Page 44 of The Duke's Stolen Heart
They had stopped dancing. Antonia glanced down and brushed her skirts back from her legs. Russet ringlets danced about her cheekbones. But when she glanced up, the vulnerability in her eyes pierced his core. Need bubbled up through him. The desire to touch. Wanting to taste her lips and inhale her breath as she closed her eyes and—
Malcolm’s drawings had sent him into this heightened state. This was his own fault.
“I must become worthy of an aristocratic lady’s highest regard,” Antonia informed him. She clasped her hands at the small of her back and paced away. Malcolm swallowed. The sight of her hips swinging beneath the cream-and-red printed cambric helped nothing. He could not calm this raging beast of desire she had awoken. Antonia was supposed to be a hired thief, not his lover. But his body failed to comprehend the message.
“You are more than worthy of anyone’s regard,” Malcolm declared roughly. Antonia cast him a quirked half smile over her shoulder.
“That is the only way I will receive an invitation.”
Lust had curdled his brains. “To what?”
“To your grandmother’s Sunday afternoon cards session.” She smirked. “Yes, I promise you, mylord—“ Antonia drew out the word in a way that both riled and teased, “—that six days from now, you shall have your gold-and-diamond necklace.”
Six days. Another day to sketch the intricate whorls of its settings for the miniaturist he had identified to repair the tiny portrait. Ever since Malcolm had set out to forgive his mother for leaving him and repair her likeness as a repudiation of his father’s bitter indictments of her and all women, his goals had felt abstract. Too airy-fairy to describe to another living soul. Until Antonia. She had made his dreams real.
“Say something,” she ordered him. “Is this not what you wanted?”
“Of course, it is,” Malcolm said, his words clipped at the edges. “You have done very well, Miss Lowry. Better than I ever hoped.”
Her full mouth pulled into a tight smile. “Thank you. I expect half the remaining monies from our agreement to be delivered in guineas and small coins. Two thousand, five hundred pounds.”
He laughed. “You wouldn’t be able to carry that much coinage. It will weigh you down.”
Antonia’s grin widened but never reached her eyes. Malcolm met her gaze and read emotions in those amber-flecked brown depths that reflected his own. Anger. Longing. Fear.
Desire. A shudder worked its way up his back, into his shoulders and up to the base of his skull. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
“I won’t need it for long. London has never been more than a way station for my purposes.”
In seven days, she would be gone. Damn.
The knowledge tipped his unsteady state into rashness.
“Don’t go,” he demanded harshly. His breath puffed in an almost-invisible vapor. The room was cold, but his body was consumed with a fire that dampened the small of his back and threatened to wilt his cravat.
“Give me one reason to stay.” Antonia remained opposite, her spine stiff as she pinned him with a glittering obsidian gaze. Gone was lightness, replaced with a consuming hunger.
Malcolm closed the distance between them in two strides. He cupped her cheek with one hand. The pad of his thumb dragged over the fullest part of her lower lip. “Because I want you to.” His breath rasped harshly over the words.
“You are not my master,” she breathed against his finger. Warm breath puffed out from between her lips. Malcolm pressed gently into the space. Antonia’s tongue glanced his flesh and he was lost, spinning into an abyss of desire.
“I would never wish to be,” he murmured. Malcolm shifted his weight and bent down, but it was she who closed the gap between their mouths in a scorching, gentle kiss. Antonia exhaled and leaned closer. Finding welcome, he wrapped his arm around the indent of her waist. She exhaled and sighed against him. He licked the seam of her mouth. Antonia opened to him. Languid heat melted his core as their kiss deepened. Lost, he forgot time and place until they were interrupted by a far-off knock of wood against wood.
“Oh, good gracious, children—cover your eyes,” a man exclaimed.
