And Then He Kissed Her (17 page)

She stood on tiptoe, squinting as she tried to
discern the titles high above her head. When she realized what she was looking at, Emma gave an exclamation of delighted surprise. Mr. Inkberry hadn’t told her about
these
. Of course not. She began to count them, and her delight only increased when she had confirmed that it was a complete set, with all ten original volumes intact.

Not that it mattered, really, she thought, gazing at them with longing. She couldn’t possibly buy them. Still, it wouldn’t do any harm to have a look. She reached up, stretching, but even standing on the very tips of her toes with her arm extended as far as possible, the books remained beyond her grasp. She lowered her arm and dropped back onto her heels with an exasperated sigh.

“Allow me,” a deep voice spoke from behind her.

Emma froze at the sound of Marlowe’s voice right behind her. Startled by his closeness, she hadn’t even heard him enter this room of the shop. As he lifted his arm overhead to remove one of the books for her, his chest brushed against the back of her shoulder, and she caught the scent of sandalwood.

He pulled the volume down, but when she turned to face him and held out her hand, he did not give the book to her. Instead, he paused to read the title, much to her dismay.

“
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
,” he read, “by Sir Richard Burton.
Volume Ten
.” He
looked at her in amusement. “And all this time you have been lecturing me on propriety?”

Caught, Emma lifted her chin to what she deemed a dignified angle. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He tapped the book against his palm. “I wonder,” he murmured, “would Mrs. Bartleby deem this to be acceptable reading for a proper young woman such as yourself?”

It wasn’t proper at all. It was Burton’s unexpurgated version of the tales, and said to be downright salacious. Emma tried to divert the conversation. “I may be proper, my lord, but I am hardly young.”

“No? You look about nineteen.” He reached out with his free hand and touched his fingertips to her cheek. “Must be the freckles.”

Emma’s tummy dipped with a strange, weightless sensation as he traced his fingers lightly across her cheekbone. His hand fell away before she could even think of telling him not to touch her like that, and he stepped back, presenting the book to her with a bow.

She did not take it. There was no point. She could never buy it, and had only intended to have a quick peek. Now she couldn’t even do that, not with him standing there, watching her, knowing what it was. She shook her head in refusal. “Put it back with the others, please.”

Instead of complying, he opened the book to read the imprint, then he glanced at the other books above. “These are originals from the first
printing in 1850,” he said, returning his gaze to her face. “All ten volumes together, a rare find in these days. Do you not want them?”

She wanted them terribly. “No,” she lied. “As you said, Burton’s version is not appropriate reading for…for someone such as myself.”

“So? Buy them anyway. I shan’t tell anyone you read naughty books.”

“They are not naughty,” she protested.

“Read them already, have you?”

“Not Burton’s version! But I have read Galland’s.” She swallowed hard. “I was looking at these because I…I wanted a…a comparison.”

“For research purposes, no doubt.” The amused curve of his lips told her he wasn’t the least bit fooled by her explanation, but to her relief, he returned the book to its place without probing her motives any further. “So did you enjoy Galland’s version of the tales?”

“Yes, I did. Though had I been in Scheherazade’s position, I doubt I would have survived.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I hardly think the sultan would have been so impressed with discussions of etiquette that he would have spared my life. To a man, tales of genies and flying carpets would be much more exciting than tableware.”

“I am forced to agree with the sultan about etiquette and tableware, but as for your fate…” He paused, his gaze raking over her. “You underestimate your charms, Emma.”

pleasure flared up inside her at those words, but when his gaze paused at her mouth, the bookshop suddenly felt much too warm, and she turned her back. Facing the shelves, she ran her fingers along the spines of books as if perusing their titles, but her thoughts were not on volumes of Persian poetry.

I should very much like to kiss you.

She felt a dizzying throb of excitement. With Marlowe right behind her, she closed her eyes and once again imagined his mouth on hers. Oh, what would it be like to be kissed by him?

She heard a sound and opened her eyes. Glancing up over her shoulder, she realized he was still standing behind her and was scanning the shelves above her head. Emma gathered her thoughts and forced herself to make ordinary conversation. “What do you like to read, my lord?”

He pulled a book out, glanced at it, shoved it back. “I don’t like to read at all, truth be told.”

“You don’t read? But you publish books.”

“Exactly so. I enjoyed reading when I was a boy, but these days, I read all the time and it has rather taken the pleasure out of it for me. When I am at leisure, reading is the last thing I want to do.”

“That makes sense, I suppose. But for me, reading is an adventure. It makes me an armchair traveler and takes me places I shall never be able to go.”

“And if you could be more than an armchair traveler?” He leaned down close to her ear. “If
you possessed a magical flying carpet, and you could journey to any place, where would you go?”

He was so near, she could feel the heat of his body behind her in the cool shadows of the bookshop. His arms came up on either side of her shoulders, trapping her without even touching her. She stirred, then stilled, staring at his hands and the strong fingers that gripped the shelf in front of her. Her breathing began to quicken.

“Where would you go?” he repeated, his warm breath brushing her ear, making her shiver. “The sultan’s harem?”

“Certainly not,” she said primly and pulled a book from the shelf, opened it, and pretended to read
The Rubaiyat
.

He was not deterred. Peering over her shoulder, he saw the title printed at the top of the page. “So the Persian garden of Omar Khayyám is your destination of choice, is it?” He laughed low in his throat. “I believe that beneath Miss Emmaline Dove’s protective shield of propriety, there beats the heart of a hedonist.”

“What?” She snapped the book shut, shoved it back into place, and turned, bristling at that description. “I am no such thing!” Realizing she had spoken too loudly, she cast a quick glance around, but much to her relief, they were alone in this part of the shop. “Please refrain from insulting me.”

“I meant no insult. Quite the contrary. I find this hidden aspect of your character fascinating.”

“How could such an egregious description of me be fascinating?”

“It is not egregious. And it is fascinating because I have known you five years and never dreamt this side of you existed. The more time I spend in your company, the more surprising you become.”

He leaned toward her, and she pushed at his arm to extricate herself from what could only be described as an embrace, but he didn’t move. Failing in her attempt to escape, she tilted her head back to look him in the eye and frowned at him. “You have no right to call me such things. Hedonist, indeed!”

“There is nothing wrong with enjoying the pleasures of life. God knows, there’s enough pain. And I am basing my conclusion about your character upon what I have seen of your preferences.”

“My preferences? I have no idea what you mean.”

“Liqueur chocolates, ripe juicy peaches, tiny red strawberries. The tales of Scheherazade and the Persian poetry of Khayyám. It seems to me that you enjoy some very fleshly pleasures.”

“I don’t!” she denied in a fierce whisper. “You make a fondness for chocolate and fruit sound like de cadence. Like…like carnality.”

“Food can be very carnal, believe me.” His lashes lowered. “Attribute that opinion to my dissolute nature.”

He was doing it again. She lifted her fingers to
her lips, then stopped and pulled her hand down. He smiled at that, as if he knew what she was thinking. As if he’d been thinking it, too. As if, when he stared at her mouth, he was thinking about kissing her, and doing other things, too, carnal things. She had only the vaguest idea what those might be, but before she could stop it, Emma’s whole body stirred with a delicious, answering thrill.

“By the way, Emma, I must contradict what you said earlier.”

She tried to think, but his closeness and his words were making that impossible. “What I said?”

“If you had faced the sultan armed with a box of chocolates, you would most certainly have survived.”

The reminder of what had happened two weeks before at Au Chocolat heightened her excitement even as it embarrassed her, and Emma turned her face away. Of course he thought her a hedonist. What else could a gentleman think of a woman when she allowed him to rub his leg against hers in a park? When she allowed him to suck chocolate off her fingers? When she allowed him to take the liberty of embracing her in a bookshop?

Emma’s controlled, confined upbringing condemned these things, even as something else, something deep in her soul, cried out for them with a hunger that was frightening. Desperate, panicky, she met his gaze and fought back. “I am
a virtuous woman, my lord,” she informed him. “I am not in any way de cadent or carnal! I am not…fleshly!”

“No?” He lifted his hand, and his knuckle brushed beneath her chin. He tilted her head back, then he shifted his hand so that his fingertips touched her mouth. She quivered inside, her fierceness and panic ebbing away along with any strength to fight him.

Don’t. Oh, don’t touch me. You mustn’t do these things.

She opened her mouth, but somehow she could not make the words of protest come out. She could only stand there defenseless as he stared at her parted lips and traced their outline with his fingertips. Around and around, making the quiver inside her intensify until it felt like the fluttering wings of a thousand butterflies.

He slid his hand to her cheek, and she gave a gasp of shock. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

He bent his head and paused with his lips an inch from hers. “Committing a serious breach of etiquette,” he murmured.

And then he kissed her.

The moment his mouth touched her own, Emma forgot where they were, forgot what was proper, forgot everything she had ever been taught about right and wrong. There, in the half-light and shadows of a dusty bookshop, she forgot that kissing was only for married people and that she was a spinster of thirty. With this man’s warm palm cupping her face and his lips
pressed to hers, joy unfurled inside her, beautiful, painful joy. It was like nothing she had ever felt before. It was like nothing she could ever have imagined.

It was like springtime.

She closed her eyes, and her other senses bloomed with a vivid clarity they had never possessed before. The masculine, earthy scent of him. The callus on his palm where his hand cupped her cheek. The taste of his mouth as he parted her lips with his. The sound of what could only be her own heart, beating like the rapid wings of a bird as it soared upward toward the heavens.

How sensitive her lips seemed, as if they were a conduit to every other nerve ending in her body. She tingled all over, vibrant, electrified. The skin around her mouth burned from the sandpapery texture of his, and she realized it was due to the hint of beard stubble on his face. How alien a man was, and yet how wonderful. So foreign, yet somehow so familiar.

She brought her hands between them to touch his chest. His silk waistcoat felt smooth against her palms. Beneath it, his muscles were hard and warm. Emma slid her palms across his chest beneath his jacket to his shoulders, savoring the strength of a man’s body for the very first time, knowing somehow that for this moment, all that strength was hers to command. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed closer, wanting that strength to enfold her.

Her move seemed to ignite something inside
him. He made a rough sound against her mouth, and his free arm wrapped around her waist. He lifted her onto her toes, pulled her fully against him. His free hand curled around the back of her neck. He deepened the kiss, and his tongue entered her mouth. Emma made a wordless sound of shock, but then she touched her tongue to his, and waves of pleasure shimmered through her. For the first time, she understood what carnality truly was.

She clung to him, pressing her body to his with an immodesty that should have shocked her, but the feelings rushing through her were so powerful and so extraordinary, Emma could not care about modesty. She felt his body, so much larger than her own, hard and strong against hers, yet strangely, he did not seem close enough. She wanted him even closer, she wanted something more, something she could not name. She stirred, her hips moving against him. She moaned low in her throat.

And then it was over.

His hands gripped her arms, pushing her back, breaking the kiss. His breathing was harsh and rapid, mingling with hers in the space between them. His eyes were as deep and vividly blue as the sea.

His hands ran up her arms, cupped her face. “You’ve never been kissed before, have you?” he whispered.

Wordless, she shook her head.

He began to smile, and she stiffened. Was he laughing at her? Had she done it wrong some-
how? All of a sudden she felt gawky and awkward and terribly afraid. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered back.

“Probably not.” He pulled her close and kissed her again, hard and quick. “But I don’t often do what I should. I’m naughty that way.”

With those words, he let her go, turned away, and disappeared around the other side of the bookshelf.

She heard his footsteps carry him out of the room, but she didn’t follow. She couldn’t, not yet. Instead, she just stood there, clothes rumpled and bonnet askew, in the back corner of a bookshop on Bouverie Street, too dazed to move.