your care—I am your prisoner.”
“Then as your warden it appears I have to expand your duties to keep you occupied. Tomorrow you’ll report to the cook. I believe we can use some additional help in the scullery.”
“You must be mad.”
“I assure you all my faculties are intact and functioning efficiently.”
“I won’t do it.” The words were ripped from her throat. “When I tell my father—”
“Your father will do nothing once I explain the circumstances. He too wouldn’t approve of you appearing in public so soon after the spectacle you made of yourself at Lady Stanton’s ball.”
Before she took the time to consider the recklessness and futility of her actions, Amelia launched herself at him.
Thomas instinctively threw up his hands to cover his face. Two women attacking him in the span of a day? Good God, had the whole world gone insane?
After several ineffectual blows to his shoulders and upper chest, she caught his lower jaw in a glancing blow. He quickly captured her flailing hands before she succeeded in doing any real damage.
“For God’s sake, get a hold of yourself, you bloody hellcat,” he muttered. Exerting little force, he used one hand to secure hers behind her back, finally ending the attack.
Thomas held her in a position that left one inhalation’s distance between their upper torsos. And to show him how little his body cared about her insolence, her woeful disobedience to his orders, his loins surged to life, growing hard behind the fall of his trousers. Reflectively, he bore her down onto the seat.
“Let me go.” Ragged breaths feathered his cheek, while she twisted beneath him, further encouraging his arousal.
“Stop moving,” he said harshly, his control slipping with the feel of her soft, womanly flesh.
Amelia stilled. She stared up at him, her blue eyes wide and wary as if she feared even a breath would draw attention to the way their bodies meshed from shoulder to hip.
“Right now I’m beyond tempted to lift your skirts and take you. Give me one good reason I should not.” His gaze dropped to the pink lushness of her lips and the avaricious hunger that had started weeks ago, threatened to consume him whole. He had to taste her again.
“Don’t.” The plea squeaked from her throat.
“Not good enough,” he murmured before lowering his head and smothering her breathy sounds of resistance with his mouth.
Blood, hot and thick, coursed through him, pulsing strongly between his thighs, his erection near to bursting. Impatient and hungry, he thrust deeply into her mouth. A shudder ran down the length of his frame when his tongue touched hers. He tried to temper his need, but it required only one delicious swipe of the cavern of her mouth before she eagerly, almost helplessly, joined in the sensual tongue play.
Thomas released her hands, dealt with the buttons of her cloak, and smoothed it from her shoulders without so much as a demur from her. The garment spread beneath her like an altar, with her as the offering.
Tracing the curve of her hip up past the indent of her narrow waist, he found the underside of her breast. Amelia let out a low moan and wrapped her arms tightly about his neck.
Lust had him in its grip, making his mind merely a vehicle of his physical needs. Mewling sounds escaped her lips when he angled his head for a more thorough and carnal access to her mouth.
One hand inched up and palmed the firm thrust of her breast, his thumb swiping repeatedly across the nipple, causing it to pebble against the pale green bodice of her gown. Thomas didn’t only want to feel them in his hand, he wanted to feast on them with his eyes and taste them with his lips.
A guttural sound emerged from his throat as he lifted his mouth from hers to gaze into her shadowed, flushed face. Taking in her swollen lips and closed eyes, he started on the row of pearl buttons marching down the front of her gown, deftly releasing them to reveal a white silk corset barely containing her breasts … and firm, smooth, creamy skin. He grew harder than he thought possible.
Slowly, her eyes, dark with desire, drifted open and she gazed up at him. It only took a few moments for her to lose the look of a woman lost in the deepest regions of passion. His fingers were releasing the buttons at her waist when her eyes widened in alarm.
What the blazes am I doing? Amelia began frantically batting at