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Not from Eleanor

Her arms went around his neck and one hand curled into his hair; his ribbon fell to the floor and her body cahed into his ave a little moan when his hand stroked her back

It wasn’t that women hadn’t done the same before He kne to turn a woman’s body into molten liquid, to shape and , so she couldn’t remember her own na was unsteady before he tried his practiced caresses It didn’t have to do with his title, because he’d already learned that she didn’t care about it It didn’t have to do with his beauty, because he didn’t have much And it didn’t have to do with his ainst hi to do with ht occurred to hi of him?" he demanded

"Yes," she breathed "What?"

His heart thudded and he pulled free of her hands

She pulled hiroaned There was so about the contrast between her composed, snappy personality and the wildness she unleashed in him that made him unable to control hi her while she fantasized about someone else

He kissed her as if to convince both of them that he owned her, that he controlled her Eleanor was too free to be controlled And yet when she pressed against him and craved him, obviously craved him…he believed

He couldn’t not believe He was only adown her back, circling that s a corset?" he rew even harder, if that were possible "What do you think?"

His hands, practiced and sure, roaown of tobin silk, so her ear

She shrugged "I have no idea My sister ordered it"

"This piece at your bodice is gauze, a very thin silka corset?" she demanded

"That is the real question"

There was a scrabble at the door and Villiers sprang to her openHe looked back for one more drink of her, to see the color in her cheeks, her tumbled hair, her desirous eyes

"I’ll discover the answer to that question tonight," he said, and it ca like a vow

Chapter Sixteen

Eleanor bathed in silence, her ame with Villiers But there was no reason not to play

Flirting with him felt fresh…clean It felt as if all the empty places inside her that had yearned for Gideon thesefilled, even if Villiers wasn’t another Gideon, and even if she wasn’t falling in love with hiht that would make most of the maidens in the ton swoon from shock Men were the only ones allowed to lust; women were allowed only an impassioned yet mysteriously platonic "love" Not to be consummated, naturally, until all the necessary papers and ceremonies were tidied up

Gideon had been slender, young, and beautiful Villiers was hard, masculine, and--not bitter, but sardonic There was a dark core to him that she would never know Not that she needed or wanted to know it, she reminded herself

She wanted his body She couldn’t bring herself to feel shaht to But she’d never been able to feel particularly shameful when she loved Gideon either

Villiers’s very touch ht out the same side of her that had enticed Gideon into a haymow, the side of her that dared Villiers to wonder whether she earing a corset