A Gentle Grace (Wedded Women Quartet) by Jillian Eaton Page B

opened her eyes and peeked up at him. “You can kiss me now,” she said politely, less he was waiting for her permission.
    Stephen traced his fingertips over her ear and smiled. “You do not want to rush moments like these. They do not come along very often.”
    “They do not?” Grace asked.
    Silently the Earl shook his head.
    “Why?”
    “Because,” he whispered as he dipped his head lower, “women like you do not come along very often.” And then his mouth was on her mouth, and his body was pressing against her body, and his hands were framing her face as if she were made of the finest porcelain, and it was all so wonderful and new and bewildering and amazing that Grace quite forgot to breathe.
    She wanted the kiss to last forever, and murmured a throaty protest when Stephen drew back but he was only adjusting the angle of his mouth, and when his lips settled against hers for the second time an entirely new sensation of feeling swept over Grace. She leaned into the kiss, into him , and he coaxed her lips to part with a teasing slide of his tongue. Her knees wobbled and she clung to his broad shoulders with all her strength.
    His mouth was doing the most delicious things to her. Nibbling and suckling, nipping and teasing until she was quite heady with it. She fumbled to keep up, to mimic the lick of his tongue against her bottom lip, but with a quiet rumble of laughter Stephen told her to relax, to enjoy, and so she did.
    She felt his hands slip from her face to the sensitive curve of her back. His fingers followed the seam of her dress, pressing against each bump in her spine until goose bumps ran the length of her body. When his hands finally reached her neck they settled there, but not before slipping beneath her collar and massaging the tightly corded muscle until she wanted to moan from the pleasure of it.
    And just when Grace thought it could not get any better, when she thought the kiss had reached sheer perfection, his mouth began to trace a decadent path from her lips to her jaw to the base of her throat where her pulse fluttered quick as a bird’s wing and back again.
    “Oh,” she gasped, her eyes opening in wonder. “That feels… That feels quite nice.”
    “Do you want me to stop?” he murmured. 
    “N-n-no,” she said, her breath catching when he slipped her earlobe between his lips and began to suckle. “You are d-doing very nicely.”
    He slowly worked his way back to her mouth and finished the kiss as he had started it: his lips pressed ever-so-slightly against hers. When he finally stepped back and slipped free of her arms Grace remained motionless with her eyes closed, reluctant to let go of the moment even after it had ended.
    Her lips felt swollen and she traced her fingertips over them in wonder, thinking this is what a woman’s mouth feels like after she has been kissed quite thoroughly . She had always imagined her first kiss would be terribly awkward and stiff, but this… well, it was certainly safe to say it had been anything but.
    “Lady Deringer?”
    Grace looked at the Earl, and for the first time she saw something other than cool indifference in his brilliant green eyes. She saw uncertainty, and a glimmer of hope, and another emotion she could not put a name to but was able to recognize because she felt it as well.
    And there, in the middle of the field on a bright summer’s day in late August, she held out her hand and he took it in his and they smiled at each other, their eyes communicating what their lips could not, and she said, “Please, call me Grace,” and he said, “Only if you call me Stephen,” and so she did.
    They returned to the house arm in arm and met an anxious and somewhat cross Henrietta on the veranda who complained that they had gone beyond her line of sight – not that she was watching – and Lord Melbourne had best mind his manners from this moment forward.
    “Yes, Lady Deringer,” he said respectfully, and only Grace saw his lips twitch as he