She felt it as surely as a touch. The room seemed to narrow to that look, to the dangerous stillness of him, to the way his breath dragged once through his chest as her teeth caught her lower lip.
His voice came lower. Rougher. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?” she whispered, though she knew.
His eyes lifted to hers, dark with warning. “You keep biting your lip like that, and I promise you, I will find a far better use for your mouth.”
The words went through her like fire.
She should have stepped back. She should have remembered every reason this was unwise, every bruise he had left on her pride, every danger in wanting a man who made control feel like something thin and breakable.
Instead, her teeth pressed into her lip again. She saw a hard snap behind his eyes, a sudden surrender of the restraint he had been holding so tightly.
Rowan moved.
His hand came to the back of her neck, fingers sliding into her loose hair, his other arm banding around her waist and hauling her against him with such force that her breath left her in a broken gasp.
Then his mouth was on hers.
His lips crushed hers, and Emmeline froze for one stunned heartbeat before her entire body answered him.
Her hands flew to his shirt, clutching at the linen over his chest. Beneath her palms, he was hard and hot, his body a wall of strength pressing her backward until her spine met the carvededge of the bedpost. He followed her there, crowding her against it, his mouth never leaving hers.
His beard scraped lightly against her skin, the roughness sending sparks through her, and when his tongue pushed past her parted lips, a soft, helpless sound escaped her throat.
He heard it. He groaned.
His hand tightened at her waist, fingers splaying over the thin fabric of her nightgown, and the heat of his palm seemed to brand straight through to her skin.
She had never been touched like this. Every careful thought she had carried into the room scattered beneath the force of his mouth, leaving only sensation. The hard press of his chest. The rough drag of his breath. The aching, molten pull low in her belly that made her knees weaken.
She clung to him.
His mouth moved from hers to the corner of her jaw, then lower, dragging a hot path down the side of her throat. Her head fell back, exposing her neck without thought, and his lips found the frantic pulse there. He kissed it once, then again, harder, open-mouthed, as if he could feel the wild beat of her heart and wanted to claim that too.
“Say my name,” he ordered.
“Rowan,” she whispered instantly.
His whole body shuddered.
For one dizzying second, she thought he might lift her. Lay her down. Make the night exactly what she had feared and wanted and not dared to name.
His hand slid to her hip. Her body arched toward him.
Then he stopped.
The loss was so abrupt that she nearly stumbled.
Rowan tore himself away, breathing hard, his face unreadable except for the stark, savage strain carved into every line of it. He stepped back, putting space between them like a man dragging himself from the edge of a cliff.
Emmeline stood against the bedpost, lips swollen, hair loosened around her shoulders, her nightgown twisted beneath one strap where his hand had gripped her. She could still feel his mouth on her throat. Her body was trembling so violently she could hardly draw a full breath.
He looked at her. For a moment, the hunger in his eyes nearly brought him back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I wasn’t supposed to…” Then he shut it down. “Go to bed, Duchess.”
Emmeline stared at him, unable to comprehend that a man could kiss her like that, could make her body burn until she scarcely recognized herself, and then send her away as if she were a mistake he had nearly made.
