Free The Chevalier by Jacqueline Seewald

me when it is you, sir, who cavort about with a married woman.”
    It was simply more than he could endure! Who was she to pass judgment on him? What did she know of life? She was the typical well-born young lady of genteel, aristocratic birth who wished to tease and flirt with a man like himself. He was so incensed at the little coquette that he seized her bodily. Emily was quite right about the girl, the spoilt creature needed to be taught a lesson. With a quick, fluid motion, he had her over his knees. Ignoring her alarmed cries, he was about to bring down his hand to administer a sound blow to her derriere, when the feel of her lower body against his loins sent a surge of pure lust shooting through him that he felt down to his very toes. The sensation disturbed him excessively; it came unwanted and unbidden. Indeed, that part of his anatomy was so affected that a more sophisticated female would have surely thrown him a knowing look. He lifted her from his lap with shaking hands. How could she have such a potent effect on him?
    Madeline looked at him wild-eyed, her chest heaving in spasms. “You were going to hit me,” she cried out. “How dare you!”
    “I apologize. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never struck a female, not even my sister when she misbehaved. Usually, I manage to maintain a certain detachment, but I seem to lose both my temper and my sense of propriety when I am around you, Mademoiselle. Forgive me.”
    She was still trembling as she shrunk back from him, sinking down into a shadowy corner of the coach. He was such a strange man; she hardly knew what to make of him. But the effect he had upon her was most disturbing. Angry as she was with him, the attraction she felt for him had not diminished in the slightest. In fact, she had to admit that she was beginning to understand jealousy quite well herself. Watching Lady Emily’s possessive manner with him had driven her almost mad with the unwelcome emotion.
    Neither of them spoke to the other until the coach drew up in front of her residence. A tense, charged silence developed between them. When he moved to help her from the coach, she inadvertently brushed against him. Just his touch made her shiver. When his hand tightened on hers to help her down, she felt a quiver from head to foot, as if her body were suspended over a blazing fire. She had been frightened of him for a moment, but no longer.
    “I should apologize as well,” she said. “I realize you were only trying to be solicitous of my wellbeing. Please forgive my rude, thoughtless tongue.”
    “There is nothing to forgive,” he said in a quiet but compelling voice.
    The moonlight touched his golden hair and made it glow silver in the hushed night. Was there ever a more magnificent man? She could only doubt it.
    His smoldering gaze dropped to her lips and she felt her heart leap and the blood in her veins begin to heat. She must escape him before he kissed her again, for if he did, she hated to think how she would react. Suddenly, his head lowered and he took her lips, swooping down on them like a hawk takes its prey. Her trembling hands reached up to his neck as she stood on tiptoes. He held her body to his; hands moving restlessly down her shoulders, igniting a burning desire within her. She was utterly lost as his tongue touched and then stroked her own. He kissed her until she was moaning with passion, writhing in his arms. His kisses drugged her mind and she felt herself whirling in a dizzying vortex of sensations. As his hand caressed her breast, she clung to him, feeling the powerful sinewy arms and shoulders, wild pleasure pulsating through her being. His body pressed hard against the swelling softness at her apex.
    How she ached to remain in his arms forever! But she willed herself to break free of him so that he would not think her totally wanton. Still, it was the most difficult thing she had ever done, since her will did not seem to be her own.
    “I must go in now,”