First kiss

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Not quite a proposal on WIP Wednesday

The two older women were so absorbed with one another that Pol and Jackie might have been alone in the house. Pol constantly fought the temptation to touch her, to kiss her. More than that, he would not do until they were wed, or at least until she accepted the proposal he had not yet made. With his future so uncertain, it would be unfair, possibly even dangerous. He shuddered to think what Oscar might do to Pol’s wife. That is, if he had been told that Pol was the rightful heir to their grandfather.

Should he kiss her, though? She was attracted to him, he was certain. He was not the rake his cousin was, but nor was he a complete innocent. She wanted him, unless he was imagining the signs of her desire—the way her body tilted towards his, the husky tone when they were alone and she spoke to him, her habit of touching her tongue to suddenly dry lips, her enlarged pupils.

As for him, he yearned to hold her, to kiss her, and everything that followed. In his dreams, they enjoyed the greatest of intimacies. He slept restlessly and woke hard and aching. Would kisses make it all worse?
Surely not. He had learned self-control in a hard school. He could kiss her, and do no more. Day by day, he became more certain that a private kiss or two would do no harm. More than that, it felt inevitable.
In the end, though, there was no question. He stepped out of his little bedchamber off the kitchen just as she hurried past, and suddenly she was in his arms. He made no conscious decision to lower his head and press a kiss to her lips. One tender but gentle kiss became another, the heat building in him as she responded.

“Jackie,” he murmured.

“Pol,” she replied, or tried to, for as soon as she opened her mouth, he slipped his tongue past her lips to explore her mouth. It was clear she’d never been kissed before, but she was a fast learner, as he might have guessed she would be. Everything he did to her, she did in return to him, stroking his tongue with her own, brushing her tongue along the inside of his cheeks and pressing it far into his mouth and then retreating so that his tongue followed hers into the warm cavern of her mouth.

They were pressed together as tightly as two people could be with clothes on, he with one hand on her buttock and one in the middle of her back, and she exploring his chest and his back with hands that stroked and caressed.

His own hands stayed where they were, though it took every ounce of self-control he still possessed not to use them to shape her breasts, to reach for her feminine core. Not here. Not yet. Not in the kitchen where her mother might appear at any moment.

The thought was enough to slightly temper his ardor, but rather than step away, he backed into his bedchamber, bringing her with him. He wouldn’t close the door, because even in his current state—especially in his current state—he didn’t think it wise to be kissing Jackie in a room with a bed in it.

“Beloved,” he said to his dear delight. “Jackie, my heart, my love. You cannot know how much I want you.”

“Perhaps nearly as much as I want you,” she replied, which made him chuckle. Trust Jackie to challenge him.

“I’ve no right to ask you to marry me when my future is so uncertain,” he admitted, taking the leap towards his heart’s desire—if only part way.

But half a leap was never going to satisfy his intrepid darling. “The future is never certain, Pol. I’ve learned that. Anything can happen. We should snatch what happiness we can.”

“Then you will promise to marry me?”

“Ask and you will find out,” she retorted.

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First Kiss from Hold Me Fast on WIP Wednesday

I’ve just sent Hold Me Fast off to Dragonblade. Here’s a foretaste–Jowan’s and Tamsyn’s first kiss. (And before you ask, those are traditional names in Cornwall.)

Her smile faded. “Jowan, why are you upset? Do you not wish to be my friend?”

Exasperated all over again, he snapped back, “I wish to be your husband and your lover.”

Tamsyn gaped at him. “You do? Still?”

He couldn’t believe she said that. “What did you think I was about? I’ve been courting you for months!”

“But you have never even tried to kiss me,” she replied.

It was the mystified tone that shredded the last of his self-control. If it was a kiss she wanted, then a kiss is what she would have. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him, but all his indignation eased as his lips touched hers, and he gentled the kiss, his lips firm but tender.

She opened beneath him, her tongue darting out to taste him, and his hands left her shoulders and pulled her closer. Her arms went around his waist and she plastered her body to his, and an endless moment passed as their tongues explored one another and so did their hands.

It wasn’t until he felt her hands pulling his shirt from his trousers that he remembered they were standing on a lookout above the village, where anyone could see them. Reluctantly, his lips attempting to cling, he pulled back.

“The village,” he panted.

“Oh! I forgot.” Tamsyn cast a glance in that direction, and Jowan’s ego celebrated the fact that his kiss had made her unaware of their surroundings.

“I was waiting to be invited,” he told her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The kiss. You said I never even tried to kiss you, but I was waiting to be invited. Tamsyn, you couldn’t control what has happened to you over the years, and you didn’t need another male forcing their desires on you. If that gave you the impression I had stopped wanting you to be my wife, then I am sorry. But I am not sorry you were upset I didn’t kiss you.” Jowan was, in fact, decidedly smug about that last fact, and about how enthusiastically she had responded when he did kiss her.

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Spotlight on Grasp the Thorn

Grasp the Thorn

An accident brings them together. Will a scandal tear them apart?

Bear Gavenor has retired from war and built a business restoring abandoned country manors to sell to the newly rich. He’d like to settle in one himself and raise a family, but the marriage mart is full of harpies like his mother.

Rosa Neatham’s war is just starting. Penniless and evicted from her home, she despairs of being able to care for her invalid father. When she returns to her former home to pick his favourite flower, she is injured in a fall.

Bear, the new occupant of the cottage, offers shelter to her and her father. When scandal erupts, he offers more. He wants a family. She needs a protector. A marriage of convenience will suit them both, and perhaps grow to be more.

When secrets, self-doubts, and old feuds threaten to destroy their budding relationship, can they grasp the thorn of scandal to gather the rose of love?

Excerpt

Rosa blushed, and allowed him to capture her hands.

“Yes, I will marry you, Mr Gavenor.”

He bent from his great height and brushed her lips with his. “Then you had better call me Bear, as my friends do. Or Hugh, if you prefer. My great aunt used to call me Hugh.”

“Hugh, then. Thank you, Hugh. I shall try to be a good wife.”

He kissed her again, another butterfly touch of the lips, then put his hands on her waist and lifted her to sit on the dresser. Now her face was level with his.

“That is better,” he murmured against her mouth. Then his lips met hers again, not a mere brush this time, but a gentle and inexorable advance, setting her lips tingling and taking her breath. His hands slid behind her, pulling her against his chest, so he stood between her open knees, his body pressed tightly to hers.

No, just one hand hugged her, for the other came up behind her head, and tipped it slightly, holding it in place as his lips moved against hers and his tongue swept the seam of her shut mouth once, twice, and again. He hummed with satisfaction when she parted her lips a little, letting his tongue dart inside, and her whole body hummed with pleasure.

Pelman had subjected her to a kiss once; an awkward, embarrassing thing, with her twisting to escape and him boxing her into a corner and pawing her body while he slobbered on her face. The new Lord Hurley, who had also propositioned her when he first arrived at the Hall, had respected her refusal. In fact, he had rather avoided her, and had left again not long after the will was read.

Pelman laughed when she said ‘no’ and waylaid her when she was alone. It had, until now, been her only experience of the pastime, and she had not seen the appeal.

It was very different being the focus of Bear’s undivided attention, the recipient of his tender passion.

She lost herself in the new feelings, grasping his shoulders to bring herself closer to his body, trying her best to imitate the movements of his mouth and tongue.

He pulled away, and rested his forehead on hers, still holding her close. “We had best stop, Rosabel. You are to be my wife, and worthy of all respect, and I have no intention of tupping you on the kitchen dresser. At least, not until we are wed.”

Rosa reluctantly let him go, and he stepped back a little so he could lift her down to the floor. She was pleased to see he looked almost as dazed as she felt.

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First Kiss on WIP Wednesday

The Talons of a Lyon, my first Lyon’s Den book, has just gone back to Dragonblade after I’ve made the changes suggested by Cynthia, the wonderful editor. I thought I’d share a first kiss with you.

His eyes focused on her lips, turned up towards him, and his mouth lowered almost without his volition. “I am going to kiss you, my love,” he warned her.

Seraphina said nothing, but lifted her mouth to meet his.

The first touch of their lips inflamed him, and he struggled to keep from hauling her against him. Her awkwardness helped him to retain his senses. She kissed like a complete novice, closed mouth, uncertain what to do.

He set out to teach her, showing her by example all the ways that two pair of lips could stroke and caress one another. “Open your mouth,” he invited, and swept his tongue inside. Aaah. The taste of her. Now he placed her hands on his chest, releasing his own to embrace her.

Not too fast, Lance. Not too much. Don’t frighten her.

Her tongue tentatively followed his, and his desire surged, almost overwhelming his control. “My love,” he gasped, pulling back to rest his forehead against hers.

The knock on the door gave them a split second’s warning, and then Elaine was in the room, followed by Barker and Mrs. Worthington.

Lance stood and assisted Seraphina to her feet. If her knees were as weak as his, she should probably sit down, but first, “Lady Frogmore has agreed to be my wife,” he announced.

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First Kiss on WIP Wednesday

Just over half way through Snowy and the Seven Blossoms, and my hero and heroine have had their first kiss.

Mr Snowden, exhausted, had fallen into an uneasy sleep, and hardly stirred when a messenger arrived back from the House of Blossoms with clean linen and blankets to make the bed. A bag of clothing for Snowy, too, from which he produced a nightshirt for Mr Snowden.

Ash and Peter helped to move the patient from one side of the bed to the other so that Snowy and Margaret could make it, and then said their farewells.

“I’ll have my cook’s assistant sent over with breakfast makings tomorrow morning,” Peter said. “She’s competent to take over your kitchen until you can hire servants. I’ll send some maids, too, Snowy.”

“And I shall send a couple of maids, too, Snowy, and some footmen,” Ash added. “Are you ready to leave, Margaret?”

“Not yet, Ash. Have my carriage take you home and come back for me.”

Peter protested. “We cannot leave you alone with to two unmarried men, Margaret.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you will not,” Margaret retorted.

The two men exchanged glances and then inclined their heads in acceptance. When Snowy returned from seeing them out, he protested, too. “You cannot stay alone with me during the night, my lady. Tell me what I must watch for.”

“I am staying with my patient, Snowy. It is likely that it will take both of us to care for him tonight. If you have paper and ink, I shall write a note for my household and send it with the carriage when it returns.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but must have seen the determination in her eyes, for what he said was, “Whatever fate did I offend that independent-minded women beleaguer me at every turn?” But his eyes were warm when he said it.

It was a long night. Several times, Margaret and Snowy sponged Mr Snowden—Ned, as Snowy called him—to bring down his temperature. Snowy sang to him when he was restless, and Margaret soon learned the words and took her turn with the lullaby.

Every few minutes she dribbled water into his throat, and from time to time fed him willow-bark tea from a spoon.

Towards morning, the fever broke and he woke with sense in his eyes for the first time. “Hal! You came!” He looked around. “Lady Charmain! You are here, too? Where are we?”

“In a house of my own, Ned,” Snowy replied. “One I have only just purchased, so it is bit bare at the moment. But it has the advantage that no one will know where we are.”

“Ah.” It was a sigh of satisfaction as Ned’s eyes closed again. This time, his sleep was more settled.

“A natural sleep,” Margaret said, pleased.

Snowy took her hand. “You’ve done it, Lady Charmain. I am forever in your debt.”

As he bent forward, she turned her head and the kiss he perhaps intended for her cheek landed on her mouth, tentative and gentle. Margaret closed her eyes and leaned into the kiss. It had been a long time, and never like this—a leisurely exploration that beckoned and enticed.

It went on forever, and was over too soon.

A knock on the front door downstairs broke through the pleasant haze that absorbed Margaret, and Snowy, too, drew back. Margaret was pleased to see he looked as dazed as she felt, and, as he shuddered as he took a deep breath. “I’ll see to that,” he said.

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First kiss on WIP Wednesday

An excerpt from the book I’m currently preparing for beta reading, One Perfect Dance. Ash has just rescued Ginny.

She was still crying, but the angry storm was gone, fading into heart-wrenching sobs that twisted Ash’s gut even more than the initial outburst. “There now, Ginny” Ash said. “Let it out, dearest. You’re safe now, my love.”

She turned her face up at that, drawing back so that her tear-drenched eyes could meet his. “Am I, Elijah?”

“Yes, of course. He has gone, and I won’t let him near you again.”

She thumped his chest softly, an action so reminiscent of the child Ginny that he had to repress a smile. “Not that,” she scolded. “The other.”

He retraced his words in his mind. “My love?” At her tiny nod, he repeated, “My love.”

She raised her eyebrows in question, the imperious gesture only slightly marred by the shuddering breath of a leftover sob.

“I love you, Ginny. Did you not know?”

She thumped him again, another gentle reprimand. “You never said,” she grumbled. “You never even tried to kiss me.” The last two words were disrupted by a hiccup, but he understood them well enough.

“I am abjectly sorry, Ginny,” Ash told her, managing to keep his voice suitably solemn while his heart was attempting to break out of his chest and into hers. She has been waiting for my kisses! Missing them, even. “I have never courted anyone before. I am clearly not very good at it.”

She hiccupped again as she put up a hand to cradle Ash’s cheek. “I am sorry to be so cross, Elijah. I hate hiccups. I hate crying, and it always give me the hiccups.” She proved it with another shuddering hiccup.

“Have a sip of brandy, beloved,” he suggested, and he picked up one of the glasses and held it to her lips. “It might help. And if it doesn’t, perhaps a kiss will cure them.”

Ash was very aware that she had not returned his declaration of love. However, she wanted his kisses. He would start there and hope for the best.

Ginny took the glass from his hand and had another sip, followed by another hiccup.

“It will have to be the kiss, then,” he suggested. He lowered his head to hers, slowly, giving her plenty of time to turn him away. Instead, she lifted her face to bridge the gap, her mouth reaching inexpertly for his.

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First kiss on WIP Wednesday

How about a kiss, folks? Put your excerpt in the comments so we can all see it. Mine is from To Claim the Long Lost Lover, which is finally wending its way up to the crisis.

For eight years, memories of their kisses and embraces had fueled her dreams. Tender at first, almost tentative, this kiss set those memories in the shade from the start, and as the heat rose and his free hand pressed her closer; as she spiraled into a a space out of time and place where nothing existed by him, the memories slipped away to be replaced by new ones.

Somehow, the brandy glasses were gone, and both of his hands were on her, and hers on him, untying and stripping off his cravat, fumbling undone the buttons of his waistcoat, pulling his shirt from his pantaloons so she could slide her hands up under it, to stroke and caress his warm firm skin, silk over steel, much more of it than back when he had been a skinny youth just shooting up from boyhood and still inches short of his adult height.

Such random thoughts surfaced and drifted away as he released her for long enough to wriggle out of his waistcoat, pull the shirt over his head, all the while kissing her as if the touch of her lips was keeping him alive.

Then his hands were on her again, and he was kissing her neck and then lower. With her bodice now completely unfastened, her gown slipped down her body to pool around her feet, and she kicked free of it and curved her spine so that he had room to continue to feast while she pressed the rest of her body to his.

The knock on the door was repeated twice before either of them surfaced enough to notice.

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After the Kiss on WIP Wednesday

We can tell a lot about the people in the books we read by how they behave after a kiss. Are they embarrassed, happy, nonchalant? What are they thinking? Do their thoughts match or are they each believe different things about what just happened. I’d love you to show me an excerpt in the comments. Mine is from next month’s release, To Mend the Broken Hearted.

“Ruth…” he said her name on a groan, then again, this time more sharply, turning his head as her mouth followed his and tried to reconnect. “Ruth. Sweetness. We have to stop.”

Yes. Yes, they did. Heavens! Jeyhun and Zyba were somewhere nearby, perhaps just around the corner, and she was draped over the Earl of Ashbury like a tavern slattern. She jerked away from him, the heat rising in her face. Whatever did he think?

“I beg your pardon,” she murmured.

“I am the one that should apologise, but I find it hard to be sorry. That kiss…!” Val’s voice still sounded strained, as if he was in pain. Her doctor’s mind registered a point from her reading: extreme tumescence could be painful, and when she had been on his lap she had felt his… If her face got any hotter, it would melt.

She opened her mouth to make some sort of an excuse for her behaviour, or to change the subject to something innocuous. But what came out just added to her embarrassment. “I have never been kissed before. Was it…?” She wasn’t sure what she was asking. Was it exceptional? Was it meaningful to you? Was it something we could do again? Perhaps all of them.

Val, who had dropped his arms when she shifted away, lifted his good hand to cup her cheek and lift her face so that he could gaze into her eyes. “I have never had a kiss like that in my life. Ruth, you are an exceptional woman, and make me wish with all my heart I was a better man.”

She leaned into his hand. “You are a good man, Valentine Monforte,”

A burst of dialogue came from just beyond the hedge that shielded them. Jeyhun and Zyba were returning.

Val caressed her lips with his thumb before standing, allowing his fingers to trail over her cheek as he dropped his hand and stepped away. He was just in time. Jeyhun and Zyba rounded the turn in the path, and their stolen moment together was over.

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First Kiss on WIP Wednesday

 

How about a first kiss post for this WIP Wednesday? I have one. It’s from To Wed a Proper Lady. Full disclosure. This seen hasn’t much changed since the novel was the novella The Bluestocking and the Barbarian.

Please share your own work-in-progress first kisses in the comments.

Sure enough, Sophia was alone in the room to which the doddery old butler directed James when he asked after the second parlour. He gave the room a quick and cursory scan before focusing his attention on the woman standing on a ladder and hanging garlands across the huge painting on the window wall. She leaned to her right to reach up to the carved pediment above the window, clutching at the draped maroon curtains to keep her balance.

James was across the room in seconds. “Careful,” he said, steadying the ladder.

Sophia looked down. “Lord Elfingham. What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for something useful to do, Lady Sophia. May I be of service?”

She examined his face and then nodded. “You are between Scylla and Charybdis, are you not?”

James laughed. “You have it exactly. On the one side, the ladies who think it worth the gamble to pull a possible future duke down into their watery vortex, and on the other, the multi-headed monster of innuendo and insult in the company of the gentlemen.”

“Neither ladies nor gentlemen by their behaviour,” his own lady said tartly. “Very well, Lord Elfingham, I will put you to work.” She put one hand on his shoulder to help herself from the ladder. “Bring the ladder, please. I have more garlands to hang.”

James lifted the ladder and followed obediently in her wake. “What are we doing, pray tell?”

“We are having a costume party tonight. You heard?”

James nodded. His wardrobe was limited to what he could carry in his saddlebags, but the duchess had ordered chests of costumes and fabric brought down from the attics, and he had found the means to replicate his festival clothes as a mountain prince, or at least close enough for the audience.

If they wanted a barbarian, he would give them a barbarian.

“We did not decorate in here on Christmas Eve, since we had so much else to do, so I am putting up Christmas decorations. See? The evergreen is a symbol of life in this most holy season. And the holly, have you heard the song about the holly?”

Sophia sang for him, in a light alto, all the verses his father had taught them when he was a tiny child. This European holly was not precisely the same as the holly he had grown up with, but it was similar. For the pleasure of hearing her voice, he kept his counsel.

She went on to explain the other Christmas customs, not just the foliage and ribbons and other materials used in the decorations, but the pudding that had been served at Christmas dinner, the Yule logs burning in various fireplaces around the house, and the boxes that the duchess had delivered the previous day to poor families around the district.

“Cedrica and I, and several of the other ladies, were her deputies,” Sophia explained. “It was wonderful to see the happy little faces of the children, James.”

James had stayed back from the hunt organised for the men in the hopes of spending time with Sophia, and had found out about the charity expedition too late to offer his services. “I am sorry that I missed it,” he said sincerely.

He noted one glaring omission in her descriptions. “Just a decoration,” she had told him, mendaciously, when he asked about the kissing boughs.

And now pretending to be ignorant of these English Christmas customs was about to pay off. One day, when she was safely his wife, he might admit to Sophia that he and the whole citadel had hung on his father’s tales of an English Christmas, that his mother and her maids had decorated high and low, and his father had led the troops out to find a fitting Yule log to carry home in triumph on Christmas Eve. A harder job in his dry mountains than in this green land.

But this was not the time for that story. Not when Sophia was relaxed and about to pass under a kissing bough that retained its full complement of mistletoe berries.

James suppressed a grin. “Look,” he said, at the opportune time, pointing up. “My kaka—my Papa—told me about these.”

She stopped, as he had intended, and with a single stride, he had reached her, wrapped her in his arms, and captured the lips that had been haunting his dreams this past three months.

And she kissed him back. For a moment… for one long glorious moment, while time stood still and the world ceased to exist, Sophia Belvoir kissed him back.

 

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Kisses on WIP Wednesday

I write romances, right? So there’s kissing. At least in most of my books there’s kissing, and if there isn’t, they think of it.

This week, I’ve been doing the line edits on The Realm of Silence, so before I move on entirely to the next three stories I’m preparing to write, I want to share a kiss from that novel. Please share yours in the comments. I’d love to read them.

…when he moved her chair back to help her rise, and she stepped to one side almost into his arms, he could not resist wrapping them around her.

He had intended a brief peck on her hair. She lifted her mouth as if she had been waiting for just such a move, and he was lost. She was all that existed. The elusive scent of her saturated his nostrils, her yielding curves filled his arms, and her lips and mouth consumed all of his thoughts as he tenderly explored them.

How long the kiss lasted he had no idea, but when she stiffened and pulled away, he let her go immediately, sense rushing back into his brain and berating it for the most arrant stupidity. She didn’t comment—wouldn’t even meet his eyes—but led the way out of the garden, almost running in her hurry.