By Arrangement by Madeline Hunter Page A

took the last of the savory.
    His hand did not move away this time, but followed her head back. His fingertips brushed her lips and rested there. The dough suddenly felt very thick in her mouth.
    She looked up at his face and saw the slight hardness around his mouth. His lids lowered as he watched her lips move beneath his hand. An odd stillness descended, and she swallowed the last of the sweet dough with difficulty.
    With a deliberate movement and watchful eyes, he ran his finger around the edge of her mouth, collecting the errant honey, and then wiped the sweetness onto her lips.
    She had a sudden shocking urge to lick the last of thehoney off those fingers. He looked in her eyes as if he understood. One by one, he wiped his fingers across her mouth like a repeated invitation to her impulse, layering the sticky remains on her lips.
    The gesture mesmerized her. The sounds of the field and races receded to a distant roar. In the still silence that engulfed her, she could hear her heart beat harder with the light pressure of each small caress. The exciting intensity that she always sensed in him spread to surround her.
    He looked at her a long moment when he finished. Then he abruptly took her hand and pulled her back amongst the trees. She stumbled after him, not really cooperating but not resisting either. Breathless anticipation claimed her as they left the sanctuary of the field. She told herself that she did not want to do this, that she would not go with him, but she went anyway.
    He dragged her behind a large oak. With his arm, around her shoulders he pulled her into an embrace. The other arm slid under her cloak and around her waist, pressing her body to his body as he kissed her.
    Those new sensations that had snuck up on her so insidiously the last time suddenly exploded all at once. It was if they had been carefully corralled for two weeks but now he had opened the gate and waved them to a frenzy. The intimacy of the embrace felt exhilarating, and a thundering tremor full of sharp sensual spikes shook her from her neck to her thighs.
    He gentled his kiss and began biting and licking the honey off her lips in an unhurried way, pulling her yet closer to him. She became very alert but only to him and each touch of warmth on her mouth. Awareness of everything else washed away beneath the stunning waves of slow, tight heat that coursed over and over through her body.
    His tongue grazed against her lips, inviting her to open to him. With the one thread of reason still left, she kept her mouth resolutely closed. He smiled before moving his mouth down.
    Did she deliberately throw her head back so that he could reach the hollow at the base of her neck? She didn't know for sure, but his mouth was there suddenly and her arms were up and around his shoulders, and both of his hands grasped her beneath her cloak, holding her, bending her up to his kisses.
    She grew acutely aware of every touch, every kiss, every wonderful strange reaction that she felt. Her upraised arms brought her body closer to his, and through the stretched fabric of her clothing she could feel his muscles and warmth tingling her breasts. The pressure of his hands around her felt both dangerous and comforting. Her awareness became full of something else, too, something commanding and expectant and connected to the hollow tension that spread through her belly. It was that as much as the exquisite feelings that kept her from stopping him. Vaguely, dully, her mind considered that he was luring her toward something that she did not really understand.
    He kissed her mouth again, and his hands moved. Slowly, gently, he caressed down and up her sides beneath her cloak, his fingers splaying around the outer swells of her breasts. Shockingly, insistently, they moved down her back and over her buttocks and up her hips. The tightness in her belly ached and somewhere low inside her a throbbing demand pounded.
    One hand stayed on her hips but the other moved up. She knew