Seen in that light, it was close enough to the truth that Jordan almost chuckled. He stared down into her stormy blue eyes and flushed face, wondering why, from the very first, she had always been able to make him laugh—wondering why he felt this consuming, unquenchable need now to possess and gentle her without breaking her spirit. She had changed tremendously during the past year, but she still suited him better than any other woman he could ever hope to find. "All this discussion of legalities has reminded me rather forcibly that I have several legal rights I haven't claimed in more than a year," he said, and caught her firmly by the arms, pulling her between his thighs.

"Have you no decency—" Alex burst out, squirming in mindless panic. "I'm still legally betrothed to your cousin!"

His chuckle was rich and deep. "Now there's a persuasive argument."

"I don't want you to kiss me!" Alexandra warned furiously, pushing hard against his chest with her flattened hands and straining backward.

"That's too bad," he softly replied, and hauled her up against the solid wall of his chest, wrapping his arm around her back and effectively trapping her hands and forearms between their bodies, "because I intend to see if I can still make you feel 'overheated.' "

"You're wasting your time!" Alexandra cried, turning her head aside, drowning in humiliation at the brutal reminder of how openly besotted with him she had been when she told him his kisses had warmed her heart and body. According to all she'd heard, Jordan Townsende's kisses were responsible for raising the temperatures of half the female population of England. "I was a naive child. I'm a grown woman now and I've been kissed by other men who do it every bit as well as you! Better in fact!"

Jordan retaliated by plunging the fingers of his free hand into the heavy hair at her nape and tugging sharply, forcing her head back. "How many have there been?" he asked, a muscle leaping in his taut jaw.

"Dozens! A hundred!" she choked.

"In that case," he drawled in a soft, savage voice, "you ought to have learned enough to be able to make me burn."

Before she could reply his mouth swooped down and captured hers with angry possessiveness, his lips moving back and forth in a ruthless, punishing kiss that was nothing like Tony's gentle ones or the few stolen by the occasional overamorous gentlemen eager to see whether or not she would permit him some liberties. This kiss was unlike any other because, beneath the ruthlessness of it, there was flowing a demanding persuasion, an insistence that she kiss him back that was almost beyond denial—a promise that if she yielded, the kiss might gentle and become something quite different.

Alexandra felt the silent promise, understood it without knowing how she did, and her whole body began to shake with terror and shock as his mouth gentled imperceptibly and began molding itself to the contours of hers, exploring her lips with slow, searching intensity, urging her to participate in the kiss.

A gasp behind them made Jordan loosen his grip and Alexandra whirl around, only to have his arm tighten, clamping her firmly to his side as they both looked at a horrified Higgins, who was in the act of escorting three men, including Lord Camden, into the library.

The butler and the three men all stopped short. "I—I beg your pardon, your grace!" Higgins burst out, losing his composure for the first time since Alexandra had known him. "I understood you to say that when the earl arrived—"

"I'll join you in a quarter of an hour," Jordan told his three friends.

They left, but not before Alexandra had noted the amused expressions on all the men's faces, and she turned on Jordan in humiliated outrage. "They're going to think we mean to continue kissing for another quarter of an hour!" she burst out. "I hope you're satisfied, you—"

"Satisfied?" he interrupted with amusement as he studied this tempestuous, unfamiliar, wildly desirable young woman who had once regarded him with childlike admiration in her glowing blue eyes. Gone were her unruly curls. Gone was the admiration in her eyes. Gone was the ingenuous hoyden he had married. In her place was this ravishing young beauty of uncertain temperament whom he felt an uncontrollable, irrational need to tame and to make respond to him as she once had. "Satisfied?" he asked again. "With that pitiful excuse for a kiss? Hardly."

"I didn't mean that!" Alexandra cried miserably. "Three days ago I was marrying another man. Have you no idea how odd those men must have thought it was when they saw you kissing me?"

"I doubt if anything we do will ever seem 'odd' to anyone," Jordan answered with equal parts of amusement and irony, "not when they've already witnessed the entertaining spectacle of me barging in on your wedding to put a stop to it."

For the first time, it occurred to her how comical that must have looked to Society—and how embarrassing it must have been to him—and Alexandra felt a tiny bubble of satisfied mirth.

"Go ahead and laugh," he invited dryly, watching her visibly struggling to remain coldly aloof. "It was funny as hell."

"Not," Alexandra corrected, keeping her face scrupulously straight, "at the time, however."

"No," he agreed, and a lazy, devastating smile suddenly swept across his tanned features. "You should have seen the look on your face when you turned around at that altar and saw me standing there. You looked as if you were seeing a ghost." For one brief moment, she had looked overjoyed—as if she were seeing someone infinitely dear to her, he remembered.

"You looked like the wrath of God," she said, uneasily aware of the magnetic charm he was suddenly exuding.

"I felt ridiculous."

Reluctant admiration for his ability to laugh at himself blossomed in Alexandra's heart, and for the moment she ignored the things she'd learned about him. Time rolled back and he was once again the smiling, compelling, achingly handsome man who had married her, teased her, and fought a mock duel in a glade with her. Unaware of the seconds ticking past, she stared up into his bold, mesmerizing grey eyes while her dazed mind finally accepted, fully and completely, that he was truly alive—that this was not a dream that would end as all her earlier ones had ended. He was alive. And he was, unbelievably, her husband. At least for the moment.

So lost was she in her own thoughts that it took a moment before she realized that his gaze had dropped to her lips and his arms were encircling her, drawing her against his hard frame.

"No! I—"