Duty At What Cost?. Michelle Conder

under such blazingly sexual intensity?

      ‘Do you?’

      As if sensing her near capitulation, he gave her a lupine smile. ‘Yes.’ He set her drink aside and swept her into his arms.

      Ava’s stomach flipped. She’d like to think that she’d let him walk her backwards onto the dance floor—although that would imply she still had some influence over her actions and she wasn’t sure that she did.

      ‘What about what I want?’ The question was meant to establish some sense of control on her part, but she suspected that he knew what he did to her and had seen right through it.

      He brought the hand holding hers towards her face and rotated it so that his knuckles gently drifted across her cheekbone. ‘This is what you want, Princess.’

      A cascade of sensations made her shiver and she told herself to tread carefully. Told herself that there was only one kind of man who parried around a woman all night and then approached her at the end. The kind her mother would have told her to steer well clear of. What it said about her wanting him regardless she didn’t want to think about.

      He was so sure. So confident. She should shoot him down in flames. Using his own pistol to do it.