Heat flared between them.His jaw hardened to marble and his fingers skimmed higher up her legs, drawing trails of fire along her trembling thighs.
“What’s a little more hell,” he rasped, and stood to catch her to him for a kiss.
They crashed together in a blaze, his kiss rough and seeking out at once the most tender, secret places in Lucy’s mouth.His teeth nipped sharply, his tongue stroked insistently, and Lucy realized with a frisson of excitement that she had finally teased and tempted him past all reserve.
He had kissed her before.Sweet, almost courtly kisses, in keeping with the gentlemanlike manner that never failed to make her heart flutter.But no matter how she’d tried to provoke him—and Lucy hadtried—he’d never touched her with anything less than perfect restraint.
Until now.
Tonight is the night!
Excitement and desire and apprehension swirled together in Lucy’s belly as he lowered them to the ground.Her head felt too heavy for her neck to hold up; when the Rogue’s lips nipped sharp, sparkling kisses into the soft skin under her jaw and down the side of her throat, Lucy let it drop back over his supporting arm.
Dizzy sensation overtook her.She blinked and couldn’t tell if the stars wheeling before her eyes were hanging in the sky or brought on by his hungry mouth.Lucy clutched at his shoulders.
She was ready.Wasn’t she?
The hand that wasn’t supporting her upper body had returned to toy with the hem of her drawers, just above her knee.Lucy experienced the strange, contradictory urges to squeeze her legs together and to simultaneously let them fall apart.She didn’t know what to do.
And then it abruptly didn’t matter, because as though he was so attuned to her that he’d sensed her momentary hesitation, he stopped.
Mere inches from the open seam at the apex of Lucy’s thighs, his hand stopped.
A breath that sounded too much like a whimper escaped Lucy’s throat.She struggled to lift her dizzy head and found him staring down at her with his face entirely cast in shadow.
His chest heaved with one great breath, and then he was gone.Off her, standing up, stepping back, and Lucy said, “No!”
“What am I doing?”he muttered, so low she didn’t think she was meant to hear.“Damnation.”
You’re supposed to be ravishing me!Lucy wanted to cry out, but he so very obviously was not about to ravish her.
Embarrassment was beginning to creep in.She reached down to twitch her skirts over her legs and curled her feet under her with a shiver.
The ground was cold and hard.Funny, she hadn’t noticed before.
He paced away from her, one hand running over the top of the scarf that still concealed his hair above his masked face.His movements were quick and agitated, devoid of his usual lethal grace, and Lucy couldn’t bear it.
Clambering to her feet, she reached out to him, only to see him whirl and cast a narrow look down at her completely uninjured ankle.Oops.
Caught out, she tried a charming smile that seemed to have the exact opposite effect of what she wished.
His face, what she could see of it, went hard and implacable.Distant as the moon and twice as cold.
“I trust you can see yourself home without further incident,” he clipped out, already striding toward his stallion, and Lucy couldn’t believe it had all gone so terribly wrong.
“Wait, please,” she begged, running after him, but he paid her no heed.
She caught him just as he reached Dante, her fingers tangling in the trailing ends of the scarf.
When he shook her off impatiently, her clinging grip tugged hard enough to nearly dislodge his mask.
Lucy’s breath stuttered in her chest as he turned on her with true fury.He grabbed her wrist like a snake striking, making Lucy startle and drop the fabric.
“Do not,” he snarled, his voice low and throbbing with intensity.“Don’t.Ever.”
“I-I wasn’t,” she stammered, but he shook his head and turned back to set his boot in the stirrup.
Vaulting lightly into the saddle, he stared down at Lucy for a long moment.“No one can know who I am.Do you understand that?Can you understand the ruin you would cause if you— Christ.What am I doing here?I should already be leagues away.”
