His response was so calm, so soft, so damnably unruffled, Daisy immediately altered the tenor of her arguments. She was not currently in a position of strength—in Etienne's carriage with his driver taking them to Colsec. "Look," she said, attorney-like and reasonable, "let's negotiate some common ground here."
"Such as?"
His voice held a hint of amusement, annoying and provoking, but Daisy had experience in mediated settlements and ignored the provocation. "Such as agreeing on some period of time amenable to us both."
The Duc laughed then, but smiled his winning smile in appeasement. "Period of time?" he said. "Really?" Gazing at her for a thoughtful moment, he decided he must have her forever or die in the attempt—an irrational and totally out-of-character decision for the man known throughout the civilized world as a passionate but impermanent lover. "I don't negotiate," he quietly said, "but if I did, I'd say something like the second millennium beyond forever."
"Be serious, Etienne. I'm not in the mood to be amused."
"And I really don't negotiate, darling. I'm not joking."
"Is this an abduction?"
"I don't think so, but it could be. I'm flexible."
"I'm not going to fall into your arms like… all the rest."
"You are, darling, so far removed from… all the rest… it's beyond comprehension… believe me." His words were so quiet they barely reached her across the small distance separating them. And straightening in an abrupt, restless movement, he reached out to unlatch the window curtain nearest him. The fine leather shade rolled up with a sharp springing snap, the silk tassel vibrating in a flash of black brilliance.
"Etienne…"
He didn't answer. Maybe he didn't hear her, for her voice was very low, or maybe he was actually engrossed in the view out the window.
"I don't know what to do…"
He must have heard her because he turned his head very slowly toward her, as if reluctant to leave the vision of Garches coming into sight. He sighed softly. "Then that makes two of us," he said.
"I want more than your undivided attention for a few hours, or were you deeply committed, perhaps a few days… or what?"�Her dark eyes were solemn—"a few weeks? You see, I've heard everything."
"I won't apologize for my life, and even if I were so inclined, it wouldn't change anything. I'd like to be able to give you guarantees. With anyone else, I'd lie and give those promises. You can see how addled I've become because I can't, and worse yet, am honest about it. I can say this though, if it helps—you are a breath of freshness and beauty in my life, you're a joy I hadn't known existed. I am for the first time in my life unconditionally happy when I'm with you. I want this feeling to last forever, I want you forever. But the world's made me cynical or perhaps I've made myself cynical… In any event, I can only say… I'd be pleased to do whatever I have to do to keep you."
He sounded like a young boy asking his first dance partner for her hand in a waltz, so full of deference and politeness was his tone, and Daisy was nonplussed for a moment at his stark and abject sincerity. An instant later she found herself scrutinizing his face. Was he only more adept than she at the mendacities of se-duction, more familiar with the right tone for the right occasion and woman? Was he simply living up to his reputation for finesse?
"I'm not normally callow or naive."
He smiled at her words because she was the most intelligent woman he knew.
"Yet I find myself wanting to believe whatever you say."
Any number of smooth and charming responses came immediately to his mind for he recognized a degree of capitulation, however understated, but he said instead a simple, "Good," because she was too important to his existence to stoop to facile charm. And he was too uncertain of his composure to risk a seductive reply.
"Good? Nothing more from Paris's most fluent ladies' man?" Her gaze was critically assessing, touched slightly too with pique. His simple response struck her as too assured. "Don't I at least deserve—"
"Daisy, please." Soft remonstrance touched his voice with unmistakable need.
Her anger drained away and Daisy's eyes met his in a staggering moment of revelation. "This isn't a game for you this time, is it?" she whispered, filled with an inexplicable joy and fear. Already he meant too much to her. How much of her heart did she dare lose to a man of his repute, a man whose name alone was a byword for profligacy?
"No."
"I'm afraid then."
"I can change that." His eyes were sorceror-green seduction.
"It's too easy for you. I know you can, but I'm more practical, Etienne. I want a future beyond your bedroom."
He didn't know what to say. He did too. But he'd only very recently recognized that fact and his thoughts hadn't fallen into any practical rationale capable of dealing with his marriage. "I'll talk to Charles."
"About what, Etienne? Good God, as if he doesn't know more than I'd like already."
"About a divorce."
Her shock showed, but an instant later reality interposed. "Do I look that green?"
Equally shocked himself, he took a moment to absorb the full impact of his words. And a moment more to realize he meant them. And a further moment to understand he owed Isabelle the courtesy of being spoken to first. "No, darling, no one would mistake you for a green child." Smiling now, he felt strangely elated at a decision he should have made years ago.
"Are you sober, Etienne?" Suddenly she questioned whether liquor might account for his startling behavior. She barely knew him, outside their passionate two days together. His family was as old as France itself, Isabelle's too; their marriage of long standing. The Duc de Vec was the least likely aristocrat to disregard a thousand-year heredity.
"Not precisely."
"I knew it." There, a reasonable explanation for his madness.
"I'm too giddy in love to be precise."
"You're mad."
"Probably."
"Thank you," Daisy tartly said, surprised herself at the discontent his word evoked.
"Make up your mind, darling," the Duc softly said.
He was every woman's dream, and she was forced to admit he featured prominently in hers as well. She was also honest enough to recognize the pleasure he brought her had not previously entered her life. "Maybe we should go back to the beginning. I admit you fascinate me." His smile was beatific. She tried to ignore it, struggling to maintain some semblance of her normal capacity for reason. "So I don't see why we can't remain friends while I'm in Paris."
"Friends?" His deep voice was the merest whisper.
Taking a shallow breath, Daisy exhaled, then met his heavy-lidded gaze with hers. "Lovers, then. Is that better?"
"Very much," he said.
Daisy sighed. "Why is this so hard?"
"I can only speak for myself, but it has to do with loving you. I find myself in strange new territory… and I'm improvising as I go."
"I don't want to fall in love. Especially with you."
He shrugged, understanding her dilemma. Until he'd met Daisy, he'd never believed in love.
"Let's keep this purely physical," she said, as if setting perimeters would insure her safety.
"Whatever you wish." He was a practical man too and the novelty of his feelings about loving Daisy offered him no reference points in his past. "How long will you be in Paris?"
"Another month at most." A rush of pleasure heated her at the thought of a month of "purely physical" contact with the Duc.
"Perhaps only two weeks," she added, her unsuitable reaction alarming her.
"There's not much time then," he said, reaching up to pull the shade down again.
"What are you doing?"
Her terse question elicited the most innocent of looks from the Duc. "Offering you some privacy," he said, his expression affable, "for our purely physical relationship." His grin was a lazy upturning of his mouth. "It's another half hour to Colsec."
"I thought you less rustic." The pejorative inflection in her voice had in the past always
served her well.
"Darling, you forget, I traveled across the Empire… across half the world on horseback. I'm quite comfortable with rusticity." Amusement colored his tone. "Do you need help with your corset?"
"I don't wear a corset," she snapped, annoyed at his casualness, annoyed at her own overwhelming sense of attraction to the dark, powerful man lounging across from her. Most annoyed he hadn't remembered their days together well enough to recall she didn't wear a corset. There had been too many corsets, no doubt, in his past.
"Forgive me. It was a facetious remark only. I remember very well."
"I'm surprised," Daisy replied, still testy, "you'd be able to sort out individuals from the blur of women passing through your life. Or distinguish the styles of lace and furbelows in your memory."
"Since adolescence, seduction has been my avocation," he replied, baiting her for the pleasure of her passionate vehemence. "I pride myself on a certain competence."
"That's it," she retorted, huffy and indignant. "I changed my mind. Don't bloody touch me, damn you." But her resentment only further fueled the heated blood racing through her senses, the images evoked in her brain of the Duc de Vec's competence bringing her temperature several degrees higher. "I mean it," she said, as a petulant child might say, "you can't come in and play."
Since the Duc had every intention of going in to play, he ignored the petulance and her words, noting instead the flushed color on her cheeks, the accelerated rate of her breathing. And when she said, "Don't bother," as he began taking his jacket off, he only smiled and said, "It's no bother. I'll take you swimming after to cool off."
She watched him discard his suede jacket. Watched him un-button his white linen shirt with a leisureliness juxtaposed to her own tumultuous agitation and found herself moving back the scant distance the carriage seat allowed her when he divested himself of his shirt. The breadth of his shoulders was alarming in the close confines of the small interior—or tantalizing perhaps�as her eyes traveled over the hard muscles toned by polo and other sports.
"Would you like me to ask Guillaume to slow down?" he asked. And when she refused to answer, he said with a smile, "I forgot. You were raised on horseback." He bent then to pull off his riding boots, placing them in a storage compartment under his seat. "So they don't get in the way," he explained, as if she'd asked.
His casual words belied the savage need he was feeling, his unhurried undressing possible only because of his enormous self-control. He had, before greeting Daisy at Charles's office, been obsessed with the thought of making love to her again, and he was maintaining his composure with difficulty. Last night had been horrendous in terms of sheer restraint. A dozen times he'd kept himself from pounding down Adelaide's front door.
"I should probably apologize in advance," he said, reaching for the buttons on his trousers.
"I said no."
"After you said yes."
"And doesn't that count?"
"Kiss me and I'll answer you then."
"I don't want to kiss you."
"I'm going out of my mind for want of kissing you. Humor me. Or if not that, show me you're unmoved by my kiss and I'll take you back to Adelaide's."
"Is this a contest?"
"A small wager, mon chou." Reaching out, he lifted her onto his lap while she rapidly debated the usefulness of resisting.
He had taken her from her seat without effort. Struggling for dominance over his strength would be senseless. She could repudiate him instead by remaining immune to his kiss. Intentionally, she offered her lips to him with a haughty coolness.
Undeterred by her feigned reserve, for the heat of her body was warning his own, the Duc took her small hands in his and gently placed them on his shoulders. Only with effort she resisted the impulse to snatch her hands away from the steel-hard muscles beneath her palms. When he shifted slightly to turn his own body more fully toward hers, she took a small steadying breath as his muscles coiled and rippled under her hands. She remembered with graphic recall how his hard body felt under her and over her, how he moved with supple sureness and skill, how no other man had brought her to climax with such exquisite sensation. And she hated him for his consummate sureness… for his mocking challenge. Seduction might be his avocation, but she'd trained with the medicine woman of her clan and resist she would. For she'd learned a pattern of visual mind-control she could call on now.
Snow-covered mountain ranges majestic against the horizon of her father's summer camp appeared in her mind as the Duc's lips first touched hers. She saw the horse herds racing across the highland pastures as his mouth softly parted hers. Closing her eyes tightly against the lazy penetration of his tongue into her mouth, she struggled to maintain the interior landscape of her mind, consciously drawing on her memories of mountain summers.
He held her tightly in his arms, only the silk of her gown and chemise barrier to the heated warmth of their bodies while his tongue slid slowly to the back of her mouth, in seductive suggestion. She could feel the hardness of his arousal beneath her, found herself imagining that same slow penetration, just as his tongue ravished her mouth. Against her will, a tremor of desire shook her. Recognizing her response, he moved gently upward at the same time he exerted a mild pressure on Daisy's shoulders. Her small gasp wanned his mouth and he smiled. Daisy desperately forced her mind away from the pleasure flooding her senses, but summer camps and mountain landscapes diminished in vividness against the heady need innundating her pleasure centers.
"No," she murmured, pushing against the solid weight of his body. "No."
But his arms held her firmly, his kiss only deepening, and Etienne Martel, Duc de Vec and practiced lover of beautiful women, brought all his skill into play. Short moments later her palms slid a small distance across his shoulders as if of their own volition—her first small capitulation to sensation. It was mere inches but they both felt it with such a shuddering intensity the world quivered on its axis for a moment. A second later, because she was Hazard Black's daughter to her very core, strong-willed as her father, too fiercely independent to be treated as the next entry in the Duc de Vec's amorous adventures, she snatched her hands back as if burned. "Don't," she protested, twisting her mouth away. "I won't."
Forcing her face around, he said very, very softly, "I love you, Daisy Black…" His fingers were leaving marks on her face. "And for what it's worth," he added in a quiet voice, "I've never said that to a woman before."
His simple words fell into the heated atmosphere of her mistrust and resentment with staggering impact. "Never?" she said.
His hand fell away from her face and he shook his head, then shivered as a premonition of disaster overwhelmed him. He'd ordered his world to his perfection too long not to recognize total chaos.
Daisy smiled for the first time that day, understanding how striking an admission he'd made. "Neither have I," she said, as simply. Her dark lashes dipped a small fraction, then she reached up to touch his lips gently with her finger and added in lush invitation, "I must have been waiting for you."
No further invitation was required for a man who had for the first time in his life seriously considered making love to a woman against her will. And brushing aside the destruction of his very comfortable world for need of this woman as if the aristocratic traditions of centuries were suddenly irrelevant, he kissed her with a pent-up, uncontrolled passion. In seconds he was frantically undressing her and in seconds more when she said, "Hurry," he stopped the undressing, tumbled her to the floor, shoved her skirts and petticoats out of the way and cursing the buttons on his trousers, entered her short moments later as if they had only minutes left on earth.
She was as frantic as he, as overwhelmed with need, as tumultuous and greedy and insatiable. With flame-hot intemperance, they loved each other, touched and felt and held each other as if feverish possession and blinding passion would affirm their love. They were wild and unrestrained, given license at last with their admission of love to indulge their desire. Tossed and b
uffeted by the racing speed of the carriage, pitched and flung from side to side, their own frenzied race toward fulfillment was as rushed. Neither could wait or breathe, it seemed, or give a care for the discomfort of their cramped quarters. Overpowered and overwhelmed, they found haste was imperative.
"Last night was too long…" Etienne whispered, bracing his feet and strong arms, steadying them for a moment, ungovernable possession igniting his mind. "I almost pulled you into my arms a dozen times in front of Charles. You're mine," he murmured, his voice a low deep growl, the brilliant green of his eyes hot with lust. "Mine," he harshly repeated. His broad shoulders swayed with the racing speed, but he held her firm prisoner of his passion and need, filling her entirely, the undulating motion of the speeding carriage creating a dizzyingly pleasurable friction.
"Yours," Daisy whispered on a small caught breath, giving up the very core of her independent soul without thought or regret, welcoming the man who had overwhelmed her thoughts and tantalized her senses in the hours of their separation.
He drove into her with impatience and covetousness prompted by craving and want, resistance and longing, as if the fierce rhythm of his need would obliterate the difficulties.
Clinging to him, she met his savage, unconstrained power, as intoxicated as he with the irrepressible, tempestuous passion burning through her senses. And when her first small orgasmic convulsions began deep inside her, he seemed to know precisely, his rhythm matching hers so perfectly, so intensely, she cried aloud, pleasure washing over her in heated waves. As their climax joined in throbbing, peaking splendor, he shut his eyes against the wild delirium. Nothing mattered but galvanic sensation. The world fell away, disappeared, the focus of every nerve and cell selfish, white-hot with explosive feeling.
Daisy understood in the languorous, glowing aftermath before she opened her eyes that her definition of pleasure had been forever altered. There were degrees now, she realized, and a range and scope calibrated light years beyond her previous experience. How exquisite, was her first thought. And how vulnerable those sensations made one, she thought next. But the Duc had bent his head to kiss her gently on the mouth and when her lashes lifted at his touch, she saw only the beauty of his eyes and a moment after when his head lifted, his disarming smile. Her half-formed feelings of defenselessness evaporated under the warmth of his smile, the golden luxurious bliss of satiation drenchingly renewed. He possessed her still, or perhaps at last and finally.
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