His head tipped back and he groaned, low like a man in pain, urging all that was female in her to both torment and soothe him with her body, her hands, her mouth . . .
He released her and eased back.
No. She followed him, chasing the intimate friction.
His hands wrapped around hers and flattened them against his chest. “Annabelle.” His voice was hoarse.
No.
She hadn’t thought she’d ever know reckless, ecstatic desire again, and now he had filled her to the brim with it. She wanted him inside her, and that feeling could not end, not yet.
She rose to her toes to fasten her mouth to his again, but he turned his head, and her kiss landed on his jaw. A gentle rejection, but a rejection still.
Her heart seemed to plummet down into her stomach.
“Annabelle.”
She didn’t dare face him. But she felt the wild thud of his heart beneath her trapped hand. His breathing came in gulps. So did hers.
Sweat cooled on her skin.
From afar, she could again hear fragments of the music.
Holy hell.
She had tried to climb Montgomery like a cat.
She took a step back. “I . . .” Her voice was thready. “I don’t normally . . .”
“Shh.” He leaned his warm forehead against hers. “I forgot myself.”
He hadn’t. If it weren’t for his self-control, where would this have gone? There was no curtain. She was not even wearing undergarments . . . What must he be thinking?
He turned her around.
His hands gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t move.”
She heard his knees crack softly, and she understood that the duke was picking up scattered hairpins from the floor, and then he set about reassembling her coiffure. With astonishing alacrity, too. He knew a thing or two about women’s hair. He certainly knew a thing or two about seduction; she would have let him have his way with her in an alcove, where anyone could have walked past.
His fingers slid around her neck, his thumbs stroking lightly over her spine.
“I can hear you thinking,” he murmured. “Your word, that you will not go haring off into the night now.”
She huffed.
“Your word, Annabelle.” His voice was low and insistent.
She gave an indignant nod.
“Good.” He pressed a kiss to her nape, soft and quick. “Tomorrow, we will talk.” He gave her a gentle push. “Now go.”
She left the alcove on unsteady legs, blindly following the sound of the music. The feel of his mouth on her nape lingered, sizzling like a branding . . . Someone touched her arm, and she flinched.
“Annabelle.” Catriona was staring back at her.
“There you are,” she said, wincing at the unnatural pitch in her voice. “Where were you?”
“Your hair is mussed,” Catriona said.
Her hand went to the back of her head. “Oh. It must have come loose while I was . . . dancing.”
Catriona’s eyes were concealed, behind her glasses. So she had found them. Still, she looked alien.
It’s me.
Her mouth was tingling violently from Montgomery’s kisses. Next time she saw him, she would remember how he felt and tasted. This knowledge threw the rest of the world off center.
“You danced?” asked Catriona.
“Lord Ballentine asked me for a waltz.”
Her friend’s brow furrowed. “He’s a rake,” she said. “Did he behave?”
“Like a rake.”
So had she. She had moaned and rubbed herself against Montgomery’s impressive erection, oh God, his erection—
“Will you help me fix my hair?” she asked, suddenly desperate to not go back into the ballroom, to sit on a chair and pretend nothing had happened.
Catriona slid her arm through hers. “Of course. The powder room is this way.”
* * *
Sebastian absently offered matches to the Marquess of Whitmore, who had come to join him on the balcony to discuss the election campaign. He hesitated before putting the matches away. While he craved a cigarette himself, he wanted to savor the taste of Annabelle more.
She was back on the chair by the wall. Her glossy hair was tousled, and her cheeks and throat were flushed pink. She looked like a woman who had been debauched in an alcove, and the fact that other men could see her like this urged him to prowl circles around her like a primitive creature.
She had awakened that creature. It had begun to stir when he had galloped across the fields with her delectable backside bumping against his crotch, and it had finally snapped its leash when she had faced down Marsden with nothing but her rapier-sharp mind. Strange thoughts had begun invading his head, and stranger feelings still were now roiling in his chest. Last year, when the Earl of Bevington had fallen from grace by marrying an opera singer, he had cut all contact with the man. Bevington had to be mad to sacrifice everything that mattered over an unsuitable woman: his standing in society, his political career, the respect of his half-grown children. The man now vegetated in a dump in Verona with the singer wife. And just now, in the alcove, with Annabelle’s soft curves and lips pressing against him, feeling her need . . . for a few mad seconds, he had understood why some men did it, risked everything.
The unlit cigarette between his fingers was trembling slightly.
He had nearly lost control—over a kiss.
Was that how disaster had begun for Bevington?
“Lovely creature.” Whitmore was leaning over the banister. For the past few minutes, the marquess’s lecherous stare had followed Annabelle around like a dog after a juicy bone.
“Good Gad,” Whitmore muttered, “behold those tits.”
The banister near cracked in Sebastian’s grip. He must not hit the man. He was an important political ally. “You are speaking about a lady.”
“Oh, I heard she’s just a country girl,” Whitmore said, oblivious of the imminent danger to his jaw. “Though it is a pity when a prime piece like that happens to be a pleb, is it not? Look at that poise—just think, the same girl would have been a diamond of the first water, had someone slapped a title on her father in time.”
“What a sentimental notion,” Sebastian said. The words emerged cold and flat.
“I’m not complaining,” Whitmore said, his belly quivering with a silent chuckle. “Who is her protector, do you know?”
Everything inside Sebastian went quiet. Like the quiet after a shot had been fired, when the birds had stopped singing and the wind held its breath.