“I did notbarrel,” she retorted, straightening her shoulders, though her cheeks betrayed her heat. “I collided. There is a difference.”
She thrives on contradicting me.She could not simply yield, not for a moment. Though in all fairness, she was pretty right to hold her ground, and he did not want to fault her for it.
A flash of white caught his eye. A feather, tangled in the fair waves of her hair that bobbed insolently with every breath she took. Benedict’s restraint frayed another inch. He reached forward before he could stop himself, plucking it free. His fingers brushed dangerously close to her cheek, and the urge to let them linger was a torment he barely mastered.
“There,” he said, his tone rougher than he intended. He held the feather up as evidence. “Proof that chaos clings to you. You cannot fault me for assuming this mess was of your own making.”
Her lips parted in indignation. Or was it surprise? He could not tell, but the sight of it dragged his thoughts toward sin.
That mouth. That blasted mouth. I have denied a dozen women in London, and yet one insolent tilt of her lips makes me forget why.
Her lips parted slightly, whether to argue or to gasp, he could not tell. But the effect on him was disastrous. He felt the full, excruciating weight of a week’s restraint pressing down upon him, the gnawing awareness that he had denied himself everyother woman in London only to find himself undone in his own corridor, with the one he ought not to want.
Her lips curved, not in embarrassment but in insolence. “Chaos clings to me? No, Your Grace. I was chasing Lupita and Pepita to help the servants, nothing more. Do you think I would waste my time shredding pillows for sport?”
Benedict closed the last inches between them until she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. The air between them went thin, hot, as though the corridor itself had shrunk to hold only the two of them.
“No,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “But you are undisciplined. Wild hair, flushed cheeks, running about barefoot like a common hoyden. What sort of lady behaves in such a manner?”
Anastasia glared at him, her eyes burning into his skin. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Straton?”
He leaned a fraction closer, his gaze fixed on her mouth. “Would you like me to repeat myself?”
“I do not think I heard what you said,” she shot back, though he could see her pulse hammering in her throat.
His mouth curved in a treacherous smile. “You heard me well enough.”
“I am not a dog,” she snapped, her voice trembling with fury. “You cannot train me as if I were one of my aunt’s hounds.”
Benedict’s eyes darkened. “No,” he murmured, lifting a hand to brush her cheek, his fingers grazing her skin in a touch far too intimate. “I would have better luck training one of your aunt’s hounds than you. Still…” His thumb lingered near her jaw. “I donot think training you would be impossible. It would take time. But it can be done.”
“You are a cad!” she hissed, though the shiver that ran down her spine betrayed her.
“Such foul words from the mouth of a lady,” he said silkily. “I take it you never want to be married at all, then, if this is how you speak.”
“If my choice were to get married to a man like you, then I would rather die,” she spat out, which annoyed Benedict more than he thought possible.
She was choosing death over ever being married to a man like him? On any other day, he would have laughed it off. But not today. Not with her eyes blazing like that and his blood already running hot.
“You like to provoke me,” he said, his voice dropping into a growl. He bent his head until his lips hovered at her ear, his breath warm and maddening. “In fact, I would wager you have been doing it since the moment we met.”
The traitorous hitch in her breath gave her away, but Anastasia held his gaze. Her lips curved into the smallest, most insolent smile. “Perhaps I have.”
That insolence snapped the last thread of his restraint. His hand slid to the back of her neck, his grip firm but not cruel.
“Then consider this your warning,” he growled.
Before Anastasia could draw another breath, Benedict’s hand closed at the back of her neck. Not rough, but inescapable. He pushed her back against the nearest wall, the paneling cool against her spine as his body covered hers.
His mouth crashed down on hers in a kiss he had imagined a hundred times but never allowed himself. It was nothing like the polite, practiced affairs of the ballroom; it was hard, hungry, a kiss made of all the restraint he had been carrying like a weight.
She gasped into him, her hands flying up to his chest. Her fingers clutched at the lapels of his coat, but she did not push him away. Instead, she clutched at him as his hands slid down, skimming the hem of her skirt, tracing over the silk of her stockings before cupping her buttocks.
He felt the sharp nip of her teeth against his lower lip, and in answer, he pressed her harder into the wall, his thumb stroking along her jaw in a touch that was both possessive and perilously gentle. His other hand was squeezing her body, which felt like soft bread in his hands.
The taste of her undid him. Sweet and defiant, she kissed him back with a reckless fervor that stripped the last thread of his composure. He felt her body arch into his, felt the hard ache straining against his breeches, and for a wild instant, he pictured taking her here, now; her skirts hitched, her stockings down, losing himself entirely.
The image hit him like a slap of cold water. This was Anastasia—unmarried, under his protection, utterly inappropriate, and already too dangerous to his self-control. He tore himself away as though from fire, both of them breathing hard, their lips swollen.
