Miranda Jarrett - Seduction of an English Beauty

For the first time she smiled. “You sound as if you sympathize with the lions and tigers.”

“I do.” He drew her a fraction closer, and she leaned into him another fraction more. He liked how her body was fuller, more rounded, than he’d realized from the balcony, and he liked how near that body was to touching his. “How could I not? Their spirit, their savagery, their magnificence. Most of all, their refusal to be tamed into submission.”

“Indeed.” She tipped her head to one side, her glance slanting up at him from under her lashes: hardly the sort of glance most young English ladies had in their arsenal, and he liked that, too. “Then you consider yourself untamed as well?”

“Oh, completely.” He rested his free hand on the back of her waist, lightly, as if by accident. “I’m as wild as any lion.”

She eased herself away from his hand. She didn’t fuss or squawk in a maidenly scene. She simply moved, silently establishing her boundaries, and his estimation of her rose another notch.

“Not so vastly wild,” she said, still smiling. “I’d wager that would change if only you’d meet the proper lion-tamer.”

“I wouldn’t offer that wager, cara ,” he said, spreading his fingers along her back with just enough pressure to feel the bones of her stays and her body beneath. “I devour lion-tamers for breakfast.”

She chuckled, a throaty sound that delighted him. “Do you eat them with jam and butter?”

“This is Rome, not barbarous London,” he said. “I prefer a splash of olive oil and sweet basil to taste.”

She chuckled again. “Pity the poor lion-tamers, to meet such an end!”

“Pity me, for having to make such a dish of the wretched beings.” He sighed dramatically, even as he reached out to touch her cheek. “I suspect the real problem is that I’ve yet to meet the right golden lioness.”

“Ahh.” She went still, but didn’t pull away from him. “You must recall that I’m here with Lord Edward.”

“I remember,” he said, lowering his face to hers, “though I’m determined to make you forget he was ever born.”

He kissed her then, exactly as he’d planned from the moment he’d followed her here. He swept her from her feet before she could stop him, leaned her back into the crook of his arm, and kissed her as she deserved to be kissed, with skill and passion, admiration and desire, and as the first, inevitable step to seduction.

He kissed her, and Diana stiffened with surprise. It wasn’t that she was surprised that he’d kissed her. She knew when men were contemplating her with that in mind, and she’d been expecting this man to kiss her ever since he’d grabbed her by the wrist.

But she’d never anticipated how he’d kiss her. It wasn’t like any other kiss she’d ever experienced. He didn’t slobber, or grunt, or press too hard, or bump his teeth against hers. He didn’t taste like his pipe, or the onions he’d eaten earlier. What she’d always liked best about kissing came afterwards, when the man was so grateful and devoted because he wished to do it again. That was the only reason she ever permitted it.

But the way that this man kissed stunned her with its intimacy. She couldn’t begin to fathom it. He kissed her, and made her lips tingle and grow warm, her head spin and her heart quicken. He coaxed her, teased her and yet there was never any doubt that he was the untamed lion he claimed to be. His mouth tasted inexplicably male, just as kissing him made her feel not like a schoolgirl burdened with her governess, but a woman. It didn’t matter that he was a stranger to her. She sensed that he could teach her mysterious things she didn’t yet know existed, things her body ached to know, and eagerly she parted her lips to let him deepen the kiss.

To her dismay, he didn’t answer, but drew back, into the darkest shadows.

“I must go, bellissima ,” he whispered, brushing his fingertips lightly across her cheek. “ Buona sera .”

“No!” she cried in a breathless whisper as he turned away from her. “I don’t even know your name!”

“You don’t need to,” he said, backing away. “You have Warwick.”

Lord Edward. Oh, how had she forgotten him so easily? She took a single step towards the stranger, wishing she could follow.

“Don’t go,” she said softly. “I beg you, please!”

He didn’t stop. Yet as he walked away, he turned back to smile one last time at her over his shoulder. He touched his fingers to his lips and swept his hand towards her, the same salute he’d made to her when she’d stood on the balcony. Then he turned through an arch and vanished into the night.

Diana pressed her fingers to her mouth, wishing she could magically keep the sensual memory of the kiss alive though its giver was gone. Her lips felt ripe, sensitized in a way that was new to her, almost as if they were no longer her own.

How could the stranger have done this to her and disappeared without even telling her his name? How could he have changed everything she thought a kiss could be and then be gone from her life? She’d wanted adventure to break this tedious journey, she’d longed for a romantic intrigue, but now that she’d been tantalized with both this night, all she could do was wish for more.

“Lady Diana!”

She turned away from the shadows and into the moonlight. Edward was coming towards her with a small glass clutched in his hand, puffing from his climb up the steps.

“I couldn’t see you, my lady,” he said as he reached her. “When I looked up from the floor of the Coliseum, you were quite lost in the shadows. I worried, you know.”

“There was no need, my lord,” she said, praying that the shadows would hide her a bit longer, and mask the guilty confusion she felt sure must show on her face. “I was well enough where you’d left me. It must have been some oddity of the moonlight that hid me from your sight.”

He nodded, and held the little tumbler out to her. “Your orange-water, my lady,” he said, striving to be gallant even as he wiped the rivulets of sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. “It was chilled when I bought it, but that was a devilish hard jaunt back up here, and I fear it may have grown warm.”

She smiled automatically, though the curve of her mouth felt as stiff as if it had been carved from wood.

If she’d truly been the honorable lady she’d been trying so hard to be these last days, she would have rebuffed the dark-clad man. She would not have let him kiss her, nor kissed him in return, nor begged him to stay….

“Thank you, my lord.” She took the glass tumbler from him, and sipped at the orange-water. It was sickly sweet, almost a syrup, so thick with sugar that she could scarcely make herself swallow it.

Yet how easy it had been to let that other man’s lips caress hers, to open her mouth to take his—

“Are you ill, my lady?” Edward was peering at her face with a frown of concern, his handkerchief clutched in a knot in his hand. “Has the closeness of this place affected you? Forgive me for speaking plain, my lady, but you don’t appear well.”

She let her gaze sweep around the great curving ruin. Likely she’d never see the black-clad man again. He was really no better than the crude rascals who tried to pinch women’s bottoms in the market, and the sooner she forgot how he’d taken advantage of her to kiss her, the better.

At least that was what her poor beleaguered conscience told her.

Her wicked body whispered otherwise.

“It’s not so much the closeness of the place, my lord,” she said with careful truth, “but the—the mystery of it that has left me rather—rather breathless.”

“It often has that effect on those who visit for the first time, my lady,” Edward said, tucking his handkerchief back into his waistcoat pocket. “It’s not surprising, really. Consider how many wicked, heathen souls must haunt this place!”