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exactly what we are playing for."
    He slid an arm around her shoulder, pulled her toward him, and kissed her.

CHAPTER 3
     
     
    Grace steeled herself against an assault, but his lips were unexpectedly gentle. And mobile. This was not a static kiss, the only type of kiss she'd ever known. His lips moved over her own, testing and tasting, tempting and confusing her.
    Her palms were pressed flat against his chest. He held one arm around her shoulders, lightly caressing her, just as he'd done with her hands. His other hand cradled her chin while he continued his slow exploration of her mouth. She flinched at the touch of his tongue tracing the seam of her lips. So thoroughly shaken at the very notion of tongues being involved in a kiss, and lost in the odd wet sensation of it, she did not at first realize what he wanted. When it came to her at last that his tongue was trying to coax open her lips, and his hand was trying to relax her jaw, she sucked in a startled breath — and in so doing, inadvertently parted her lips. In the next instant, his tongue was inside, inside her mouth.
    Grace had never experienced anything like this in all her life. Her entire body tingled and trembled, every inch of her heated and flushed. She ought to be disgusted, but she was not. She ought to push him away. But dear God in heaven, she did not want him to stop.
    A yearning that was both pleasure and pain spread through her body, coalescing in the most private part of her, setting off a warm throbbing between her legs. Her breasts tightened beneath her stays. Hardened nipples strained against the whalebone.
    She should not be feeling like this. She should impose more control over her body. But she couldn't stop the sensations flowing through her and over her. It was wrong. It was frightening.
    It was exciting.
    Her body seemed to have come alive in a whole new way, a way so unrecognizable that for an instant she felt like a stranger in someone else's skin. Someone loose and carnal, sensual and unbridled. So, this was passion. This was the exhilaration the bishop had warned her against.
    Remembering her husband's words caused her to be a little frightened at what was happening to her. Fear wound its way around tentative passion, intensifying it, adding more danger to the moment. Rochdale was infamous for using and discarding women. Publicly so. She should not allow him, of all people, to do this. Yet she could not seem to muster the will to put a stop to it. Instead, she simply allowed herself to experience it. For once in her life.
    And before she realized it, fear had been transformed into need and wanton desire.
    Grace kissed him back.
    Her tongue hesitantly touched his, and he responded by clasping her tighter against his chest, and setting up a dance where their tongues circled each other and retreated, circled and retreated. Heat and longing spread through her like a fever. She was lost in pure sensation.
    Her hand had somehow crept up over his shoulder and into his hair. Silky black hair between her fingers. Lord Rochdale's black hair.
    Lord Rochdale .
    His name and all it represented brought her back to earth with a thud.
    Dear God, the man was a devil. A black-hearted spellbinder. What had he done to her ?
    She pushed him away with such force he became unbalanced and almost slid to the floor. Grace pressed a hand to her mouth, horrified at what she'd allowed to happen. "How dare you," she said in a voice so strangled she hardly recognized it.
    Rochdale righted himself, straightened his neckcloth, and stared at her. "I beg your pardon?"
    "You have no right to kiss me like that. I cannot believe you are so lacking in decency that you would accost an unwilling woman, trapped in a carriage with nowhere to run."
    "Ah, but I am the man who debauches young ladies and publicly abandons them, am I not? You cannot expect decency from such a blackguard."
    "Ooh, you are loathsome!"
    He smiled and his teeth caught the moonlight, giving him a diabolical