She gasped and struggled, her eyes widening in surprise, but he held her firmly. Chase wasn’t sure who the chit was, but he had to admit that she affected him. His body was warming by the second, his manhood stirring as if he held a prime morsel in his lap and not a plain mouse of a maid. It was a lovely distraction from his rather annoying headache. He must have drunk too much port the night before.

“Let me go,” she said, her voice pitched low, the sound both soft and unyielding.

Something about that voice tickled the back of Chase’s memory. He wasn’t sure where he’d heard it, but he had. All he knew was that if the woman now lying across his lap was half as seductive as her voice, he was in for a hell of a night.

Wherever he was, he might as well take advantage of all the amenities. He pulled the little maid against him, holding her imprisoned to his chest. Servant girl, daughter of the house, he really didn’t care. He wanted to taste her and b’God, he would.

“You—what—” she sputtered. “Let me u—”

He kissed her. Hard. Pressing his mouth against hers, halting her words, and capturing her breath in his mouth. She didn’t fight him, but lay stiffly in his arms as if suffering his touch.

Chase paused. Most housemaids pretended to resist, but only for a second. Most of them wanted to be romped as much as he wanted to romp them. But this woman offered no encouragement. None at all. In fact, she was unbending, stiff, anything but pliant.

His interest piqued, Chase deepened the kiss, covering her mouth with his. He ravaged, plundered, took, and demanded. She stiffened in his arms, and then…slowly, ever so slowly, she relaxed and let him do his worst.

And Chase’s worst was good. Better than good—his efforts were masterly, and he knew it, had worked to perfect them. He might have failed being a St. John in many ways, but never in the bedroom.

He’d pleased and tormented, seduced and fulfilled more women than he could remember. And he took pleasure in their pleasure—took satisfaction in the realization that none would ever forget him or their time together.

He’d sampled beautiful women aplenty and usually found his delights in the more sophisticated connections. Yet here he was in the middle of the godforsaken country and a slip of a woman, this rather unremarkable housemaid, not only had an astonishing effect on his senses, but she also was not responding to his caresses. At all.

It was a challenge of the first order.

He applied himself with increased ardor, getting even more aroused as he did so. His head hurt like the devil, but that was nothing compared to the maelstrom of heat that swirled through his veins and pooled in his loins while holding this woman. B’god, he’d teach her a lesson or two.

Chase deepened the kiss, lengthened it, stretched it across time until he forgot all of his aches and pains and remembered nothing but the hot, sweet warmth of the woman in his arms. Of her taste and her scent and the heat of her skin beneath his fingers.