The door closed behind her. She stilled, elegant and regal and ineffably lovely. All the resentment festering inside him since he’d seen her last reminded him that she was the reason he was once again battling to maintain a tentative grip on his sanity.
If she hadn’t kissed him…
If he hadn’t kissed her…
If he hadn’t raised her skirts and touched her hot, silken quim…
Damnation, he couldn’t do this. She’d stretched him to the edge of madness.
“Lady Boadicea,” he greeted curtly.
She stiffened, whether at his tone or his presence he couldn’t tell. Her blue gaze, cutting and intense, clashed with his. “Your Grace.”
She didn’t curtsy. Nor did he bow. He supposed this meant they were dispensing with the formalities. And anyway, what did it matter after he’d thrown her skirts up to her waist and slipped his hand inside the slit of her drawers? Ruffled, white, silk, they’d been embroidered with roses. He shouldn’t think of them now. Nor should he think of the prize they’d shielded. She’d been so wet for him.
He swallowed, battling back his unwanted attraction to her. “If you’d arrived but half a minute later, you would have found yourself utterly alone.”
She pursed her lips, considering him in a way he didn’t like, as though she could see straight to the marrow of him and still found him lacking. “I’ve been alone for twenty years, Your Grace. A moment without your company would be neither here nor there.”
Her cutting words found their mark. He strode toward her before he could check himself, as though he needed to be nearer to her. To smell her delicate scent. To inhale her as if she were as necessary to him as the air he breathed.
What in God’s name?
He stopped, four paces away, forcing himself to keep his distance and his cool both. “Twenty years? I daresay you’ve scarcely more than one-and-twenty years altogether.”
“You would be correct.” She pursed her lips, taking inventory of him once again as if he were something that caused her a great deal of displeasure. “What is the purpose of this audience, Your Grace? Do you mean to return my book?”
Her book. That bloody bit of nonsense she’d been so keen on devouring when he came upon her in his library. The leather-bound home for licentious drivel that shocked even his sensibilities. He’d read the first chapter of the volume in question in the midst of the night after his nightmares had rendered sleep impossible. He hadn’t believed his bloody eyes. And damn him if the knowledge that her bright-blue eyes and rapier wit had taken in the same wickedness hadn’t left him inflamed.
The daring of the woman. He wasn’t sure if he ought to be horrified and repelled or if he ought to take her up in his arms and never let her go. As it was, he wanted her so damn much that his entire groin ached and pulsed with a ferocity he’d never even known possible.
He stalked closer. Closer. Until his trouser-clad legs pressed into her heavy skirts, making them bell out behind her. She inhaled sharply, tensing even more, leaning away as he caught her around the waist and hauled her against him. Her head tipped back, leaving her ripe, supple lips a scant distance from his, open and ready, awaiting his claiming.
Temptation was the devil.
“I’ve no intention of returning your book,” he informed her coolly.
“Oh?” Her eyebrows hiked up her flawless ivory forehead, making the slightest crinkle that he found somehow riveting. “Well, it would seem we are well-matched in determination if nothing else, for I’ve no intention of marrying you.”
He couldn’t tell if she was bold or if she was foolish, or both. “How much of it have you read?” he demanded in spite of himself. He shouldn’t want to know. Curiosity ought not to burn inside him like a hearth fire upon which someone had thrown a bucket of lamp oil. But it did.
Her full lips quirked, tipping up at the corners as though she attempted to repress her humor and couldn’t quite manage it. “You read my book, didn’t you?”
Something alarming and unprecedented happened to him in that moment, as he held her against him and accepted the knowledge that this minx could somehow see through him in a manner no one else before her had.
His ears burned. “Of course not,” he lied.
She shook her head slowly, and he noted how the light glinted from the hidden undertones of red in her luxurious hair. Her hands went to his shoulders in a familiar gesture that aroused him even more. What the hell was it about her?
Lady Boadicea leaned nearer. Jasmine wafted to him. Her gaze lowered to his mouth for a moment before burning into his once more. “Tell me, Your Grace, did you enjoy the chapter about Lady Letitia and her groom?”
She was beyond any woman he’d ever known in his life. Was she mad? It was a possibility. Having lived with a mad wife, it only stood to reason that he would be drawn to more of the same.
“You’re the most forward female I’ve ever met.” He wasn’t sure if he issued the observation as praise or as condemnation.
A complete smile blossomed on her luscious lips then, and if he’d thought her beautiful before, he’d been wrong. She was stunning. A goddess. A witch. Surely the Lord himself had fashioned her with the sole purpose of one day punishing him for his sins.
Her brow arched. “You didn’t answer my question, Your Grace. I can surmise from the flush on your cheekbones that you were curious enough to read a few pages at least.”
