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back of her head. The silken strands slipped along the hardened
    lengths of sinew and bone she felt like iron bands against her skull. He wrapped his
    other hand around her throat, tilting up her chin, trapping the negative movement of her
    head.
    The very quality of his deliberation was shattering. The room whirled about her so that
    the only secure point of reference was the rock-like steadiness of his grip. He said with
    stunning gentleness, 'But perhaps you should have.'
    Then his head came down like an avalanche, like a comet. Her heart bucked hard in
    violent response, but his mouth when he made contact with hers was devastatingly light
    and hot, sweetly, inexplicably closed to hers, and it was at once an impassioned, feverish
    caress and a locked door of his own. Dear God, she hadn't a clue whether it was meant
    to teach her or punish her.
    Every one of her senses kicked into hyperdrive. She was vibrantly aware all at once, of
    not only the very care with which he held her and the utter lack of invasion, but of his
    scent, and taste, and feel, and, deepest of all, her own growing sensual hunger and
    disappointment. Not a punishment, but he pushed and pushed her with the long seconds
    trickling by, and the refusal to either deepen the kiss or pull away, until she gritted under
    his mouth, both angered and horribly frustrated. 'You don't frighten me!'
    Even as she said it, and her mouth opened under his, she knew the statement for what it
    really was, an invitation.
    He froze and, most amazingly of all, the featherlight fingers underneath her chin
    trembled. Then with exquisite, torturing control, he drew back and they stared at each
    other, brilliant grey and brilliant green.
    'That's all right, then,' he said, so mildly that she felt the urge to hit him, but the white
    tension had eased from around his mouth. And then, most devastating of all, he released
    her and turned to walk away.
    Kirstie didn't like it.
    Francis was up to something. Every inch of his behaviour shouted it. He was still
    relaxed, even indolent. His eyes laughed more, and when his manner did not tease he
    was extraordinarily polite. Solicitous. Kirstie finished chewing the nail of her left
    forefinger and started on the thumb. Charming as well.
    In fact, he had been that way ever since their nocturnal visitor on Monday night, and this
    was a bright Wednesday morning.
    She still couldn't believe the utter ease with which he had so sensually, so casually
    brought her to a silently shrieking peak of physical awareness and then just walked
    away. She couldn't believe how she had reacted—with fury, with astonishment, with the
    invitation that she had known he was all too aware of— and how he had refused it and
    her.
    She had run through the entire gamut of emotions. He hadn't wanted to kiss her, really
    kiss her, to sink into the warm, open crevices of her waiting mouth and devour what she
    had been prepared to give. That was galling.
    Then, after a time, left on that stunned, unfulfilled plateau he had brought her to, she
    knew differently. She knew, from the unspoken language of his body, with the
    instinctive feminine awareness of masculine interest, from the way his gaze would linger
    from time to time on the mobile action of her lips as she spoke, and the stem, banked-
    down hunger in the depths of those green eyes, that he had wanted to.
    She shook herself and jumped out of bed. Yesterday he had awakened her with a smile
    and breakfast on a tray. He had leaned over the pink bedspread to set the tray across her
    hips and she had slithered back on her pillows at the first whiff of his fresh warm scent,
    gaping at the full display of his delectable pectoral muscles only inches away from her
    mouth.
    In any other male she would have liked what she had seen and basked in the attention,
    but that lazy, patient sexual prowl coming from Francis had her so wound up that if he
    so much as said boo to her she would be hanging from the ceiling like a