" I now understand why you’re determined to thwart her,” Maria went on. “She does have a hateful side.”
He stared down into the goblet. “I suppose you’d see it that way. She sees it as protective.”
“Yet you’re angry at her.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, will you stop harping on that? I’m not angry at Gran.” He stepped closer to her. “And if you intend to stand out here all night and plague me with questions about it, I’ll give you something better to do with your mouth.”
She gazed up at him, perplexed. “I don’t under-“
He cut her off with a kiss. Let her knee him in the groin. Let her slap him. Anything was better than having her ask him about things he didn’t want to discuss. Ever.
But she didn’t kick him. She stayed very, very still, but she didn’t fight him.
He drew back to eye her suspiciously. “Well? Aren’t you going to punch me in the kidney? Pull a knife on me?”
A smile curved her lips. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I kick your shin and march off in a huff, and you don’t have to answer me. But I’m wise to your tricks now, Oliver. I’m not going to stop asking just because-“
He kissed her again, dropping the goblet so he could drag her close and take advantage of her gasp to plunge his tongue into her mouth. Her sweet, silky mouth. So warm and innocent.
So dangerous.
Swiftly, he retreated.
She did not. “What was that…you just did?” she asked in a breathless voice.
Such clear evidence of her arousal made something resonate deep in his chest. And that wasn’t good. “It’s another way of kissing.” He ran his thumb over her lower lip, unable to stop himself. “A very intimate way.”
Maria heard his explanation in a daze. Another way of kissing? There was more than one? Was it supposed to make her pulse jump and her heart thunder? And why had Nathan never done it to her?
Great heavens, Nathan. She had let the villainous Rockton himself kiss her, without a thought for her fiancé!
Still, she wanted to know why kissing was different with Oliver. Was it her? Or was it just that Oliver had experience that the respectable Nathan could never have?
“Do it again,” she blurted out.
Oliver’s eyes, black as the mouth of hell, glittered in the moonlight. “Why?”
“Don’t you want to?” Her heart sank. It was her. She’d been so inept that even a debauched scoundrel like Oliver lacked any urge to kiss her again.
“Of course I want to,” he growled. “But I don’t fancy having your knee shoved in my groin.”
“I won’t hurt you. I just…want to see what it’s like. That’s all.”
He narrowed his gaze on her. “Didn’t your Nathan ever kiss you?”
“Not like that.”
“Never?”
She tipped up her chin. “Not all men are as shamelessly wicked as you.”
The faintest of smiles touched his lips. “True.” Then he kissed her again, taking advantage of her slightly parted lips to thrust his tongue inside her mouth.
And it was glorious, a hundred times more thrilling than any kiss Nathan had ever given her. "

― Sabrina Jeffries , The Truth About Lord Stoneville (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #1)