Hot, unbridled pleasure took away her power of thought, of flight, of anything but longing for him to continue. He kissed the back of her neck, increasing the heated tremors running through her body, and she felt him reach down to grasp her hips, bending his knees, and sliding the long, hard length of him between her thighs, settling himself against her most sensitive places.
Antoinette groaned, unable to help herself, reaching back blindly to touch him, to hold him. He wasn’t inside her but he was pressing against her, creating a pressure that was driving her to distraction. She moved, too, trying to catch his rhythm, but she felt awkward. As if she was seeking to sing a song she’d never heard before and hadn’t quite got the tune right.
That aching pressure was building inside her. With his fingers about her jaw, he turned her face, arching her back so that his mouth could cover hers in a slow, passionate mating of tongues and lips.
Another moment and she would be flying. She tensed, ready, as her body gathered itself for the launch…
And then he stepped away.
A moment of confusion, of disbelief, and then she gave a wail of disappointment. Spinning around, she tried to grasp him, pull him back to her, but he avoided her hands. His chest was rising and falling heavily, and his muscles were hard as iron. Such self-control should have won her admiration, but Antoinette wasn’t in the mood to admire him. Instead she wanted to pound him with her fists; at least that would release some of her tension.
“The letter,” he gritted. “Give me the letter and I’ll roger you until you can’t walk.”
The coarseness of his words finally reached her. Antoinette dropped her hands. The ache inside her was still there but it was draining away, being replaced by cold disgust at herself and him, and hatred of Lord Appleby for placing her in this appalling situation in which she could be mistaken for a woman whose sensual greed was more important than her honor.
“Never,” she hissed.
He walked by her and opened the door. The light made her blink. She couldn’t see his face, only the shape of him, as he left her.
“Never is a long time, sparrow,” his voice drifted back.
She stood there in the silence after he’d gone. Anger ravaged her, making her hate herself and him, but gradually her emotions began to cool. Her mind took over.
Why was she allowing him to treat her like this? He was teasing her, manipulating her, using her. It was time she turned the tables on him and began to do the same to him. He’d shown himself to be vulnerable to her charms, hadn’t he? Antoinette might be an innocent but she was no fool. She knew he wanted her. Why not use his desire against him just as he was using hers?
But the question was: How?
Frustrated at her own lack of sexual knowledge, she almost gave up the plan—and then she remembered something. When she was in the library looking for a hiding place for her letter, she’d noticed some books in the corner of a high shelf. They were the sort of books gentlemen collected—her gentle Uncle Jerome had several and called them “art,” but since they had titles like The Journey into Desire and Ladies of the Rod, Antoinette had her doubts on that score. Now such tomes might actually come in useful if they gave her hints on how to play the highwayman at his own game.
In a purely educational manner, of course.
Antoinette smiled to herself as she left the room and sauntered down the hallway. Just wait until next time. She’d show him what it was to suffer the effects of unsated passion!
Gabriel didn’t know how he managed to hold back. He hadn’t planned to, he’d wanted her so much, but at the last moment his pride had stepped in.
Of course now he was in agony. Again! Was it possible to die from unsatisfied lust? And the un-fairest cut of all was that Antoinette had wanted him just as much as he wanted her.
He pushed open the side door and strode out into the cool air, breathing deeply, trying to still the trembling in his limbs and the heavy ache in his groin. There was the letter, he reminded himself. The letter was why he was here, not to slake his lust on Appleby’s mistress.
Jealousy burned inside, and he clenched his fists. He wanted her, he accepted that, but what worried him more was that he didn’t want Appleby to have her. He wanted her all to himself, just him and no one else.
Gabriel knew he was in trouble.
Chapter 12
The books were where she remembered, just out of reach on a higher shelf, but with the titles plainly visible. Antoinette peered upward through her spectacles. Erotic Poses and Positions, she read. Nights in the Sultan’s Harem. She dragged the stepladder into position and climbed up to remove the books and carried them to the table.
They were dusty, and after she mopped at them with her handkerchief, she opened the first one. The illustration that confronted her made her blink. Several times.
A naked young woman with her back to a half-open door, glancing around over her shoulder with a wicked little smile at the man who was standing in the shadows watching her.
Antoinette cleared her throat nervously, and glanced over her own shoulder. She’d locked the library door, but she still felt as if someone would burst in upon her and demand to know what she was doing with obscene material.
“I’m teaching myself the arts of seduction,” she said aloud. Feeling better, she turned over the page and took in the next image.
A woman reclined on a chaise longue, her long, dark hair spread across her breasts, her head arched back, and a look of dreamy pleasure on her face as a man leaned over her, his fingers between her thighs.
“Oh my…” Antoinette closed her eyes and swallowed. She turned over the page. The same woman was seated on the chaise longue while the man stood before her, his manhood jutting toward her open lips. She looked at it as if—Antoinette peered more closely—she was going to suck on it like a giant lollipop. An irresistible giggle broke from her.