Fingers over her mouth, she backed away a step. He crouched and looped the rope above the rear axle, pulling in a slow breath.

“I will not insult either of our dignities, Miss Lucas, by pretending that you did not just attempt to kiss me.” He glanced at her over his shoulder.

“I did.” She performed the usual damnably taking twist of her lips. “I should very much like to.”

He leaned his forearm onto his knee to turn to her. “Did you hear nothing I said to you yesterday afternoon?”

“I wish I had managed it more successfully.”

“Apparently not,” he answered himself, and stood.

She frowned, her features coming to life again. “Oh, why not? The Bateses believe we are wed, and Mrs. Polley has just dropped off to sleep so she will not discover it. I am not proposing marriage to you. It would just be one kiss, and no one would know.”

“I would know.”

“Well then you could simply forget about it right after, couldn’t you?”

“No.” Never. Dear God, she was unbearably pretty. He scanned her face aglow with mingled indignation and hope, unable not to take his fill of looking. “Do you even hear yourself now?”

“Yes. Don’t be silly. Although I suppose it isn’t silliness but rather gentlemanliness. I admire that about you enormously, of course, but it is inconvenient at the present.”

He laughed, because the only other alternative was to drag her delectable body against him and kiss her until neither of them could see straight.

A crease slipped across her brow. “You already know that I occasionally have lapses in modesty. But why must you be a gentleman at all times? Except of course in that stable.”

He had not been a gentleman when she’d drunkenly clung to him and he’d nearly given her what she wanted. The thoughts he’d had then were not gentlemanlike. Nor was fantasizing about her the night before. Nor was the ready tenor of his body now.

Damn it, where were the rules when a man needed them?

Rule #8!

“A man is only a gentleman if he is never otherwise.” He matched her tone, seeking steadiness. “Except perhaps in a stable,” he admitted.

Her lashes flickered up. “We are in a stable now.”

God help him. “That we are.”

“Just one kiss,” she whispered. “I promise I shan’t bother you about it again.”

Bother? Rather, enchant, torment, torture. Her lips and eyes and silken neck and perfect breasts beckoned.

Damn the rules. If only for a moment.

He cupped his hand around the side of her face, his palm reveling in the warmth of satin. Soft skin. Soft hair. Soft woman. He nearly groaned from the pleasure of it. Her eyes were wide as moonlight. He bent to her.

Her lips were infinitely sweeter than he had imagined, plump and yielding. For the barest moment he allowed himself to breathe her in, to capture her scent of fresh air and sunshine amid the autumn mist, to feel the caress of her against his mouth.

Long enough for his body to stir and a hot thread of panic to dart through him. Good Lord, he had to have her.

Intoxicate.

She intoxicated him.

He drew away. She gulped breath, her lashes stuttering open. Then she smiled and the lapis pools shone.

He choked back a groan.

Mistake. Weakness. Enormous mistake. What had he been thinking?

“That was a perfect first kiss,” she breathed.

“Second.” His voice was uneven.

“Second?”

He tapped a fingertip to the place on his jaw that she had first attempted. Her berry lips opened in a grin of pure delight.

He should kill himself now rather than wait to meet his end after murdering the duke. None of the thoughts in his head were gentlemanly. None of the desires. He saw a flash of her pink tongue and wanted it wrapped around every inch of his body—several inches in particular. He wanted her here, beneath him in the straw and damn every scruple, rule, and plan he’d had for the past five years. Ten. Fifteen. The way Diantha Lucas made him feel was far from gentlemanly. He needed to be inside her.

She had no idea. Despite her inebriated advances and innocent insistence, her face wore an expression of complete satisfaction. She hadn’t any notion what lay beyond kissing, of what he could do to her now.

The air seemed thin.

He could regain control.

“Are you in the habit of assigning numbers to the kisses you share with gentlemen, Miss Lucas?” Speech. Inane speech would help. He would imagine himself in a London drawing room trading flirtatious banter with a lady of society. In a manner of weeks she would be just that, after all, safely surrounded by propriety and safely none of his business.

“Numbers?”

“Counting them up on your fingers, as it were, like points in a card game.”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“ ‘First’ suggests you anticipate a second.”

“ ‘First’ actually means that you are the first man I have ever kissed.”

Her first kiss? Impossible. Yet he was a scoundrel for even imagining otherwise.

“Your suitors have not—?”

“Oh, well, I didn’t have any suitors in Devon—except Mr. H. I was all spots and two stone rounder until last summer, after all. Gentlemen found nothing of interest in me. You didn’t.” She said it so blithely, as though commenting on the shade of the grass.

“I found your quantity of opinion interesting. And before that I found that you danced quite prettily.”

“You remember?” She drew her chin in, disbelief bright in her wonderful eyes. “You remember at Savege Park two years ago when I told you that you should not drink as you did? Do?”

“I do. Remember, that is.”

“Oh.” She seemed to consider it. “But you don’t really remember dancing with me on the terrace at Lord and Lady Blackwood’s wedding. You were drunk then.”

“I remember everything, Miss Lucas. It is my curse.”

She seemed not to hear the last. “Do you . . . ?” Her gaze fluttered past his mouth, then down his chest. “Do you remember what those young men were saying to me?”

“I remember that you wished them to cease teasing you.”

Her voice quieted. “You saved me.”

He turned back to the carriage. “I merely recalled them to their manners.” He affixed the final loop of rope and pulled it tight. “All is ready here. We can leave immed—”

She grasped his arm. His every muscle tensed. She would not make this easy, but Wyn didn’t know if he wanted it to be easy. Part of him wished to crave something he could not have, and to suffer accordingly. It was the foolish part of him, the part that had trod that path of craving and suffering so well he knew it by heart, the part he’d thought he left behind when he escaped home, then again when he joined the Falcon Club, but that nevertheless clung tenaciously.

“Can—” She caught her lip in her teeth. “Can you tell me . . . ? How does one breathe?”

Very unsteadily while those eyes gazed up at him. “Breathe?”

“While kissing.”

Not easy. He tried to moderate his voice. “In the usual manner, I imagine.”

Her slender brows dipped.

“At opportune moments,” he suggested.

Her lips twisted up in that manner he both dreaded and longed for.

“Through one’s nose, perhaps,” he said, because his only refuge was to continue speaking or to walk away.

“Really?” She appeared unconvinced.

And so, because her skepticism suited his need to have her lips beneath his again, he showed her how one breathed while kissing. To her soft gasp of surprise, he took her waist in his hands, bent to her mouth, and kissed her in truth this time. Her lips were warm and still, and then not still as he felt her eager beauty, tasted her, and made her respond.

She held back at first, and then she gave herself up to it. Her mouth opened to him as though by nature, offering him a sweet breath of the temptation within. If he’d gone seeking an innocent with more ready hunger he could not have found her. But he had not wanted an innocent. He’d wanted no one, yet here he was with his hands on a girl he could not release, his tongue tracing the seam of sweet, full lips that she parted for him willingly.

“Now, breathe,” he whispered against those lips, then he sought her deeper. She made sounds of surrender in the back of her throat. He wanted to run his hands over her body, to pull her to him and make her know what a real kiss could be.

“Breathe.” God, she smelled so good. He could press his face against her neck and remain there simply breathing her. But he feared that if he enjoyed much more of Diantha Lucas he would be in a very bad way when it came to giving her over to her stepfather and subsequently her intended. A very bad way indeed. And she didn’t deserve it. Rule #9: A gentleman must always place a lady’s welfare before his own.

She slipped her tongue alongside his, gasped a little whimper of pleasure, and he coaxed her lips open and showed her more than how to breathe. He showed her how he wanted her.

It was a pity for Miss Lucas’s welfare that no gentleman could be found here, after all.

She wanted it to go on and on, forever and ever.

His first kiss had not been what she expected. Having a man actually touching her face was a bit odd. It was not soft like when a woman bussed her on the cheek, but firm, and he smelled of leather and horse and a hint of elegant cologne. But after a moment she’d thought it was quite nice. Quite. It made her heart beat swiftly and her breathing cease. She’d been glad she arranged for Betsy to play lookout so Mrs. Polley would not discover it.

It did not feel odd any longer, and glad seemed an enormous understatement.