Seduced by the Scoundrel by Louise Allen

and stretched and she found she could not take her eyes off him. She had seen him naked—wasn’t that enough? Did she have to do what she accused him of doing and ogle him, just because he was a man? A big, virile, exciting …
Oh, stop it!
    ‘Tell me why not,’ he said.
    ‘Because you are a hypocrite. You condemn the admiral for forcing that girl and yet you expect me to kiss you.’
    ‘Am I forcing you?’ He came round the table and sat on the edge of it, perhaps two feet from her. It felt far too close for comfort.
    ‘I have no experience of men. I do not know how to deal with the way you make me feel,’ she admitted. ‘I want to say no and somehow, when you touch me, I cannot. I must be very wanton,’ she said, looking away while she fought the blush that was heating her cheeks.
    ‘Not wanton, just sensual,’ Luc said. ‘Do you not like how it feels when we kiss?’
    ‘Yes, I do. And it is
wrong.’
    ‘It is perfectly right,’ he countered and reached out to turn her face to look at him. ‘Natural.’
    ‘I am betrothed,’ she said, shocking herself with the way she had lost sight of why she had ended up here. ‘I have hardly given that fact a thought since we hit the rocks. I have not thought of Viscount Bradon himself
once
until just now. The reason I was coming back from India was to marry him and I just did not think of him, even when you kissed me.’ How on earth could she have ignored something as important as that? How on earth could she have enjoyed another man’s caresses as she had? She stared at Luc, appalled at herself. ‘That is the most shocking thing of all.’
    * * * 
    Luc dropped his hand from where it cupped her cheek. Averil was betrothed? That should change nothing—and yet, subtly, it did. It made him want her more. He had never been competitive with Englishmen for their women. When he married it would be to a French
émigrée,
one of good birth and title. He would not ask for money—he had invested his prize money with care and had few expenses—nor for land—he would be the one providing that once Bonaparte was defeated and he could reclaim what was rightfully his. What he wanted was good French blood to breed back into the d’Aunay line.
    Once this episode was over he would either be dead or in a position to court a bride seriously. Bonaparte could not hold out much longer, he felt it in his bones; in three or four years he must be ready to return to France and fight to regain what was his by right.
    The woman in front of him knotted her hands into that ridiculous blanket, her face a picture of guilt and confusion. ‘Shocking that you should forget?’ Given the natural sensuality of her responses he found Averil’s expression amusing. ‘I do not think so. Surprising, perhaps. I suppose I could find it flattering.’ She sent him a withering look. ‘But I fancy that being caught up in a shipwreck and almost drowned may account for a little forgetfulness. Do you love him?’ Surely not, if she could forget, even when she was being kissed by another man—she might be sensual, but she was not wanton. But then, she had never been kissed before, he remembered.
    ‘Love? Why, no, but then I would not expect to. Lovehas nothing to do with marriage in aristocratic families, of course.’
    ‘Ah, so you think as I do. Marriage is a matter of dynasty and land. Your father has found you a good match?’ It must be if the girl had been sent all the way from India.
    ‘I have never met him, nor had a letter from him, but Papa arranged it all, so there was no need. It is an excellent match,’ she added.
‘Everyone
says so.’
    There was defiance in that statement and under it he sensed doubts. Any woman would have them, he supposed, sent so far from home and family to an unknown husband.
    ‘His father is the Earl of Kingsbury,’ Averil added as though playing a trump card.
    Yes, on paper a very good match indeed. Luc nodded.
    ‘You know him?’
    ‘I have come across