The Lady Most Willing

“Of course not. We just got through—”

“You’re jealous,” he declared.

“I said I’m not— What are you doing?”

“Kicking the door shut,” he said, just as he did so. It was a small room, and only three steps were required to bring him back to her side. “About that kiss,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

Her lips parted, just in time for his to brush gently against them.

“I said I would do my best,” he murmured.

“Your best not to kiss me,” she reminded him, her voice trembling softly into a whisper.

He nibbled at her lower lip, then gently explored the corner of her mouth. “My best, apparently, has nothing to do with not kissing you.”

She made some sort of inarticulate sound. But it wasn’t a no. It definitely wasn’t a no.

Bret deepened the kiss, nearly shuddering with desire when he felt her body relax against his. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, what mystery she possessed that made him want to possess her. But he did. He wanted her with an intensity that should have terrified him. He’d never dallied with gently bred women, and he wasn’t angling for a bride. Catriona Burns was all wrong for him, in almost every possible way.

Almost.

Because the thing was, when she was in his arms . . . No, even when she was merely in the room with him . . .

He was happy.

Not content, not pleased. Happy. Joyful.

Good God, he sounded like a hymn.

But that was what it felt like, as if a chorus of angels were singing through him, infusing him with such pleasure that he could not contain it. It spilled out through his smile, through his kiss and his hands, and he had to share it with her. He had to make her feel it, too.

“Please tell me you’re enjoying this,” he begged.

“I shouldn’t,” she said raggedly.

“But you do.”

“I do,” she admitted, moaning as his hands cupped her bottom.

“You don’t lie,” he said, hearing his smile in his words.

“Not about this.”

“Catriona,” he murmured, then drew back a few inches. “Do people call you Cat?”

“Never.”

He gazed down at her for a moment, his first inclination to declare that he would call her that. He wanted something special for her, something all his own. But it didn’t fit, he realized. She would never be Cat. Her eyes were too round, too open and honest. There was nothing slinky about her, nothing cunning or calculated.

Which wasn’t to say she wasn’t enormously clever.

And witty.

And sensible.

“Who is Delilah?” she whispered. While she was kissing him.

And stubborn, apparently.

He pulled back, just far enough to settle his nose against hers. “She was my mistress,” he said, unable to be anything but honest with her.

“Was?”

If his life had been written by Shakespeare, he might have said that Delilah had entered the past tense of his story when he first laid eyes on Catriona. That he had been so squarely struck by Cupid’s arrow that all other women were made insubstantial and colorless.

But the truth was, Bret had broken it off with “Delicious Delilah” some weeks earlier. It was exhausting keeping company with London’s most renowned opera singer. Forget her temperament, which was full of drama, both on and off the stage. It was the other men who were driving him to the edge. He couldn’t get a quiet drink at White’s without a pack of young bucks edging over to his table with winks and leers and drunken elbows jabbing in his shoulder.

Even at the Icicle Ball he’d been accosted by a pack of young men dying to talk to him about the legendary lady. To say nothing of the rude and raunchy gestures, as if the young dandies could approximate Delilah’s curves by cupping their hands in front of them.