Page 45 of The Duke
But no.
This was no bright-eyed do-gooder latched to his mouth with all the craven audacity she could muster. She was a woman of desire, of spirit and determination. She was like a wild American mustang yet to be broken to a master’s hand.
Sweet Christ, did he ever want to ride her until they were both slick with sweat and pleasure. Until she was slack-limbed and docile.
The moment he decided to deepen the kiss, she ended it.
A new pallor flushed her skin as she held a hand to her lips. He realized with a hot stab in the pit of his stomach that she was as shocked as he by the electric current of arousal between them.
She recovered astonishingly well, her multicolored eyes glittering with triumph as they narrowed at him. “Don’t get any mistaken ideas of my intentions,Your Grace,” she said. “I merely wanted to see if your taste was as bitter as your conversation.” She gathered her skirts and made to push past him, her voice hitched with telltale breathlessness. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I—”
“Shut up,” Cole commanded, as he crowded her back against the door and captured her mouth again.
He wasn’t finished with her.
Cole made his kiss everything hers hadn’t been. Wet, probing, and utterly wicked. Though he had to brace himself against the door so his weakened knees wouldn’t have to support them both, he summoned all the skill and expertise she’d accused him of having and wielded it against her lips.
He licked at the seam of her mouth, more of a warning than an inquiry, before he claimed it with his tongue. In truth, he half expected her to bite him.
But she didn’t.
The moment a dark groan manifested in his throat, she came alive in his arms, clinging to his shoulders for stability. As he drank deeply from the well of shocking pleasure in her kiss, he found with sinister delight that her tongue tangled with his instead of retreating. Her mouth was hot and her lips so infinitely soft, he almost couldn’t believe they were real.
A part of him realized he’d conjured a firestorm in that moment. That everything that had been shattered and cold within him melted in an instant inferno, becoming liquid and incomprehensively hot. Ready to be molded into a weapon. Made to thrust. To penetrate.
And here was an opponent worth the battle.
With a ragged sound, she broke the kiss, ripping her mouth from his and surging to the side, out of his grasp. With clumsy, shaking hands she wiped at her mouth as though to erase any trace of him.
She stared at him in open accusation, her features twisted with dire anguish. “Whydid you come here tonight?” she demanded with a half-sob. Her eyes, though suspiciously bright, remained empty of tears and full of antipathy. “Do you enjoy tormenting me so, that you would dedicate an entire evening to my humiliation?”
Cole pushed away from the door, turning from her and taking the time it took retrieving his prosthetic from the bench to collect himself. Whyhadhe come? Why was he acting like this? Why, when his mind recoiled from her, did his flesh seem to crave her? It was as though his body betrayed him in her presence. He’d never had such a strong physical reaction to a woman he hardly knew. At least not since…
“Ravencroft wanted me to attend, and since I owe the man my life, I find it hard to deny him anything.” He answered her question with as much nonchalance as he could muster.
“Need I remind you that Ialsosaved your life,” she railed. “And yet you have no compunctions about degrading me and threatening to take everything I have.”
Was that how she regarded his kiss? As a degradation?
“What have I done to you?” she cried. “Why must you be so beastly?”
We must be what we are,he thought.Beasts.
“I don’t like what you are doing here.” He turned on her, summoning his reserves of malice to coat the nerves that had become raw and exposed by their interaction. “I don’t like the noise of your renovations. I don’t want to live next door to whores, vagrants, and pickpockets. I don’t want to deal with the risks their associations bring into this neighborhood. I wantpeace, woman. Why can’t you understand that?”
“Is your peace and quiet worth a beaten woman’s life? Or a frightened child’s safety?” she asked, once again impassioned.
“Whatever it’s worth, I’ve paid twice the price. I’veearnedit.” He brandished his prosthetic at her. “You want to save all the whores in London, fine, just do it elsewhere.”
“These women, they’re notjust whores,not merely a collection of orifices for your amusement. Some of them are mothers. Or daughters turned out by the very family who was supposed to protect them. They’re humanbeings.”
“You don’t think I know that?” he bit out.
“Do you? If you truly believed in their worth as women, you’d treat them with compassion instead of contempt. With affection rather than acrimony.”
“You know some big words for such a small woman.”
“And you have a small mind for such a big man,” she volleyed back, raking him with a disgusted glare. “I can’t believe I ever—” She pressed her lips closed, her little fists balled with fury.
