Marchese's Forgotten Bride. Michelle Reid

stop it, a muffled breath left her throat and she looked up and was hit head-on by the glow of raw desire leaping out from his dark, dark eyes. His whole hard body pulsed with it. It was that instant, that hot, so stifling it held her breathless and horrified because the same dismaying heat was pooling low down inside herself, toying with intimate tissue that tugged and pulled.

      Her throat hurt. She tried to swallow. The sense of being drenched in fine sexual static made her lips part to whisper something she couldn’t even understand herself.

      He understood it, though, because he muttered roughly, ‘No wonder I’m struggling.’

      About to demand what he meant, Cassie wasn’t given the chance. Next second his dark head was lowering and she was receiving the full, burning impact of his passionate mouth on hers.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      HEAT poured into her bloodstream. He kissed her as if he’d been waiting to do it for years. He savoured it, explored the moist hollows of her mouth, guided her like some helpless puppet through the fiery pit of reacquaintance with the forgotten side of her own sensuality only this man had ever tapped.

      His hand was restless on the small of her back, long fingers burning her through the fine layer of silk, stroking and kneading as they drew her further into the hardening bowl of his hips. The heat coming from him was heavy with the scent of his subtle aroma, the mobile seduction of his lips and the skilled intrusion of his tongue sinking her so deeply into a heady place of pleasurable memories Cassie found herself responding as a rolling mist of desire closed her in.

      She felt small and weak and delicate as she leant against him, could feel his heart pounding against the clenched fist she’d pressed to his chest when this had first begun. And she could feel her own heart racing against the tightening crush of her breast. Her legs had gone hollow again, that tingling sensation a wash of desire this time, attacking every nerve-end from her toes to her hips. When he breathed something against her mouth and moved against her the flash of sexual agitation she experienced flung herself back from him on a shocked, shaken gasp.

      Eyes as black as ink bored into her for a second then flowed down over her heaving, slender, panting, trembling frame. His frown was back, the greying pallor, joined by a fierce, dark, pulsating frustration that scared Cassie even as her own shattered senses clamoured in direct response.

      As he reached out towards her, ‘No!’ she cried out because she thought he was going to drag her back to him.

      What he did was tighten the grim line of his mouth and gently hitch her dress up from its structured front. Her helpless whimper was of mortified agony when she realised why he’d done it. After that the silence between them sizzled. She’d never felt so helpless or so exposed or so cheap in her entire life. One kiss and she’d fallen to pieces. One kiss from a man she supposedly hated and she’d turned into—

      ‘Oh,’ she choked and shot into movement, spinning round and reaching out to grab hold of the heavy bar which held the exit door shut.

      She was panicking—Cassie knew she was panicking and he was saying nothing. She could feel him standing there behind her like some—some—grim, silent reaper, probably disgusted with himself for kissing her at all!

      Then his arms were coming round her; she felt the smooth, warm slide of his silk sleeves against her arms as with a gentle firmness he prised her fingers from the bar. Trapped like that, trembling and shivering at the same time, and acutely aware of every lean, hard inch of him, she watched through bright, burning eyes as he dealt with the heavy lock on the door.

      Almost falling outside into the cool night air in an effort to put space between them, Cassie found herself in an alleyway that must run alongside the restaurant. It was quiet and dark, the shadowy bulks she could see across from her looking too much like lurking bodies to her fevered mind, though she knew they had to be rubbish bins. Still, she spun away from them to face what she thought—hoped—was the main street. She had to get away—she knew she had to get away before she did something really humiliating and fell into a fit of wildly sobbing tears.

      Sandro. She’d just let Sandro kiss her stupid. How dared he—how could she have let him get away with it? She hated him, every single thing about him.

      The door closed with a thud behind her and she jumped like a startled rabbit then went onto the balls of her feet. A strong hand clamped around her wrist to stop her running. The grimly silent way that he kept her still while he stepped close enough to strap his other arm across her back broke her control with a shrill, ‘Let me go!’