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“You should be.” Their breath mingled as he spoke. The faintest hint of brandy wafted over her senses, more dangerously intoxicating than the actual spirits themselves.

“I—I should be what?” she managed, her voice thick even to her own ears. What had he been saying? What had they been talking about?

A slow, faintly mocking grin curled his hard lips up in that all-too-pleased, feral masculine grin. He was a man who knew the effect he was having on her. “Afraid.”

With that, his mouth covered hers.

And she was very much her mother’s daughter, for as he devoured her with his kiss, it was not fear or indignant outrage at this stranger who dared to embrace her that she felt, but a searing, gripping need.

There was an almost violence to the bold slash of his lips. He slanted his mouth over hers. Again and again. It was her first kiss. And as heat sang through her veins, she at last had an answer to why women threw away reputations and honor for fleeting moments of passion.

Verity gripped his shirtfront and drew herself closer. Heat poured from him, and she moaned against his mouth like the wanton she’d become. Or mayhap had always been.

He slipped his tongue past her parted lips, and Verity met each bold lash. He mated his mouth to hers, this man a stranger. This embrace forbidden. And mayhap it was the thrill of that wickedness. Or mayhap it was the fact that she was thirty and had never experienced, nor understood, the temptation of carnality. But she wanted this moment to stretch on. She wanted the desire battering at her senses to continue to drag her under.

He cupped her buttocks in his impossibly large hands, and drew her close. The feel of him—steel and heat burnt through her skirts, and moisture pooled between her legs, the desire to be closer still. Of their own volition, her hips rolled against him.

With a primitive growl, he plunged his tongue more violently, and she whimpered; her body bowed to that melding of fear and desire his embrace stoked.

And then he released her.

Her body sagged, even as she silently cried out at the sudden loss. Verity forced her eyes open, and struggled to push back the desire blanketing her senses. And ignore the agonizing ache at her center.

Oh, God.

What had he done? What hadshedone?

Verity took a lurching step forward, making a beeline for the door, but he caught her in a lazy grip. Looping an arm around her middle and anchoring her to him.

“Found your fear at last,” he breathed against her ear.

Little shivers raced along the small shell, trickling down the sensitive skin of her neck, and she resisted the reflexive breathless giggle. “You’ve prevented me from leaving and continue to do so.” Except he didn’t truly hold her captive with anything more than the loosest of holds.

“Is that what I did before, love? And here my chest bears the marks of your nails from where you gripped me.”

She gasped. Mortification chased away whatever maddening spell he’d woven. Verity spun out of his arms. “You are no gentleman, my lord.”

He smiled again. “Ah, given our recent familiarity, Malcom should suffice.”

Recent familiarity, indeed.

“You’d run off without gathering the information you sought about me ... unless”—he gave her a suggestive look—“thiswas the information you—”

Her outraged gasp drowned out the rest of that shameful charge. “You’re incorrigible.” Her weak insult merely earned another of those mocking smiles. “And here all I sought was information about you, my lord.”

“Malcom,” he dared.

“Malcom,” she ground out between clenched teeth.

His gaze worked over her. “All you sought was information?” he asked quietly.

The absolute lack of mockery and ice in those golden eyes gave her pause. Mayhap she’d reached him. She nodded slowly. “That is all.” For her. For her sister. For Bertha. For her employment atThe Londoner.

“You’ve your pencil ready?”

A pencil?It took a moment for that question to register, and when it did, along with what he offered, Verity sprang into action. He’d help her. She scrambled to retrieve a remnant of pencil she could still write with. “I do,” she said quickly, cursing the fact that she was without her journal. Glancing hurriedly about, she slid into a seat at his desk, and stared expectantly at Malcom North, the Earl of Maxwell.

“Society, Polite and otherwise, with their interest in me and my life, can go hang, Miss Lovelace.” He dropped his hands on his desk and leaned across the stretch of surface. His lip peeled back in a black snarl. “Write that on your paper. Now, lest you wish to see what I’m truly capable of, I suggest you leave,” he whispered. There was a beat of silence while she sat there, frozen, numbed by all the original terror she’d faced in this man’s presence. “Now,” he thundered.