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“Hysterical and inquisitive.”
“Yes, well.”
“You’re not like my other mistresses.”
She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled until he winced. “I’m not your mistress.”
“At this moment, nobody would find that assertion remotely convincing.” The smile became more pronounced. “You’re b
lushing.”
“With annoyance.”
He glanced a quelling but incendiary kiss across her lips. “With excitement.”
“You’re a vain coxcomb.” In her own ears, she sounded considerably more breathless than she had before he kissed her, and she hadn’t exactly sounded self-possessed then.
It wasn’t just his kisses, intoxicating as they were. Unwilling emotion cramped her heart. He’d never brought a woman here. At least in that, she wasn’t just another conquest.
“You’re more talkative than my other mistresses.” His voice roughened as his gaze dwelled on her lips.
“Poor things were probably struck dumb by the size of your conceit.”
“By the size of something at any rate.” His short laugh did nothing to disguise his determination.
Sweet preliminaries drew to a close. Within moments, he’d slide inside her. Her skin tightened with delicious suspense.
“Do you really want to talk?” he whispered. “Isn’t there . . . something else you’d rather do?”
He turned something into a salacious invitation to sin. She was so afire, everything seemed an invitation to sin. She really was a hopeless case.
She pulled his hair with less force. “You’re a wicked man, Nicholas Challoner.”
In unmistakable demand, he pressed his erection into her belly. “My darling Antonia, you don’t know the half of it.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Ranelaw stirred from a restless doze. The candles on the sideboard burned low, the room was hushed as if waiting. Something had disturbed him. Then he heard the sound again. The lark’s sweet trill from his garden. The new day dawned.
He lay on his back with a warm, relaxed body curled into his side. Silky hair trailed over his naked chest. A slender arm draped across his belly. He held her close as if even in sleep, he didn’t want this woman too far away.
Although he’d never shared this particular bed in this particular room before, he knew exactly where he was and who he was with.
Antonia . . .
Sweet, sweet Antonia.
She’d suffered in the past, his beautiful girl. His gut knotted at how she’d paid for her passionate nature. Listening to her story, he’d burned to pulverize Benton, to horsewhip her narrow-minded father, to slam his fist into her unknown brother’s face.
Ranelaw wanted to jump to her defense, spare her every ounce of misery.
This helpless, frustrated drive to protect was agonizingly familiar. He’d struggled with the same futile rage when Demarest ruined Eloise.
The stark truth was that no amount of anger had saved his sister. Nor could it save Antonia from tragically similar circumstances. Ironic that this woman who drew him so powerfully had been betrayed just like his beloved sister.
As if she knew he thought about her, she made a soft, contented sound and cuddled up against him. Her naked breasts flattened into his side and one thigh crooked across his.
Her drowsy murmur was astonishingly arousing. His cock twitched with immediate interest. He was a man who rarely ignored his physical urges, but he didn’t immediately slide her legs apart and lose himself in her.
