“If anyone calls you out, Lord Donne, ’twill be me,” she promised in her low, vibrant voice.
“And that,” he returned in a matching tone as he turned his back on her and her coterie of sycophants and panderers and strode away, “is one challenge I might accept.”
He paced across the chamber through the door and down the hallway. And so did not hear her whisper in a voice so low even those nearby did not make out her words, “En garde!”
“MAKE LOVE TO ME,” she whispered.
Love. Dear God. Yes, he wanted to make love to her, to love her, to give her some of the physical pleasure he knew this act could bring and in doing so find for himself that deeper something he suddenly had cause to believe existed.
Once, a decade ago, she’d saved his life. He wouldn’t ever again be the cause of her anguish or her guilt He couldn’t bed her and risk ruining her future. If only she would tell him to stop … but she didn’t.
“You have the most beautiful hands,” she said. “I want to know what artistry they might work on my flesh.”
Good intentions faded. His clasp on her chin became a caress. “You don’t want this. It isn’t going to lead to some blessed union, Favor,” he rasped out “I have nothing. Nothing at all to offer you.”
“You have your name,” she suggested in a whisper as fearful as it was hesitant
“Dammit, don’t you think I want to feel you under me, around me?” he ground out. “I want to drink your cries, I want to make you scream with pleasure. I want to take you. Now. Here …”
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Connie Brockway
Insert page cameo illustrations copyright © 2000 by Lisa Faulkenstern
Insert page photo copyright © 2000 by Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos/PNI
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-75994-8
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