After a moment, she gave a little half sob, half laugh and toppled forward, smashing directly into his cravat, and mumbled something that sounded like, “I apologize.”
“For what?” he asked the top of her head. He dipped his chin until his lips pressed against the softness of her hair. “I have no idea what just happened. Did you have a vision?”
She nodded without looking up. “Earlier. Days earlier. With Susan. She was running through what I now know to be your fields, screaming for me. And then my stepfather burst through one of the paths, with me limp in his arms. He tossed me in his carriage and took me away.”
“Over my dead body,” Gavin said, and then paused as a horrible thought struck him. “Do your visions always come true?”
“Yes. No. I think so. I don’t know. I’ve never known of themnotcoming true—they seem to be memories, even the ones that haven’t happened yet—but I thought…I thought if I just didn’t gointhe fields, he couldn’t take meoutof them.”
“Logical enough.” He tilted his face until his cheek rested against the top of her hair. “We’ll do our best to keep you as far from the fields as possible. When was this capture to take place? Today?”
She sighed against his chest. “I don’t know. My visions tend to be simultaneously useful and useless.”
“All right. Well, let’s keep being logical. We were just to the side of my property, were we not? And before that, in the front garden. The front garden is an excellent vantage point of the only means by which a carriage may come anywhere near us, and there were none. Trust me, I’ve been glancing over my shoulder ever since the Stanton woman first threatened to summon the constabulary.”
“It’ll be a race,” she mumbled with a hiccupy laugh. “Which one of us gets taken away first.”
“Not amusing,” he returned gruffly, pressing his lips to her hair again. And then suddenly it wasn’t enough. He threaded his fingers through what was left of her chignon, cradling the back of her head so he could gaze into her eyes.
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
He meant it to be a small kiss, a dry kiss, a chaste kiss. The merest brushing of closed lips against closed lips. The briefest of illicit contact.
But the moment he captured her breath with his own, her fingers dug into his biceps and she matched him kiss for kiss.
Her mouth opened beneath his. Tempting him. Teasing him. She suckled his lower lip until he gave her his tongue, and then she suckled that, too. He hauled her against his body, not caring if he destroyed her hair, if she destroyed his cravat, if his cock throbbed against those maddening layers of fall and gown and chemise.
He had to have her. She was his. His to have, his to kiss, his to protect. No one could take her from him. And whether she wanted Gavin the man, her body wantedhisbody, and that was enough for now. It would have to be. He was dying for her. Whether or not she was truly his—he was hers.
She gasped into his mouth, ground her hips against him. He was moving too hard, too fast, bruising her with kisses. He had to be. But she pulled him closer, tighter, wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him.
He deepened the kiss. What choice did he have? He could do nothing but succumb to desire. Succumb, and pray she felt the same. He slid his hands from her hips to her derrière, nestled her more firmly between his thighs, made love to her with his mouth and tongue as he rubbed his aching cock against the softness of her body.
She did not recoil. She did not push him away. She wriggled against him, met his tentative thrusts with a whimper and her own rocking hips. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, his neck, his hair.
“Gavin,” she moaned against his mouth.
He almost came.
He tilted his head back long enough to grin at her, with eyes that drank in her beauty, with lips that yearned for the touch of her mouth.
“I knew you’d first-name me eventually,” he teased. Or meant to tease, but the words came out so low and so husky, he barely recognized his own passion-strained voice.
She smiled back at him, the slow sensual smile of a woman who had a man by the balls and well knew it, the smile of a woman swept up in the furor of her awakening body, the lilting, teasing, touch-me-kiss-me-love-me smile of a woman who wantedhim. Unbelievable. And unutterably arousing.
“I welcome you to call me Evangeline.” The smile in her eyes took on a knowing, suggestive edge. “I welcome youtoEvangeline.”
And then her mouth was upon his. Her arms tightened around him, twined, then loosened just enough to unplaster her breasts from his shirt, to rub them against his chest.
God help him. He swore he could feel her hard nipples through his waistcoat. And just in case that wasn’t possible, just in case the only thing feeling her nipples was his frenzied imagination, he slid one of his hands from her rear to her hip, from her hip to her waist, from her waist to her ribs. His thumb brushed against the underside of her breast, then his index finger coasted upward, then his palm, and yes, an erect nipple definitely crowned that perfect breast.
Her breath hitched as he rubbed the tips of his fingers against it, rolling, teasing, gently tugging. He longed to feel her, skin to skin. Curse whoever invented clothing! He’d get rid of it in under two seconds. Maybe. Where the hell was the bottom of her skirt? He had to touch her. Now. God damn frustrating mess of silk and—
She tore her mouth from his. “Why did you stop? Don’t stop. I liked it. I—”
“I didn’t stop,” he promised. “I’m about to do something better, just as soon as I get my hands underneath this infuriating ream of—”
“Inside the summerhouse?” came an overloud female voice from outside the thin walls. “Are you sure he’s in there, Mother?”
