Her fingers lingered against mine as we reached for the unopened letter, her defiance already rising like a challenge I was born to meet. Nessa Ogilvie, my rival for the marquessate, with that sharp tongue and the body that pressed too close in the shadowed hall.
I told myself it was strategy, this need to take her in hand. Yet the hidden passage called, promising the darkness where her resistance might finally crack under my control. Every document we shared only tightened the noose around the independence we both guarded.
One more word of argument and I would bend her to the low shelf, my hand delivering the discipline she secretly craved. The question was whether either of us could survive what came after.
