dark and lonely place at this hour of the night. She wondered for one awful moment if Stonevale was going to lose his grip on the reins of his temper, and then she started wondering what she should do if he did. Belatedly she took a step back.
“My lord?”
“No,” he said, as if having reached a conclusion. “Your paltry thanks are not enough for what I have been through and what I undoubtedly have yet to endure.”
Without any warning Lucas’s hands closed around her shoulders, and in one smooth, swift motion he backed her up against the garden wall.
Before Victoria could react, Lucas moved in close, so close that the hard, unforgiving length of his body pressed against her much softer frame.
Lucas’s booted foot slid between her legs. Victoria froze for an instant, held still by the shock of his muscled thigh alongside her own leg. Her eyes widened in the moonlight as she looked up into Stonevale’s starkly etched face.
“You are a hotheaded, reckless hoyden; a little shrew who is badly in need of taming before she lands in serious trouble. If I had any sense, I would end this here and now,” Lucas rasped.
Victoria licked her dry lips. “End what, my lord?”
“This.” His mouth came down on hers with a fierce, plundering heat that made her fully aware, at last, of the true extent of his dangerous mood.
She had been prepared for his anger but nothing could have readied her for the masculine arousal that poured over her in a searing conflagration.
Stonevale wanted her.
Victoria was momentarily stunned by the sensual assault. She had been kissed a few times by daring or desperate suitors and once or twice because her own curiosity had gotten the better of her. But she had never known anything like the rough, deep, demanding kiss that held her now.
She trembled and her fingers clenched around Lucas’s upper arms. He responded with a husky groan and then he was crushing her into the ivy, his thigh forcing her legs further apart. Victoria felt the small jabs of the vines and inhaled the fragrance of crumpled leaves and the musky scent of Lucas’s body. Her head spun as if she were being whirled about on a dance floor.
When she felt Lucas’s tongue slide along her lower lip, she opened her mouth for him in the same instinctive, unquestioning manner in which she had earlier followed him to safety.
She flinched when his hands circled her waist, but she did not struggle as she knew she should, not even when she felt his thumbs glide up to rest just under the weight of her small breasts.
“My lord,” she managed in a ragged voice as he freed her mouth to catch the lobe of her ear between his teeth. “My lord, I don’t know … that is, you ought not to be doing this.”
“I want you to have good cause to remember me, Victoria,” Lucas whispered.
Victoria swallowed hard, trying to collect herself. “I assure you, I am not likely to forget you.”
“Excellent.”
His teeth grazed her tender earlobe, causing no real pain but leaving her with a disquieting sensation of vulnerability. The odd caress left Victoria feeling shaken to the depths of her being. Her insides turned warm and her pulse quickened.
Without stopping to think, she moved her hands up to twine her arms around Lucas’s neck. She liked the scent of him, she realized. She also liked the feel of his strong shoulders under her hands. She was acutely aware of the heavy, masculine bulge outlined by his tight breeches.
“This,” Lucas whispered, “is going to prove a most interesting association.” The anger seemed to evaporate from him in that moment, leaving only the desire—his eyes alive and glittering with it.
“Do you think so?” Victoria was feeling very daring now as she looked up at him. The recent rush of euphoric relief engendered by the close brush with danger was meshing with another kind of thrill, a new and unfamiliar thrill, a thrill of deep sensuality. She felt oddly weak and realized she was clinging to
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