It wanted at her with a violence he’d never before felt.
His hand found its way to her throat. Her startled gasp both shamed and inflamed him. It was the only way he could make her see, the only possible way for him to force her to comprehend the mortal danger she was putting herself in.
“I will spoil you at every turn,” he snarled.
“I would expect no less from you.” By now, she had to tilt her head back rather far to look up at him, pressing the column of her throat against his hand.
“It would take nothing to destroy you.” He tightened his fingers ever so slightly, and the telltale jump of her pulse belied her unwavering audacity.
“Better men than you have tried,” she remonstrated, her eyes blazing green with a maelstrom of her own primitive emotions. “Yet here I stand.”
“You are a fool if you think any of those people in there are going to help you save every gutter whore from here to the East End once they realize you’re planning on bringing them here.”
She gave him a level look. “You surprise me, Your Grace, I rather expected you to have higher opinions of whores, as you are reported to spend an inordinate amount of time in their company.”
He leered at her. “I appreciate whores very much and like them to be what they are instead of striving for a title.”
Her eyes narrowed to glittering slits of wrath. “You should hear what they have to say about titled men. Apparently blue blood has a difficult time finding its way to the correct appendage. And even if it does, the experience rarely lasts long enough to be worth the trouble.”
She gasped a bit when her back found the panes of the door, but to her credit, her eyes never ceased burning up into his.
“The whores I’ve known have never left my company unsatisfied,” he purred, his finger drifting south, to curve over the delectable flesh at her nape, the sharp arrow of her clavicle, pointing down. Down toward the breasts now surging toward him with each troubled breath.
“How wonderful for you.” She mocked an impressed expression, but not before something else flickered over her features. Fear. Sadness. And something else … something that disappeared as quickly as it had materialized. “I suppose they’re paid not to complain. And I happen to know the ones who feign pleasure are better compensated.”
He made a droll sound. “I rather think I’m not too dense to decipher real pleasure from false.”
She lifted a lovely bare shoulder and rolled her eyes heavenward. “Every man assumes thusly.”
How was it that such a lovely, soft woman had such a sharp tongue? It was like being bitten by a butterfly. Most women would have been shocked into catatonia by this conversation, or at the very least reduced to tears. His hand was around her neck, for the love of Christ … or it had been. Now it was decidedly not. It had drifted and explored … which should have distressed her more than it did him.
But the countess Anstruther met his dark look with a mulish one of her own. God, it had been a long time since he’d felt so frustrated, so infuriated.
It was … rather glorious.
The scant air between them shifted, becoming heavy with promise, insinuation, and more than a little danger. “How is it, Lady Anstruther, that you know so much of my intimate exploits? Interested?” He punctuated the word intimate by leaning forward and catching his weight on his elbow, hovering above her. A moth’s wing wouldn’t have survived between them.
“It’s only the worst-kept secret in the realm.” She rolled her eyes again, but her voice was certainly breathier than before, contradicting her pretense of remaining unaffected. “Everyone knows who you are and the manner in which you conduct yourself. The prodigal duke. The tragic hero. Gossip columns report what kind of powder you prefer to clean your teeth with, let alone the more salacious aspects of your life. Everyone knows how you’ve taken your second chance and done your best to ruin it in the most reckless, ridiculous ways possible. It’s an insult to those of us who toiled so hard to save you.”
“They bloody well know nothing,” he growled. “And I credit you with even less intellect than I first did if you believe what you read in the papers.”
“If not for a reporter, you’d never have been rescued,” she argued.
“I’m certain you’re feeling that your life would be a great deal easier had I not been found.” He meant to push away from her, to stalk out of her home and her life, but something about her expression froze him in place. Between the blood-soaked battlefields and messy assassinations, the numerous hospitals and even the Turkish prison, he couldn’t remember ever seeing such a deeply, truly wounded expression.
“You can’t even hope to imagine how I feel about it.” Her faint words carried a thread of steel, and so much pain he could no longer stand to look her in the eye.
Glancing down, his gaze snagged on her now-exposed throat as it struggled to swallow some incomprehensibly powerful emotion. Such a graceful neck. Soft and lovely with fragile, thin skin. The most delicate place. Well … among them. There were others.
Like the insides of her wrists. Or her thighs.
Her lips. Lips that might welcome him, that might part for him if he took them.
His head dipped low, his body curled around her. So small. So slight. And yet so warm.
Her tremulous breath brushed at his face, her features frozen. Paralyzed. Though her small, pink tongue slipped over her lower lip, leaving a delicious gleam of moisture there.
Fuck, suddenly he wanted to—
Surging up to her toes, she slammed her lips against his with such force their teeth almost clattered together.
Cole couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d taken a knife and stabbed him in the heart. Either way, that traitorous heart ceased beating. She not only stole his wits, she took his breath for good measure.
This was no searching, probing kiss from an aroused woman seeking stimulation or validation of his feelings. No exploration of sensual attraction nor the expression of tender affection. This was something hard. Something angry and wild. The explosive moment held them suspended in time, the frustrated heat of it searing its way from his lips to his cock. With this kiss, she seized control of the moment. Exerting her wishes upon him. She demonstrated to him with a definitive, unmitigated action that she was a creature in command of her own will.
He’d been so wrong about her. At first he’d thought her devious and scheming. Then perhaps sweet and simple, unaware and out of her depth.
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—”