"Do you want to kiss me, Mr. Gallagher?"

Cade almost swallowed his cigar. Do you want to kiss me?

What on God's green earth could he say to that? Jolted cruelly back to reality, his mind whirred like a computer through countless impossibilities, distilled finally down to two: Lie and tell her he didn't, which would be unconscionably cruel; or tell her the truth, which would most likely land him in more trouble than he cared to think about.

It was probably gut instinct that made him do neither of those things, but instead try to laugh his way out of it. To make light of it. A joke.

Tossing his cigar over the balustrade with an exaggerated, almost violent motion, he snaked one arm around her waist. The other he hooked across her back at shoulderblade height, and laying her against it, arched his body over hers in broad parody of some old silent movie clip he'd seen recently, he couldn't recall exactly where--the Academy Awards, maybe?--about an Arab sheik in flowing robes and headdress seducing a wild-eyed maiden in a tassel-draped tent.

"Kees you? he intoned in a ludicrous and excruciatingly awful mishmash of several different accents--he had no idea where he'd gotten that from. "Oh-ho-ho, madmoiselle..."

Startled eyes gazed up at him. He felt a sensation of falling, as if the ground beneath his feet had dropped away.

What now? He had no idea what he was supposed to say next. That was the trouble with those silent movies, he thought. They were silent. Short on dialogue, long on action. And he was pretty sure he did know what action was supposed to come next.

Don't do that. You can't. You'd be crazy to do that.

Then came the smallest of sounds...the soft rush of an exhalation. Her breath was sweet and faintly wine-scented, so close he felt the stirring of it on his own skin. So near to his...her lips parted. Slowly, slowly her eyes closed.

Lord help me, he thought, and lowered his mouth to hers.

He had in impression of warmth and softness, of sweetness and innocence. Of purity. It occurred to him to wonder whether his might even be the first lips to ever have touched hers, and the thought both excited and shamed him. Is that what it's all about? he wondered. Is that why I want her so much? Nothing to do with exotic beauty and forbidden fruit, only the thirst of the conqueror for undefiled lands to claim as his own.

His thirst was in danger of blossoming into fullblown lust.

He felt the flutterings of her instinctive resistance. If only he hadn't! If only she'd responded openly, brazenly to his kiss, he might have been able to keep it as he'd intended it to be--blatantly mocking--and end it there. But that tiny faltering, that faint gasp of virginal hesitation...It stirred some primitive masculine response deep within him, so that her hesitation affected him not as a warning, but as a challenge. And an embrace meant only to lighten the mood and diffuse dangerous emotions became instead a seduction.