Free Duchess in Love by Eloisa James Page A

leaned toward her. Gina smelled his soap. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo against her rib cage.
    â€œNo, I mean how are you truly?” he said. “After all, we are intimately related, though I haven’t seen you for twelve years. We were first cousins for years. Then when it was suddenly revealed that you were not my blood relative, you became my wife.”
    â€œI’m just fine,” she said, getting more flustered. She tapped her fan closed and looked at it rather than meet his eyes.
    Marissa’s face was a perfect oval. When Gina’s eyes were hidden by those sooty eyelashes—she must color them, he thought absentmindedly—her face looked almost as perfectly oval as Marissa’s. Odd he hadn’t noticed that earlier. It must be her eyes. They led him astray. She was smoothing each stick of her fan with a delicate finger.
    He was jolted by a stab of lust. Did she touch the lofty Bonnington with those long fingers of hers? With that smooth a stroke? If she hadn’t, she would. He pulled his thoughts back from that image.
    â€œGina,” he said.
    She looked up. Her eyes were a bewitching green, the color of a deep pool of Mediterranean water.
    â€œAren’t you going to welcome me home?” he said, rather huskily. And then, before he thought twice, his lips drifted down on hers. He tasted surprise on her lips. He was surprised too. What the devil was he doing? Still…a woman’s lips, a curtained alcove, a waltz playing dimly in the background. England at its best, he thought dimly. He cupped the back of her head in his large hand and relaxed into the kiss.
    Except that one moment he was feathering his lips over hers in a sweet, welcome-home kind of way, and the next his wife gave a startled little squeak and so, of course, he took the invitation and—her open mouth.
    At which point waltz, curtains, and champagne fell away. His groin tightened; he tilted her face so that he could crush her mouth under his. He cupped that delicate oval of a face in his callused hands and drank from her as if she were nectar. The mating game. Not nostalgia anymore, nor greeting. In the flick of an eyelash, their kiss had transformed into a bewildering, lusty meeting of mouths. He had a sweep of her hair in his right hand and her hand was curved around his neck. His mouth was hard on hers, sweet kisses, hot kisses that burned the air between them.
    Except she stopped kissing him back and shoved at his shoulder, hard.
    He pulled back. For a moment they just stared at each other. Then she reached out a hand and pulled open the curtains. Sure enough, her fiancé was making his way across the ballroom floor.
    â€œYou must excuse me,” Gina said. “I believe I momentarily forgot who you were.”
    Cam felt a bolt of anger. No one forgot who he was when he held her in his arms—no one. Especially not his own wife.
    â€œIt appears that Bonnington is about to save us from a spot of marital embarrassment,” he drawled.
    â€œAre you embarrassed by something?” she asked, raising a delicate eyebrow.
    He had to admit it. She was as cool about it as he was. Damned if he believed that she’d never been in an alcove before. He answered without pause for thought. “I’ve always thought it must be unpleasantly embarrassing to feel desire for one’s wife. Rather like a disreputable longing for the bread pudding served in the nursery.”
    She turned a little pink at that. “Bread pudding?”
    â€œYes,” he said. “Bread pudding. Because one can go without bread pudding for long periods of time, can’t one? Infact, it is hardly seen on a civilized table. But then sometimes one has an alarming”—he paused—“ lust for just that homey concoction.”
    There was a moment’s pause as Gina untangled his metaphor and discovered she was being compared to a soggy concoction that she hadn’t willingly eaten in years.