The Lady Chosen

His lips curved in a wholly male grin; opening the door, he handed her through. “Far be it from me to disappoint you.”

He didn’t; the room he led her to was small, furnished as a sitting room in which a lady of the house could sit in comfortable privacy and look out over the manicured gardens. Reached through a maze of intersecting corridors, it was some distance from the reception rooms, a perfect venue for private conversation, verbal or otherwise.

Inwardly shaking her head—how did he do it?—she went straight to the windows, to stand and look out on the fog-shrouded garden. There was no moon, no distraction outside. She heard the door click shut, then felt Tristan approaching. Dragging in a breath, she swung to face him, put a palm to his chest to hold him back. “I want to discuss how you see me.”

He didn’t outwardly blink, but she’d obviously taken a tack he hadn’t expected. “What—”

She stopped him with an upraised hand. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that you view me as some sort of challenge. And men like you are constitutionally incapable of letting a challenge lie.” She eyed him severely. “Am I right in thinking you view getting my agreement to marry you in such a light?”

Tristan returned her regard. Increasingly wary. It was difficult to think how else he would view it. “Yes.”

“Ah-ha! That, you see, is our problem.”

“Which problem is that?”

“The problem of you not being able to take my ‘no’ for an answer.”

Propping his shoulder against the window frame, he looked down at her face, at her eyes glowing with zeal at her supposed discovery. “I don’t follow.”

She made a dismissive sound. “Of course you do, you just don’t want to think about it because it doesn’t fit your stated intentions.”

“Bear with my muddled male mind and explain.”

She threw him a long-suffering look. “You can hardly deny that any number of ladies have been—and more will be once the Season proper starts—throwing themselves at your head.”

“No.” It was one of the reasons he clung to her side, one of the reasons he wanted to gain her agreement to their wedding as soon as possible. “What have they to do with us?”

“Not us so much as you. You, like most men, have little appreciation for what you can have without a fight. You equate fighting for something with its value—the harder and more difficult the struggle, the more valuable the object attained. As with wars, so with women. The more a lady resists, the more desirable she becomes.”

She fixed him with her clear, periwinkle blue gaze. “Am I right?”

He thought before nodding. “It’s a reasonable hypothesis.”

“Indeed, but you see where that leaves us?”

“No.”

She gave an exasperated hiss. “You want to marry me because I won’t marry you—not for any other reason. That”—she waved both hands—“primitive instinct of yours is what’s driving you—and it’s getting in the way of our attraction fading. It would be fading but—”

He reached out, caught one of her waving hands, and yanked her to him. She landed against his chest, gasped as his arms closed around her. He felt her body react as it always had, always did, to his. “Our mutual attraction hasn’t faded.”

She hauled in a tight breath. “That’s because you’re confusing it….” Her words faded as he lowered his head. “I said we’d only talk!”

“That’s illogical.” He brushed her lips with his, pleased when hers clung. He shifted, settling her more comfortably in his arms. Setting her hips to his, the soft curve of her stomach cradling his erection. He looked down into her eyes, wide, darkening. His lips curved, but not in a smile. “You’re right—it is a primitive instinct that’s driving me. But you picked the wrong one.”

“What—”

Her mouth was open—he filled it. Took possession in a long, slow, thorough kiss. She tried to resist, hold back, but then surrendered.

When, eventually, he lifted his head, she sighed, murmured, “What’s illogical about talking?”

“It’s not consistent with your conclusion.”

“My conclusion?” She blinked at him. “I hadn’t even got to my conclusion.”

He brushed her lips again so she wouldn’t see his wolfish grin. “Let me state it for you. If, as you hypothesize, the only reason I want to marry you—the only true reason driving our mutual attraction—is because you’re resisting, why not try not resisting and see what happens?”

She stared dazedly up at him. “Not resisting?”

He shrugged lightly, his gaze falling to her lips. “If you’re right, you’ll prove your point.” He took her lips, her mouth again, before she could consider what would happen if she was wrong.

His tongue stroked hers; she shivered delicately, then kissed him back. Stopped resisting, as she generally did when they’d reached this point; he wasn’t fool enough to believe that meant anything more than that she’d inwardly shrugged and decided to take what she might, still firmly convinced the desire between them would wane.

He knew it wouldn’t, at least on his part. What he felt for her was quite different from anything he’d felt before—not for any other woman, not for anyone at all. Protective, deeply to-his-bones possessive, and unquestionably right. It was that conviction of rightness that drove him to have her again and again, even in the teeth of her determined denials, to demonstrate the breadth and depth, the increasing power of all that was growing between them.

A stunning revelation in any circumstances, but he set himself to paint the sensual reality between them in bold and striking colors the better to impress her with its power, its potency, its undisguised truth.

She felt it, broke from the kiss, from beneath heavy lids met his eyes. Sighed. “I really did intend that tonight we would only dance.”

There was no resistance, no reluctance, only acceptance.

He closed his hands about her bottom and shifted suggestively against her. Bent his head to brush her lips. “We are going to dance—it just won’t be to a waltz.”

Her lips curved. Her hand tightened on his nape and she drew him to her. “To our own music, then.”

He took her mouth, caught their reins, and deliberately set them aside.

The daybed angled to the windows was the obvious place to lay her, to lie alongside her and feast on her breasts. Until her soft gasps were urgent and needy, until she arched and her fingers clung to his skull.

Suppressing a triumphant smile, he slid farther down the daybed, raising her skirts, pressing them high about her waist to expose her hips, and her long slender legs. Tracing her curves, fingers first trailing, then gripping to part her thighs, opening her to him.

Then he bent his head and set his lips to her softness.

She cried out, tried to catch his shoulders, but they were beyond her reach. Her fingers tangled in his hair, clenched as he laved, licked, then lightly suckled.

“Tristan! No…”

“Yes.” He held her down and pressed deeper, savoring the tart taste of her, step by step knowingly winding her tight…

She was quivering on the crest of climax when he shifted, freed his erection from the confines of his trousers, and rose over her. She gripped his forearms, nails sinking deep, her knees rising to grip his flanks. Sensual entreaty etched every line of her face; urgency drove her restless body, shifting wantonly, beckoning beneath his.

Her spine bowed as he entered her; he drove home and she climaxed, a glorious rippling release. He caught her up, drove her on. She clung, sobbed, and matched him, as committed as he as they swept up the mountain, with each forceful thrust climbed the jagged peaks, then tension splintered, fractured, fell away, and they soared into the void, into the sublime heat of their sharing.

Into that moment when all barriers fell away, and there was just him and her, joined in naked honesty, wrapped in that powerful reality.

Chests heaving, hearts thundering, heat coursing beneath their skins, they stilled, waited, locked intimately together, for the glory to wane. Their gazes touched, held—neither made any move to shift, to part.

She raised a hand, traced his cheek. Her eyes searched his, wondering…