Good God. Good God.
She kissed him with everything. As if she wanted to. As if she’d always wanted to. As if her small, slender body were nothing more than a cunningly crafted decanter of some bewitching potion. An essence of desire, aged and corked and waiting for years. As if in one single kiss, she’d sensed her chance to foist it all on him because she was weary of the burden.
Take this sweetness, her kiss said. Take this passion. Take all of me.
He explored her mouth thoroughly, desperate for more.
He should have refused those reckless gifts. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. His desires had been caged a long time, too. He couldn’t evade the longing she kindled. Couldn’t deny the hard, hot response of his body—not with his c**k throbbing vainly against his buckskin falls.
God, he felt alive. Fully alive, for the first time since . . .
Since dying.
Ransom didn’t know if this Beware-My-Dangerous-Kisses ploy was having any effect whatsoever on Izzy Goodnight, but he knew this much.
This kiss had him rattled to his boots.
Well, Izzy thought, her first kiss wasn’t everything she’d hoped and dreamed it might be.
It was a thousand times more.
Now this was a proper kiss.
Not just a harsh press of bruising lips, but a real, true kiss, by a man who knew what he was doing. He was kissing her with not only skill but with passion. And ardor.
And tongue.
Best of all, she was somehow managing to acquit herself in a manner that had him growling against her lips. Pure luck there, she had to imagine. Or maybe he was the kissing equivalent of those London dancing masters—the ones who made a girl look graceful and competent when she was just following his lead.
It didn’t matter. She was being kissed, and she was kissing in return, and thus far, it wasn’t a humiliating disaster.
This . . . was . . . glorious.
For the second time in a single day, he made her knees go weak.
She threw her arms around his neck for balance. And then she kept them there for the sheer pleasure of lacing her fingers at the nape of his neck and sifting through the heavy locks of his hair.
He smelled so good. So simply, and so masculinely, good. It made no sense to her, how the most humble, unlikely scents could add up to an exotic cologne. If one gathered a flask of whisky, a strop of old leather, and a cake of plain soap, then tied it all together with a few wisps of dog hair—no one would expect the resulting “bouquet” to smell more enticing than an armful of roses. But somehow it did.
And then there was his heat. He seemed made of it. The man was a coal-fired furnace. He radiated warmth through his grasping hands, his hard chest, his lips.
Oh, his lips. The whiskers dotting his chin and jaw were abrasive, but his lips were . . . not soft, exactly. Soft meant pillows or petals, but his lips were the perfect blend of resilience and gentleness. Give and take.
When at last he reached her mouth again, his taste was easy to name. Whisky and tea. And when he thrust his tongue deep, whisky and need.
So much need.
That was the most stirring, intoxicating part. Everything about his embrace told her that he needed, and what was truly astonishing—that he sought something he needed in her. He twisted his hand in the back of her nightrail and kissed her more deeply, relentless, as if chasing that something. Searching for it.
And part of her wanted nothing more than to surrender. To offer whatever he needed of her, and gladly.
Be careful, Izzy.
“Enough.” With that gruff pronouncement, he released her. So quickly, she almost stumbled.
The sounds of labored breathing filled the turret.
At length, he cursed. “That was a disaster.”
Izzy put her hand to her temple. She was alone in the dark again, and her head was spinning. This was the moment for a witty, sophisticated retort.
What came out of her mouth instead was, “You kissed me first.”
“You kissed me back.”
“And then you kissed me more.” She sighed. So much for sophisticated banter. “I won’t make too much of it if that’s your concern. I know you only kissed me to intimidate me. But you should know this. It didn’t work.”
“I think it did work.” He pulled her close again. “I felt your heart pounding.”
Well, if a pounding heart was a sign of fear . . .
She flattened one hand against his chest, covering the thumping beat there. The man must be terrified.
Izzy felt a strange pang of sympathy for him. Growing up as Sir Henry Goodnight’s daughter had taught her all about male pride. Her father had labored for years in obscurity as a poorly paid, frustrated scholar. Once the stories found success, the adulation of readers was the food that sustained him. He couldn’t last a week or more without another meal of fawning praise.
And if pride was that important to a middle-aged scholar, Izzy could only imagine how vital it must be to man like the Duke of Rothbury. How difficult adjusting to blindness must be for a man like him, young and strong and in his prime of life. For the first time, he was forced to rely on others. He must hate that feeling.
So he’d learned Gostley Castle, pace by pace, month after month, building a painstaking map of every room in his head. By now this castle was a fortress to his pride. The one place he still felt in control.
And today . . . thanks to some legal quirk, he’d lost it. To a plain, penniless spinster.
It wasn’t any great wonder he despised her.
But just because Izzy understood and sympathized, that didn’t mean she would give up. She couldn’t surrender her own interests just to soothe his pride. She’d made that mistake before, and it was why she found herself here, penniless and stranded in a crumbling castle with nowhere else to go.
She had to look out for herself. No one else would.
“You needn’t be anxious, Your Grace. We will do whatever it takes to sift through the papers and legalities. In the meantime, I promise, I won’t be much trouble.” She gave his chest a gingerly pat.
His hand closed on her forearm and pushed it away. “What you’ll be in the morning, Miss Goodnight, is gone. I will see you back to your bedchamber now. And when morning comes, I will find you somewhere else to stay.”
Izzy relented, saving her strength for tomorrow. In the morning, he would try to make her leave. He might scare her, shout at her, ply her with threats or kisses.
She would be strong as these castle walls.
She would not give one inch.
Chapter Seven
The next morning, Ransom awoke with a surplus of inches—all of them straining against his breeches falls.