holding her tightly in his arms as he moulded the softness of her curves against his much harder ones and his gaze became fixated on her mouth.
In fact, everything about the high and mighty Duke of Stourbridge gave every indication that he was about to kiss her!
It was unthinkable.
Unimaginable…
And yet Jane found she could imagine it. Could already feel the hardness of those perfectly moulded lips on hers as his mouth plundered and claimed. Possessed. For surely any woman the Duke of Stourbridge chose to kiss would know the full force of the ardour he was normally at such pains to hide from his fellow beings, but which Jane could now see so clearly in the fierce glitter of his eyes? Just as clearly she could feel the tense hardness of his body as it pressed intimately against her own…
‘You should not have come here alone, Jane.’ The Duke’s gaze, that fiercely golden gaze, moved searchingly, hungrily, over the pallor of her face. ‘You should not, Jane!’ He began to lower his head towards hers.
Jane was held in motionless fascination for several long seconds as her lips parted instinctively to receive his.
A kiss.
One kiss.
Her first ever kiss.
Surely it was not too much to ask? To take for her own? After twelve long years of being denied the touch, the warmth, of another human being?
But a deeper, more knowledgeable instinct told her that Hawk St Claire, the powerful and forceful Duke of Stourbridge, would not stop at one kiss. His years and experience would demand he take more, much more. He was a man who would take and take again, while giving nothing of himself in return.
‘No!’ She turned her head away to avoid his kiss and at the same time pushed against his restraint, fighting to escape the steely band of his arms, but only succeeding in pressing herself more intimately against him. ‘No!’ Again she protested, fearing the desire that she could clearly see still held him in its grip. ‘You must not! Please, Hawk, you must not…!’
Her pleas pierced the fierce desire that raged through Hawk’s body, causing him to pause, to blink dazedly as he stared down at her in stunned disbelief.
This woman—this girl—was the ward of his host. The unmarried ward of his host.
He released her abruptly to step back, jaw tight, eyes gleaming a glittering, inflexible gold. ‘You should not have come here alone, Jane,’ he repeated harshly.
Her throat moved convulsively in the moonlight. ‘No, I should not. But I had not expected anyone to follow me—’
‘No, Jane?’ Hawk’s voice was hard, inflexible. ‘Are you sure that your present indignation is not due to the fact that it was the wrong man who responded to your invitation?’
She looked bewildered by his accusation. ‘The wrong man? I do not understand—’
‘Was it not James Tillton who was supposed to attend you here tonight rather than myself?’ Hawk had realised belatedly, as he remembered the flirtation he had witnessed during dinner, that this must be the case—that Jane’s dismay when he had joined her here had really been due to the fact that her lover—James Tillton?—had not arrived for their arranged tryst.
‘Lord Tillton?’ Jane gasped at his accusation. ‘I detest Lord Tillton! He behaved most disgracefully towards me during dinner—to such a degree that in the end I had to pierce his wrist with my fingernails in order to stop his pawing of me beneath the table. Besides which, he is a married man!’ she added frowningly.
Hawk’s mouth twisted scathingly. ‘Summer house parties like this one are notorious for the night-time assignations of people who are indeed married—but not to each other.’
‘Indeed, Your Grace?’ Her voice was icily cold. ‘And which female guest’s bed have you chosen to grace with your own illustrious presence tonight?’
Even now, in her pride and anger, Hawk could appreciate how beautiful, how tempting the inaptly named Miss Jane Smith truly was. Admittedly, her years spent under the guardianship of the forceful Lady Sulby seemed to have cowed the more spirited parts of her nature, but they were still there nonetheless—in the way that Jane challenged him, in the way that she never flinched from contradicting him. Two things that rarely, if ever, happened to the Duke of Stourbridge.
Jane Smith was unusual in that she did not seem to see him as just a duke. She saw past his title to the man beneath, and it was to that man that she spoke during her moments of rebellion. It was to that man that her beauty appealed. To such a degree that Hawk had briefly forgotten all the caution that had served him so well these last ten years.
It would not—it must not!—happen again.
‘I have no interest in bedding any of the ladies now residing at Markham Park,’ he said disdainfully, knowing by the way Jane stiffened that she had heard his intended rejection of her own charms in that carefully worded dismissal. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I will make my excuses to the Sulbys before retiring to my bedchamber for the night.’ He bowed abruptly before turning to leave.
‘Not without first making me an apology,Your Grace!’
Hawk turned slowly back to her, his narrowed gaze taking in the taut lines of her body and the challenge in her defiantly raised chin.
‘For almost kissing you…?’
She gave him a contemptuous glare. ‘For wrongly accusing me of encouraging Lord Tillton!’
Was it possible Hawk had mistaken the events he had witnessed earlier at the dinner table? Had Jane not been encouraging Tillton after all, but rather, as she claimed, fighting off the other man’s unwanted attentions? Attention towards a young woman about whom it was obvious her guardians did not care, let alone offer protection to?
‘If I was mistaken—’
‘You were!’
‘If I was mistaken then I apologise.’ Hawk nodded abruptly. ‘But in future I would advise you not to come here alone. You might find yourself in much graver danger another time than you have this evening.’
‘Until now these dunes have always been my place of refuge!’
Until Hawk had intruded.
Until he had held her in his arms and attempted to kiss her.
But that was a temptation she had not demanded apology for…
She was magnificent. Hawk could acknowledge that even with his inner determination not to initiate any further intimacy between them. Her unconfined hair blew in the wind, a thick curtain of flame, her eyes were wide and challenging, and those perfectly pouting lips were set defiantly.
All of those things told Hawk that she would be a formidable lover. that this woman was more than capable of matching the depths of his own passion, which he was always at such pains to hide from others and which Jane, instinctively, was able to touch and ignite.
Jane Smith, he decided determinedly, was a definite danger to the icy reserve of the Duke of Stourbridge.
