She dove for the field, intent on hurdling the distant fence and losing herself in the trees.
Courtland roared her name, the sound as angry and hot as the furious rush of blood to her face. He’d seen her.
Legs pumping beneath her skirts, she risked a glance over her shoulder and shrieked. He was closer than expected. One glimpse of his thunderous visage coming after her, closing in with such speed, and her heart jumped to her throat.
She ran harder. Icy wind stung her cheeks and made her eyes tear. The landscape blurred white and gray as she pushed. Pushed until her lungs ached from inhaling the cold-burned air.
She cleared the fence with a graceless stumble, her skirts and cloak a tangle at her feet, nearly bringing her down to the snow-covered earth. Kicking her legs free, she regained her footing. The heavy pounding of his tread was upon her. This time she did not look behind her, too afraid of what she might see.
She dove for the tree line, refusing to entertain the notion that she was well and truly caught. That she had endured a cold, bumpy ride in a wagonload of miserable hay for naught. If she had learned anything in the last fortnight, it was that supernatural forces were at work in this world. Perhaps if she wished it, willed it, she could sprout wings and fly.
The heartening thought did not save her.
A great weight struck her in the back. She hit the ground with bone-jarring force. Sputtering, snow filled her mouth, eating up her nostrils.
A hard hand gripped her shoulder and rolled her over, but he didn’t lift off her. His great weight bore her down into the cold.
“Owww!” She beat him in the chest and shoulder with both fists and arched, attempting to throw him off. A vain endeavor. He was a veritable boulder atop her. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Oh,” he sneered, his savage expression no less handsome as he pushed his face close, “and you care so much for your life? A woman who jumps from a second-floor window and braves the north road alone is scarcely someone I would describe as mindful of self-preservation.”
“A necessary risk to preserve myself from the villain who abducted me and thinks to force me to marry him, thank you very much. Now! Get! Off! Me!”
“Force?” he barked. “I gave you a choice—I’ve been endlessly patient while you make up your mind, woman!”
Helpless rage swept over her. Helplessness because she couldn’t explain her desperate need to escape him. Not unless she wanted him to believe her mad.
“What is it you’re running from?” he growled, his gleaming dark eyes crawling over her face with an intensity that made her throat constrict.
You, she wanted to shout. And yet it wasn’t him. She could no longer deny it. She didn’t want to run from him. He was temptation incarnate.
“I hate you!” The words burst from some place deep within her. And that moment she did hate him. She loathed him for tempting her with what she couldn’t have.
If possible, the roiling emotion bled from his eyes. His gaze turned to dead ice. His strong jaw locked, a muscle feathering along the taut flesh. “There now. See,” he murmured with deceptive calm. “We’re already behaving as a married couple. Shouldn’t be too difficult to make the transition.”
“Never!” she shouted, thrusting her face close to his. Foolish, she knew. She should at least feign submission. The man was crushing her in a snowy field.
“Come now,” he mocked bitterly. “We’ve already come this far.” He angled his head closer. The cold tip of his nose brushed her cheek. A hissed breath escaped from her lips. “Why such the fuss?” His rasping breath felt warm as peat smoke on her face. She couldn’t help herself, she inched her face closer into him, into that delicious heat.
His voice continued at a purr. “My pockets run deep enough. I’m no fortune hunter, as all the others sniffing about your father are. And best of all—I won’t try to dominate you as any other husband would.”
As far as solace went, it wasn’t much. It wasn’t anything at all. She had other motives for escaping Ash Courtland that he couldn’t even begin to guess. Life and death motives. This very moment she was supposed to be on a ship bound for Spain. He ruined that. The reminder fueled her fury.
“No thanks.”
He looked angry again, his dark eyes burning. “Obstinate female. It’s not as though you’re some green girl. You’ve done this before. At least I’ll make an honest woman of you and not demand you serve me on your back—”
“Oh!” Heat flamed her face. She resumed her struggles in earnest then, wedging her arms between their bodies, marveling at the breadth of him, solid and firm and so unyielding.
“Marguerite, enough,” he snapped. “You’ll only hurt yourself.” He grabbed her wrists and stretched them out on either side of her head. The position thrust her br**sts up into his chest. Her cheeks burned at the provocative sensation. The tips of her br**sts hardened. Mortification swept through her. Hopefully, he could not feel the aching tips through her gown. Her breath fell in spurts, little gasps of air that betrayed her, revealing exactly how he affected her.
“You needn’t fight this, you know.” His voice dipped to a husky pitch, confirming her worst fears. He was aware of how he compelled her. “Perhaps we should discard the idea of a name-in-only marriage and strive for the real thing—”
“Never,” she cried, her voice a desperate whip on the frigid air. In truth, his suggestion sparked something deep inside her, fanning the flame he’d started upon their first encounter. She tugged at her wrists, more desperate than ever to be free of him.
He angled his head. Waning sunlight filtered through the heavy clouds, gilding his hair. “You’re not some chaste creature—”
She laughed hoarsely, the sound dry and broken. “So because I’m damaged goods I shouldn’t concern myself with whose bed I share?”
“You’re far from damaged goods to me,” he said, his voice oddly thick, breathless to her ears.
He lowered his head, his dark eyes, fathomlessly deep, melting her where she lay on the cold earth.
She scarcely heard her whispered, “What are you doing?”
“Something you’ve been wondering about from the moment we met.” His lips brushed hers as he spoke, butterfly soft but no less shocking. She jerked back reflexively, air shuddering past her lips.
“I have not,” she managed to get out, her voice so shaky she didn’t even believe in her own denial.
“Something,” he continued as if she had not spoken, “I’ve wanted to do since I saw you that first day in the rook.”
She sucked in a breath … his breath, and tasted a hint of coffee. And something else subtle—mint?
His lips lowered again. This time she didn’t pull away as his mouth claimed her. She didn’t move, simply held herself still.
His mouth was firm but gentle in a way that she hadn’t expected. His lips moved slowly, leisurely, coaxing her own to move in response. The sensitive skin of her lips warmed, tingled. Her entire body heated despite the snowy earth under her, soaking through her clothes and wetting her to the bone.
She didn’t care. She didn’t feel the cold or wet. She was lost to it. Lost to anything but him. She felt only the delicious hardness of him against her every curve and swell.
His hold on her wrists loosened, his fingers softening to a silken caress, gliding down the length of her arms … grazing the sides of her br**sts.
She sighed, her arms looping around his neck. The heavy weight of him sank deeper into her. He groaned, deepening the kiss, both hands sliding up to cup her face. His thumbs pressed into her cheeks as he angled his head, his wicked tongue tracing the crease of her lips, opening her to him. She moaned at the first taste of his velvet tongue on hers. Wild as the wind and snow-scraped gorse around them. She moaned, bringing him deeper, hungry for more.
One of his hands slipped around her neck, tilting her face closer. His other hand dragged a burning trail down her bare throat. His thumb grazed the delicately hammering pulse there.
She placed her palm on the plane of his face, relishing the scrape of his bristly jaw against her palm. She savored it all. The press of him over her, the hot fusion of their mouths, the way his hands moved over her, always touching, brushing, caressing her like she was something special … fine crystal to be cherished. An illusion all, but she savored it nonetheless. The first time she ever found herself in a man’s arms. Perhaps the last.
He angled his head, slanting his mouth and deepening the kiss yet again. As if it could never be deep enough. Heat curled through her, sinking into her belly and coiling there, twisting. She wiggled against him, pulled his head closer, her fingers stroking the rich strands of his hair, like silk to her touch.
He groaned and the sound rippled through her, reverberated deep within, as though it had come from herself.
“Marguerite.” He breathed her name into her mouth. She drank the sound, loving it. On his lips, her name sounded raw, hungry and desperate with need.
The same need she felt pumping through her. God, I am my mother’s daughter. All these years, she had thought herself so unlike her, so immune to the desires of the flesh. It must be the specter of death hovering over her. It made her bold, reckless.
His lips broke from hers, gently nibbling the side of her mouth. His hand at the back of her neck anchored her, a feast for his mouth. “So sweet,” he whispered, dragging feathery kisses along her jaw, scalding a path down her throat.
His other hand palmed a single achingly heavy breast, chafing it until it throbbed within her suddenly constrictive gown. She purred, arching her body closer to his.
“Mr. Courtland!” The sudden shout ripped through her haze of lust. She blinked. The call came again. “Mr. Courtland!”
Pounding feet shook the ground beneath her.
Ash’s head lifted from her with a jerk. She glanced around, brushing a hand to her bruised lips and eyeing the trembling arms braced on either side of her.
“What?” he bit out from above her, a wild tic feathering his cheek.
She followed his stare to the driver and groom running through the field toward them. The portly driver clutched his side as if suffering from a stitch. The groom, concern writ upon his face, was a good yard ahead of him. As he neared, the concern lifted and his expression turned sheepish as he marked their scandalous position on the ground.
“Oh, forgive me, sir! Thought you had fallen and injured yourself …” his voice faded. He grabbed hold of the panting driver. Together, they turned back toward the lane, tromping clumsily across the field.
The spell had been broken.
Her lips still tingling, she squeezed out from beneath Courtland. Fortunately, he made no move to stop her.
Teeth chattering, she fell an arm’s length from him, watching him warily, prepared to bolt if he made a move to touch her.
He sat back, studying her. When he reached to swipe an inky wet strand that drooped in her face, she jerked away and swatted at his hand.
His lips pressed into a hard line, his dark gaze dead again, looking straight through her, giving nothing of himself away.
“You’re shaking,” he announced coolly.
She didn’t bother telling him that it wasn’t the cold as much as him that made her shiver, or rather the memory of him—his kiss, his body pressed to her own, the stark, feverish way he whispered her name. There would never be a moment when the memory of that did not make her shiver.
Rising to his feet, he reached for her arm. “Come along. I’ve brought your things. Let’s get you into some dry clothes, and then we’ll be on our way.”
He tugged her along, not waiting for her response. He was all brusqueness, yet again the businessman who first offered her an arrangement of marriage. He in no way resembled the man who had kissed her so passionately moments before. The man she just might be willing to risk everything for.