Page 37 of The Dangerous Lord

“My reputation.” He snorted. “I hardly know what it is these days, it’s been so mangled by you and all the gossips. But that doesn’t answer my question. If you didn’t lie, then what did you mean when you told Sara I’d gone ‘too far’?”

He now stood scant inches from her, and though she wanted to flee, she refused to let him see how he intimidated her. Besides, the dressing table at her back prevented it.

Trying to retain some semblance of a spinsterish air, she retorted, “You know what I meant. I meant you kissed me with ... with—” Oh, how did one describe the heart-stopping plunge into passion and sheer intensity of a man’s kiss without sounding like a milksop schoolgirl? “With great enthusiasm,” she finished lamely.

A half-smile touched his lips. “I won’t deny that. I’d say we both showed ‘great enthusiasm.’ Yet even the most enthusiastic of kisses wouldn’t have prompted Sara to evict me from her house.” Without warning, he hooked his arm about her waist, tugging her so close she could see the dark smudge of whiskers along his upper lip. “So tell me, my deceptive Felicity, what did I do to make her think so ill of me? I swear I don’t remember anything that would shame me.”

“That’s because nothing shames you!” She dug the heels of her palms into his chest and shoved, which proved utterly pointless and merely made her dressing gown gape open. “Let go, Ian, or I shall ... shall ...” Her heart sank as she remembered why she couldn’t scream. “Shall be convinced you’re a blackguard and a scoundrel!”

His quick burst of laughter echoed in the room. “You’re already convinced of that. Besides, I won’t leave until you demonstrate what ‘too far’ is. Just so I don’t make the same mistake in the future, you understand.”

“In the future?” she squeaked.

“Much as I hope our little skirmishes are over, I know you better than that. So I want to know what’s allowed and what’s not.” Snagging the edge of the dressing gown with two fingers, he peeled it open, his gaze dipping brazenly to examine her chemise.

Her blood quickened, leapt, rushed through her veins. She should scream that this was definitely not allowed, yet all she could do was fight to drag breath into her lungs. Then he bent his head to press a hard kiss where her collarbone lay exposed above her chemise. It was so intimate a caress she strained away, but that threw her off balance so that she fell against the edge of the dressing table, her hands catching at it for support.

He took advantage of her imbalance to catch her wrapper in his fists and push it slowly, sensuously off her shoulders. As it pooled on the dressing table behind her, he wound a lock of her hair around his finger, then kissed it.

“Don’t,” she whispered hoarsely. A heady pleasure already raced through her traitorous body. She fought it fiercely. The last time she’d let him kiss her, he’d trampled on her feelings afterward. “You ... you ... mustn’t ...”

He dropped the lock of hair, stroking it where it fell across her shoulder. Then he swept her shoulder free of it. “Is this what you meant by ‘too far’?” He edged the sleeve of her chemise over to bare her shoulder. She caught her breath when he lowered his mouth to kiss the exposed skin. His breath was a feathery caress, a teasing promise.

When a soft sigh spiraled out of her, he turned his lips to the base of her throat. “Or this?” He skimmed his mouth along the smooth hollow as if seeking the pulse that jumped in a frenzy beneath his touch, and when he found it, he kissed it, too, then followed it up the arch of her neck.

By the time he lifted his head, his eyes smoldered like barely banked embers in the flame that was his face. “No, I’d forgotten. Those are kisses, and ‘too far’ is more than a kiss or two, isn’t it? ‘Too far’ must be enough to make my childhood friend doubt my good character. Now, what could that be?”

With his gaze still fixed on her face, he caught one sleeve of her chemise in his fist and inched it down past her shoulder. Color flooded her cheeks as she grabbed his hand at the wrist to stop him, but then he brought his mouth down on hers and she forgot why he shouldn’t be here with her alone ... why he shouldn’t touch her like this, kiss her like this ... why she didn’t trust him ... everything.

His kiss was deep and immediately possessive, his tongue entering her mouth before she even realized she’d parted her lips. The table edge dug into her palm where she gripped it in an attempt not to “draw him back” as he’d accused her of before.

But that was only a small victory, for she couldn’t keep the rest of her body from responding, from straining against him, from welcoming his mouth as it urgently explored hers ... or his hands as they worked the sleeves of her chemise over her shoulders ... or his knee pressing in to part her thighs within the muslin prison of her scarce clothing. She even helped him by angling her head back as his lips kissed a path down her throat.

When he loosened the ties of her chemise, however, she came briefly to her senses, catching the muslin’s edge before it could gape open and reveal her bare breasts. “Stop it! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Determining my limits,” he said in a husky voice. “How far is ‘too far’?”

“This most certainly is!”

“Oh? But you said you didn’t lie to Sara about my ‘assault’ that night, and I definitely don’t remember doing this.” His night-black gaze locked on her face, but his hand cupped one muslin-shrouded breast in a bold caress that made her suck in a breath. “Then again, my memory is sometimes faulty. Perhaps I should refresh it.”

“No, you ... you ...” Her mind went blank when his hand moved on her breast. It was exquisitely shameful and very delicious. “Oh, my word,” said a throaty voice that surely belonged to someone other than her, the voice of a wanton.

“Did I touch you like this that night, Felicity?”

She closed her eyes to keep from witnessing his triumphant expression. He flattened his palm against her breast and began a rotating motion that made her nipple tighten into an aching kernel.

At her sharp intake of breath, he leaned close, his own breath beating a hot tattoo against her cheek. “Tell me, querida. Did I do this?”

The foreign word caught her off guard until she remembered he was half-Spanish. And she was too embarrassed to ask what it meant.

“Answer me,” he commanded in a harsher tone.

“No,” she blurted out, heedless of her pride. “You know you didn’t.”

When she forced her eyes open to face the gloating expression sure to be there, she was shocked to see he wasn’t gloating.

Raw need fractured his normally controlled features. “It’s a miracle I didn’t,” he confessed raggedly. “Because I wanted to.”