“What makes you think—”
“This,” he whispered, and took her mouth with his.
He was firm, his lips bold, his arm crushing her against him, his other hand plunged into her hair, holding her tightly, claiming her ever so sweetly, treasuring her. He raised his face, looking into her eyes once. Then he groaned and seized her lips again.
He was heaven. He was hell. So mighty, so determined, so devoted to devouring her lips.
She drank him in. Her arms went around his shoulders. Her nails scored up into his hair. One leg went around his.
He growled and picked her up off her feet and sank her against a wall. There, he delved into her eyes and seized her mouth again. “Not enough,” he said, and nipped her earlobe.
“Too much.” She wanted to push him away.
“No lies between us.” His warning was a challenge.
She cupped his handsome face, and though she knew she would try to comply, she also now would agree. “None.”
Then he put two fingers to her lips. Her chest heaving, she watched him in the shadows as he pressed himself to her once more and stole her remaining free will. “Friday.”
Chapter Five
Damn him.He was going home. He was finished for tonight. Headed for the foyer, he skirted many in the ballroom and avoided eye contact and discussion with anyone. He decided not to bid good evening to his host and hostess. He’d write a note tomorrow and explain that urgent business took him away. He’d leave the family carriage for his mother and two sisters, and have the Chelmsfords’ butler hail him a public hack.
He grumbled to himself as he waited in the foyer for the cab. A footman brought his greatcoat and hat, and he donned them, grumbling. Not business but the lack of pleasure drove him onward. He’d failed to have a proper meeting with Sir Raphael Durham and certainly failed to contain his impulses where the luscious Mademoiselle Bechard was concerned.
What was it about her that made him forget his rules of conduct?
If he touched a woman—especially her lips—if he drew a woman against him—as he had drawn her to him in the library—that was all a lady needed to agree to his affections. He would decide then if his attentions should last a night, a week, a month, whatever to sate his attraction.
But this woman—this French beauty with hair that caught the golden rays of candles, and eyes that lured a man into thewooded shades of her surrender—confounded him. She was no innocent chit. Her carriage, her sense of personal authority, even the way she absorbed the sight of strangers in a supposedly unoccupied room, proclaimed that she was no girl from the countryside who knew little of men, their needs and their desires. She bore that look about her, that grace that said she understood those she gazed upon, and certainly those with whom she engaged in polite banter. Yes, she was savvy. She’d pegged even him.
That she had rejected him had had him questioning his allure. It even, for a moment, deterred him. If she’d had no reaction to his touch or his embrace, he would have abandoned his interest and his ploys to make her melt for him.
But when he sent his thumb along the edge of her lower lip, she’d caught her breath and allowed him his full caress. Both times. Then, just now, when he’d pressed her near and listed what particulars he knew of her background, she’d not pushed away.
He was too much a roué not to have noticed her responses to him. Too much of a gentleman to advance further. He’d first have her consent.
So she could be as rebellious as she wished for as long as she wished, but he could wait for her to cool…and warm. To soften. To yield. No need to make amends for what he had first assumed was an error on his part. He had rattled her, not insulted her.
Furthermore, he had no woman at the moment gracing his bed. Indeed, he hadn’t had one in nearly a year. He’d been oddly irritable lately, attributing his discomfort to his lack of bed sport. But holding her firm, curvaceous body against him, he knew better. He wanted not simply someone new, someone sensual and eager for a man to help her pulse with fulfillment. He wanted a challenge, a mystery. He wanted a woman whoexcited him with her mettle. With her grace and form. Like the charming pianist in Boulogne. Like this new émigré, this cantankerous, exquisite woman he needed to know better. Know completely, body and soul.
God knew, he faced mighty challenges in her. Truth be told—he stopped on the next step to acknowledge his next thought—he might never gain her.
But he would make a giant effort.
He smiled at that. He’d never exerted himself to gain a woman’s company.
“First time for everything,” he told himself.
Set in his purpose, he tugged on his gloves and drove one fist into his other hand. Then he strode down the front steps. The night was chilly.
He spied a footman at the end of the drive who had done the butler’s bidding and urged a public carriage to come forward.
“Sir,” the footman said as he opened the door to the hack, “we were very happy to have you with us this evening.”
“I was delighted to be here.”More than you will ever know.
“Halsey!”
