only feet away. On this terrace with the scent of exotic flowers heavy in the air, only now mattered. Just enough light shone from the ballroom for her to see his eyes were ice blue and hot at the same time. Her breath stuttered when he pulled her further from the lights of the party and the glow of a waxing moon gave them a world of their own.
‘You should not trust me, Belle. I’m dangerous,’ he said almost seriously. ‘I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing,’ he added as if he believed it.
‘It’s not full,’ she told him and sensed his bewilderment. ‘The moon,’ she explained with a nod towards it where it seemed almost touchable, on the horizon, ‘so you can’t claim the moon made you do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Kiss me,’ she heard herself say rashly. A sane part of her was so shocked it was as if it flopped down on to the stone bench nearby and sat there with its mouth open.
‘Oh? And why would you let me do that, Belle? Perhaps you’re as wild as I am,’ he murmured, suddenly closer than she remembered.
She should run, dash back into the familiar noise and heat and glitter of a tonnish ballroom, and find the nearest respectable female to chaperon her. Instead she stayed as if her feet were rooted into the still-warm stones under their feet. She could touch and taste him if she stayed, hear the urgent saw of breath he’d been holding too long. Moonlight fell on high cheekbones and dark, dark hair springing almost to disarray despite all his efforts to tame it. The hint of a frown at his dark eyebrows told her a goodly part of him thought he ought to fight this basic, gut-deep attraction as well. But there was enough light for the sensual curve of his mouth to betray the fact urgency and passion were getting the upper hand even without her exploring touch and silent encouragement to get on and kiss her and to hell with the real world.
‘I think you’re right,’ she whispered as she padded her fingertips against his tense jaw, feeling how it clenched and suspecting it was taking everything in him not to fall on her like the wolf he claimed to be.
But reason gave way to madness and suddenly she was in his arms. This was the kiss that would bring Isabella Penelope Alstone fully to life. The one she’d been so secretly waiting for since the day she began to be a woman. She hadn’t even let herself know she wanted it until now. His mouth fitted lushly against her eager lips and he felt so familiar against her. He murmured something as if he agreed with her unspoken thoughts and she opened her mouth to say Yes, please, but he dipped his tongue inside first, as if he had to know more, had to know everything now she was here at last. She was melting from the outside in, or should that be the inside out? Heat beat through her in time with his hurried breaths and the dart of his gently exploring tongue, as if he knew she’d never felt passion like this before and it was a shock that echoed through them both.
Yes, there was the shake of novelty and wonder in his fingers as he danced them across her cheekbone and down to outline her chin as if he was learning her with every sense he had. Never before had she been tempted to burrow into a man’s arms, to try to become a part of him by melding her heat with his, her mouth with his. For a minute reality threatened to pull her back and her mind told her body to flinch away, but the alluring stranger snatched all her attention back by sliding his wickedly exploring tongue over her lower lip, deepening the kiss.
She shifted even closer and copied his exploration. His cheek and jaw felt so firm under her touch and her fingers were intrigued by the contrast between her own softer features and his hawkish ones. She could feel the suggestion of his beard despite a careful shave and she spared a moment to scent the clean, sharp smell of soap and something tangy used to take the sting of the blade away when a gentleman was making himself civilised and smooth for the company of ladies.
Real life threatened to jump in again, but she told it to go away and muttered something encouraging instead. Nothing in reality could beat a meeting outside time and all the rules of polite society. Her heart beat so fast and her breath demanded air while pleasure and hope and a big, wide yes to life and this stranger and all he could be opened up inside her. She was shivering like a thoroughbred and rode a tide of heat more intense and deep and demanding than anything she’d ever felt before. There were no words to describe how right it felt when he pulled her closer to show her what she was doing to him. She felt the tension of deep desire in his rigidly muscular form. This was the carnal, primal need that carried men and women to places they’d never intended to go to when they started an evening not even knowing one another.
Instead of flinching back and telling him, no, they couldn’t go any further down that road when they didn’t even know one another’s real names, she pushed her curious hands under his unbuttoned evening coat and gave a pleased little grunt at the feel of a hot, needy and intriguingly muscular male under her exploring touch. Her fingers soothed the tight muscles at the base of his spine, whispered inquisitively downwards, desperate to know the difference between his spare male flanks and her own sleekly feminine curves. He gasped as if she’d stung him, then sucked in breath as if he might need more if she was going to carry on, so she did. She could feel his muscles shift and soothe, then tense again as she explored the sparseness of his buttocks and the honed, pared-down line where they met long, strong legs. Her own legs wobbled and almost let her down as their stance thrust his unmistakably eager manhood emphatically against her.
This was what uncontrollable desire felt like. This was how a woman felt when she was desperate for the man she loved to take her somewhere magical. That old taboo, that stark little four-lettered word sounded like a death knell in a corner of her mind, but she was moon-mad and curious enough to ignore it for a little longer. It put a hiccup in her sigh, though, a caveat in her exploration even as she buried a gasp of awe and need against his shoulder, then stood on tiptoe so that every bit of her felt it knew every bit of him.
But they didn’t, they couldn’t; not with so many sharp eyes and curious minds dangerously close by. She felt him stand a little straighter, pulling back his leanly powerful shoulders so he stood more sceptically apart from her as she burrowed against the warmth and strength and certainty of him and tried to hold on to this moment for a little while longer. If she let go, she’d have to see what she’d done and what she ought to have been doing instead. Ever since she’d given in to impulse for once and stepped outside the stuffy ballroom behind them, the way her life was planned out from now on was weightless in the balance against this rebellious encounter under the stars. Let him go and that weight would tumble back and she would end up more wrong than she had ever been in her life.
As she stood in the stronghold of his arms, trying to hold the real world at bay for as long as she could, voices started to disturb the fog of her mind.
‘Isabella can’t be out here,’ she heard Magnus Haile’s voice say in the vast, close distance between his world and the one she and the stranger and the moon inhabited.
Now just a few yards away his voice sounded pacifying with forced casualness. She stiffened and felt her fellow moon-led simpleton do the same. Magnus must be with his father for him to sound like that. The Earl of Carrowe was a despot with his family, but so sleekly charming in the polite world the stark difference between public and private man still took Isabella’s breath away.
‘Where is she, then? Get your engagement puffed off so I don’t end up in the sponging house or have duns to breakfast. You have shilly-shallied for far too long, so you find her before her upstart brother-in-law withdraws his consent or I’ll spill your secrets.’
‘She’s of age and so am I. We need no consent,’ the Honourable Magnus Haile asserted uncomfortably, as if he was trying to remind himself that he and Isabella were two free and unencumbered adults.
Even as she stood in another man’s arms and felt him go rigid before he let her go as if she’d suddenly grown horns and a tail,
