He couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t not respond to her flagrant invitation. To the blatant enticement she pressed upon him, with her lips, her tongue, with her fabulous body. She shifted, pressed into him, and his control—what was left of it—quaked.
He’d expected to have to persuade, to exert his talents to convince her, that she would still be wary, hesitant at best, that he’d have to cajole…instead, he was left reeling in her wake.
He hadn’t expected her to surrender so easily, to give way…but as her tongue boldly tangled with his, as he felt her hands beneath his coat spread over his chest, he realized that wasn’t the case. She hadn’t given in—she’d changed her mind. She wasn’t going along with his tack—she was pursuing her own.
She’d decided she wanted him.
Something akin to the angel’s chorus rang triumphantly in his head. But he had no time to savor the triumph, not yet.
Because having decided what she wanted, she was intent on getting it.
Which would normally pose no problem whatsoever, except…
Thoughts whirled in his head, fragmented, disjointed, but clear enough for him to see the danger. She wasn’t destined to be—hadn’t been created to be—a woman lightly taken.
Unfortunately, as her present actions were most effectively demonstrating, she didn’t know that. Every wanton movement only underscored her direction; she was hell-bent on having him take her.
Trying to battle his reaction to that realization as well as battle her was all but impossible.
He broke the kiss, dragged in a desperate breath—only to hear her hum in her throat, a purring, determined warning, then she bore him back until his shoulders hit the wall.
She was on him, using her weight to pin him; he could easily have thrown her off, resisted her, if he’d been able to summon the slightest will. Instead, he merely gasped, then inwardly groaned as she framed his face and kissed him.
Wild, unrestrained—as abandoned as he’d known she would be.
And she called to him. He could feel the rising beat in his blood; he was already hard, and that insistent beat was only going to grow more compulsive, more difficult to deny. Especially in the face of her urging, her clear and effectively communicated desire.
It took an exercise of will he hadn’t known he possessed to force his hands from her, to seek and catch hers—and then abruptly, before she could think to demur, shift and turn, so he was pinning her.
Her kiss only grew more hungry; he had to pull back and lift his head before she, the sultry siren he hadn’t until then fully appreciated she had in her, caught him again and pulled him under.
For a long moment, he stood gasping, panting, waiting for his head to stop spinning. He had her plastered to the wall, pressed to it, her hands anchored to the bricks on either side of her head. Her lips, her eyes, were only inches from his; she licked the former, slowly, then opened the latter and looked into his.
“Why…Oh.” Her eyes searched his. “I suppose I should tell you. I’ve changed my mind.”
If he hadn’t been aching so badly, he would have made some clever quip; instead, he merely growled, “So I gathered.”
She tilted her head. “So why have you stopped?”
“Because we can’t go further—not here, not now.”
She looked puzzled. “There are quite a few rooms in this house. I’m sure we could find one suitable for our purpose.”
Lips setting grimly, he shook his head.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
There was an edge to her tone that told him he better have an excellent answer. Luckily, he did. Leaning into her again, letting her feel his weight, he took her lips—gently, oh-so-tantalizingly, the contact not enough to satisfy either of them.
Ending the torture, he opened his eyes, waited for her lids to rise, caught her gaze. “Because I want you naked beneath me, and I want time—in the order of several hours—to savor your conquest.”
Her eyes started to narrow again. Her lips parted—on a protest, he had not a doubt. Swallowing a groan, he covered them, pressed them wide and laid claim to her mouth; he wasn’t up to defending something he knew had to be, not when every muscle in his body was in open revolt against his self-imposed edict.
Madeline boldly met his heat, his fire, with her own; she had no real argument with his vision, only his timing. They could take hours…next time. This time…
She’d come to Caterham House determined to learn all—at least the basics—of what she wanted to know, and she wasn’t about to retreat without in some measure, to some degree, succeeding.