Free Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare

better.”
    He shook his head, incredulous. “It’s over. It’s already done. Even if I did kiss you again, it wouldn’t be your first kiss anymore.”
    “It counts,” she said. “So long as it’s part of the same embrace, it all counts as one.”
    Bloody hell. Where did women come up with these rules? Did they keep them in a book somewhere? Sometimes he wondered if women were all lawyers, with an extensive code of Romantic Law that they kept stubbornly hidden from men.
    “Stop dithering,” she urged. “Surely, that kiss wasn’t the best you could do.”
    He bristled. “Of course it wasn’t.”
    “I mean, you’ve made love on horseback enough times to draw generalizations about it. You must know how to kiss better than that. I’m not leaving this turret until—”
    He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her again. Harder this time. Mainly just to quiet her prattling, but also to underscore the original meaning. If she wanted tender starlight interludes, Ransom was not her man. When it came to physical pleasure, he was aggressive, bold, and unashamed of it. If he had to make the point twice, so be it.
    But as he kissed her, something went horribly, horribly wrong.
    This time, she kissed him back. Not with mere curiosity or artless enthusiasm but with a sweet, unfettered passion that made his ribs ache.
    His eyes flew open in shock—not that it made a damn bit of difference. He still couldn’t see, only feel.
    Sweet God above, did he feel.
    This was . . . This was not supposed to happen.
    Her lips were even more tempting than he’d dared suppose. Plump, wide, sensual. He savored each in turn, then swept his tongue between. She matched him kiss for kiss, taste for teasing taste.
    He tugged her close with one arm. As he thrust his tongue deep, her mouth shifted and softened under his. Generous. Giving.
    This was everything he’d been craving for so damn long. Closeness, warmth, sweetness, surrender.
    He might have confined himself to this castle in the months since his injury, but he hadn’t stopped moving. He’d walked this place every night, traversing the galleries, climbing the stairs, measuring the rooms in paces and learning the way his steps echoed off the stone. Hour after hour and day after day turned into month after month.
    First, he’d walked to rebuild the strength sapped from his limbs. Then he’d walked to master the lay of this castle without his sight. He might be a wreck, he told himself, but he’d be damned if he’d be an invalid.
    But there was something else that kept him walking, prowling the corridors and towers of Gostley Castle. Even if he wished to rest, he couldn’t. Not without indecent amounts of whisky, anyhow. He just never felt easy. He never knew true peace. He was beginning to think he never would.
    And now . . . now, this woman grabbed that tormented, wandering part of him and kissed it. Like a long-lost lover welcoming him home.
    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 cock 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