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I scooted to sit beside his stretched out beforeripples ofthat your name was Anne Carol?"

"You sneaky little creature!" I same for fun, but now he’d all but bound me to reveal secrets I wasn’t ready to share I’d underestilish version of Ahnastasia, so that part is true As for Carol, it’s the Sanglish version of Charles, which is the na Many people in hin Stock-heler than expected As I’ and without the Tsar’s trade would have killed you if you had been wrong I guess you have your answer now"

My eyebroent up "You’ve dealt with hi blud is the tamest of his pastimes"

"Your turn"

"Dare"

"I dare you to kiss me" I licked my lips and waited

"You don’t play around, do you?"

"No Why should I have to?"

"Well, then I guess I’ve got no choice, do I, darlin’?"

He leaned towardin a s closed with a sweep of auburn lashes I breathed hihest in his blood, as if I’d o, when I’d first snized the blud of other predators Now I smelled only him and me, and it was a pleasant and heady mix Just before his lips found , the slowness hich he tookI partedmore, and his hand caht, but not by his hand, and I sighed when his tongue finally foundand intense

I had little experience with kissing, but he had plenty, and he used it well Hot and sweet, firry for more He kissed me so carefully that my beast never rose; I felt all of the poith none of the frenzy, and, like a banked fire, the heat only grew the deeper it got When he finally pulled away, I realized that I’d slid down the bed ontothe fluffy white

"Your turn," he said, his voice dusky with proave me was so masculine, so confident, so seductive, that I stopped breathing "Now you kissmyself on an elbow, I leaned over with the same casual slowness he had used to torturewith a chaste kiss behind his ear

"Oh, you little rowled

"You didn’t say what kind of kiss or where," I said blithely, putting ainst the pillows "Your turn"

"Truth"

"What do you want to do right this s" The look he gave hpossessively over uess we’re even"

"I don’t think we are"

He caught ers, his lips so close I could feel their war toto stop that froedtwisted in the air between us, a breathless pause that reiving the sky per , and I took it as pero of the control I’d kept around hiht in his hair, and he pressed me back, deep into white blankets that billowed around us like clouds

I laughed fiercely into his irl," and licked a searing trail up ht behind asped and made fists in his hair No wonder he’d called old He was halfway on top ofhim there He ht of hiainst ain, his tongue dipping between , and I kissed hime around the waist, he pulled th of the bed He placed one hand onit down reat poem," he said

"You have me laid out before you, and you speak of poetry?" I couldn’t help laughing "Is that how things are done in your world?"