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Her exotic eyes narrowed. “There’ll be no all-but about it.”
“We’ll see,” he said. “Name your time and place.”
She glanced out of the window. “Now,” she said. “We’ve plenty of time before we reach my house. This shouldn’t take so long, at any rate.”
Her confidence—hell, her insolence—was beyond anything. It was infuriating. Knowing he was in a temper, he should have held his tongue. He should have given himself time to cool down and think. But he was too angry—with her, with himself.
“Do your worst,” he said.
Francesca couldn’t remember when last she’d been so furious.
She’d made a fool of herself last night, and now he presumed she was his for the taking—if and when he felt like it.
To him, she was merely a whore.
You are, a rational voice within reminded her. You chose to be.
True enough. Nonetheless, the pearls he called a sign of men’s weakness were in fact a sign of respect, a sign of her power.
Since she’d left England—that frigid island of provincials, Puritans, and hypocrites—no man had shown her disrespect…except this one.
An Englishman, naturally. Half an Englishman, to be precise, but half was more than enough.
He needed desperately to be taught a lesson.
Unhurriedly she slid shut the casement beside her and closed the blinds. She reached across him, letting her bosom brush against his chest, and closed the window and blinds on his side.
As she moved back to her place, she felt his chest rise and fall a little faster than it had done a moment earlier.
She folded her hands in her lap. “There,” she said. “No one can see.”
“There won’t be anything to see,” he said.
“We’ll see,” she said.
She looked down at her hands. She looked at them for a while, making him wait.
Since he sat to her right, she started with her left glove. She slid it down toward her wrist until it bunched against her bracelets. She tugged on the thumb, the index finger, and so on, each finger by turn. She did it in a leisurely way, as though her mind were elsewhere. Then she drew off the glove, pulling it gently through the bracelets.
She dropped the glove into her lap.
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t have to. She knew he was riveted on her hands. She knew he was breathing faster and harder and trying not to.
She went to work on the other glove, again, slowly, casually, in the way she might if she were alone in her boudoir. Undressing.
She let the second glove drop onto her lap.
She adjusted the bracelets, letting her fingers trail lightly over the pearls and diamonds circling her now-naked wrists.
She lifted her hand.
He tensed.
She didn’t touch him.
She touched herself, bringing her index finger to her right ear. She made a light path along the curve of her ear and behind it, lingering at the place below her ear where she liked to be kissed.
She felt him shift in his seat.
She ignored it. She pretended she was alone, enjoying her treasures, herself.
She drew her finger down over the earrings, caressing the round top and the pear-shaped drop, savoring the feel of these, the most sensuous of gemstones.
She let her hand glide down over the upper necklace, and enjoyed the feel of the large pearls under her fingers. Back and forth, back and forth she went, then down, to fondle the immense pear-shaped pearl at the center.
And down further still she went, to play with the other necklace. And down again. This time she slid her hand over the silk of her bodice, making the fabric whisper. Then lightly she cupped her breast.
He made a sound, deep in his throat.
She didn’t look at him. She watched her hand as she might have done had she been alone…touching herself.
She drew her thumb along the edge of her bodice, slowly, back and forth, tracing the swell of her bosom.
Then she lightly pushed the edge of the bodice down, baring another inch of skin.
His breath came out in an abrupt whoosh.
“Diavolo!” he growled.
His arm wrapped about her waist. He pulled her onto his lap. He grasped the back of her head and brought her face close to his.
It happened so fast, faster than she’d expected. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t done yet.
“I’m not done y—”
His mouth silenced her. It was warm and stubborn and very, very angry.
She brought her hands up to his chest and pushed.
I’m not done yet.
“I’m n—”
But she forgot the rest, because his mouth was so warm and sure and…
And then her hands went limp, her mind clouded, and everything turned hot and confused, and she was swimming in awareness.
She could smell him. Man smell. The tang of shaving soap and starch and freshly laundered linen. The damp Venetian air clinging to the wool of his coat. All of it mixed with the scent of his skin.
She could feel him: the big, warm, powerful body under the civilized trappings. She could feel the tension in his powerful thighs. She was aware of the heat beneath her, of his arousal.
Something kicked, low in her belly, and heat uncoiled there, serpentlike.
Her hands slid up, to grasp his shoul
ders, then up again to find the thick black curls, where they tangled. She held him thus, as he held her, and kissed him back, as stubborn and angry as he.
Stubborn and angry and hot and wanting.
His tongue pushed for entry and she gave way, and the taste of him was dark and wicked and exactly what she wanted. He tasted like every sin she’d ever been warned against and committed, every rule she’d learned and broken.
She was distantly aware of sound, a drumming, but there was drumming within, and she didn’t know, didn’t care, which was which.
She cared about his hands, the long fingers moving down her neck, sliding over the pearls, and over her skin and down to the place where she’d silently invited him a moment ago. He pushed the bodice down and cupped her breast. He broke the kiss and bent his head. She arched back, to give him room. He kissed her once, long and hard, upon the breast he’d bared, then again, long and hard upon the other.
Then he lifted his head and looked at her, his blue-black eyes glittering in the lamplight.
“You’re a very bad girl,” he said hoarsely.
He lifted her up and dropped her back into her seat. Not gently.
Hot need bubbled into rage. She almost bounced up from the seat and wrapped her hands around his throat…
A modicum of sense remained, though, pointing out that he was too big for her, and the attempt would only make her look more ridiculous than she felt already.
She became aware once more of the drumming. Her heart was pounding with balked lust, with fury, but that wasn’t what she heard.
It was rain, beating on the cabin roof.
He opened the blinds and peered out.
“Home,” he said, his voice thick. “You lose, cara.”
Home? Already?
She yanked open the blinds.
Her house.
She blinked in disbelief.
She looked at him, but he was still gazing out of the window.
“Maledizione,” he said.
She leaned forward to see.
A large, ostentatious gondola waited at the open water gate, lamps ablaze, as were all the lamps in the andron.
She could see, within, Prince Lurenze standing near the gates. With him stood Count Goetz.
