Page 23 of The Devil in Her Bed

He leaned in, the fragrance of clean cedar and a hint of musk eliciting a deep breath. “I’d kill for another,” he said in a dangerous voice.

Would he? Something about him seemed lethal, which bemused her utterly. He was the very picture of an elegant lord. And yet… to imagine him slicing through his enemies wasn’t at all a stretch.

She conjured a compliment. A safe one. “You are… deft on the dance floor.”

His victorious smile caused her stomach to flip. “I’m deft at just about everything.”

“Except modesty,” she said wryly, trying not to be charmed by his confidence.

“Modesty is tripe,” he declared.

“Is that what you really think?”

“Aye, a man is his achievements. So why must he hide them? Why must he pretend they belong to someone else, or that he hasn’t earned his accolades? I find that weak.”

“One must wonder if you hold the same standards for a woman?”

His smile dimmed. “What do ye mean?”

“We are categorically expected to be modest, in every sense of the word. Some of our attributes we are born with, and others we must work very hard to attain. But a woman must reject her compliments. Must act and dress with modesty above all else… or she is ruined.”

“There’s no reason for ye to be modest,” he said earnestly. “Especially not with me.” He twirled her again, angling for a corner of the dance floor. “In fact, I’d be grateful if ye were the opposite of modest, as I’d like to discover every one of yer attributes.”

“I think you are proposing something, my lord Drake,” she said rather breathlessly.

His eyes darkened, deepening as the onyx of his pupils dilated with powerful emotion. “I can offer ye no proposal, but a proposition.”

She let out a noise of surprise. “You are bold.”

“Are ye?”

“Infamously so.”

“Good.”

Francesca found herself swept from the dance floor with a well-timed whirl. She couldn’t say how he threaded them through the throng of people, but suddenly they were bursting forth from French doors onto a garden patio dripping with gardenias, lilacs, and hydrangeas, their sultry nectar perfuming the chilly night air.

Francesca had no time to enjoy the respite of the out of doors before she found herself crowded between a rock and a hard place. The rock being the stone of the manse, and the hard place the entirety of Lord Drake’s body.

She barely had a moment to take a breath before that hard mouth clamped over hers.

Francesca stilled. She’d been kissed before, of course she had. She’d kissed a number of men recently, because the situation called for it. Because she needed what they could give her. Information. Confession. A weapon to use against them in condemnation.

But this was different. Her first kiss, truth be told. The first kiss she’d given to a man for no other reason than she wanted to. And oh, how she wanted to.

Especially now.

His mouth, that hard, stern mouth, was both ardent and coaxing upon hers as he immediately nudged her lips open with passionate impatience.

Once his tongue swept inside, however, a tenderness emerged in his kiss that both thrilled and addled her. He secured her firmly between his body and the wall, though his arm burrowed beneath her, supporting her head and protecting her from the abrasive stone.

What did she do with a gesture like that? She’d always assumed consideration and passion were mutually exclusive. Men tended to shore up that opinion with every interaction.

But this. This was… extraordinary.

His tongue caressed her everywhere in warm sweeps of silken exploration. He kissed as though they’d shared this intimacy before, and an intimacy far beyond this. He kissed like a lover, like a man who’d claimed her already and promised to do it again.

Francesca found she had no idea what to do.Shegenerally controlled a kiss, maneuvering her utmost to keep an unwanted tongue from finding its way down her throat or unwanted hands from her breasts.