“Why should I believe you?” she asked, keeping her voice to a hushed whisper. “No gentleman would dare to treat me as you have done. You claim to be safeguarding this house, and yet you have forced me into my chamber and are holding me captive.”
He found a tendril of hair and tucked it behind her ear, stealing her ability to think. The gesture was so unexpected. His fingers grazed the place behind her ear where his mouth had been. They lingered there, his fingertips brushing her skin.
“Is that what you believe, my lady?”
The deepness of his voice made more unwanted feelings rise.
“Of course I do,” she managed. “You’ve accosted me in the darkest depths of the night.”
“I was keeping you from folly, not accosting you,” he countered, using the backs of his fingers to slowly travel over her throat. His knuckles left a trail of fire. “Keeping you from bringing the household down upon us with your screams or from committing murder.”
“Murder?”
“Murder, my lady. Mine. Unless I am mistaken about your plans for the fire iron?”
He wasn’t. She would have hit him as hard as she could, believing him another housebreaker, or worse. But the sins he had committed against her were of a different, most unexpected sort. Never mind that she had thrilled at every one of them.
“And you…what you…this,” she hissed meaningfully, unable to utter the wordkiss, for fear it would make her long for his lips on hers again more than she already did. “How do you explain your actions, sirrah?”
“What isthis, as you say?” he asked.
He was goading her.
Enjoying the sparks between them.
And so was she. Her own actions had been equally shameful, and she knew it. She hadparticipated. She was lingering now when so easily she could escape. She was savoring the sensation of his muscled thigh between hers, parting them. Delighting in the illusion of him holding her captive. As if he sensed the direction of her thoughts, he shifted, his knee going higher. An answering burst of pleasure radiated from her core.
And that was when she became painfully aware of her reaction to him. Her most intimate flesh was wet. Scandalously, embarrassingly so. She didn’t recall ever having a response like this, so sudden and wanton.
“You didn’t answer me,” Beast pressed.
Pamela swallowed hard against a fresh rush of desire, telling herself she was stronger than this. She had been a faithful widow for years. She had avoided temptation and sin. She had held the memory of her husband in her heart, firm and strong, and she had never, not once, wavered in her devotion to him. There was a reason she was known as the Ice Widow in polite society behind her back. How had Beast turned her so quickly and relentlessly into flame?
“Kissing me,” she elaborated, furious with herself and overwhelmed with yearning for a man she couldn’t even see properly in the lack of light. A man with one name. “Touching me. Making yourself so familiar with my person. How do you describe that if not accosting? I will tell you plainly, sir, that after I tell my brother of what has passed between us, you will be gone by morning light.”
“Tell him, then, Marchioness. And while you do so, tell him how you responded to me. Tell him how you kissed me back. Tell him how you put your tongue in my mouth.”
Oh, sweet heavens above.
Those low, gruff words coiled around her like a serpent. Made all the molten heat coursing through her veins burn hotter still. She had done those things, had she not? But how ungentlemanly of him to taunt her so, to give voice to the unspeakable.
Her cheeks went hot again, and between her legs, she was even hotter. “You accosted me.”
Perhaps if she repeated the words enough, her protests would render them true.
“I defended myself.” His hand had curled around her throat now in a light hold that shouldn’t have felt erotic and yet somehow did. “You intended to do me harm with that fire iron, did you not?”
Her every sense was heightened. From the coast of her own breath over her kiss-bruised lips to every place they touched. They were yet entwined most intimately, like a pair of lovers who’d met under the cover of darkness for fear they would be discovered. And it shocked her to realize they could have been, so very easily. He could unbutton his falls and drive inside her in one hard thrust. Her inner muscles clenched in delicious anticipation at the thought. How appalling to think she would welcome his possession.
No, Pamela. You mustn’t allow yourself to go down this disastrous path. A path which leads only to ruin and scandal.
But was that her voice inside her mind, or the judgmental voice of her mother? Sometimes the two were difficult to differentiate between. Mother had raised her to be a paragon, and Pamela had fallen desperately short of the mark.
“I heard creaking in the hall and thought it another housebreaker,” she admitted.
“And you thought it prudent to confront a dangerous man yourself, alone?” he demanded, his voice harsh. “Promise me you won’t do something so imprudent again, my lady.”
He dared to call her imprudent, whenhehad swept her into her chamber as boldly as a lover and then had kissed her breathless? When he remained so close that his scent was wrapped around her like an embrace and the slightest shift of his body against hers incited her rebellion against the chaste life she had been living as a proper widow.
