Deceived by Jess Michaels Page B

this moment to get what he wanted. And yet, that felt so…terrible.
    But it was Claire! And perhaps something Josie revealed in her weakness could help their family.
    “You loved Claire, I know. You were like a second sister to her,” he said.
    “My own sisters were so much older, I hardly even existed for them. I honestly still don’t. So Claire was truly my sister in every real sense of the word.”
    “You must miss her as deeply as we all do,” he whispered.
    “I do,” she admitted, but he noticed her gaze flitted away.
    Slowly, he slipped a finger beneath her chin. Her skin was so soft under his rough fingertip he suddenly wanted to stroke her all over. She tilted her face up.
    “Do you ever hear from her?” he asked.
    She caught her breath, though he wasn’t certain if it was from the unexpected intimacy of the moment between them or from his question. Perhaps both.
    “Do you know something?” he pressed, but he found his lips descending toward hers. Lower, lower, and then he kissed her.
    He hadn’t meant to kiss her at all. But now that he was doing it, it felt more right than any other kiss he’d had in years. Her lips were as soft as her skin and he melted against them, lifting his hands to tilt her face, brushing his lips back and forth against her as he coaxed her to open, to welcome.
    And to his surprise, she did. Her lips parted on a sigh and he darted his tongue inside, tasting the sweetness of her like a man starved for far too long. Once he had, he couldn’t let go. He molded her closer, sucking her tongue and drawing her in until she felt like a part of him.
    And she did not resist. In fact, her hands came up to his upper arms, fingers digging into him through his clothes as she lifted to meet him. Slowly, she became more daring, swirling her own tongue against his, exploring his mouth with hesitance that gently blossomed into passion.
    But just as swiftly and powerfully as the kiss began, it ended. With a cry, she pulled herself from his arms and spiraled away, nearly tripping into the flowerbeds neither one of them had spent any time exploring.
    “Josie,” he began.
    “Don’t,” she whispered, her voice broken. “Oh please, don’t!”
    Then she gathered her skirt into her hand and ran.
     

    Josie paced the first room she had come to after fleeing the conservatory. The billiard room was vast and masculine, but she didn’t give a damn. Her mind was very much elsewhere.
    “What did you do?” she gasped out loud. “Oh God, what did you do?”
    But she knew what she’d done. She’d allowed Evan to kiss her. She’d very much kissed him back. And now as she thought of it, her errant mind took her back to the moment and she felt as much of a thrill and desire as she had then.
    But with Evan? Evan whom she had an infatuation with since she was a girl? Evan whom she had vowed to despise the rest of her days? Why in the world had she had to kiss Evan?
    “Josie.”
    She froze in her pacing at the sound of Evan’s voice at the door behind her. She refused to look at him. Looking at him wasn’t going to help.
    “How did you know I was here?” she whispered.
    “I followed you,” came his voice again, after a brief hesitation.
    She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please Evan, go away. Just go away and let’s pretend the conservatory never happened.”
    She heard him move and she forced herself to look at him, if only to ensure that he wouldn’t intrude upon her space again and prove to them both how weak she was. He had shut the door and they were alone. In a dim billiard room.
    Alone.
    Her breath caught.
    “Josie, please,” he began.
    She shook her spinning head. She couldn’t let him talk her into anything. Because he would. With his dark brown eyes, and his full lips, he would spin some kind of spell on her, just like he had in the orangery. She would forget herself if she didn’t find a way to distance them.
    But her mind was too addled to concoct some lie. And she found herself