Free Charity by Deneane Clark

smiled and smoothed his thumb along her jaw line. “So sweet,” he murmured, then cupped her chin and, dipping his head, brought her mouth to his. Lightly, softly, he brushed his lips along hers, drawing out the moment, delaying his first taste of her, tormenting himself with the barest of touches.
    Charity’s heart was pounding as she waited for the kiss to engulf her senses, to carry her away on gossamer wingsof passion until she swooned with delight. Because in every description of a first kiss she’d ever read in the silly romantic tales she preferred, that was precisely the way it happened. But first kisses weren’t quite the amazing, wonderful things she’d always imagined—not that she ever would have thought her first kiss would be with Lachlan Kimball in her sister’s London garden in the middle of the day. Lachlan hovered just out of reach, teasingly separate. And when his lips did touch hers, it was only to brush lightly across them. He immediately pulled back. In frustration, Charity leaned forward and pressed her lips fully against his.
    Lachlan laughed softly, surprised by the unexpected move, and he caught her face between his hands. Amity was usually so sedate, so quiet. He pulled away a fraction of an inch, just enough to look into her eyes. They were as bright as the morning sky, wide with expectation and something else. Was it disappointment, he wondered? He released her face and watched as she settled back, a tiny frown marring her expression.
    Silence stretched between them. Charity glanced at Lachlan out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak, so she smiled politely. “Thank you.”
    A glimmer of humor touched his silver gaze. “You’re welcome,” he returned with mock gravity, then added, “Is something amiss?”
    “Oh, no,” she assured him. “It was really a very”—she paused, searching for just the right word—“ nice , um, kiss.”
    “Nice?” Lachlan cocked his head to the side and captured her eyes with his.
    Charity squirmed, wondering why he was placing her in the awkward position of trying to reassure him that he kissed well, especially when the kiss hadn’t been at all what she expected. Uncomfortable with an untruth, she finallysaid, “Well, I mean . . . perhaps they do it differently in Scotland.”
    Thoroughly entertained and charmed by this young lady who, he was learning, was far more unconventional and open in a private setting than a public one, Lachlan leaned back on his hands again. “Ah, I see.” He raised his brows. “How do they do it here?”
    Charity had the grace to blush at the question, since she didn’t have an iota of expertise on the subject, but she charged recklessly ahead. “In books, the girl almost always gets all swoony and breathless.”
    “Mm? Is that so? In books, you say.”
    The way he was looking at her, eyes half-closed and speculative, was doing odd things to her stomach again. Nervously, she smoothed her skirt over her knees and bit lightly into her lower lip.
    Lachlan watched Charity’s even white teeth sink delicately into that tempting, plump bit of flesh and, doing so, decided he could not possibly allow her to think that, in all of Scotland, there wasn’t a single man who could kiss with the passion of a literary Englishman. In fact, he convinced himself, it was his patriotic duty as a Scot to persuade her of the exact opposite. He caught her arm and gave it a little tug so that she fell against him. “Perhaps then, Miss Ackerly, you can teach me .”
    He slid a hand into the sun-warmed curls near her temple, tilted her head back, and took her mouth with his. The kiss was anything but gentle or hesitant. His lips slanted across hers with hot insistence, and Charity felt suddenly as though she’d been tossed into an unknown sea teeming with feelings she’d never encountered. His tongue slipped along the crease between her lips until she whimpered and opened her mouth. She couldn’t think,