He prayed she didn’t realize the same risk applied to him.
Pris sensed his retreat; she read it as a caution, as a belated recognition that this much heat, this much passion, wasn’t wise.
Too late. Her fingers speared through his heavy locks; seduced by the silky texture, she held his head steady and pressed boldly nearer until his hard frame fully impinged against her curves. If he thought he could tease her-offer a mere glimpse of the plea sure she might have, and draw back and dangle more like a carrot before her-he could think again.
The tiny part of her mind still functioning knew that reacting so flagrantly was reckless. She didn’t care. His arms tightened about her and she delighted; his hands spread over her back, hesitated.
She kissed him voraciously, tempted, beckoned; he tried to hold aloof, then the dam broke, and he responded.
With heat. With a fiery response that curled her toes.
His palms hardened, pressed, then slid low, evocatively molding her hips to his.
Her abandoned senses exulted. Nearly swooned when he ruthlessly took command of the kiss, took command of her senses, and recklessly spun them both into the eye of a passion-wracked storm.
He held her there, for long moments let the sensual winds buffet her, rake her nerves, her mind, let them tempt and promise.
When he lifted his head just enough so he could speak, his breath a warm flame over her sensitized lips, she was clinging to him, clinging to the remnants of her wits, still whirling in the vortex of welling, swelling need.
“Did you find the string you were searching for?”
The words made no sense, connected with nothing in her mind. She blinked, then realized, remembered. “Ah…no.”
He kissed her again, waltzed her back into the waiting conflagration, until every nerve sizzled, until heat raced through her veins and pooled low. Until the world had disappeared behind a mist of desire, and only the two of them existed.
Lifting his head, he caught her lower lip between his teeth, gently tugged, then released it and murmured, “Is it your brother you’re protecting?”
This time, it took longer to gather her wits, longer to find the strength to think. She tried to frown, but her features seemed unresponsive. Her lashes fluttered as she battled to assemble the right words…no? Yes?
It was only because she couldn’t decide but had to think harder that she realized what he was doing. The effort required to snap her mind free of his sensual web left her weak; luckily, he was holding her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her delivery lacked incisive strength but was enough to make him draw an exasperated breath.
She would have smiled, but he kissed her again. For one long moment she let him pull her, unresisting, back under the glorious wave, then she mentally jerked back. She drew her lips from his enough to whisper, “What’s in the confidential section of the register?”
His only answer was a curse; she was smiling broadly when he kissed her again. But she now had his mea sure, and her own; she refused to let him submerge her wits. Reluctantly, she pulled back again, but tried another avenue of attack and leaned heavily into him. Let her stomach cradle his erection and sinuously moved against him.
He sucked in a breath, closed his eyes. He looked like he was in pain.
Another form of persuasion. Artfully she caressed, slowly, she hoped seductively. “How do the confidential details stop the falsifying of winners-is it some sort of description?”
She made the words as soft as she could, let her voice slide into the low, sultry tones she knew from experience rattled the cages of men’s libidos. She’d never before used her body, her voice, to deliberately entice; she derived more feminine satisfaction than she’d thought possible when he answered, his tone a gravelly rumble, “Yes.” He paused; to her delight, he was struggling to think. “I can’t tell you more than that.”
He could, if he would. She slid her hands from his nape to his shoulders, was about to run her palms down his chest when he glanced down.
“That’s the ugliest shawl I’ve ever seen.” With a tug, he unraveled the knot between her breasts.
Before she could catch the screening silk, it slithered over and off her shoulders and fell to the floor.
Leaving her-the real her-revealed, clad in her deep green silk gown with its daringly abbreviated bodice. It was a perfectly acceptable gown, yet her breath tangled in her throat; her nerves stretched. She glanced up, and her lungs seized.
He was looking at her-at her breasts mounding above the low, straight edge of her bodice, at the expanse of fine white skin now exposed-and there was heat in his eyes. His gaze caressed like flames, touching, brushing-threatening to consume.
Before she could do the sensible thing and step away, he raised both hands and, almost reverently, closed them about her breasts.
Sensation, sharp, indescribably shocking, lanced through her.
Her knees buckled.
He swept one arm around her, gathered her to him, held her against him, supported as his other hand eased, then caressed, fingers firm and seeking through the silk. Her pent-up breath hissed out, a sharp exhalation in the warm, earthy dark.
Forcing up her suddenly heavy lids, she looked into his face. Watched some expression move across the angular planes; in the weak light it was impossible to decipher it.
Easier to follow were his physical reactions, the tightening of the steely muscles that banded her back, the thin slash of his lips as they fractionally parted. His eyes as they tracked his fingers, as his gaze devoured and rising heat licked along her spine.
Even easier to sense was his fascination. With her body, with the firm flesh his palm sculpted, with the nipple his knowing fingers found and, to the sound of her desperate gasp, teased to furled attention.
With the delicate skin above her neckline that the pads of his fingers skimmed…
Then he bent his head and found her lips again, whirled her back into the spinning vortex of desire, into the conflagration that so temptingly threatened to consume her senses-just as long as she surrendered and let go of her wits.
Let him sweep them away and command her.
She wouldn’t-knew that she couldn’t, that she didn’t dare. That she couldn’t risk it.
The kiss evolved into a battle of wills, of wits, a flagrant duel of the senses. He pressed; she countered, fighting to keep her mind from the seductive play of his hand at her breast, from the evocative thrust of his hips against hers when, denied, he let his other hand slide down her back, over her hips to her bottom, to grip then knead provocatively, then to mold her hips to his.
He was devilish, experienced-unused to being denied. He had more weapons in his arsenal than she’d dreamed of, yet even while she realized he hadn’t been anywhere as near losing control as he’d let her believe, she also sensed, and his reluctance to engage those more potent weapons he possessed confirmed, that he was walking as fine a line as she-the line between conquest and surrender, not to himself, or to her, but to passion.
She pressed her hands up, framed his face, clung as she kissed him, as she met the next thrust of his tongue and with reckless abandon drew him deep.
His control shook, wavered.
Abruptly she discovered she’d waltzed them to the edge of a sexual precipice, and they were suddenly teetering on the brink.
She didn’t have strength enough left to haul them back.
Neither, it seemed, did he.
His hands, on her body, firmed, his grip suddenly more demanding.
“Yes, Mildred-I do assure you it’s quite purple around the edges of the petals.”
Lady Kershaw’s haughty tones achieved what neither of them could. Jerked back to sanity, they both froze. Both rediscovered their reins and pulled back. Quietly, barely moving, they broke the kiss, hesitated for a moment, their breaths mingling, then they carefully lifted their heads and looked around.