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She scrabbled for the cap. She hadn’t realized quite how strongly she clung to the elements of her disguise until Ranelaw threatened to deprive her of them one by one.
She shook so badly it took her longer than it should to retrieve the scrap of lace. She rose, gripping it in both hands with a hold tight enough to tear.
“Go,” she said in a low, throbbing voice. The tears that had threatened earlier surged closer to the surface. “Just . . . go.”
She should have known he wouldn’t obey. Instead he stood stock-still. From their first meeting, his attention had been intense. Now his interest ratcheted up another notch.
Almost reverently he touched her hair, his fingers as light as feathers. “Why do you cover it?”
“I’m a companion, not a courtesan,” she snapped, and fumbled to restore her cap. And somehow in the process restore her sangfroid, her confidence, and her resistance to masculine wiles.
Against better instincts, she turned her back on Ranelaw to check that she covered her hair. She stopped aghast as she caught her reflection in the mirror. The hand clutching the cap dropped to dangle at her side. In spite of the ugly spectacles, she looked vivid and alive in a way she hadn’t in years. The last time she’d looked like this, her life had collapsed around her in smoking ruins. She refused to let that happen again.
Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were red, begging for a man’s kiss.
Not just any man.
Unfortunately the kisses she wanted belonged to the rapscallion who loomed behind her and put his hand on her shoulder with a gesture she read as possessive. Furious despair flooded her. Never, never would she allow another man to destroy her. She must scotch this insidious attraction. Loneliness was vastly superior to harlotry.
Ranelaw didn’t shift his gaze from the pale braids coiled around her head. The severe style did little to conceal her hair’s unusual color or its thickness.
“It’s a sin to hide such beauty under that hideous rag.” Ranelaw turned her to face him.
After a moment’s resistance, she let him have his way. Angry bewilderment knotted her belly. How had they reached a point where he touched her with such authority, spoke to her with such intimacy? They were strangers. Antagonistic strangers at that.
He stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman.
So he liked her hair. That was no reason to glow with pleasure. Johnny Benton had liked her hair too. He’d particularly loved to comb his fingers through it and drape it over her bare breasts.
It hadn’t stopped him seducing her away from her noble family and leaving her alone to face the consequences.
She stared into Ranelaw’s glittering black eyes and recognized that he entertained similar fantasies about her hair draping her naked body. He grabbed her wrists in adamant hands, stopping her from tugging the mangled lace over her head.
“It’s too late. I know.”
“What . . . what do you know?” Dread snaked through her, almost killing the desire.
Desire was an old enemy. She knew to her cost that nothing killed it once it stirred. It had stirred the minute she’d seen this beautiful, dissolute man.
Only the damage awaiting kept her from surrender. That and the truth that he didn’t really want her, much as his eyes sparked hunger and his big, strong hands warmed her skin. The knowledge that he initiated this elaborate charade merely to smooth his path to Cassie made her straighten and glare at him. He took her for a henwit if he imagined his feigned desire duped her. He didn’t desire her. He couldn’t.
But it was hard to believe the seduction halfhearted when she met his arrested expression. He frowned at her scared little question but his answer allayed her worst fears. “I know what beauty you hide under those rags.”
“Don’t be a fool, Ranelaw,” she snapped, anger defeating momentary vulnerability.
“Oh, I’m a fool, all right,” he muttered and tugged her into his body, his arms lashing her against him.
A chaos of impressions, familiar and unfamiliar, overwhelmed Antonia. She knew how a man’s embrace felt. But the fierceness of this hold, the hard strength of this body, the clean, fresh smell, these were all Ranelaw.
She flung her head up to deliver the scolding he deserved, then forgot everything when she met the blazing excitement in his eyes. A blazing excitement echoed in her pounding heart and rushing blood.
“No . . .” she whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear.
He bent his head and kissed her hard, using his tongue like a weapon to part her lips and give him access to her mouth. He was ruthless. He was insatiable. He gave no consideration to her unwillingness or her lack of preparation or what he believed was her inexperience.
Shock rather than anything as commendable as virtue kept her unmoving under his mouth. Even as molten heat flooded her and a deep trembling set up in the base of her belly.
With a muttered exclamation of frustration, he raised his head. He seized her shoulders in an adamant grip and stared down at her. “You can do better than that.”
