Chapter 12

He offered her the metal flask, still warm from his palm. Celsie took it. She wasn't particularly fond of brandy, so she had only the tiniest of sips. But it was a toast to which she was all too happy to drink. She handed the flask back. He tipped the vessel, draining it.

Their gazes met, coconspirators, allies, on a mutual smile.

And a moment later, it hit her.

Oh, no. Not again!

"Andrew —"

He must have felt it too, because at the same moment he shot to his feet, rapping his head on the roof and cursing loudly. "Hell and damnation! That cursed spawn of the devil!"

It was the same thing all over again. The same warm languor spreading through her blood. The same desperate longing to get her hands on this man, under his clothes, on his skin, all over his skin. The same prurient, unfulfilled tingling in her breasts and between her thighs . . .

Oh, no.

Oh, yes.

Oh, God!

She flattened herself against the back of the seat, willing herself not to touch him. "For heaven's sake, Andrew, this isn't just brandy, it's —"

"The bloody potion!" he roared, throwing himself back down in his own seat and twisting his face against the leather squab so he couldn't see her. His eyes were open, glazed, as surely her own must be. She saw his fists clenching and unclenching desperately. She saw the fine sheen of dampness breaking out across his brow, along his jaw and neck, and heard the almost inhuman howl of rage that tore from his anguished throat.

"I'll kill him, so help me God, this time he's gone too far!"

"I don't understand —"

"Lucien was the one who gave me the brandy! He bloody drugged it!"

He made a desperate lunge for the door, ready to hurl himself out of the coach at high speed if only to keep his brother from having the last laugh, but his knee caught the edge of Celsie's seat and he fell, heavily. Celsie was never to know whether he grabbed for her shoulders as he went down, or she grabbed for his in an attempt to catch him. It didn't matter. In the next moment, his mouth, hard and angry all over again, was slanting towards hers.

And then he kissed her.

She had never been kissed so thoroughly, so hungrily, so aggressively, in her life. Oh, she'd had the occasional chaste peck from fortune hunters posing as admirers; she'd had cold, sloppy kisses from the pea-plagued Lord Hammond and found puppies' tongues to be drier; and she'd had no cause, based on her own wanting experiences, to think there was anything more to be had from kissing a man than some vastly unpleasant sensations they had all seemed to enjoy far more than she.

But this . . .

She melted under the delicious sensation of his hard, powerful body all but crushing her down against the seat. She felt his hand yanking her shirt free from the waistband of her breeches and sliding up her abdomen beneath the light fabric, his other hand cradling her cheek, holding her head right where he wanted it, his thumb slowly brushing her mouth as his lips drove hungrily against hers. There was nothing cold, wet or sloppy about the way Lord Andrew kissed; there was nothing chaste about it, either. He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew exactly how to go about getting it, and what he wanted was to put his tongue into her mouth and his hand beneath her shirt and then all over her suddenly sensitive, suddenly on-fire, suddenly very eager and happy-to-be-noticed, breast.

Celsie let him.

She moaned deep in her throat as he caught the nipple between thumb and forefinger and gently rolled it. And all the while his tongue thrust against her own, his mouth crushed hers, his harsh, quickening breath glancing off her cheek and a jutting hardness pushing against the top of her thigh.

Celsie, gasping, finally broke the kiss. She stared dazedly up at him.

"My God," he said, breathing hard. "I'm not going to survive this."

"And neither am I, unless you kiss me again."

"This is ridiculous, I hardly know you, I hardly like you, I want to do all sorts of wicked things to you and I can't seem to control myself —"

"I hope you don't even try."

"I don't want to try . . . Lord save us, Celsie. I need to touch you. I need to kiss you."

His lips were against her temple, feathering down the outside corner of her eye, his breath warm against her chin. She shuddered, feeling herself go liquid with answering heat even as her own arms went around him and her fingers explored the hard ridge of his shoulders, his nape, the silky queue of his hair. She didn't know whether to be thankful or despairing that she'd only had the tiniest sip of the brandy . . . thankful because she didn't feel drugged as she had the last time, despairing because she'd had just enough to take the edge off any inclination she might otherwise have had to shove him away from her and straight out of the carriage.

Andrew, on the other hand, had finished off the entire bottle.

His mouth found hers yet again, needy, desperate. How warm his lips were against her own . . . how good he smelled, like some exotic spice from a faraway land . . . and how wonderful his hand felt, driving through her hair, thumbing the velvety skin behind her ear, tracing the rise of her cheekbone, while his other hand —

She moaned into his mouth as his hand roved over, then cupped, her breast.

Her small, insignificant breast, which he would surely find wanting.

"Andrew . . . you're touching my — my —"

"Breasts? Ah, yes. So I am. I quite like touching them, you know. They're high and firm and fill my hand quite nicely. Very nice. Very nice indeed . . ."

"You don't find them . . . wanting?"

"I do find them wanting. They want my hands all over them. They want my mouth all over them. They want my tongue and teeth and kisses all over them. God, you're gorgeous . . ."

He leaned down, his glossy, dark auburn hair filling her field of vision, his breath hot against her bosom and making her heart skip and trip and tumble all over itself as it fought frantically to retain its beat. And then he caught her shirttails in his hands and pulled the garment over her head, leaving her naked from the waist up.

His mouth drove between the faint cleft between her breasts, out over the high, pale rise of the right one. The sensation was enough to make her head dizzy with pleasure.

"A-Andrew, what are you doing?"

"I am kissing your breasts."

"But I thought kisses are for lips!"

"Kisses are for wherever one chooses to put them. And I choose to put mine, here . . . and here . . ."

He was now suckling the fiercely erect nipple, causing Celsie to gasp and squirm and tangle her fingers in his hair in an attempt to find anchorage on a sea of feelings that were totally overwhelming her. Oh, don't fight it. He's not going to stop. You don't want him to stop. Sit back and enjoy it . . . oh, enjoy it, this is never going to happen again!

His hand skimmed down her waist, moved out over the soft buckskin of her breeches where they covered her mound, and drove itself between her thighs, forcing them apart.

"And here is another place that quite likes to be kissed," he murmured, rubbing her cleft through the breeches. "Another place where I shall quite enjoy putting my lips. My mouth. My tongue."

"There? H-how can you even think such a thing?"

The coach thundered on, its rocking movement causing her body to scrape against his, his hand to vibrate against her intimate flesh, and heightening the wild, prickly-hot sensations he was creating in her.

"I will do more than just think it." He leaned close, so close she could see the starbursts of green that radiated out from his rust-colored irises, so close that the heat of his gaze drove right through her and impaled her with its intensity. "Let me tell you something, my dear Celsiana. Aphrodisiac or not, I have been wanting to peel these breeches off you from the moment you stepped out of the carriage. I have been wanting to touch those long, silky thighs, to trace the curve of your bottom, to slip my hand between your legs and feel you hot and wet with desire for me for the last agonizing hour."

God help her, she was hot and wet with desire already; she could feel the moisture dampening her breeches, knew he felt it against his hand, and knew she ought to be mortified. But how could she be mortified when heat was rising from every pore in her skin, burning every blood vessel in her body, making her head feverish with longing? She gazed, fascinated, up into his intense eyes and felt her leg, bent at the knee, sag back against the squab; her other slid downward, off the seat, the ball of her foot just resting on the floorboards and leaving her wide-open to his questing fingers . . .

"And I have been wanting to strip you naked and take you on the floor of this coach from the moment we entered it," he said roughly. "There is nothing you can say or do that will curb my desire for you. I want you. I need you. And I will have you."

He bent his head, tasting her nipple once more, drawing it with a taut, ruthless pull into the hot cavern of his mouth even as his hand rubbed her through the breeches, hard, over and over again.

"Oh," Celsie said faintly, sinking back into the seat and closing her eyes as her bones and muscles went liquid. "And here I thought you weren't interested in women . . . that the only thing you cared about was your science . . ."

"I am interested in you. I just don't want to marry you. Nothing personal, of course," he murmured, the deep reverberations of his voice against her breast, her nipple, both tickling and exciting. "I don't want to marry anyone."

"If marriage means getting to do this every day, then maybe it's not such a terrible thing after all," she breathed, watching him through half-lowered lashes as his tongue lazily circled her areola, the nipple in its center as hard as a dog's toenail. "If you married me, Andrew, could we do this every day?"

"Every day and every night."

"But we're not going to get married."

"No. We are going to outsmart Lucien."

"Yes. Outsmart Lucien . . ."

"And make love." She gasped as he deftly unbuttoned her breeches and slid his fingers beneath the warm buckskin to find her silken mound. "Now."

"Yes. Now . . ."

His hands caught the waistband of her breeches in unspoken command. Through the fabric she could feel the warmth of his palms against her hips, the strength of his hands against her thighs. Celsie lifted her bottom from the seat, and slowly, agonizingly, he pulled the soft buckskin down her thighs, pushing them down to her knees and exposing her long white legs — and everything else — to his appraising gaze.

He stared. His eyelids drooped. His breathing changed, and when he looked up at her, she saw that the little striations in his eyes had become very, very green.

"No — keep them open," he said harshly, thrusting his hand between her thighs like a blade when she would have closed them in forgotten modesty. "I want to look at you."

"I swear, I can feel your eyes upon me."

"Can you? You'll soon be feeling more than just my eyes upon you."

His gaze burned into hers for another moment, and then he looked back down at her, and stayed looking at her, and every place his gaze touched seemed to burn with a savage, unrequited longing.

Still looking his fill, he dragged his hand higher, his fingertips skirting the soft triangular tuft of hair. Celsie tensed. His hand was big and warm against her belly, and she looked down to see the palm spread out over the alabaster skin, the tip of one finger just nestled within the top edge of her silken curls. He let his hand remain there for a long moment, warming her, tantalizing her, than let it slide downward, his forefinger driving between her cleft and stroking a hidden button of tingling, needle-hot flesh once, twice, three times.

Celsie jumped, then moaned deep in her throat.

"I see that my hypothesis is correct," he murmured, smiling.

"Your . . . hypothesis?"

"Yes. I hypothesized that you would be hot and wet and ready for me. You are."

"It's embarrassing."

He was still stroking her with the tip of his forefinger. "It's flattering."

"It's beyond my control."

"It's making me hard. So hard that I ache."

She flushed and, as he continued that slow, maddening stroke, heard strange little whimperings coming from her throat, bringing his intense gaze back to her face. His hand paused, becoming rigid against her. "What is wrong, Celsiana? Yesterday you were a tigress. Today you are a kitten. Am I the only one who is going out of my mind with need?"

"No . . . but you're the one who drank the whole damned bottle of laced brandy. I only had a sip. Just enough to keep me from saying no . . ."

"If you want me to stop, I'm afraid you'll have to bodily throw me out of this carriage."

"I don't want you to stop," she managed, opening her eyes to stare fixedly up into his face.

"Then if you have any fears, qualms, or misgivings, you have only to voice them and I will soothe them to the best of my abilities."

"I have no fears. After all —" she faltered, feeling a sudden pain in her heart — "I am no longer a maiden, am I?"

He sobered. His gaze softened, and for a moment, he was the Andrew she had only glimpsed, the one who gently stroked his dog's head, the one who'd respected her on the dueling field, the one who had warily joked with her a few moments ago, the one who was usually gaoled behind the bars of anger and rudeness. "As I expect you do not remember much, if anything, of what occurred between us yesterday, I'll have you know, Celsie, that I still consider you a maiden in all senses of the word except one."

Celsie. He had called her Celsie. Something hitched inside her heart.

"And I shall contrive to treat you as gently as a maiden deserves to be treated."

So he said. And all the while, she could feel the hard, flat blade of his hand thrust against her dampening cleft, the thumb lazily caressing the silky hair there and igniting the whole area into something hot and twitchy and wanting. She wanted his hand to touch her even more intimately, though she could not think how that would be possible. She wanted his thumb to move slightly more toward the very center of these oh-so-strange, oh-so-delightful, feelings. And she wanted —

The coach hit a bumpy section of road, and Celsie, still gazing up into Andrew's smoldering eyes, gasped as the jerky movement of the coach caused his hand, which he himself hadn't moved, to begin agitating her exposed, already aroused flesh.

"Oh!" she cried, her mouth falling open, her blood frying in her veins as she saw the wicked, lupine gleam in his eyes.

"A rather singular sensation, is it not?"

"You — how could you know?"

"I know a lot of things about your body, madam, that you have yet to learn. And I also know that in a few moments, this road is going to change to chalk rubble for a good mile or two and then your senses are really going to explode when these iron-clad wheels go vibrating over it."

"Will it feel . . . good?"

"Oh, yes," he said, chuckling darkly. "It will feel very good."

God help her, she felt really good, now. She felt really good as her lover knelt down on the floor of the coach, stretched her out on the seat, and began kissing the still warm spot on her belly where his broad palm had so recently rested. And she felt really good as his tongue, drawing little circles on the taut, electrified skin there, began moving closer and closer toward where his hand, shuddering rapidly with the movement of the coach, still lay, his fingers stroking her, his thumb pushing hard against that hot button of sensation.

Celsie whimpered and moaned, her head twisting on the seat, a strange, wonderful sensation gathering inside her like a horse gathering itself for a titanic hurdle . . .

"You may not remember all that happened between us yesterday, madam," he breathed, his lips now seeking the outermost curls of her femininity, "but I guarantee you shall never forget what's about to happen between us now."

One hand on her breast, the other holding her legs apart, his hot mouth dragged through her curls and planted itself with hard, unrelenting firmness, there.

Celsie cried out — and at that moment the coach hit the chalk rubble that he had heralded, making the vehicle, making her body, making Andrew's tongue as it plunged and dipped within her moist folds, shudder with a rapid, unceasing, crescendo of agitation.

"Oh, dear!" cried Celsie, gasping.

He raised his head the merest of inches. "Faster," he shouted, to the driver above.

"Oh — oh, you fiend!" wailed Celsie, as the coach picked up speed, and so did the maddening agitation that was repeated in every cell in her body, in Andrew's mouth as he opened it wide against her shamelessly wet cleft once more, in his stiffened tongue as it pressed against that hidden button of flesh there, licking, stroking, the rumble of the chalk beneath the wheels rapidly agitating it beyond anything Celsie was physically capable of enduring.

"Oh, please —- oh please, oh please," she sobbed, her fingernails clawing at the seat.

"Faster!"

The escalating rumble of the wheels, rapidly shaking everything inside the coach like the onset of an earthquake, was too much. Celsie came against him with a harsh, rending cry, her body arching straight off the seat, his tongue never retreating but only pressing harder, deeper —

"Oh, oh God, help me!" she cried, flailing in the seat, writhing against his tongue, her hair whipping wildly back and forth as she climaxed once more. And then, just when she thought she would die, he drew back, thrust his fingers, vibrating with the shudder of wheels over rubble, deep inside her, and watched her senses explode yet a third time.

She was still convulsing when he climbed on top of her, opened his breeches, and drove himself into her, hard, thrusting over and over again until he finally reached his own satisfaction.

And on the box above, the driver never heard a thing.