Flirting with Ruin Read Free Page A

cue to persuade her, but this man, she was certain, would not. She was not ready for him to walk away. Her body felt alive. Humming, thrumming, taut. Every cliché she had ever read, but she felt it. Rosalind shook her head. ‘I have not,’ she said, and pulled him to her, fastening her mouth on his.
    * * *
    This time when he kissed her, Fraser eased some of his restraint. It astounded him how much he wanted her. This time their kiss was more ardent. It was ridiculous, just as he had said, for two grown people to be kissing in the open air with only a tree trunk for a prop, but it was also intoxicating, and he did not want to stop. Not that it would go much further. Not that he would try. Not that she would permit it. But still…
    Her tongue tangled with his. Her body writhed against his. She had such delicious curves, his hands could not help but cup and mould and stroke. The soft shelf of her breasts above the neckline of her gown. The swell of them, irksomely corseted, beneath. The flare of her hips, and the sweet curve of her rear. The delightful arch in her back as he pulled her harder against him. The softness of her thighs against his. The ache as she rubbed against his erection. He drew his breath in sharply as she did so.
    She smelled musky, of some exotic perfume mixed with soap and the saltiness of her perspiration from dancing. Her skin radiated heat. ‘So hot,’ he murmured. ‘I could almost believe your hair was fire.’
    ‘It was the dancing.’ Her hands fluttered under his coat, stroking down his back, clutching at the tensed muscles of his buttocks, then back up under his waistcoat so that there just his shirt between her hands and his skin. ‘But you are hot too.’
    He kissed her throat. ‘And I was not dancing.’ He nudged her against the tree trunk.
    ‘Then it must be this.’
    She pulled him between her legs, kissing him, touching him, urging him on with soft little moans, making him wild, almost desperate for more. ‘We are adults, not overwrought adolescents,’ he said feverishly, his hands roaming, stroking, urgent.
    ‘Far too old to be carried away by lust,’ she agreed lustfully.
    ‘Far too old.’ He hitched up her skirts and she helped him do so.
    ‘Absolutely,’ she said, then gasped as his hand slipped beneath her petticoats to find warm flesh covered by the thinnest layers of silk and cambric.
    She wrapped one of her legs around him. Her cloak fell back, and he kissed the quivering flesh of her breasts, licking into the squeezed-tight valley between them. Her hand skimmed the front of his buckskins to lie flat on his erection. Blood coursed to thicken it. If he did not stop now…
    He did not want to stop now. His fingers found the opening between her pantaloons. He did as she did, flattening his hand against her sex. He could feel her curls on his palm, feel the heat and damp of her sex, radiating. Above them in the tree, something rustled. He looked up and caught sight of the moon.
    Rosalind followed his gaze. ‘A harvest moon.’
    ‘Symbol of fertility,’ Fraser said wryly.
    ‘And madness.’
    She was looking at him now. There was something in her eyes—uncertainty, hesitation. The merest hesitation, but it was sufficient. Fraser forced himself to remove his hand. ‘Is it madness?’
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘You are probably right.’ Fraser sighed. ‘We have had enough of the night air, wouldn’t you say?’
    Would she ?She should. Rosalind righted herself. ‘I think we are both a little drunk on it,’ she said regretfully, pulling her cloak around her. ‘That, and the moon.’ She shook back her head and met his gaze full on. ‘I should have heeded Kate’s warning. She told me it was potent.’
    ‘Kate?’
    ‘The friend I am visiting. I should go.’
    ‘May I escort you there?’
    Rosalind shook her head firmly. ‘It is but a step.’
    She did not wish to be seen with him, that much was plain. Was she ashamed? More likely—and quite rightly—simply cautious