a few minutes. In a fiacre, at least, she might have been able to think.
The night was dark, the sheeting rain blotting out what little light the street and carriage lamps shed. Within the carriage was darker yet. She could barely make out his form on the seat opposite. But she was suffocatingly aware of the long legs stretched out over the space between them. He seemed to have his arm stretched out over the top of the seat cushions, too. The relaxed pose didn’t fool her. He lounged in the seat in the way a panther might lie on its belly in a tree, watching its prey move along the forest floor below. If he’d owned a tail, it would have twitched.
“I was an idiot to attend this event with you,” she said.
“You seemed to be having a fine time. You certainly did not lack for dance partners,” he said.
“Yes, I was doing quite well, thank you, until you had to turn medieval—”
“Medieval?”
“Out of my way, peasants. The wench belongs to me.” She mimicked the Duke of Clevedon at his haughty best. “I thought Monsieur Tournadre would wet himself when you bared your fangs at him.”
“What a grotesque imagination you have.”
“You’re big and arrogant, and I think you know exactly how intimidating you can be.”
“Alas, not to you.”
“Still, perhaps all is not lost,” she said. “That sort of possessive behavior is typical of your kind. Furthermore, I am your pet. You brought me to the party for your amusement. And I did make it abundantly clear to the company that I’d come to drum up business and was using you for that purpose.”
“But that isn’t what happened,” he said.
“That is exactly what happened,” she said.
“What happened was, we waltzed, and it was plain to everyone what we were doing even though we had our clothes on,” he said.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I have the same effect on every man I dance with.”
“Don’t pretend you weren’t affected as well.”
“Of course I was affected,” she said. “I never danced with a duke before. It was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in my mediocre little bourgeois life.”
“A pity I am not medieval,” he said. “In that case, I shouldn’t hesitate to make your mediocre little life even more exciting, and a good deal littler.”
“Perhaps I ought to put it in an advertisement,” she said. “Ladies of distinction and fashion are invited to the showrooms of Mrs. Noirot, Fleet Street, West Chancery Lane, to inspect an assemblage of such elegant and truly nouvelle articles of dresses, mantles, and millinery, as in point of excellence, taste, and splendor, cannot be matched in any other house whatever. Often imitated but never surpassed, Mrs. Noirot alone can claim the distinction of having danced with a duke.”
The carriage stopped.
“Have we reached the hotel already?” she said. “How quickly the time flies in your company, your grace.” She started to rise.
“We’re nowhere near your hotel,” he said. “We’ve stopped for an accident or a drunk in the street or some such. Everyone’s stopped.”
She leaned forward, to look out of the window. It was hard to make out anything but the sheen of the rain where the lamp lights caught it.
“I don’t see—”
She felt rather than saw him move, but it was so quick and smooth that he took her off guard. At one moment she was leaning forward toward the door’s window. In the next, his hands were under her arms, and he was lifting her, as easily as if she’d been a hatbox, out of her seat and onto his lap.
For an instant, she was too startled to react. It was only the briefest of moments, scarcely the blink of an eye. But when she started to push away from him, he caught one hand in the hair at the back of her head and brought her face close to his.
“Speaking of business, which you do incessantly, we have some of our own,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “That isn’t finished, madame. It hasn’t even begun.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. Her voice was shaky. Her heart pumped wildly, as though she dangled from a ledge over an abyss.
She told herself he was only a man, and she understood men through and through. But her reasoning self hadn’t a prayer of being listened to.
He was strong and solid and warm. His size excited her. His beauty excited her. His power and arrogance excited her. That was the danger. She was weak in this way, her will and mind easily beaten down by the wantonness in her blood.
She felt the heat of his muscled thighs through the layers of her dress and petticoats, and the heat sped through her, upward and downward, stirring cravings she was hopeless at stifling. “I don’t want you,” she lied. “I want your duch—”
His mouth cut her off.
It was warm and firm and determined. Centuries earlier, his ancestors had taken what they wanted: lands, riches, women. Called it “mine,” and it was.
His mouth took hers in the same way, a siege of a kiss, single-minded, insistent, potent.
His mouth was a hedonist’s dream, luscious carnal sin. The feel of it, the unyielding pressure—a saint might have withstood it, but she hadn’t a saintly bone in her body. She gave way instantly. Her mouth parted to take him in, to find the taste of him on her tongue and to relish it, as she hadn’t let herself do the last time. He tasted of a thousand sins, and those sins were like honey to her.
Her hands, still braced on his chest to push away from him, now slid up, over the hard angles of the emerald and the crisp linen of his neckcloth and up. She pushed off his hat and let her fingers tangle in the thick curls, as they’d itched to do from the moment he’d bent over her hand in the Italian Opera House.
It was as stormy a kiss as the last time, but different. He was angry with her; she was angry with him. But far more than anger was at work between them. This time she wasn’t in control. She was drowning in feeling, in the taste of him, and the scent of his skin and the feel of his hard body under hers, and his hand so tight in her hair, possessive.
A lifetime had passed since a man had held her like this.
She knew—a part of her mind knew—she needed to break away from him. But first…oh, a little more. She rubbed her body against his, reveling in the heat and hardness of his, and feeling a jolt of triumph because his arousal was obvious even through the layers of her dress and petticoats. As that hard part pressed against her hip, heat and pleasure coursed through her, like a madness.
He made a sound deep in his throat, and broke the kiss. She should have pulled away then, but she wasn’t yet ready to stop. Then his mouth slid to her throat, trailing down and over her collarbone and up to her shoulder. She let out a little moan of pleasure and her head fell back, and she gave herself up to sensation: his big hands sliding over her, stirring up wants she’d shut away for years…his mouth on her, making a trail of kisses like little fires. They burned her skin and set fire to her inside, too, deep inside.
She wasn’t the only one inflamed. She heard his breathing grow harsher, and when his hand closed over her breast, she gasped and he growled again, deep in his throat. The low sounds they made mingled in the darkness, and she thought of panthers coupling in the shadows. She could have laughed, because the image fit so well.
He was a predator. So was she.
His mouth found hers once more, and he was moving his hands over her, taking possession. She was claiming him as well, running her hands over his muscled arms and taut torso. She thrilled as his body tensed under her touch. Every sign of his slipping control elated her, even while hers slipped, too.
She changed position and moved her