Page 72 of The Smuggler’s Escape

She nodded, sadness in her stance and her eyes.

So much for seducing her into loving him again. Please, Noelle. Want me. Need me.

Don’t leave me.

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “You’re perfect for me, and you know it.” He tossed the rag into the kitchen and passed her a glass of wine. “Drink up.”

“You’re back to getting me drunk.” But she took the glass all the same and raised it to her lips.

“No. A drunken whore is no fun at all.”

A furious cry broke from her. She dashed the wine in his face.

That was more like it. Richard laughed and emptied his own glass over her head.

Noelle sputtered. Wine trickled down her nose. It dripped off her hair and slithered between her breasts. She raised her arm to throw the glass across the room.

Richard caught her hand, removed the glass, and pulled her hard against him. “A spirited woman is a treasure.”

~ ~ ~

She struggled, cursing, but he laughed again, pinning her against the wall. His eyes gleamed in the candlelight. She thumped at him with her free hand, but she might as well have pounded the wall. Wine drizzled down her cheeks. She blinked it away from her eyes.

“Close them.” He bent his head and, with feather strokes of his tongue, kissed and cleaned the wine from her eyelids. Lazily, he sucked and licked the wine from her forehead and cheeks, then took the corner of her mouth. “Ah, woman, you excite me.” His lips hovered close to hers.

Noelle quivered, resisting, resisting . . . Ah, mon Dieu. You excite me, too.

She parted her lips on a tiny sigh, and kissed him back.

Wine and Richard. The heady male aroma of him, the subtle, dark flavor, the insistence of his lips, the dance of his tongue. His rough, unshaven face . . . She sighed and touched her tongue to his cheek.

Most of the wine had caught him in the chest, ruining his shirt, but she feasted on his cheeks and his chin, then followed a drizzle past the corner of his jaw to his throat. She buried her nose in the scent of his flesh.

Languor spread through her limbs.

Resentment at his seductive power simmered at the edges of her mind, but she quashed it. Didn’t she want to enjoy this? That was the plan—to enjoy his lovemaking while she could.

She didn’t know what she wanted.

He released her, to rest his hands lightly at her waist. She moved a little away from him and sucked in a deep breath.

She needed to stop and think.

“There’s more,” Richard said, unbuttoning his shirt. The dusting of dark hair on his chest shone sticky with wine. She told herself to turn away, to think rationally, to gain control over her rampaging emotions. There is no point in loving a man whom you have to leave behind.

She didn’t love him, though. Why must she keep reminding herself of that?

Trying to concentrate on practical matters, she eyed his torso. Unfair. He shouldn’t be allowed to look so beautiful unclothed. A rivulet of wine had circled his navel and made its way into his breeches.

Her eyes flew to his. Surely he couldn’t want her to lick him there.

He threw his shirt into a corner, poured wine into a glass, and offered it to her. “Care to try again?”

No. Noelle drank the glass in one gulp.

“Coward.” Richard poured more wine and drank, leaving a tiny pool at the bottom of the glass. He tipped the wine between her breasts.

The shiver traveled downward with the wine. It trickled into the little patch of hair below her belly, and settled with a throb on the most sensitive spot in her anatomy.