My Reckless Surrender by Anna Campbell

a friend over her honor? An honor that after tonight she could no longer claim? Her hands clenched in his coat.
    â€œSteady on, old man. Not worth losing a chum over a bit of muslin.”
    â€œSo you choose the second option?”
    Belton sounded considerably shakier—and more sober. “Good gad, no. I’ve seen you shoot the club out of an ace at Manton’s.”
    â€œThen I suggest you choose the first option.”
    â€œFirst option?”
    â€œLeave. Now.”
    â€œOh. Right. Assuredly.” Diana heard bootheels scrape across cobblestones as Belton beat a hurried retreat. “No offense meant to you or your lady, old man. No offense.”
    Over the noise from the street, Diana listened to the drunkard’s stumbling departure. She assumed it was safe to look up, but still she kept her head buried against Ashcroft. Beneath her cheek, his heart thumped steadily.
    She was all kinds of a fool to trust this embrace. His armspromised safety and security. Lying promises. Those were the last things Ashcroft could give her. Those were the last things she wanted from him.
    But she couldn’t forget how quickly he’d shielded her. When she deserved no such consideration.
    Her heart contracted in miserable denial of everything she’d learned about Ashcroft tonight. She desperately wanted him to be a pig of a man. She wanted him to treat her badly. She didn’t want to like or respect Tarquin Vale.
    Because then she might need to feel guilty about what she did to him.

Chapter Five
    H e’s gone.” Lord Ashcroft’s whisper was a breath across the top of Diana’s head.
    â€œI won’t…” Her unsteady response was muffled against his shoulder. A woman who had just shuddered to completion in public shouldn’t be backward about voicing her wishes, but forcing the words out was impossible.
    Shame crushed her in a grip of steel. Her belly cramped with a vile mixture of fear and self-disgust.
    After tonight, there was a stain on her soul. One could wash a soul clean, surely? Good works, prayer, repentance. But with every minute in Ashcroft’s disconcerting company, her certainty of eventual salvation faded.
    I’m not a whore.
    The emphatic declaration lacked conviction when she remembered how she’d yielded to his caresses.
    â€œIt’s all right. He didn’t see your face.” Ashcroft’s voice was a deep rumble under her ear, and his arms tightened around her. She fought unsuccessfully against deriving comfort from his embrace.
    â€œI won’t…” She jerked her head up and gulped in a lungful of air. She felt like she hadn’t taken a breath in an hour. “I won’t let you have me against a wall.”
    She read reluctance in the way he withdrew, as if he derived strength from their embrace just as she did. Oh, how she deluded herself. She stood trembling while he removed his coat and slung it over one broad shoulder.
    â€œContrary to what that blundering fool indicated, I usually restrain myself from rutting in backstreets.”
    â€œHe said…” She flinched to put Belton’s assumptions into words. That any trull would do for Lord Ashcroft, and tonight the trull was Diana Carrick. Although the Lord Ashcroft she’d imagined was just such a profligate lover.
    When had she started to think of him as more?
    No, he was a man who treated women as casually as the scythe sliced a blade of wheat. One moment of thoughtless kindness didn’t compensate for a lifetime of sin.
    With unsteady hands, she tugged her bodice up. She must appear an utter slattern. Humiliation prickled her cheeks, and she fumbled.
    With an efficiency that irked because such coolness was completely beyond her, Ashcroft tweaked her dress into decorum. His hands were adept, and little trace remained of the desperate, shaking man of a few minutes ago.
    His control made her feel even more of a trollop. Satisfaction still swirled