Free Dance of Seduction by Sabrina Jeffries

run one finger down her cheek, sending a sensual shiver along her skin. “You’d like to experience something more…exciting.” He bent close to whisper, “With me.”
    She jerked back. “Don’t be absurd.”
    He dropped his hand and gestured to the doorway into the front room. “Fine. You know the way out. Good day, Lady Clara.”
    She stared at his self-assured expression. Clearly he expected her to abandon her quest for the watch and run screaming from his shop, clutching her virtue to her chest and vowing never to come back.
    It was almost certainly a bluff, just the sort of tactic her roguish uncles would have tried on any hapless female who’d given them trouble. But did she dare to call him on it?
    Why not? If he tried anything, all she had to do was scream and Samuel would be in here in seconds. But she’d wager good coin that he wouldn’t try anything anyway.
    She tilted her chin up. “I told you—I’m not leaving without the watch.”
    Disbelief, then anger, flashed over his face, and before she could even react, he advanced forward, forcing her to back up or be run down. She came up short against the wall, wherehe trapped her by planting his hands on either side of her shoulders.
    She stared up into his determined expression and felt a moment’s panic. “What in the dickens do you think you’re doing?”
    “Rousing your sense of self-preservation.”
    “I’m not afraid of you, you know,” she said stoutly.
    He flashed her a smile of pure wickedness. “You should be.”
    Then he kissed her. Hard. Thoroughly. As she’d never been kissed before.
    His audacity so stunned her that she didn’t react at first. Then she tried pushing him away, but it was like shoving a boulder. Nothing gave, nothing moved.
    Nothing but his mouth…which explored every inch of her lips with merciless thoroughness. She smelled apples on his breath, mingling with the spicy aroma of bay rum that clung to his roughly shaven jaw.
    A wanton heat flashed through her, mortifying her to her toes. Surely she wasn’t actually responding to this….
    This incredible, alarming kiss that went on and on until she grew dizzy.
    When he tore his lips free, she was so rattled that all she could do was stare at him. Her heart thundered in her ears as she fought frantically to rein in her wildly careening senses.
    At least he looked nearly as rattled as she. His breath came in ragged, urgent gasps, and his face mirrored her own surprise.
    Until he wiped it clean of all expression. “Now,” he whispered, “I hope I’ve made it thoroughly clear why you’d best not come around here anymore.”
    She understood his words for the threat he meant them to be. “You mean, because you might kiss me senseless?” How dare he assume he could run her off so easily?

    “Or worse.” His eyes glittered wolflike in the dim light. “I might ravish you.”
    “R-Ravish me?” A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat before she could prevent it. “Good Lord, that sounds like something out of a Gothic novel! Ravish me, indeed. Don’t be ridiculous.”
    Judging from the flare of frustration in his face, her response wasn’t what he’d hoped for. His mouth tightened into a grim line as he leaned into her, reminding her only too well that he had her trapped. “You think I wouldn’t?”
    “I think you’re not that stupid.”
    That seemed to give him pause. “What do you mean?”
    “You were right when you said going to the police to complain about your business affairs might gain me nothing. But if I complain about your attacking me…well, that’s another matter entirely, isn’t it? Englishmen are odd that way. They don’t take a lady of rank seriously until she cries that she’s been ‘ravished,’ as you so colorfully put it. Then I need only point the finger, and they’ll hound you to the gallows.”
    Not that she for one moment believed he actually would “ravish” her. If he’d intended that, he wouldn’t have stopped