A Rogues Proposal

"Whatever-whoever." He bit off the words. Towering over her, his hands on his hips, he captured her gaze. "Bad enough you're surrounded by a gaggle of fortune hunters-that doesn't excuse your behavior tonight. You know damn well not to go anywhere alone with any man. What the hell did you think you were doing?"

Her spine stiffened; her chin rose. Her eyes flashed a warning. "You heard. I happen to like etchings."

"Etchings!" Jaw clenched, he only just managed not to roar. "Don't you know what that means?"

"Etchings are prints made from a metal plate on which someone has drawn with a needle."

She capped the comment by putting her pert nose in the air; Demon tightened his fingers about his hips against the urge to tighten them about her. He bent forward, lowering his face so it was closer to hers. "For your information, a gentleman offering to show a lady etchings is the equivalent of him inviting her to admire his family jewels."

Flick blinked. Puzzled, she searched his eyes. "So?"

"Aargh!" He swung away. "It's an invitation to intimacy!"

"It is?"

He swung back to see her lip curl.

"How like the fashionable to corrupt a perfectly good word."

"Remington was looking to corrupt you."

"Hmm." She looked at him, her expression stony. "But I do like etchings. Do you have any?"

"Yes." The answer was out before he'd thought. When she raised a brow, he grudgingly elaborated, "I have two scenes of Venice." They hung on either side of his bed. When he invited ladies to see his etchings, he meant literally as well as figuratively.

"I don't suppose you'd invite me to see them?"

"No." Not until she agreed to marry him.

"I thought not."

He blinked, and scowled at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" Her cryptic utterances were driving him crazy.

"It means," Flick enunciated, her accents as clipped as his, "that it's become increasingly clear that you want me merely as an ornament, a suitable, acceptable wife to parade on your arm at all the family gatherings. You don't want me powerfully at all! That doesn't impress me-and I've been even less impressed by your recent behavior."

"Oh?"

The single, quietly uttered syllable was a portent of danger; she ignored her reactive shiver. "You're never there-never about! You don't deign to waltz with me-you've driven me in the park precisely once!" Looking into his face, fists clenched, she let loose her pent-up frustrations. "You were the one who insisted on bringing me to London-if you thought this was the way to get me to marry you, you've seriously miscalculated!"

Her eyes narrowed as she looked into his. "Indeed, coming to London has opened my eyes."

"You mean it's shown you how many puppies and fortune hunters you can have at your beck and call."

His growl was a grating rumble she had to concentrate to hear; her reply was a sweet smile. "No," she said, her tone that of one explaining a simple matter to a simpleton. "I don't want puppies or fortune hunters-that wasn't what I meant. I meant I've seen the light about you!"

Eyes mere slits, he raised one brow. "Indeed?"

"Oh, indeed!" Buoyed on an outrush of pure release, Flick gestured wildly. "Your women-ladies, I'm sure. Particularly Celeste."

He stiffened. "Celeste?"

There was demand in his tone, along with a clear warning. Flick heeded the first but not the second. "You must remember her-dark hair, dark eyes. Enormous-"

"I know who Celeste is." The steely words cut her off. "What I want to know is what you know of her."

"Oh, nothing more than anyone with eyes knows." Her own eyes, filled with fury, told him precisely how much that was. "But Celeste is by the way. At least, if we're ever to marry, she will certainly have to be 'by the way.' My principal point, however, is this."

Halting directly in front of him, she looked into his face, and hissed, "I am not your cousin, to be watched over in this dog-in-the-manger way!"

He opened his mouth-quick as a flash, she pointed a finger at his nose. "Don't you dare interrupt-just listen!"

He shut his mouth; the way his jaw set, she felt reasonably sure he wouldn't open it again soon. She drew in a deep breath. "As you well know, I am not some eighteen-year-old i

"I want to talk, walk, waltz and drive-and if you wish to marry me, you'd better see it's with you!"

She waited, but he remained preternaturally still. A sense of being too close to something dangerous, something barely controlled, tickled her spine. Hauling in a breath, she kept her eyes steady on his, unusually dark in the weak candlelight. "And I will not be marrying you unless I'm convinced it's the right thing for me. I will not be browbeaten, or pressured in any way."

Demon heard her words through a smothering fog of seething rage. Muscles in his shoulders flickered, twitched-his palms itched. The injustice in her words whipped him. He'd done nothing for any reason other than to protect her. His body was about to explode, held still purely by the force of his will, which was steadily eroding.

She'd paused, searching his face; now she drew herself up and coolly stated, "I will not be managed by you."

Their gazes locked; for one long moment, absolute silence held sway. Neither moved-they barely breathed. The conflagration within him swelled; he locked his jaw, and endured.

"I refuse-"

He reached out and pulled her into his arms, cutting the statement off with his lips, drawing whatever repudiation she'd thought to make from her mouth, then he plundered, searched, took all she had and demanded, commanded, more.

He drew her against him, hard against the unforgiving rock his body had become. His mind was a seething cauldron of emotions-rage colliding hotly with passion and other, more elemental needs. He was coming apart-a volcano slowly cracking, outer walls crumbling, blown asunder by a force too long compressed. Only dimly did he recall that he'd wanted to shut her up, wanted to punish her-that wasn't what he wanted now.

Now, he simply wanted.

With a desire so primitive, so primally powerful he literally shook. For one instant, he stood on the cusp, quivering, the last shreds of restraint sliding through his grasp-in that moment of blinding clarity he saw, understood, that he'd asked too much of himself, too much of who he really was. Remington had provided the last straw, piling it on top of more amorphous fears-such as what he would do if she fell in love with someone else. How he would cope if she did.

He'd assumed he could control the thing that was inside him-the emotion she and only she evoked. In that quivering, evanescent instant, he knew he'd assumed wrong.

With the last shreds of his will, he forced his arms to ease just enough to give her leeway to pull away, to escape. Even in extremis, he didn't want to hurt her. If she struggled, or even remained passive, he could fight, hold back, endure, and eventually releash his demons.

She grabbed the chance and pulled her arms from between them; something inside him howled. He braced himself for her shove on his chest-whipped himself to let her go-

Her hands caught his face, framed it. Her lips firmed, then angled under his; her fingers slid into his hair.

She kissed him hungrily. Voraciously. As powerfully demanding as he.

His head spun. Desire exploded. He was lost.

So was she-no angel, now, but a woman wild, demonically demanding, flagrantly inciting-

Madness.

It caught them up-set them free.

Flick gloried in the rush, gloried in the sense of being impossibly alive. Gloried in the hard body against hers, the chest like rock against her aching breasts, the thighs like pillars trapping hers. His lips bruised hers and she exulted; his hard hands held her brutally close, lifting her, rocking her-she only wanted to be closer.