“But . . . but it could be worse.”
“It’s hard to see how.”
She didn’t know what made her say it. The words just came from her lips. “You could be kissing me.”
Chapter Ten
“Kissing you,” Griff echoed. He tried to make it sound as though the words were some outlandish sentiment spoken in a foreign, unfamiliar tongue—and not the exact same thought he’d been harboring.
She was so close and so warm. They were entangled, and her deft, impertinent hands were all over him—reminding him just how long it had been since he’d been touched, stroked, fussed over. Given a damn about.
The hell of it was, none of her attentions were soothing in the least. Only provoking, arousing. Inflaming the hurt not only in his slashed arm, but in those raw, hollowed-out chambers of his heart.
“You’re right,” he told her. “Kissing is the one thing that would undoubtedly make this moment worse.”
“Oh, Lord.” She leaned forward until her brow met his chest. Then she lifted her head slightly. Then let it fall forward again. After a few more repetitions, he understood the meaning behind this strange gesture.
His chest was the brick wall, and she was bashing her head against it.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
“This is terrible,” she moaned. “I can’t fail at this, too. I just can’t. My life before this was bad enough. What kind of hapless, hopeless person fails at failing?”
“I’m not following you.”
She snuffled a little, using his pocket square to wipe her nose—without actually easing it from his pocket.
“At home,” she said, “my sister and I, we’re always those Simms girls who mean well. They say that because we can’t do anything right.”
Her br**sts were now pressed against his chest, soft and springy. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Didn’t help.
“I’m no stranger to humiliation,” she went on. “The day you came into the Bull and Blossom, I’d been having the worst morning of my life. Everything went wrong. And I agreed to come to London with you because this was my chance. Surely, I thought, social disaster is the one thing I can do right. I’m expert at it.” Her voice tweaked. “But just look at this. I can’t even succeed at failure.”
She wriggled the hand trapped deep in his sleeve. Those br**sts trapped against his chest now shimmied in a little dance.
He took a deep breath. He had to take control of this situation, fast—or he would lose his grip entirely. “Listen, Simms. Let’s just remain calm.”
He sent a mental message downward: That goes for you, too.
“First, extricate your hand from my sleeve.”
She obeyed, and he suffered all the same torture in reverse as her fingers dragged and wrestled over his shoulder, then his chest. But once it was done, he could step back, put some distance between them. They were only tangled in one place.
He nodded toward a nearby bench. “Now sit. Give me a moment, and I’ll have this sorted.”
He worked his own gloves free, then set about exploring the connection between his sleeve and her side. He found the place where his button had snagged. By now the cursed thing had twisted several times. He turned it this way and that, looking for the slack, resisting the urge to rush. Haste would only make it worse. This was a task that required patience.
Patience, and extreme fortitude.
God, what she did to him. Her brandy-colored hair made him yearn for a drink. He breathed deeply instead. A mistake. She smelled of French-milled soap and dusting powder and crisp, new linen. Now he wanted, quite desperately, to taste her bare skin. To run his tongue down that delicate slope of her neck, all the way to the graceful curve of her shoulder.
Then lower . . .
Lower, lower, lower.
“I had a dozen ways to be a disaster this evening,” she said softly. “I’d thought them all out.”
“Such as . . . ?”
“Eating far more than is ladylike, to start. Gentlemen despise indulgence in a lady.”
This was news to Griff. “We do?”
“Of course you do.” She gave him an incredulous look. “Secondly, I was going to express far too many opinions. A lady never airs her opinions.”
“That can’t be one of my mother’s lessons. That woman never formed an opinion she didn’t share.”
“I didn’t learn it from your mother. I read it in a book.” Her voice took on an affected tone. “ ‘Save for unsightly mustaches, there are few things gentlemen find less appealing in a lady than a political opinion.’ Well, I couldn’t grow any whiskers. But I’m prepared to make six outrageous statements about the Corn Laws.”
“The Corn Laws?” He couldn’t help but laugh.
“You don’t think it improper?”
“I think you’re greatly overestimating a man’s ability to heed conversation about the Corn Laws while confronted with a sight like this.”
He let his gaze dip to her bosom, where it had been wanting to stray all night. Two soft, pale mounds pressed to the border of her neckline. Like twin pillows. His attention bounced back and forth between them.
“It’s all right,” she said in a playful whisper. “I can’t stop looking at them either. This corset is a feat of engineering.”
“I think it’s sorcery.”
“You’re right about the illusion part. Here.” She took his hand and brought it to her breast.
Griff froze, lust rocketing through him.
“There’s cotton batting in the corset,” she said. “Can’t you feel it?”
She kept her hand over his, molding his fingers around the ample swell of fabric and the soft flesh beneath.
He swallowed hard. “Yes. I can feel it.”
He could also feel her. Warm and supple and enticing.
“See? It’s not real. So there’s another strike against me.” She adopted that strange tone of voice again. “A young lady who employs artifice to catch a gentleman’s eye will never secure his admiration.”
With profound reluctance, he let his hand slip from her breast. “Believe me. Right now, I only wish you could decrease my admiration. My admiration is currently rather . . . large.”
She looked him in the eye and blurted out, “I’m not a virgin.”
Damn. Just like that, he went fully erect, with a swiftness that rivaled swordplay. Upon reflection, he wasn’t sure he could have drawn an actual blade that quickly. Were he wearing a metal codpiece, his c**k would have met it with an audible clang.