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“Has Lord Appleby been neglecting you? Never mind, I will make it all better…”
Before she could answer or even think, one of his fingers was sliding inside her moist body, and his mouth was on her breasts, sucking first one nipple and then the other.
Antoinette clasped his head and realized for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his mask. His hair was springy against her fingers, and the nape of his neck strong and yet strangely vulnerable. His clothing brushed against her nakedness, and she felt the linen of his shirt and the rougher cloth of his trousers and the leather of his belt. But most of all she felt his hot mouth and his tongue, as he worked his way down over her belly, tasting her skin as if she were a rare delicacy.
Antoinette lay bathed in a warm glow of delight. She almost believed it was a dream, or perhaps she preferred to believe that because it was safer than accepting that this was real.
He had reached the apex between her thighs, and he paused. She felt herself tense, thinking he would stop now. But he didn’t.
He parted her legs. In the darkness she felt his breath against her skin, cooling her, and then his open mouth closed on her and his tongue went deep.
She couldn’t speak. Once more she was in new territory, and it was beyond anything she could have imagined. Her fingers clenched in the sheets, and she struggled not to scream. He began to move his mouth upon her, teasing her swollen flesh. Heat coursed through her lower belly, and she arched off the bed as the feelings inside her gathered strength. It seemed to her that there was a cacophony of sounds inside her, growing louder, drowning out the thudding of her heart, and in a moment more she would explode and scatter into bits and pieces.
He stopped.
She made a cry of distress and heard him chuckle. “Be patient,” he teased.
He bent again, and his tongue was back. Antoinette realized dizzily that she wanted him, as he’d said, inside her. Filling her. Her arms around his big body, her mouth on his, their bodies moving as one to the ultimate goal.
His tongue was doing its work on her, sliding around the swollen nub, and the tension was reaching a crescendo.
And then he pulled away. Again.
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Antoinette lay still, holding her breath, waiting for his next touch, for the roll of his tongue to bring her to that place she had so recently experienced and already longed for again.
It didn’t come.
She sat up, her hair loose about her, staring around in the dark. She opened her mouth to call his name and remembered she didn’t know what it was. Legs weak and shaky, she rose from the bed and found the tinderbox and lit a candle. The weak light wasn’t much help but it did show her one thing.
She was alone.
He had gone.
The ache between her legs told her that he had left her wanting more. Of course, she thought angrily, he had done so on purpose, so that she would be longing for him to return.
And she was.
With a sigh of frustration and annoyance with him, and herself, she walked to the window. She was glad he’d gone, and yet the ache in her body mocked her, made her think of what might have been. He frightened her, put her off balance in a way she had never felt before. How did he know why she’d gone to Sir James? How did he know what she felt when he touched her? It was as if he knew her better than she knew herself.
She looked down and gave a gasp. A dark figure stood against the stars, head back, staring up at her. He lifted an arm and waved to her, and she was certain she could hear his laughter. And then he was gone, as if he had simply vanished into the night.
Leaving her more unsettled than ever.
Chapter 10
Gabriel strode away from the manor house and into the woods, a spring in his step despite the heavy ache in his groin. He was trying to reconcile the last few moments of heady pleasure with a woman he found wildly attractive with the fact that she was the mistress of Lord Rudyard Appleby, his enemy. He felt confused, as he always was when he’d spent time with her, as if the two Antoinettes didn’t quite match.
Don’t get drawn into her web, he warned himself. Don’t trust her.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy her.
Pleasures of the flesh didn’t necessarily mean a commitment of the mind or heart. Aphrodite would tell him that, if she were here to ask. Gabriel could seduce her and enjoy her, and when he had what he wanted from her—the letter—he would return her to Appleby without a second thought.
But the words had a sort of forced bravado, and he wondered if it would be that easy to let her go.
“Master Gabriel?”
