Free A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle by Catherine Gayle

tips of her gloved fingers into his hand and
bringing them to his lips for the most chaste of kisses. “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