He bent his head and kissed her.

Not gently.

Hard. Ravenously. Her lips had been parted; his tongue filled her mouth with no by-your-leave.

He marched in and laid claim. His lips commanded, demanded-rapaciously seized her wits. Captured her senses.

Desire rolled over her in a hot wave.

His, she realized on a mental gasp, not just hers.

The realization utterly dumbfounded her; since when had he desired her?

Yet the ability to think, to reason, to do anything other than feel and respond had flown.

She didn’t at first realize she was kissing him back; once she did, she tried to stop-but couldn’t. Couldn’t drag her senses from their fascination, from their greedy excitement; this was better than she’d dreamed. Regardless of all wisdom, she wasn’t able to disengage, not from him, not from this.

He made it harder yet when he angled his head, slanted his lips over hers, and deepened the kiss-not by degrees, but in one bold, senses-shattering leap.

Her hands had fallen to his shoulders; they gripped, clung as their mouths melded-as he relentlessly pressed his advantage, rolled over her defenses and drew her with him into the scorching, shatteringly intimate exchange. She couldn’t comprehend how his rapacious kisses, his hard hungry lips, his bold thrusting tongue, caught her, trapped her, then delivered her up, captive to her own need to respond. It wasn’t his will making her kiss him so damningly eagerly, as if despite all good sense, she couldn’t get enough of his thinly veiled possession.

She’d always known he would be an aggressive lover; what she hadn’t known, would never have guessed, was that she would respond so flagrantly, so invitingly-that she would welcome that aggression, seize it as her due and demand more.

Yet that was precisely what she was doing-and she couldn’t stop.

Her experience with men was limited, but not nonexistent, yet this…was something entirely beyond her ken.

No other man had made her heart thud, made her blood sing, sent it racing through her body.

With his lips on hers, with just a kiss, he’d transformed her into a greedy wanton-and some part of her soul sang.

Royce knew. Sensed her response in every fiber of his being. He wanted more-of her, of her luscious mouth, of her blatantly inviting lips. Yet beyond his own hunger lay the wonder of hers, a temptation like no other, one every primitive instinct he possessed had fixed upon, unswervingly fastened on as the most direct and certain route to appeasing his own, already tumultuous needs.

Sunk in her mouth, he wasn’t thinking. Only feelings registered-the spike of disbelief when he’d realized what she’d been hiding-that she did indeed respond to him vibrantly, instinctively, most importantly helplessly-that despite his experience, his skills, she’d pulled the wool thickly and completely over his eyes…and a wave of hard anger that the agonies he’d suffered over the past weeks while subduing his lust for her hadn’t been necessary. That if he’d given in and kissed her, she’d have yielded.

As she was now.

She was helplessly in thrall to the desire, the passion, that had erupted between them, more powerful, more driven from having been denied.

Relief swam through him; he would no longer need to suppress his lust for her. Expectation flared at the prospect of giving it full rein. Of indulging it to the hilt. With her. In her.

In the instant before he’d kissed her, he’d looked into her face, into her gorgeous autumn-rich eyes-and had seen them widen. Not only with the realization that he’d learned what she’d been hiding, not just with apprehension over what he might do, but with sensual shock. That was what had sent her eyes flaring, all rich browns and welcoming golds; more than experienced enough to recognize it, he’d instantly taken advantage.

He’d seen her lips part, start to form some word; he hadn’t been interested in listening. And now-now that she was trapped in the web of their desires-he was intent on only one thing. On possessing what he’d wanted to seize for the last too many days.

On possessing her.

She was clinging to his shoulders, as deeply ensnared in their kiss as he. Her knees had weakened; his hands locked about her waist, he held her upright.

He didn’t even need to think to steer her back, shouldering her horse aside as he guided her back until her spine met the bole of the nearest useful tree.

She instinctively braced against it. He wedged his right knee between her thighs, the hard muscle of his thigh riding against hers, holding her in place as he released his grip about her waist, easing back from the kiss as, hard palms to the velvet of her habit, he skated his hands, slow and deliberate, up, over her ribs, and closed them possessively about her breasts.

He broke from the kiss, let their hungry lips part just enough to catch the shocked, delicious inward hiss of her breath as he eased his hands, then closed them again, then provocatively kneaded. Just enough to savor her half moan, half sob when he found her nipples and through the screening fabric circled the tight nubs with his thumbs.

Then he dove back into the kiss, reclaimed her mouth, sent her gathering wits spinning again while he set his hands to learn everything he needed to know to reduce her to the sensual wanton he had every intention of drawing forth.

She had it in her, he knew.

Even just from this kiss, he knew beyond question that she was not just more responsive than any woman he’d ever known, but specifically more responsive to him. If he managed her correctly, educated her properly, she would willingly cede him everything, anything and everything he wanted of her; he knew it to his bones.

There was nothing the marcher lord within him found more alluring than the prospect of absolute surrender.

He plundered her mouth, and reveled in the knowledge that, soon, she would be his. That, very soon, she would lie beneath him, heated and mindless as he sheathed himself in her.

As he took her, claimed her, and made her his.

He wouldn’t even need to go slowly; she wouldn’t be shocked by his demands. She knew him well, knew what to expect from him.

Closing his hands possessively about her breasts, squeezing her distended nipples between his fingers, he shifted his thigh so the long muscle rode more definitely against the soft flesh at the apex of hers, caught her muffled moan, and held her, with lips and tongue bound her ever more tightly to the increasingly explicit exchange.

Drew her ever more powerfully along the road to his goal.

Minerva knew his direction, felt it-ached for it-with every muscle, with every taut nerve, yet while most of her mind was deliriously following him, wantonly abandoned to his desire and hers, a small part remained lucid, detached, shrieking that this was more than dangerous, more than disastrous-that this was calamity about to strike.

It didn’t matter; she couldn’t break away. Her mind was overwhelmed, seduced in every way.

He, his kiss, was all power and passion, intertwined, entwined, inseparable.

The taste of him, of that senses-seducing combination, overrode all good sense, devastatingly easily. The edged desire in his kiss, dangerous and uncompromising, lured her on. He devoured, seized, claimed-and she kissed him back, wanting more, inviting more; his hands on her body, hard and possessive, set a fire burning within her she knew he could quench.

She needed to feel it, that fire, that life, needed to burn in its flames.

She knew that, craved it, even though she knew that with him, that fire would sear, scorch, and ultimately scar.

Yet the fact that he wanted her, and she knew enough to know that his want was as honest and real as hers, completely overset, overcame, overturned her carefully constructed defenses. His need, his raw hunger, was the most powerful weapon he could wield against her-as if he’d needed more.

She knew she was a fool for permitting the kiss to rage-although how she might have stopped him, stopped them, she had no clue. Yet even knowing how witless it was to so wantonly accept every potent caress, and mindless-abandoned to all good sense-yearn for more, she couldn’t stop herself from seizing this, this moment, with both hands, and wringing from it all she could. Clinging to him, savoring every nuance, every evocative, provocative sweep of his tongue, of his bold fingers, seizing as much as she dared, surrendering whatever he asked. Taking from him, from the moment, as much as she possibly could.

It wasn’t going to happen again.

It was he who broke the kiss, he who lifted his lips from hers. They were both breathing rapidly. After several breaths, her senses returned enough to inform her how heated, how pliant, how weak she’d become.

How helpless in his arms.

He glanced left, then right. Then he swore.

Grated, his voice a deep rumble, “Not here.”

Her wits returned in a rush, and she realized what he meant. Felt panic rise as she looked where he had, and realized she owed her escape to the heavy dew that had left the lush grass sodden.

If not for that…

She quashed a telltale shuddery shiver as he stepped back.

Royce felt it-sensed it in his marrow-but clamped down hard on his inevitable reaction. The grass was too damned wet, and the trees all had rough, deeply etched bark, but quite aside from such logistical difficulties, ones he could yet have overcome, that part of him ruled by his more primitive self was insisting, dictatorially, that the first time he sank into his chatelaine she should be sprawled naked beneath him in his ducal bed-the massive four-poster in his room.