he murmured.
“A prince, no less,” she stammered, knowing she needed to go, but unable to make herself leave his side. “I … I have never met a … a prince.”
“How fortunate I am to be your first.”
It was a double entendre. She had heard them before and always recoiled from them. But this one, said in his deep voice, only tempted her further. Made her watch the slow brush of his fingers against the bounding pulse in her wrist and wonder what it would be like to watch his lips graze that very same spot, or other more intimate places on her body.
“I am your first prince, but am I the first to touch you like this?” he asked, glancing up from the lush fringe of his lashes, which his mask could not conceal.
“I am a lady, Your Highness,” she admonished him, but her voice was breathless, husky, and he smiled, the barest fleeting hint of a self-satisfied grin.
“An extraordinarily lovely lady.”
Drawing in a deep breath, he brought his mouth to her skin. She heard as well as felt him sniff delicately. His lips suddenly parted and she saw a glimmer of brilliant white teeth behind his sculpted lips. Slowly, the tip of his tongue crept out from between his lips and her breath caught, freezing in horrified wonder as she watched him.
With exquisite care and reverence he lightly grazed her wrist with the tip of his hot tongue. His lips soon replaced his tongue as he looked up at her. His eyes, Chastity noticed, were now black, as if his pupils had dilated and swallowed the blue iris.
“And what of that, Lady Chastity? Is that the first time a prince, or any man’s tongue, has tasted your flesh?”
Like a simpleton, she nodded, unable to do anything more. She should break this trance he held her in, but suddenly she lacked the incredible moral strength it would take. She was weakening, and Lord help her, she didn’t want to find her wavering resolve. She wanted more, to discover what he would do to her, how far he would go in this game of seduction.
Watching her, compelling her with those black, fathomless eyes, he drew his tongue across her wrist once more, their gazes locking upon one another, their faces still masked, heightening the charge between them.
“Do not fear me,” he whispered as her hand trembled in his. “I would never hurt you. ‘Tis only pleasure I seek to give you.”
“My God, your voice,” she gasped, tugging her fingers out of his hold and backing away. Suddenly she was thrust back to that afternoon, and the vision of a huge white dog and a dark-haired man came rushing back to her. “I … I know you.”
“You have mistaken me for another.”
“Today, by the woods, back home,” she began, stepping back, trying to put a safe distance between them. “You were on horseback and you stopped us on the path. But how could you …”
The sensual haze began to evaporate. How could this man—this stranger—possibly be the one who had found her and her sisters walking that very morning? How could it be that he had come to London? To her brother’s ball? But something inside her screamed that it was him, and that she needed to run from him. He was dangerous and not just because he was a threat to her innocence.
He followed her like a tiger stalking its prey. Farther and farther she backed up, until she was deep amongst the trees that stood tall around the garden bench. Surrounding her, the maze rose high, engulfing her and the stranger. Step for step, he followed her, his gaze never leaving her face. The intensity of his stare grew stronger, more bewitching, singeing her flesh until she was hot and struggling to breathe.
“Is that really what you want? What you were feeling just a few seconds ago—the very great desire for me to leave you?”
“Stop it at once, sir,” she demanded, although her voice lacked conviction. Behind her brocade stomacher and the tightly laced stays, her breasts inched up, caused by her ragged breathing. Breathing that should have been harsh and rasping owing to fear, not this strange, intoxicating sensation that only could be lust.
“Come to me, Chastity,” he coaxed, “I can feel how much you want to, just allow yourself one moment of unguarded pleasure.”
Her lips parted as she struggled for air. She heard herself gasping as she cried out, coming up short against the trunk of a tree. With lightning speed he was before her, his arms wrapped around her waist as he pulled her deeper into the maze.
“Stop this,” she cried, struggling in his arms—not because she was afraid of him, but because she was afraid of herself and the need that was suddenly ruling her.
“I have spent so long just waiting—watching. You call to me, to the deep-seated hunger inside me. A hunger I would never allow to hurt you, but only wish to share with you.”
His words shocked her. The intimacy of them, the honesty made her still in his arms. Pressing her backward over his arm, she felt his solid, flexed muscles beneath her shoulders. His mouth was mere inches away from hers, and his eyes, those intense, mysterious eyes which were still black, held her steady.
He held her thus, bent over his arm, her breasts straining against her formfitting bodice, the mounds of which were in increasing danger of spilling out of her demure square neckline.
Chastity was aware of her body, of how it heated and yearned, her flesh swelling against her stays, the liquefying between her thighs, and all the while he continued to stare down into her upturned face, scrutinizing every inch of her. She wanted to say something, to act as though she were not a naive innocent, but she could not catch her breath or think clearly when she looked into his eyes.
His free hand came up to roam over the contours of her face before trailing down to her jaw. “Never fear me,” he whispered at last while tenderly stroking his finger along the pounding pulse at the base of her throat. She didn’t cry out as his fingertip glided down toward her décolletage, but swallowed hard.
His eyes seemed to glow even brighter as his gaze dropped to the wild fluttering in her throat, then lower to her breasts, which were now generously spilling out from her stays.
“The way in which the moon plays over your skin beckons me to explore. To touch. To taste.”
His fingertips lingered lightly over her pulse and she heard him growl, the sound of a jungle cat purring in satisfaction. His mouth lowered then stilled, and a cry, not of the jungle cat but that of savage beast, emanated from deep in his throat.
“There can be very great pleasure to be found in darkness. You needn’t fear it. But only embrace it.”
Closing her eyes, Chastity tilted her head back, savoring the heat coming from his mouth as it washed over her décolletage. She burned, breathless, waiting for something she could not name.
She didn’t understand, only knew that this feeling must not leave. She wanted it to consume her. Wanted to fall victim to him. She was not this person, this wanton. She was a virtue, but it seemed her virtue had abandoned her, leaving her as she truly was, a woman yearning to be seduced.
“Yes, yield to me. Let me come to you as I am. Embrace the darkness, the darkness in me, and let me take you … corrupt you …”
Breathing hard against Chastity’s milk-white throat, Thane endured the pain that pierced him. He was forcing her. It was forbidden. It would only deepen the curse, but by the goddess, he wanted her, wanted to take her without any thought or control and sink himself into her luscious body.
She whimpered, not out of fear, but of feminine arousal, and he decided that perhaps he could still make her want him. He couldn’t hide his little growl of victory as he brushed his lips along the full, throbbing vein that ran from her neck to the apex of her breast. Parting his lips, he breathed hotly against her. The mist that was part of him began to float over her, whispering softly, covering her until the little beads of moisture turned to a glistening rivulet of water that trickled between the valley of her generous breasts.
She