Dukes Prefer Blondes by Loretta Chase Page B

she can’t have her own way.”
    â€œYes, I’m irrational, you supercilious, conceited, ill-­mannered—­”
    â€œBetter and better,” he said, aware of heat—­inappropriate heat—­surging within. “A temper fit over nothing.”
    â€œNothing!”
    She whirled away and grabbed her ugly hat from the table.
    â€œGoing so soon?” he said. “And we—­”
    â€œYou condescending thickhead!” She hit his arm with the hat. “You obnoxious—­” She hit his chest.
    â€œYou’d better stop,” he said. “I’m trying to be the sane one in the room, but you’re making that exceedingly difficult.”
    She made it impossible. She was a goddess in a passion. The blaze of her blue eyes and the pale fire of her hair and the crimson glow of her cheeks.
    She flung down the hat and grabbed the lapels of his coat. “I wish I were a man,” she said. “I would knock you down. I would plant you a facer. I’d break your nose. I—­”
    â€œNo, really, I mean it,” he said. “You’re murdering my brain.” And he took hold of her shoulders and bent his head and kissed her.

 
    Chapter Five
    THE BARRISTER . . . 1. In considering his duty to his client, he reflects upon the propriety of his acting; upon the person for whom he should act; and his mode of acting.
    â€”­ The Jurist , Vol. 3, 1832
    C lara knew what a lady was supposed to do when a gentleman attempted to take liberties. She was supposed to fight him off and defend her honor with all her might.
    Whoever made that rule had never been kissed by Raven Radford.
    His mouth pressed to hers and things happened in her head and spread over her body, alien feelings in a great, overwhelming rush, like a windstorm, and all the rules of ladyship, written in a massive tome in her brain, flew off the pages and vanished.
    She did not push him away. She held on for dear life, and gave back the best she could, given limited experience.
    Given no experience.
    What had previously passed for kisses before compared to this in the way playing with tin soldiers compared to Waterloo.
    She let go of his coat to reach upward and wrap her arms about his neck, and her body lifted to fit against his.
    He made a sound deep in his throat and moved his hands downward from her shoulders past the barrier of her sleeve puffs, to grasp her upper arms. He started to draw away but she wasn’t ready. She held on, and after a heartbeat he slid his hands to her waist and pulled her closer. His kiss grew more fiercely determined, as though he would wipe every recollection of anything remotely resembling kisses from her mind and imprint his, permanently, upon it. And upon her body, where the alien feelings simmered into excitement and happiness and a yearning for more.
    Strange feelings, and most likely wrong, as so much was for young ladies.
    She let herself swim in them the way she’d swum, in childhood, in forbidden waters. She floated on the rise and fall of his breathing, fast, like hers. She swam in the heat radiating from his big frame and the warmth and strength of his hands, in a sea safe and not at all safe. Beyond it, on some far horizon, lay another realm toward which she was moving on a strong current.
    Not safe, not safe .
    She didn’t want to be safe. She’d been too safe all her life.
    She wanted to be in danger like this, caught in his arms and crushed to his powerful body. She wanted not to think at all, simply to be aware of him and everything about him and about this moment. The feel of wool and linen and the faint rustle of her cloak against his coat and the scents of coal fire smoke and damp wool and linen mingling with the smell of male, this male. She wanted to burrow into him. She wanted the heat and the deepening kiss and the feelings pulsing along her skin and through her veins that made her restless, wanting some vague