Virtue v-1

"You are an incorrigible, unscrupulous, card-sharping, horse-thieving baggage!"     Marcus declared. "By God, someone had better take you in hand, before you do some serious damage and find yourself at the end of the hangman's rope."     He jerked the reins from her grasp and guided the horse over to the side of the road, in the shadow of a bramble hedge.     "What are you doing?" Judith demanded.     "I don't know yet." He turned on the bench, catching her shoulders, and the minute he touched her that jolting current surged between them. Judith looked into his eyes, glittering with purpose, and she shivered, feeling the heat in her belly slowly turning bone and sinew to molten lava.     "You weave the strangest magic, Judith," he said, his voice a husky murmur, his eyes holding hers. "You confuse me so much I don't know whether I want to beat you or make love to you… but I have to possess you one way or the other."     Marcus pulled her against him, his mouth coming down on hers with a crushing violence akin to punishment. Judith responded unhesitatingly to the bruising pressure, her lips parting for the determined thrust of his tongue. Her hands found their way around his neck, her fingers raking through his thick, dark hair…