Free Twice a Rake by Catherine Gayle

“Might I request the honor of the next dance?”
    A dance?
    He wanted to dance.
    Not string her up by her toes and drag her behind his horse for miles in order to drop her from the side of a cliff. Not send her out to be trampled by a sea of frenzied cattle. Not burn her alive at the stake.
    Thank God.
    She breathed, for the first time in what must have been almost a minute. But then again, he also didn’t want to grab her by the knot in her hair and drag her bodily back to his cave.
    Too bad.
    “Aurora,” Rebecca said firmly at her ear. “This is madness. My lord, this is entirely inappropriate”
    “Yes, I’d love to dance with you.”
    His eyes, which she had yet to look away from, flashed with what could only be described as satisfaction. He took the whole of her hand into his own. The scandalous heat of palm against palm threatened to burn straight through her glove to her very soul. Finally, her feet moved beneath her and she fairly floated alongside him, dislodging her other arm from Rebecca’s grasp.
    “I believe,” he said to her softly, “this dance shall be a waltz.”
    A waltz .
    She was bound to burst into flame if any more of their bodies touched. Even with the small distance between them, his warmth engulfed her. Somehow, her body wanted to be closer, as though it had a mind and wants and needs of its own.
    He turned her to face him and placed her hand against his shoulder, pulling the other more fully into his. And then his free hand was at her waist, drawing her into the inferno of his arms.
    Aurora heard no music. She saw nothing but him, Lord Quinton, staring down at her with an intensity she’d never experienced. He smelled of brandy and heat. She was nearly intoxicated just from his sheer proximity.
    After moments or hours, she would never know, she finally found her tongue. “My lord, how did you know who I am?” What a foolish, silly question. She was a ninny. What did that matter? Not a whit.
    “I would imagine in the same manner you knew who I am.” His eyes bored into her. “You do know, do you not?”
    She would be perfectly content to never take another breath so long as he never stopped looking at her like that. Aurora tingled everywhere he touched her, with the delicious gooseflesh spreading through her limbs, up to her head, and then plummeting all the way down to her toes—which somehow curled beneath her.
    “Yes. You are the mysterious Lord Quinton.” And he would think her an utter dolt if she did not manage to remove the derisible grin from her face. There was also the rather embarrassing problem of a blush spreading over her cheeks and all the way to her bosom. The heat flowed like gauze in the wind. She looked down to see how bad it was, only to realize too late she had drawn his gaze to that very same place.
    “That I am.” He stared at the low bodice of her gown, or rather at the display just above it, for an inordinately long period of time. Finally, his eyes moved slowly up her chest to her neck, to her chin, to her lips—where they paused yet again.
    She felt parched. She needed something— something —something to calm her nerves and to cool her off. Yet all she wanted to do was move closer, still.
    Aurora licked her lips.
    Lord Quinton’s hand at her waist flinched and grew tense, pulling her in as though on command.
    “I am also, Miss Hyatt, not the kind of gentleman a proper young lady should have anything to do with—not if she wishes to keep her reputation intact.”
    “I am aware of that.” Too aware. But that was the last thing she wanted to think of at the moment. She preferred to focus on the day’s growth of stubble lining his jaw and to imagine how it might feel if she drew her hand across it.
    The corners of his lips quirked up in the slightest hint of a rakish grin. It looked lascivious. Fiendish. And entirely too appealing. “Then you must also be aware, Miss Hyatt, that every eye in the room is trained upon the two of us. Including those