The Virgin's Pursuit. Joanne Rock

surged with carnal longing, and he tried to imagine what played through her mind.

      He would be lucky if he could make his legs walk back to the keep at this rate. The heavy weight between his thighs would not be eased anytime soon.

      “Lady, you misunderstand—”

      His words dried up in his throat as her fingers reached for the laces up the side of her surcoat.

      “I know little of men,” she said, sliding loose one of the ties until her surcoat hung shapelessly about her figure. “But I have heard men are moved by what they can see.”

      His eyes burned with the desire to blink, to give his brain even a moment’s respite from what he feared she was about to do. If he could have moved he would have reached to stop her. To save them both from the fierce tide of heat that rolled through him. Yet he stood frozen and watchful, like a great buck just before the firing of a deadly arrow.