Even though he knew the danger, when she tipped her face up and her lips found his, he couldn’t resist, couldn’t break away. She seduced him with a gentle touch and a kiss so innocent it reached his shielded heart.

“No,” he breathed, and tried to draw back.

“Yes,” she replied, and said no more. Her lips held his, not with any physical coercion, but with a power he was helpless to deny.

Francesca drank him in, drank in the promise of the hard body lying atop her, of his flagrant response to her. She was more than pleased; she felt like the cat about to lap the cream. He felt hot, hard; the tension in his body screamed of urgency.

His lips broke from hers, trailed her jaw, found her ear, slid lower.

“You like the mare?”

He sounded hoarse.

“She’s beautiful.”

His lips touched her throat and she instinctively arched, and heard his indrawn breath.

“She’s got… excellent bloodlines. Her paces…”

He’d reached her collarbone and seemed to forget what he was saying; Francesca saw no reason to prompt him. She didn’t want to talk, she wanted to explore passion, with him, now. She was about to send her hands wandering down his body, when he murmured, “You can take her with you when you leave.”

Francesca stilled. And forced herself to think. She tried a number of interpretations, but couldn’t find one that fitted. “Leave?” Puzzlement, she found, could overcome passion, at least in this instance. “Why would I leave?”

He sighed, and the warmth that had wrapped about them fled. He lifted his head and looked down at her.

“All the guests will leave shortly after the wedding, most after the wedding breakfast, the rest the next day.” He paused, then continued, steel sliding beneath his tone, “No matter how close to Francesca you are, you’ll leave with Charles and his party.”

Francesca stared up at him-at the face that was just a shadow to her. Her mouth was open, her mind blank. For the space of four heartbeats, she couldn’t say a word. Then her world stopped its crazy gyrations, slowed… She wet her lips. “The lady you’re marrying-”

“I will not discuss her.” The tension that shot through his body was quite different to the heated resilience of passion. It drove passion out, locked her out.

After a moment, she ventured, “I don’t think you understand.” She didn’t, either, but she was starting to suspect…

She felt the sigh he suppressed; his defensive tension eased a fraction. “She might be meek-a perfect cipher-but she’s precisely what I need, what I want, as my wife.”

“You want me.” Francesca shifted beneath him, defying him to deny the obvious.

He sucked in a breath-she felt his glare. “I desire you-I neither want nor need you.”

Her temper erupted. A hot retort burned her tongue, but she got no chance to utter it.

“I know you don’t understand.” The words were tight, harsh. “You’ve never known a man, certainly not one like me. You think you understand me, but you don’t.”

Oh, but she did, she did, and she was understanding more with every second that passed.

“You think because I am as I am, I would want a passionate wife, but the opposite is true. That’s why I chose Francesca Rawlings as my bride. She’ll fill the position of my countess perfectly-”

Francesca let him talk, let his words flow past her while her mind flitted back over the weeks since she’d first run into him in the shrubbery and rescripted every scene.

Gyles suddenly realized he was doing the very thing he’d said he wouldn’t. Why, for God’s sake? He didn’t owe the gypsy any explanation…

Except that he was rejecting her, deliberately turning his back on her and on a passionate liaison none knew better than he would burn brighter than most stars. She’d never offered herself to any other man; she wouldn’t still be virginal, so untried, if she had.

He felt guilty, severely at fault, for turning her down. Ludicrous, but he felt guilty for hurting her even that much, even for her own good. He felt equally guilty that, even now, he was so obsessed with her he couldn’t even form a mental picture of the woman he would marry on the morrow-a woman who was her close friend. There was guilt enough to sink his soul in this tortured situation.

He stopped speaking, then sighed. “At least she won’t have brought those blasted dogs.”

Silence.

She was still looking at him, staring up at him; he felt her breasts swell and ease against his chest.

A sense of unease slid down his spine. “She hasn’t, has she? Brought that pack of lap spaniels?”

The silence stretched, then he felt her gaze refocus. She hadn’t truly been watching him.

“No-your bride did not bring the dogs.”

Every word vibrated with a determination he couldn’t place. He felt her draw breath.

“She did, however, bring me.”

Her hands had been resting against his chest-Francesca pushed them over his shoulders, twined them tight about his neck, yanked him down, and sealed his lips with hers.

Fury ignited her passion, fueled it, merged with it. She deliberately let go. Let the fire inside her rage unfettered. It was the only thing she could think of to hit him with, the only thing to which she knew he was not immune.

She couldn’t begin to enumerate her hurts, her feelings, her rational, logical reactions, but her instinctive response she had no doubt about.

He’d pay-and in the coin that would cost him most dearly.

He went under-she knew it-sensed the moment the tide dragged him down. Sensed the moment when his will was submerged beneath a tide of need too strong to deny.

She fanned the flames, kept them racing. Their mouths were fused, tongues dueling, tangling. She didn’t need to hold him anymore. Sliding her hands free, she went to reach down-his hands closed about her breasts and she arched, and forgot, for the moment, about caressing him, reveling in the sensations as he caressed her.

Between them, they opened her short jacket and blouse. Her chemise he undid with two flicks of his long fingers, then his hand was on her breast and she gasped. His lips returned to hers just in time to catch her cry as his fingers closed about one nipple. As the sharp sensation eased, heat flooded her. She struggled to breathe, struggled to cope, struggled to keep pace with him. She’d never done this before, and he was an expert; she’d seen more than most innocents could even imagine, but she’d never been the woman at the heart of the storm.

And it was a storm-of heat, of sensations too acute to express. She writhed like a wanton beneath him, and knew she was arousing him, driving him on.

So she writhed some more. Everything she could think of to do she did, every action that would further enflame him. She wasn’t of a mind to accept anything less than his complete and abject surrender. To her-to their passion. To all that he’d thought to keep out of his life.

He dragged his lips from hers and ducked his head. Her fingers sank into his hair as his lips found her breast. The scalding touch of his tongue made her shudder, then he suckled, clamping a hand over her lips just in time to mute her scream.

She was panting, heated, flushed beyond belief when he finally lifted his head, shifted back, and rucked up her skirts. Hard fingers found her knee, then trailed higher, over the flickering skin along her inner thigh. He touched the soft curls at the apex of her thighs, then his fingers trailed down again.

They returned, to stroke, tease, then tangle in her curls, then one long finger slid between her thighs. She sucked in a breath. Her body tightened as he stroked, then gently probed, then his knee nudged hers, opening her farther. Warm darkness held them; her senses reached no further than him-the world beyond their cocoon of straw had vanished, fallen away. His touch was deliberate, knowing. Dragging in another breath, Francesca parted her thighs.

He cupped her, and her nerves shook. Then his hand shifted; one long finger pressed in, a little way at first, then deeper, deeper, penetrating her softness, opening her body.

Francesca arched, but he held her down, his other hand splayed across her stomach.

Gyles shuddered and closed his eyes. His fingers touched, traced, explored, his imagination supplying what he couldn’t see. He was one step away from madness. He had no idea how he had got to this point, but there was only one way forward, one path to sanity.

Ruthlessly, he drove her on. Her body was fluid, liquid heat under his hands. She was passionate woman incarnate, wild and uninhibited; he had to kiss her again, had to stop her cries, had to stop the whimpers of pleasure that tore at his resolve. He could have pushed her to climax swiftly, brutally; some gentleness buried deep made him linger, made him show her the ways, made him steep her in pleasure, until, at the very last, she fractured in glory.

Her body eased beneath him; he felt the last tremors of completion fade and die. He eased his fingers from her, shutting his senses to the musky sweetness that called so elementally to his instincts. He started to ease back, was about to lift away when she turned, found his face with her hand, cradled his jaw, and kissed him.

Held him, trapped him in a web of raw need.

For him, she was the ultimate siren-her kisses lured him to destruction. He only just managed to cling-not to control, but to sufficient lucidity to know what he was doing, and what he must not do. She was still aroused, still aware, still playing havoc with his senses. He’d assumed, after her first climax, an extended one at that, she’d be limp and exhausted, unable further to oppose his plans.