine form plastered to his.
On the warmth of her curves, on their lush promise.
On her face, jade eyes wide with shock.
Lips, rosy red and luscious, parted…
Because she’d been above him, they were face-to-face, those luscious lips level with his.
He saw them shift, form words.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
He felt her hands grip his arms. When he lifted his gaze to her eyes, hers searched, urgently, almost frantically. The emotion lighting the jade was simple, undisguised concern.
She cared.
No woman had for decades.
Her lips firmed, then parted again. Her fingers gripped, and she tried to shake him. “Are. You. Hurt?”
He’d been struck-that he knew-but not by any fist.
She drew breath, her luscious lips parted again-and he knew he had to answer. So he did. In the most appropriate way.
He bent his head, covered her ruby lips with his.
Kissed her, not as he might any gently bred young lady but as he’d longed to kiss the houri who’d taunted him for the last hour.
Her lips had been parted. He took her mouth with no by-your-leave. Simply waltzed in and laid claim…
And ended reeling. Sinking. Drowning.
Captive to an exchange too potent for excuses, too primitively powerful to ever be denied.
Too urgent to be brought to any quick and neat end.
His arms cinched tight, hauling her against him, locking her there-where she belonged. He felt her hands on his shoulders, then in his hair.
Felt-knew-when she succumbed to the compulsion, to the desire that suborned all reason, to the unrelenting thud of passion in his veins.
Their veins.
The sensation was so heady Deliah was helpless to resist. To pull away, retreat to safety, to step back. Instead, she plunged in.
Into the temptation of his hot demanding mouth, into the whirling vortex of desire that had seized the unlooked-for moment to manifest between them-the cumulative promise of the last hour’s teasing; the nascent passion they’d both been deliberately prodding flared to urgent life between them.
She kissed him back, flagrantly demanding, joyously inciting, her inner self racing ahead, free of all restraint.
Wantonly enticing. Abandoned and eager.
Del sensed it, tasted her unleashed passion, and urgently wanted more.
Some distant spark of sanity assured him that was so. With regret, he forced himself to draw back; only by reminding himself of all he would eventually gain did he manage to rein in his hunger, soothing it with promises of ultimate gluttony. That she would, at some time-the right place and the right time-appease his hunger, feed it until he-it-was utterly sated was, to his mind, an engagement already inscribed in stone.
Easing back from the kiss, he lifted his head and looked down into dazed jade eyes, took in her oddly blank, faraway expression-and knew a moment of intense satisfaction.
At last he’d found a surefire way to manage the willful woman.
A way to tame her, to bring her to him, to his bed…
The sound of a throat clearing hauled his mind from that attractive track, from dwelling on the satisfaction having her beneath him would bring. Looking up, he saw Madame Latour and her assistant peering rather warily down.
“Pack up the gowns-all that were tried on-and send them to Miss Duncannon at Grillon’s. You may send your account to me there.”
Madame’s face lit. She bobbed a curtsy. “Thank you, Colonel. Miss Duncannon. You won’t be disappointed.”
He was sure he wouldn’t be. He had plans for that pale green dress.
Looking down at Deliah, he set her on her feet.
She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he asked, “Are you ready to go on?”
She blinked, hearing, correctly, the latent triumph in his tone.
Remembering what had brought her rushing down the stairs, Deliah swallowed, nodded. She wasn’t yet sure she had command of her voice.
By the time he’d led her outside-where all appeared normal and utterly mundane-and she’d finished buttoning her pelisse against the increasingly biting wind, settling her reticule and gloves, then had taken his arm and begun strolling beside him, her wits had started to function again-enough to have her wondering if perhaps he’d kissed her, at least in part, because the modiste had been watching.
That didn’t seem convincing, not even to her, but if furthering their roles wasn’t his motive, she’d rather not think of what was.
Shouldn’t think of what was, or might be.
She was shocked enough by her own motives-by the reemergence of the wanton inner self she’d thought she’d buried, or at least bludgeoned into weakness, long ago.
With him, that side of her wasn’t weak at all. She was going to have to be on guard henceforth; she couldn’t return to England after all these years, supposedly reformed, only to fall victim to her own desires with the first handsome man who crossed her path.
Admittedly, he was exceedingly handsome. But still…
He’d been the first man to kiss her, at least like that, in more years than she cared to count…actually, in all her life.
After a moment, she blinked, inwardly shook her head. She was looking ahead down the street-and seeing his lips.
She needed to concentrate on the here and now. Replaying his last words…she frowned. “I can’t accept gowns
