“And you could not wait until breakfast to do so, I gather?” No warmth either—the warmth that was always there beneath the teasing.

“Mrs. Polley will be with us at breakfast. I understood that you wished her to remain ignorant of our encounter with Mr. Eads today. Did I understand you incorrectly?”

He moved toward her, his steps very deliberate. A shiver of fear passed up her spine. Why she should fear him, she hadn’t any idea, unless it was the lusterless steel of his eyes in the dark corridor or the scent of cigar smoke and whiskey that accompanied him. But she was accustomed enough to the latter from parties during her visits to Savege Park. Her fear must come from the incident with the pistols earlier that day.

No. It was not the pistols. It was his eyes, the absence of any light in them. It made her at once cold and unnervingly hot—cold with that unexpected fear, and hot with . . . she knew not what.

“You understood me well enough. In that matter.” He halted close. Unbidden, her foot inched back, her heel tapping the door panel, and he watched her. “But it seems, Miss Lucas, that you understand me very poorly in another.” His gaze flickered down her face to her mouth, black lashes obscuring the gray of his darkened eyes. For a moment he seemed to study her lips. Then it dipped to her breasts. “Very poorly indeed.” He reached forward and placed a palm against the wall beside her head.

“I—” She pulled in a tight breath, but it made her breasts jerk upward. He was still looking at them. Him. Mr. Yale. Her gentlemanlike hero. Her hero who’d had his tongue in her mouth that morning. “I . . .” Her own tongue seemed to forget its purpose, lost in the memory of his caressing it.

He leaned toward her, bending his head, and the scents of strong liquor and tall, very dark man tumbled over her.

“You should go to your bedchamber now.” His voice was husky.

“I want you to kiss me again.” She nearly choked on the words as they tumbled out. “Or rather more, actually.” She had not meant to say this. She had not planned it. But she did want it. She’d wanted it since he walked out of the Bates’s stable that morning, yet he had told her she mustn’t ask again. But now she might take advantage of the fact that he had been drinking spirits. A great quantity of spirits, it seemed. His gaze returned to hers, but it did not really look at her, rather, it focused elsewhere even as he stared directly at her from only inches away.

His fingers clamped about her wrist before she even saw him move. She gasped. His grip dug into her flesh.

“Do you? Now why doesn’t that come as a surprise to me, I wonder?”

“Mr. Yale,” she managed in a whisper, her breaths fast in the close space between them. “You are hurting me.”

“With every pleasure there is also pain, Miss Lucas.” His eyes were dull and distant. “Has no one ever told you that?” He tilted his head down. Half of her wished to flee, the other half to rise onto her toes and press her lips to his hovering so close.

“Just how intoxicated are you?”

His gaze traveled over her face, and for an instant she saw a spark of light. “Entirely.”

His mouth covered hers.

It was not like the kisses he had given her that morning in the stable. It did not begin gently or slowly. It was complete, his mouth seizing hers thoroughly and demanding of hers reciprocal treatment. And she could not deny that she wanted him to kiss her like this. Her lips would not deny it. They sought his as eagerly as his sought hers. Feeling him made her more eager yet, and hungry for even more with each meeting. His flavor, whiskey and tobacco, was another world, a world of men and pistols and honor and danger, and she was weak with her entrance into that world. His world. He was kissing her and she knew he did not wish to but he was doing so anyway. Because he was foxed?

She didn’t care. She didn’t care that she was standing by a man’s bedchamber door in the corridor of an inn, letting herself be kissed like no lady should. She wanted this.

His hand came around her face, scraping through the hair at her temple and holding her tight, then his other as well. He drew her to him, capturing her mouth again and again in a succession of kisses that grew more intense. The tip of his tongue strafed her lips, slipping along the edges, stalling her breaths in her throat. Then he dipped inside her and she melted.

It was like dying and coming alive at once, so perfect, sublime, and she felt it everywhere—in her mouth, in her breasts and belly and in the deliciously hot place between her legs. A sound came from her throat she did not intend, a sigh slipping from her lips to his. “Oh, yes.”

He broke away.

One powerful hand went to his face. His breaths came hard, like hers, his fingers pressed into his eyes at the bridge of his nose. He shook his head once.

“No,” he uttered. “God, no.” He turned and moved to the stair with lurching steps.

She touched her lips, hot and damp now. Her heart raced. “Why did you stop?”

He swiveled around to face her, catching the wall hard with one hand. To steady himself? New fear rushed through her, tangling with the pleasure.

He returned to her in three fast strides and she hadn’t time to think, to plan, before he was upon her. He grabbed her arm, then the door handle behind her.

“Do you want to know what a man does to a pretty girl who begs him for kisses one too many times, Miss Lucas?” His voice was a growl.

“No.” She couldn’t breathe. “Yes,” the whisper stole from her.

He yanked her into the chamber and seized her about the waist. She fell against him and he grabbed her chin with an ungentle hand, trapping her face tilted up to him. His eyes were dark, no pleasure in them.

He lowered his head and kissed her and she was the wayward wanton her mother had borne, wanting his lips on hers and his tongue in her mouth, and hers in his, dizzy with the feeling of her body pressed to his. He was all muscle and strength she had not imagined—the iron strength in his arms, the power in his hands, his hard chest and thighs. She was far too weak to withstand him, but she didn’t want to. She sank her fingers into his arms and met his mouth hungrily, the thrusts of his tongue making her ache deep in her body, making her press her breasts to him more fully. Her skin and crevices seemed to hum for more contact. More kisses. More of him.

His hand spread on her waist gripped hard, his other slipping away from her face, fingertips trailing a rough path down her throat, then her neck. She gasped in air through the kisses, his hand spreading over her collarbone.

“This,” he whispered against her lips, “is what he does.” His hand surrounded her breast. “He touches her as he should not.”

She gulped in breaths—swallowed—sought air. She had not known this. She had not even imagined this. She had been very naïve. How could his hand on her breast make her feel this way, like laughing and crying and wanting his tongue in her again more than anything? The place between her legs filled with warmth and a strange, urgent hunger. She gripped his arms tight and tilted her head back against the door, her breaths hard and fast as he fondled her, his thumb passing over the fabric beneath which her nipple pressed. She shuddered, a light ripple of every part of her, oddly frantic beneath her skin. It was almost too much. Almost. She did not understand the feelings, but they felt so good and she wanted them. But it must be wrong to want them.

She reached for his hand. “Mr. Yale,” she managed to whisper, “you must not—”

His thumb slipped beneath her bodice. She moaned. He caught her mouth with his and his fingers stroked, and she did not protest. She trembled and told herself that this was all right because she could not stop him. He was too strong and she hadn’t the will for it.

He pressed her body against the door with his own, trapping his hand within her garments, against her skin. She felt weak in his arms, the sheer size of him and his touch more than pleasure. She slid her hands to his shoulders, slipping them about his neck, feeling fine linen then skin—his skin, hot and wonderfully male—and into his hair. His mouth left hers to sink to her neck and she twined her fingers through his short, satiny locks.

“Ohh.” There was nothing like this. Nothing had prepared her for touching a man so, or being touched by him. There could be nothing better than this, nothing more wonderful.

His fingers snagged in her garments, dragged the fabric down, and exposed her breasts, and swiftly Diantha discovered that there could in fact be something better.

She had always hated her breasts, too big and soft drooping over her big belly. But now even without that belly they were still ungainly, and there were the ugly stretch marks along the sides. She’d taken comfort in the notion that no one would ever see any of it.

Now Mr. Yale could see, but he seemed entirely disinterested in looking.

Touching was another matter altogether. He touched, his hips pinning hers to the door, his mouth caressing her neck deliciously, and he stroked her breasts and did remarkable things with the nipples that made Diantha feel she might simply perish of pleasure. She heard herself make little whimpering sounds and could not seem to withhold them. She gripped the back of his neck and struggled to keep his mouth upon her throat where it made her feel insanely good. But she also wanted him kissing her again.

Then he did kiss her, but not on her mouth.

He grabbed her hands from about his shoulders in a firm grip, then he dipped to her breast and licked it.

“Mr. Yale.” She could barely muster sound, her breaths broken. His jaw was rough against her tender skin.