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“I hope you are not thinking of kissing me,” she whispered, her throat almost too constricted to squeeze out the words .

He grinned and studied her through narrowed eyes. “I think it only a fair exchange for watching me strip naked.”

“You’re … not naked,” she pointed out.

“Let us not split hairs, ma petite. You have already seen all there is of me to see, whereas I … I remain somewhat in ignorance, relying only on my imagination. Granted, I have a good one, but I confess I am intrigued to know what you keep so carefully guarded behind your belts and buckles. Here, for instance—” His fingers nudged aside the collar of her shirt and touched on the smooth white slope of her shoulder.

“And here,” he murmured, sending that same impudent finger over the folds of her shirt, tracing the swell of her breast.

Beau blushed to the point of numbness. The heat that had all but paralyzed her earlier was spreading downward, fanning through her body with unsettling precision, as if he knew just what to touch and how to touch it to render her immobile.

She was also aware of the negligent power in those hands—hands that could easily take what they wanted without her cooperation or assent.

At the moment they were taking the knife out of her belt, another out of the concealed sheath she wore on her hip; they were traveling lower and skimming down her leg to the cuff of her boot.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“Following your father’s advice.”

Startled, she looked up into his face.

“He warned me to search you ten ways to Sunday, and even then, not to turn my back on you.”

Beau opened her mouth to protest, but his lips were on her temple, on her cheek, they were seeking out the soft pink shell of her ear.

His hands had not stopped moving, stroking and smoothing over her arms, her waist, her hips.

Her heart was pounding, she was certain he could hear it.

Surely he could feel it, for his body was crowded warmly against her, pressing her back against the gallery ledge.

And his mouth—God save her, his mouth was exploring the crook of her neck, roving at leisure, his tongue swirling hot, moist patterns on her skin.

“Christ Jesus,” she gasped, “if you’re going to kiss me, can you not just do it and be done?”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth when his lips covered hers, claiming them with a rough imperiousness that chastised her for her impatience.

Yet his own was no less compelling and he chased her gasp inside her mouth, filling it with his tongue, shocking her with an intrusion that reverberated to the soles of her feet.

His hands raked into her hair and would not let her move or twist away to avoid the plundering boldness.

His lips were hungry and demanding, moving hot and sure over hers, ravaging them with a fierce insistence that left her weak and reeling with confusion.

She wasn’t enjoying it. She wasn’t! Yet she was trembling, quaking everywhere.

Her hands, pinned against his chest, began to feel more restrained than trapped and longed to be set free to roam the wide expanse of swarthy muscle.

Dante lowered a hand to the small of her back and urged her forward against the growing hardness of his body, introducing her to yet another shattering sensation.

When she offered no objection, when she met this new boldness with a soft, ragged moan, he angled her head back and sent his mouth down to plunder the curve of her throat again, finding and laying siege to the tenderest of nerve endings.

“Isabeau, Isabeau,” he murmured, shifting his hands, his body, his intentions. “I knew there must be a softer side to you. Softer. Sweeter. Tantalizing.”

Beau’s eyes shivered open. His hands were creeping up beneath her shirt and the impossibly long, solid shaft of his phallus was pressing into her thighs, into flesh that was suddenly alive with raw, liquefying sensations.

“Stop,” she gasped weakly. “Please …”

“Why?” His voice was thick and husky, muffled against her throat. “Why are you so afraid of admitting you are a woman with a woman’s desires, a woman’s needs?”

“A woman’s needs,” she cried, shuddering as his thumbs caressed the round underside of her breasts. “You mean your needs, don’t you?”

“I was hoping, for tonight anyway, they might be one and the same thing.”

“I don’t need you,” she insisted on a broken whisper.

His hands descended. They shaped themselves to her buttocks and drew her against him, savagely enough that they both gave a little groan. “But you want me. Almost … and God damn my soul for admitting it… almost as much as I want you.”

"No,” she gasped. “No.”

Resisting the urge to call her a liar, he slanted his mouth more forcefully over hers.

He ran his tongue across the velvety smoothness until a soft cry parted her lips again and he thrust deeply, possessively, inside.

The tension snapped back into her neck but he was ready for it.

He held her firmly, closely, snugly, against his body, letting her know the games were over, letting her know exactly what effect the rumbullion, the moonlight, the scent of her skin, was having on him.

Yet none of those things was as potentially devastating as the silky warmth of her mouth.

He had not expected anything half as arousing nor a fraction so seductive as the sound of the tiny, stifled moans that came on each swirling incursion of his tongue.

He had not expected himself to come half out of his skin, imagining other areas of her body that would be as smooth and silky, as hot and wet, as lush and sensitive to his every move.

Raw, sexual heat flamed his senses and made him probe even deeper, made him turn his mouth this way and that so there was no part of her left unexplored, untouched.

“Please,” she gasped. “Wait! Stop….”

He surely hadn’t expected to feel himself respond to her half-whispered pleas, or to stand away, or to put an arm’s length of distance between them.

What he saw caused his jaw to clamp and his body to ache with unbelievable pressure.

Her hair was a tumble of luminous waves trapping the moonlight—softer, fuller, more luxuriant than his silk-starved hands could expect to resist. Her shirt was pulled taut over her breasts, emphasising their proud, upthrust shape and the small, rounded beads of her arousal.

The thought of stripping away that shirt, of taking those small, firm beads into his mouth and suckling them until she groaned from the pleasure nearly brought a flush of sweat across his brow.

And her eyes, damn them. Her eyes. There was a wildness in them that defied him to try his hand at taming her, yet there was also a soft shimmer of uncertainty, a vulnerability that almost caused the last of his senses to desert him.

She was shaking. But so was he.

“If this isn’t what you want,” he said hoarsely, “you’d best get the hell out of here … and you don’t have much time to do so.”

Beau’s lashes were almost too heavy to lift, but lift them she did, and was not surprised to find the smoldering argentine eyes waiting for her.

Waiting to tell her how foolish she would be to underestimate his dark desires.

There were no promises there, no hint even of an obligation that would go beyond the next clear thought.

There was only the moment they were in right now, only an offer of heat and sin and pleasure beyond her wildest dreams .

She reached out her hand—it was more of an instinctive gesture than anything else, intending to do … what? Apologize? Attempt to explain again an error foolishly made?

Instead, it turned into a kind of wondrous journey, a shy exploration of forbidden territory, as her fingertips encountered the oil-slicked surface of his forearm.

When her hand did not instantly erupt in flame and cinder, it was with some fascination she laid it flat and skimmed it over the silky furring of dark hairs, sliding upward to the crease of his elbow, then higher onto the solid bulge of hard muscle.

The residue of oil had left his skin as smooth as satin and her hand seemed to glide of its own accord to his shoulder and across the sculpted plateau of his upper chest.

A small frown bade her explore further, and she combed her fingers lightly through the wealth of sworling hairs, spreading them wide and laying them flat again to feel all of him, all the splendor of the hard-surfaced flesh that had been tormenting her thoughts since she had first seen him on the deck of the Virago.

A second, tentative hand joined the first and she found the dark discs of his nipples, surprised to feel them roused and pebbled hard on their surrounding island of soft velvet.

She had wanted to touch all this male heat earlier, to run her fingers through the dark fur, to explore the vast, uncharted planes of her imagination, but she had thought it all out of her reach.

It was not out of reach now, and with an exquisitely shivered breath she lifted her eyes to his and wondered what other transgressions might be permitted.

“Whatever you decide,” he warned her softly, “know that I will not be able to stop again.”

Fine wisps of her hair, ruffled by a passing breeze, floated across her cheek and throat, brushing over her lips, clinging to the faint moisture left by her breath.

“I will … likely … not want you to,” she whispered.