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closed the distance between them and took her in his arms. His lips were gentle yet possessive, their passion igniting a fire in her soul. Her nipples hardened and ached for his touch. The simmering heat low in her belly flared into life. She felt herself grow moist for him and knew she had to stop this, now. Turning her face away to break the contact of their mouths, she placed her palms flat against his chest to free herself.
    ‘Marcus…’

    But he found her mouth again despite all her prevarications and kissed her with a thoroughness to set every nerve in her body tingling. Such dangerous temptation. He had never kissed her like this before, never touched her with such intensity, never looked at her with such ravishing hunger in his eyes. And she had not realised how much it would affect her. She could not think straight, felt herself succumbing to the madness of this overwhelming desire that was exploding between them.
    Her blood was pounding. Her breathing was ragged. His hands worked a magic that rivalled his lips. From the distant edges of her mind the last vestiges of sanity yelled at her to stop before she destroyed everything for which she had worked so hard. Every touch, every kiss, was breaking down the barricades she had erected around her heart. Temptation whispered again louder than ever, seeking to sway her and coming dangerously close to succeeding. If she allowed him into her body, if she gave herself to him, any small pride she had managed to salvage would be destroyed. And even knowing that truth she still wanted him, wanted him more than ever she had done. And she yielded to him with her lips.
    It was Marcus who broke the kiss. Yet he did not release her. She could feel the rigidity of his manhood against her belly, sense the strain and need that quivered through it. Where her hand rested against his neck she could feel the fast, hard throb of his blood. There could be no doubting the intensity of his desire rivalled her own. He stared down into her eyes as he slid his thumb across her cheek in a tender caress. Such a small, gentle gesture but one so powerfully moving that it made her tremble. ‘Until later,’ he said and his voice was low and husky and filled with promise.
    The words seemed to echo in the bedchamber long after he had gone downstairs to greet the guests she had invited, fanning those embers of doubt over her plan, over all that she had plotted to do, into the first small flicker of a flame. Sitting there alone in her bedchamber, on the verge of executing the vital step of her plan, she hesitated, unsure if she were doing the right thing. Things between them were not as they had been. Then Amanda’s taunting words whispered through her mind again. And when she closed her eyes she could see again the young widow’s features, beautiful and mocking, as they stood alone in the ladies’ withdrawing room at that ball. And smell again that cloying heavy scent of jasmine that made her want to retch. And the memory slashed across her heart, both sobering and strengthening her in an instant. Ellen hardened her heart and turned her back on the doubts that niggled at her. She wanted this. It was everything she had worked for. And she would not falter now in this final furlong.
     
    The tension at the dinner was so palpable between them that Ellen did not know how Lord and Lady Willaston could fail to be aware of it. The very air seemed to spark with it. His eyes, when they found hers, were dark and heated and dangerous. Everything about him seemed primed, intense, focused…barely held in check. Awareness tingled through her, making her feel every beat of her heart, every thrum of her pulse. Strength. Virility. Masculinity. She was attuned to his every nuance, connected to him in some way that she could not sever, no matter how hard she tried to engage in conversation with Lady Willaston. She picked at her meal, her appetite crushed by anxious anticipation. The clock crawled by and that