Viola was aroused, but along with that rising arousal, she was also terrified. She wanted to kiss him back, even if only out of curiosity, to follow the slow movements of his mouth and respond to them in kind, but she couldn't.
Even if she truly wanted to, this was the least she could give him without exposing another hidden part of herself, another secret that needed desperate fixing before their marriage and the mating night. She knew she would share more than a kiss with him eventually, but only when the time was right, and only when she had finally met Evan and destroyed a past that might actually prevent her from ever daring to let herself grow intimate and return such intimacy with another man.
