turned to find Alex very close to her.
“You’re crying,” he said, his voice rough with some emotion she could not place.
“Of course I’m crying!” Joanna exclaimed. “I have had a very bad week!” She flashed him a look. “Go away, Lord Grant. Can you not take a hint? I really do not want to cry in front of you!”
Alex ignored her words. His hand was on her waist, the gentle warmth of his touch searing her through the silk bodice of her gown. How had that happened? He was drawing her closer, as though he wanted to comfort her. Joanna had never equated a man’s physical proximity with reassurance before; David had only ever touched her when he wanted to bed her. And surely Alex, of all people, cared nothing for whether she was distressed or not. She felt confused, disturbed. She was not sure what was showing on her face. Alex raised a hand and brushed away the smudges of her tears with the pad of his thumb. Her heart ached at the tenderness of the gesture. She looked up to meet the dazzling intensity of those gray eyes and then he was kissing her, his mouth gentle and persuasive, and the sheer surprise of it ripped through her and set her trembling.
“Open your mouth,” he whispered and her mind reeled shock whilst her lips parted in instinctive response to the command and to the pressure of his. Alex coaxed them farther apart with sensual deliberation and she felt the slow sweep of his tongue against hers. She could taste brandy mingled with the salt of her tears. The heat consumed her then, fierce, scalding her, leaving her shaking and breathless. They fell apart and stood staring at one another.
“What was that?” Jo found her voice first. “Comfort?”
“Scarcely that.” For a moment Alex looked as stunned as she felt, his expression taut and astonished, his gray eyes mirroring her shock and confusion. Joanna felt a violent wash of pleasure to see how shaken he was.
“That was not what I intended to do,” he said slowly.
“I imagine not.” Joanna bit her lip. She felt dazed and heated, her stomach burning with wicked excitement. The air between them felt alive. From the room next door came the roar of the boxing crowd as atavistic as a beat in the blood. There was something equally primitive in Alex’s eyes, but it did not scare her. It called to her.
“But now that I have.” He was drawing her close again, his voice so low that she could barely hear it, “I confess I have been wanting this for a long time. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and even earlier …”
She could have stopped him. She thought she should have done, knew she should have done. She did not like Alex Grant, yet for some reason that very aversion seemed to make his appeal even more powerful. It added an undertow of raw passion that simultaneously seduced and appalled her. There was a dark current of attraction between them that tempted her with its wicked sweetness, drawing her in so that she clung to him instead of pushing him away. She did not understand it and when Alex held her she did not care.
This time it was not so gentle. Alex’s lips captured hers and took them with all the passion she had always sensed was in him. Joanna yielded to the danger and the excitement, sliding her arms about his neck, pulling him closer. The kiss was so urgent and primitive that she shook with the power of it. It called to an answering need in her. Gone was the ice maiden, the woman David Ware had scorned as barren and frigid. Her mind spun as she realized that she had never felt like this before, never experienced this intensity, this utter desire. It was what she had searched for and never found. She made a small, surrendering noise deep in her throat and felt the harsh need surge in him as he gathered her closer, every hard line of his body taut against hers. There was a tense, heated spiral of desire tightening within her. She wanted him to make love to her here, in this inn parlor with the wild noise of the crowd in her ears.
When he finally released her Joanna pressed her fingers to her mouth in disbelief and felt her lips swollen and moist from the demand of their kisses.
“Well,” Alex said, “that was interesting.”
Interesting? Was that what he called it? Joanna stared at him in outrage. He had kissed her with lust and sweetness and a fiery heat that had her body still humming and he thought it was interesting? Really, she thought, he only needed to speak to annoy her.
“I am glad that you thought so,” she said frostily, trying to damp down her feelings.
His grin was pure wickedness. He looked damnably pleased with himself. Joanna’s annoyance grew.
“I suppose it was a little more than that,” he said.
“You flatter me,” Joanna said. “I should like to know how you can kiss me like that when you profess to dislike me so heartily.”
“It seems that I do not need to like you to kiss you,” Alex said. His gaze was dark and hot. “Nor do you need to like me to kiss me back.”
She felt color flare into her face. “It is unaccountable, is it not,” she said, “for I do not like you at all.”
“And yet.” Alex ran his finger down the curve of her cheek. Her skin seemed to warm to his touch; she resisted a powerful impulse to turn her face against his hand, seeking further caresses. She was simultaneously mortified and fascinated by her response to him. She could feel the arousal building deep inside her again, tight as a knot.
“And yet you want me,” Alex said.
“I want a carriage with matching grays and a diamond necklace from Hatton Garden,” Joanna said, “but it is not going to happen, just as any sort of affaire between us is not going to happen.”
“Is it not?” His voice was dangerously soft. His hand fell to the hollow at the base of her throat, his touch as gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. Joanna could feel her breathing catch. She knew that the pulse there would be pounding; her heart was racing so fast now that she could feel the beat of it against the silk of her bodice. Alex ran a finger along her collarbone, dipping his hand beneath the ruffled neckline of her gown to caress the upper curve of her breast in a touch that was fleeting and yet wrenched so deep a sensation from Joanna that her knees almost buckled beneath her. Her nipples hardened instantly and a tiny gasp broke from her lips. Alex’s gaze was intent, dark, focused, utterly consumed with desire. He slid the slippery silk from her shoulder and his lips replaced his fingers, drifting down across the tender skin of her neck and the delicious line of her breasts to dip into the hollow between them, his tongue flicking, hot and shocking against her skin.
Joanna’s mind spun with dark, erotic images, her body melting into slow, luxuriant pleasure. It was like a game, a dare, a test of how far he could push her, and she knew she should stop it, stop him, but she did not want to because she was trapped in a web of sensual delight.
She felt his palm against her breast, warm through the silk of her chemise. The spread of his fingers against the slippery richness of the silk made her gasp again, the thought of his hands on her body with only the thin material between setting her shaking. She reached out to steady herself and her hand brushed the edge of the table, her wedding ring catching on the wood. It was a tiny thing and yet it caught her attention, not because she felt that she was in any way being unfaithful to David’s memory-such a thought was laughable given their estrangement-but because it reminded her who Alex was. Her late husband’s best friend, a man who disliked her and yet could make such exquisite love to her that her body hummed and sang under his touch.
Wrenched by a spasm of self-disgust, she pulled back and he let her go. He was breathing as hard as she was. His gray eyes were smoky dark.
For
