He turned, angling his body slightly to protect that area of his anatomy. His hands came up as if to hold her off and he said warningly, “Not again, you don’t.”

She frowned. “What do you mean ‘not again’? I’ve never—”

“You did it once before, five years ago.”

She dismissed that notion with a gesture. “Nonsense. I didn’t know you five years ago. It must have been someone else—clearly a woman of discernment.”

“It was you. We were in Gloucestershire. You’d just ruined a hunt and I pulled you off your horse—I thought you were a boy.”

“Oh, was that you? You deserved it, in that case. In fact, now I come to think of it, I wish I’d hit you harder. Now move aside and let me pass. I want to return to the concert.”

His lips twitched with amusement. “No you don’t. It’s a dreadful concert.” He added in a voice that almost purred, “And here’s me, thinking you never lied.”

The fact that he was right—again—inflamed her temper. George shoved at his shoulder. “Ooh, you are so irritating! Just let me pass, will you?” He didn’t move, just stood there being big and powerful and warm and infuriatingly smug. Annoyingly attractive—and worse, knowing it.

“Make me.” His smile was a slow, sensual challenge. “You know you want to.”

How dare he know what she wanted? Anger, desire and frustration warred within her. She was a spring, wound up too tight. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned . . .

“In that case . . .” She jerked her knee up, aiming for his genitals, but she was too used to wearing breeches, and the skirt of her dress was too narrow. Her raised knee dragged the skirt against the back of her other knee, which buckled. Cursing the impracticality of dresses, she overbalanced.

Into the arms of the duke.

He pulled her up against him, hard, and his mouth came down on hers, not gently as it had that first time, but firmly, possessively, as if he had every right to kiss her. And while a small thready voice in her mind suggested feebly that he didn’t, neither her mouth nor the rest of her body cared.

The taste of him—dark, hot, intense—soaked into her, building, like a fever in her blood. She speared her fingers into his thick hair and pressed her mouth to his. Excitement shivered through her, sending spirals of heat to the very core of her body.

He kissed as if he wanted to devour her. She learned from his every move, giving him back kiss for kiss, caress for caress. Learning passion. Intoxication.

She twisted her body restlessly against him, practically climbing him to get closer, heat and aching need driving her. She knew she was out of control; she didn’t care.