LITMIR.BIZ

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now. Do you let anyone past that wall you keep round your heart?’

      ‘Not very often,’ he said with a shrug that said that was a good thing.

      He also looked as if he had a hundred places he’d rather be, and Polly concluded he was only staying here because he wanted to distract her from the subject they had been discussing. He was doing quite a good job just by being here, but probably not the one he intended. She ought to be finding out what he and Partridge were really up to, but all she could think about was him. Silence stretched as he struggled not to tell her to mind her own business, and what right had a beggar like her to enquire into the state of a marquis’s heart in the first place?

      He wasn’t going to admit he kept his essential self as shut up in that tower room as his guardian had the rest of him as a boy. Nor would he own up to the need that felt so strong she could almost touch it. And why would he when they were about as far apart as two people could be?

      Yet only her presence had stopped him facing down those intruders that first night and, if she let him do as he wanted and keep her out of the way next time, he would take risks she couldn’t seem to think of without a chance the bottom might drop out of her world if he got himself murdered, just because he was such a stubborn great idiot. He would certainly take on the rogues himself rather than trust anyone else to do it for him.

      ‘Then you should,’ she argued with his determination to always walk alone. ‘You will never be truly alive if you don’t.’

      ‘Why, for Heaven’s sake? I’m perfectly happy as I am.’

      Polly found his ignorance of all he might be more touching than any conscious attempt to garner sympathy, but my Lord Mantaigne didn’t need sympathy, did he? He didn’t need anything he couldn’t buy or charm out of those who only wanted to be charmed or bought, or so he obviously believed.

      ‘I suppose you’ll never know unless you try,’ she said huskily.

      ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he ground out as if denying what was there in the room with them and pushing them to explore a lot more than a mere friendship hurt him physically yet he couldn’t stop doing it. ‘Just don’t.’

      ‘All right then, I won’t,’ she whispered back, hoping Partridge really had gone to search through dusty piles of documents the lawyers hadn’t thought worth taking away. It was as well to only lose one man’s good opinion at a time, and she was very fond of the gatekeeper of Dayspring Castle.

      ‘I’ve tried so hard not to touch you or kiss you again, you do know that, don’t you?’ Lord Mantaigne said with a feverish glint in his eyes that confirmed it and made her feel a lot better about the brazen course of action she was about to take.

      ‘Be quiet, rattle-pate,’ she chided him gently and took it.

      Well, she would regret it for ever if she didn’t, so she kissed him, since he was being such a gallant marquis they might be in their dotage before he got round to it. Wanting him so badly made her ache in places she hadn’t known a woman could ache for a man and she really had a lot of experience to make up in a hurry. Even so, this was playing with fire and it flashed and roared into a blaze even as he met her kiss for kiss. He tasted of rain and fresh air and himself and it was like all her birthdays as a child piling into a whirlpool of excitement and promise and hope all mixed together.

      Then he took over the kiss and made it deeper; more sensual; unique. She had known, but not known. He was experienced and compelling and he knew how to make that fire slide under her skin and speak to the same force in him as they stood, mouth to mouth. Who needed words when there was such a use to put their tongues to? He slowed the pace, showed her how to enjoy the scenery on the way to a destination she’d never visited or expected to visit. It was subtle and somehow beautiful and how could he think himself isolated and unlovable when he had all this magic in him?

      He gave a soft groan against her lips, and she felt the shake in his mighty body. Despite all that fine control of his, he needed her and that sucked her into another layer of wanting him altogether. He licked the swollen line of her lips with sensuous little darts of his tongue where they almost met, and she sighed with pleasure so he had a way to dart inside. This was so much more than a kiss now—more of a pagan dance he was showing her true, wild inner self as they explored and deepened and fed the heated delight that was taking over every inch of her body.

      Even dancing wasn’t close enough now. Mind and body united; touch and thought all wrapped up in needing this one man as she never would any other. His arousing, worshipping hands explored her narrow waist, down over the lithe curve of her hip and rested on the neat softness of her feminine buttocks, and she wriggled shamelessly until the urgent evidence of his need of her rose emphatically against her hot, wet core even through his gentlemanly breeches. Her soft, clinging and light-as-air skirts were a fragile barrier between them now. She appreciated them as she never dreamed she could when she put them on this morning.

      It would take only one flip of the fine-spun stuff and the gossamer petticoats underneath to leave her open to such pleasure it made her breath catch at the very idea of it. One more fiery impulse and he’d be there, inside her—doing something about the delightful pain that was winding her so tight it hurt not to have him there. Instead of held back and still apart, they could have everything, right now. They could soar into sweet, hot darkness together; dizzying and brilliant as racing up to the moon. It was there; on their tongues, in their reaching, exploring hands, in their lips; as if they had to take all there was to take and love every second.

      A surge of heat and pleasure sang though Polly. She wanted to meld with the pure essence of Thomas Banburgh and forget he was a lord and she was a pauper. She swayed into their kiss to deepen it even further, because she knew he wasn’t going to let that happen and she desperately wanted him to spin beyond thought, beyond restraint with her. He was who he was and she was who she was and she felt him clamp fearsome self-control on the rigid need she could feel through his fine clothes and hers as well.

      ‘Noble idiot,’ she muttered reproachfully.

      ‘If I was that, I’d never have got so close to losing control,’ he said unsteadily, leaning his head against her bowed forehead as if he didn’t want to break contact, but being kissable and not beddable was an agony she wouldn’t share.

      ‘You didn’t, I did,’ she said wearily and heard the jag in her voice as she said goodbye to so much they could have been and faced reality.

      ‘I’d only harm you in the end and I’m not worth it.’

      ‘Don’t try to hide the truth behind your imaginary shortcomings. I am a nobody; less than that even as far as your kind are concerned. I was born a lady, but now I’m less than a beggar because I’ve fallen so far. Tell me I’m not a suitable mistress if you have to, but don’t hide it behind polite lies.’

      ‘How can I when it’s not true? You’re as good as any other woman I’ve ever met and I wouldn’t offer you so little,’ he told her with a fierce frown.

      ‘Damned with faint praise,’ she managed to say as his words sank in and she couldn’t find even a trace of lover-like adoration in them.

      ‘I lose any smooth words and easy compliments I ever had the use of when I’m with you. Maybe I left them at the castle gate the day I arrived and ogled at you like a looby,’ he admitted with a flush of colour across his hard cheekbones that made her hope he had been a little bit besotted with her after all, even if it was only at first glance and seemed to have worn off.

      ‘I’m not sure if I’m delighted or insulted by that lack.’

      ‘Neither am I,’ he said with a wry grin.

      She felt a tug of temptation to smile back at him and pretend it didn’t hurt, but it did. ‘Don’t expect me to interpret your lack of a glib answer, I obviously have no idea what makes you lords of creation tick along to your own tune,’ she said as coolly as she could manage. She wanted to rage at him for rejecting what they could be to one another—and that was little enough, in all conscience—but she wasn’t going to give

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