Forbidden by Susan Johnson (good books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

Vec was the least likely aristocrat to disregard a thousand-year heredity.

"Not precisely."

"I knew it." There, a reasonable explanation for his madness.

"I'm too giddy in love to be precise."

"You're mad."

"Probably."

"Thank you," Daisy tartly said, surprised herself at the discontent his word evoked.

"Make up your mind, darling," the Duc softly said.

He was every woman's dream, and she was forced to admit he featured prominently in hers as well. She was also honest enough to recognize the pleasure he brought her had not previously entered her life. "Maybe we should go back to the beginning. I admit you fascinate me." His smile was beatific. She tried to ignore it, struggling to maintain some semblance of her normal capacity for reason. "So I don't see why we can't remain friends while I'm in Paris."

"Friends?" His deep voice was the merest whisper.

Taking a shallow breath, Daisy exhaled, then met his heavy-lidded gaze with hers. "Lovers, then. Is that better?"

"Very much," he said.

Daisy sighed. "Why is this so hard?"

"I can only speak for myself, but it has to do with loving you. I find myself in strange new territory… and I'm improvising as I go."

"I don't want to fall in love. Especially with you."

He shrugged, understanding her dilemma. Until he'd met Daisy, he'd never believed in love.

"Let's keep this purely physical," she said, as if setting perimeters would insure her safety.

"Whatever you wish." He was a practical man too and the novelty of his feelings about loving Daisy offered him no reference points in his past. "How long will you be in Paris?"

"Another month at most." A rush of pleasure heated her at the thought of a month of "purely physical" contact with the Duc.

"Perhaps only two weeks," she added, her unsuitable reaction alarming her.

"There's not much time then," he said, reaching up to pull the shade down again.

"What are you doing?"

Her terse question elicited the most innocent of looks from the Duc. "Offering you some privacy," he said, his expression affable, "for our purely physical relationship." His grin was a lazy upturning of his mouth. "It's another half hour to Colsec."

"I thought you less rustic." The pejorative inflection in her voice had in the past always served her well.

"Darling, you forget, I traveled across the Empire… across half the world on horseback. I'm quite comfortable with rusticity." Amusement colored his tone. "Do you need help with your corset?"

"I don't wear a corset," she snapped, annoyed at his casualness, annoyed at her own overwhelming sense of attraction to the dark, powerful man lounging across from her. Most annoyed he hadn't remembered their days together well enough to recall she didn't wear a corset. There had been too many corsets, no doubt, in his past.

"Forgive me. It was a facetious remark only. I remember very well."

"I'm surprised," Daisy replied, still testy, "you'd be able to sort out individuals from the blur of women passing through your life. Or distinguish the styles of lace and furbelows in your memory."

"Since adolescence, seduction has been my avocation," he replied, baiting her for the pleasure of her passionate vehemence. "I pride myself on a certain competence."

"That's it," she retorted, huffy and indignant. "I changed my mind. Don't bloody touch me, damn you." But her resentment only further fueled the heated blood racing through her senses, the images evoked in her brain of the Duc de Vec's competence bringing her temperature several degrees higher. "I mean it," she said, as a petulant child might say, "you can't come in and play."

Since the Duc had every intention of going in to play, he ignored the petulance and her words, noting instead the flushed color on her cheeks, the accelerated rate of her breathing. And when she said, "Don't bother," as he began taking his jacket off, he only smiled and said, "It's no bother. I'll take you swimming after to cool off."

She watched him discard his suede jacket. Watched him un-button his white linen shirt with a leisureliness juxtaposed to her own tumultuous agitation and found herself moving back the scant distance the carriage seat allowed her when he divested himself of his shirt. The breadth of his shoulders was alarming in the close confines of the small interior—or tantalizing perhaps�as her eyes traveled over the hard muscles toned by polo and other sports.

"Would you like me to ask Guillaume to slow down?" he asked. And when she refused to answer, he said with a smile, "I forgot. You were raised on horseback." He bent then to pull off his riding boots, placing them in a storage compartment under his seat. "So they don't get in the way," he explained, as if she'd asked.

His casual words belied the savage need he was feeling, his unhurried undressing possible only because of his enormous self-control. He had, before greeting Daisy at Charles's office, been obsessed with the thought of making love to her again, and he was maintaining his composure with difficulty. Last night had been horrendous in terms of sheer restraint. A dozen times he'd kept himself from pounding down Adelaide's front door.

"I should probably apologize in advance," he said, reaching for the buttons on his trousers.

"I said no."

"After you said yes."

"And doesn't that count?"

"Kiss me and I'll answer you then."

"I don't want to kiss you."

"I'm going out of my mind for want of kissing you. Humor me. Or if not that, show me you're unmoved by my kiss and I'll take you back to Adelaide's."

"Is this a contest?"

"A small wager, mon chou." Reaching out, he lifted her onto his lap while she rapidly debated the usefulness of resisting.

He had taken her from her seat without effort. Struggling for dominance over his strength would be senseless. She could repudiate him instead by remaining immune to his kiss. Intentionally, she offered her lips to him with a haughty coolness.

Undeterred by her feigned reserve, for the heat of her body was warning his own, the Duc took her small hands in his and gently placed them on his shoulders. Only with effort she resisted the impulse