Page 46 of Enticing the Devil

Without glancing his way, she pushed off from the wall and continued walking. She had no idea where the hallway led and didn’t care as long as it took her away from him. Away from the humiliation and pain his words had caused. Words that really shouldn’t have surprised her, though they did. He’d never suggested he had any tender thoughts toward her.

“Lady Anne,” he called after her, his voice gruff.

She ignored him and quickened her pace. When he responded with a low growl, a raw shiver of fearful exhilaration ran through her but she didn’t slow or turn around. Whatever it was that made her feel the way she did in reaction to the man was futile and foolish. She might have given in to the rush of feelings once, but she wouldn’t make that mistake again.

But it seemed Mr. Thomas had no intention of letting her escape him. And as she felt his large hand encircle her wrist, stopping any further escape, a strange wildness rose up inside her. It was fierce and reckless and perhaps just a bit terrifying.

Rather than resist his far superior strength, she spun to face him without any forethought or particular intention. But as soon as she looked up into his dark features, made even darker by the deep shadows of the unused hallway, she lost a large portion of the fight inside her. All of a sudden, she just felt small and sad and tired.

She gave a testing tug of her wrist still caught in his grip but he didn’t loosen his hold. If anything, his fingers tightened as he took a deliberate step closer. His body was so large it took up the full width of the narrow passage and his voice, though nothing more than a low murmur, seemed to fill all available space between them.

“Go on,” he urged thickly. “I know you’ve a sharp tongue when you choose to wield it. Cut me down for my cruelty.”

Anne took a deep breath. She wanted to. She really did. But no words came. She wished he’d just stayed in the drawing room. She didn’t want him to see how deeply his words had wounded. She didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing he had the power to hurt her at all.

“I’ve nothing to say to you,” she replied.

“Yes, you do,” he growled as he stepped into her, turning her until her back came up against the wall once again. Only this time, he held her there by the sheer force of his proximity. “Call me a fucking bastard if you must. A savage brute. The Welsh Devil. I don’t care.”

With each word that fell roughly from his lips, he slowly closed the distance between them until he was pressed against her from knee to chest. His head was lowered toward hers—close enough for a wavy lock of his hair to brush her temple.

“We both know I deserve it,” he muttered. The harsh, unforgiving lines of his firm lips hovered just above hers. His eyes sparked black fire in the darkness.

Overcome by sensations too wild and hot to manage and emotions that stabbed too deep, Anne closed her eyes, forcing an inconsequential barrier between them when all she wanted was to sink into him. Sink into the hard heat of him, the potent savagery of his anger, the raw sensuality.

But she knew now she couldn’t trust him. Not with the tenderness growing inside her or the confusion and the longing that had become ever present in the most private corner of her soul.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked on a breathless whisper.

With her eyes still tightly closed, she was able to feel his response. The tightening of his fingers around her wrist pinned to the wall behind her. The swift intake of breath that expanded his chest and flattened her breasts. And then the ragged exhale that bathed the side of her throat.

“I don’t know,” he confessed and the tortured defeat in his voice lashed at her pride.

She opened her eyes as the muscles bracketing her spine tensed to steel. Lifting her free hand, she pushed against his shoulder, having every intention of stepping away. But with her wrist still firmly in his hand, when she shifted her weight away from the wall, it only brought her body more fully in contact with his. And when he set his large hand to the inner curve of her waist, the warmth and weight of his hold on her there felt like an act of possession, a claiming.

A sound of gentle frustration and willful surrender escaped from her lips.

She didn’t want to walk away. She wanted to be here with him. In the darkness and the quiet. But not in anger or guilt or injured pride.

She wanted to feel cared for—like she mattered—as she had when he’d tended to her in the maze. She wanted to feel what she’d felt when he’d kissed her in the garden—the wildness and the hunger. She didn’t want to feel despair as they stood so close. She wanted desire.

Without pausing to consider the decision, she lifted her hand to the hard curve of his shoulder and rose to her toes as she tipped her head back.

The pressure and warmth of his mouth immediately covered hers, as if he’d been waiting for exactly this. She whimpered softly and parted her lips to flick her tongue against the edge of his teeth. Desperately seeking the taste of him.

His groan was heavy and raw. He answered her demand with a velvety glide of his tongue and the harsh bite of his teeth on her lower lip.

He might not like her, but in this...she suspected he needed her as badly as she needed him.

She arched against him and grasped his coat in a tight fist as she tried to fit herself more completely to his powerful form. Desperation pressed outward from every corner of her being. Making her strain in his hold and gasp into his mouth.

After only a moment, he growled and wrapped one arm tight around her waist, lifting her from her feet. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and she whimpered again at the lush invasion.

In the back of her mind, she acknowledged the sound of a door opening. He executed a quick turn and she caught just the bare impression of some sort of storage closet before the door closed again, leaving them in pitch-blackness. With his arm still locked around her waist and his mouth ravishing hers, he pressed her back against the closed door.

They were alone. Shut off from the rest of the party—the rest of the world—in a private darkness all their own.

A thrill unlike anything she’d ever felt before rushed through her body, making her fingers and toes tingle and her blood pulse wildly through her veins. Desperation spread like an inferno, as though suddenly freed from some invisible confinement.