LITMIR.BIZ

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gave a toss of her head. ‘You’re having an affair.’

      ‘It is not your business, Anna-Maria,’ Stepan warned. Did the minx not know when to stop? No gently bred young girl called out an older man on his private affairs. No gently bred girl was supposed to know about such things and, if she did, she was to pretend she did not. But Anna-Maria was all dark-haired defiance as she stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes flashing. He’d have liked to scold her and say defiance did not become her, but it did. She was magnificent in her accusations and he was a powder keg primed to explode after three and a half months under the same roof with her. A woman could not provoke a man thusly without consequences.

      He stalked her, encroaching on her space as she did his, making her aware of him with every step, of his height, of the piercing intensity of his gaze. There would be gentlemen in London who would make her aware of much more if she wasn’t careful.

      Anna-Maria took a step backwards, her eyes glinting, but wary now. Good. She should be wary. A man aroused was a dangerous creature. Her back was to the wall and she could retreat no further. Stepan rested an arm above her head, his gaze intent on her face. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To jar me out of what you call my complacency? To break my stoic reserve?’ His eyes lingered on her mouth, ‘Well, now you’ve done it, my sweet girl, and there is a price to pay for waking the sleeping dog.’ Anna-Maria’s gaze dropped. ‘Are you prepared to pay it?’ He would be toyed with no longer.

      He captured her mouth in a hard kiss meant to demonstrate his point, but Anna-Maria wasn’t ready to admit defeat. Her mouth moved beneath his, opening in answer to his press. Her body moved against his. He intensified the kiss, his hand at her neck, keeping her close, as he claimed deep access to her mouth, his tongue testing and tasting her. What a heady elixir it was to drink of her naïve boldness, the innocent curiosity waking in his arms.

      He had not expected it to go this far. He’d expected her to be frightened long before his body roused, but her curiosity was fast outpacing his ability to keep his body in check. Soon, the masculine hardness of his response would be in evidence. Perhaps it would be for the best that she encounter all the consequences of her behaviour. This was not a harmless game she played. She gave a sudden gasp. The moment he felt her hesitate, he stopped. He pulled back from their embrace, creating much-needed space between them.

      Her eyes were wild and questioning, her hair had come down from its pins and her lips were puffy. She looked precisely like what she was: a beautiful woman halfway seduced. If Dimitri were to walk in at this moment there would be no explanation other than the truth: that he’d kissed Anna-Maria up against the sitting-room wall. Never mind he’d felt prompted to do so after months of provocation or that he’d done it out of some misguided notion of teaching her the finer points of dealing with gentlemen. Stepan didn’t think those arguments would go far with Dimitri.

      Anna-Maria smoothed her hands over her skirt. He gave her time to gather her shaken composure. That was his second mistake. The first had been giving in to her game. He saw that now. Whatever advantage he might have gained in his ambush was lost when she raised her head and met his gaze. ‘Why did you do that? What did you think to prove?’

      He should have pressed his advantage when he’d had the chance. ‘You’ve been flirting with me.’ He waved a hand when she tried to protest. ‘Admit it, Anna-Maria, you’ve been cutting your teeth on me all winter and why not?’ Stepan growled. ‘There’s very little appropriate male society to practise on in these parts.’ He was rewarded with a slight flush creeping up her cheeks. The little minx didn’t like being caught out. ‘Be warned, Anna-Maria, I am no green ham-handed boy like the Squire’s son, willing to be led about by the nose because a pretty girl smiled my way. Neither am I a dissipated gentleman with finer clothes than manners who would not have stopped this evening.’

      Her eyes narrowed. ‘Is this your way of saying I should be thanking you for the experience?’ She was far too saucy for a girl who’d just been delivered her comeuppance.

      ‘It’s my way of alerting you to the lesson that desire is power—a sword to be wielded, a currency that can be bartered by any man or woman. Be careful, Anna-Maria, you are a beautiful woman and a susceptible one. You are not fully aware of the weapon you possess in your face alone.’ To say nothing of her body, of the passion that coursed through her.

      Stepan’s hands fisted at his sides. He was deuced uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation. This was why young girls needed their mothers. Mothers were supposed to teach those lessons, not nominal uncles. Least of all him. What did he know of family? Of mothers and daughters and preparation for marriage? He knew nothing even of fathers and sons. His own father had decided he wasn’t worth raising well before he’d reached adulthood.

      Anna-Maria gave him a wry smile. ‘I think there might be a compliment in there somewhere for me. I will pretend there is. I will pretend you called me beautiful and that my beauty wasn’t an insult or a plague to be protected against as my father suggests.’ She laughed harshly. ‘Would you prefer it if I went around veiled so that I would not be a Jezebel enticing men to their doom?’

      ‘I was being honest.’ Which, apparently, he couldn’t be without having his words come back to haunt him. He’d not meant to imply she was to blame for a lack of male self-control. Nor had he meant to align himself with the cruel opinions of her father. He owed the old man a debt of gratitude. The man had been nothing but gracious to him, treating him as a second son, yet Stepan could not condone the way the man treated his daughter. He’d had the nagging suspicion over the years that if Anna had been born male her mother’s death would have been forgiven.

      ‘I thought we’d left such old-fashioned nonsense behind us in Kuban,’ Anna-Maria argued. ‘I thought you believed a woman should have the same freedoms in society a man had?’

      ‘I do,’ Stepan protested.

      ‘Unless that woman is me?’ She pierced him with a stare. He knew impending defeat when he heard it. He wasn’t going to win this.

      ‘You should talk to Evie about these things.’ He stepped back, looking to retreat the field.

      ‘Evie doesn’t know about “these things”,’ Anna-Maria snapped. ‘How could she? She has two parents who raised her. She’s lived the entirety of her life in Little Westbury surrounded by safety and love. Her parents saw to it, her friends saw to it and now my brother sees to it. Their child will grow up with the same.’

      ‘Lower your voice,’ Stepan cautioned. ‘You’ll wake the house.’ The warning was inadequate and frankly a non sequitur. He chose not to address the wistful envy behind her words. It was an envy he knew well. How many times had he held Dimitri’s infant son and thought the same? Dimitri’s boy would grow up never knowing a lack of affection, never doubting his worth, his acceptance.

      Anna-Maria did not heed his request. She was angry now and she was exacting revenge for his madness over the kiss. ‘Evie is not like us. She knows nothing of being raised without parents, without a family, of being looked upon as an inconvenient nuisance by one’s own father.’

      ‘You had Dimitri,’ Stepan reminded her. He would not tolerate his friend being maligned. At twelve, Dimitri had taken on the responsibility of caring for a newborn and he’d never laid down that burden. Nor did he like the reminder of those painful similarities between them.

      ‘But for the single variable of my brother, both of us would have been entirely alone,’ Anna-Maria said sharply. ‘Why won’t you admit that we’re more alike than the others? That we’re both lost souls, surrounded by people who have found theirs.’

      ‘You are not lost, Anna-Maria,’ Stepan countered argumentatively even as the words caught him by surprise. Was that how she saw herself? He’d not once thought the vivacious Anna-Maria, the beloved centre of her brother’s life, a girl who had everything, felt lost. The very image of Anna-Maria being lost cut at him. He and the others had joined Dimitri in that fight years ago to protect Anna-Maria from the cruelties of their world, from the hurt of a father who did not acknowledge her existence because her life had stolen the life of the woman

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