Free Always a Temptress by Eileen Dreyer Page B

carriages.
    “So,” he said jovially to his captive, “resorting to children for rescue now, are you, Kate? What’s the matter? No cicisbeos in the neighborhood?”
    He was trying his damndest to ignore the sweet pressure of her derriere against his groin, the feminine swoop and swell of her too-lush form beneath him. She’d almost gotten away, and he blamed himself for not anticipating it.
    “What?” he asked. “No excuse? No plea for clemency or offer to negotiate?”
    That was when he realized that something was wrong. She was too still. He thought she’d shuddered once, but after that she went quiet, emitting no more than a funny, rasping little wheeze he almost couldn’t hear over the shush of the breeze.
    She couldn’t be having trouble breathing. He didn’t have all his weight on her. But by now she should have been bucking and kicking, at least cursing him back to the ninth generation. Instead, she was eerily still, her forehead on the ground, her hands limp.
    He couldn’t have knocked her out, could he? “Kate?”
    Nothing. He lifted back enough to give her a bit of room and flipped her over on her back. Not unconscious. Her eyes were open.
    “You really have to stop this, Kate,” he told her, holding her hands, just in case.
    She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. It was as if she weren’t there at all. She just…lay there, staring sightlessly past him. An odd chill snaked down Harry’s back. Capturing both of her hands in one of his, he tapped at her cheek.
    “Kate.”
    She was beginning to frighten him. Kate was never this quiet. This still. “Kate, answer me or I’ll do something drastic.”
    He knew he wasn’t using all of his faculties. He’d actually been half asleep in the library when the sound of scraping against the outside wall had pulled him awake. He still felt groggy. But that didn’t excuse his next decision, except that he was beginning to feel desperate, and he could think of only one way to guarantee an immediate reaction from her. He kissed her.
    At first, he merely touched her lips, nudging them with his own. Brushing back and forth. She didn’t even resist. She was scaring the hell out of him.
    He pushed farther, deepening the kiss, stroking her throat with his hand. He nibbled at her bottom lip; he ran his tongue across the seam of her lips. He pressed against her closed teeth.
    He wished he could have said he remained unaffected. He wished like hell the taste of Kate didn’t suddenly call up too many memories to contain. Good memories, sweet memories, the kind that a man should store up as ballast against all the evil and violence he would face in the world.
    It had been his last moment of innocence, that summer, when he’d still believed that the world was his for the taking, when he believed Katie loved him. When he still held out the hope that she really would cast her lot with him.
    Too quickly to think, he found himself spinning back there, and it cost him his control. Before he knew it, he was urging her to open for him; he was stroking and soothing and doing his best to incite a firestorm. And she was responding. Her lips began to soften, her body move, tentatively at first, as if she’d forgotten the sensuous duels they had once fought.
    Relief swept through him, gratitude. She was all right. He let go of her hands and cupped her face, his body molding itself against hers. He felt her heart against his, and it was thrumming like a hummingbird’s. He was in danger of being lost, and he knew it.
    And then she bit him.
    He reared back in outrage. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”
    He reached up to touch his lower lip and came away with blood.
    Well, at least he’d accomplished one thing. She was definitely alert. Her eyes were cold as death, the icy green almost vanished around huge pupils. “You have to ask?”
    “You enjoyed it as much as I did! You can’t tell me you didn’t.”
    “I’m not telling you anything except get off me.”
    He