of emotions, as contrary as the woman before him. “What are you doing here, Emma?” he squeaked, his voice climbing to a pitch it hadn’t attained since he’d been a boy of fourteen.
With slow, languid movements, she peeled off her gloves, shedding the black leather like a snake he’d once observed with Seamus at the Royal Menagerie, coming free of its bothersome skin. “You can rest easy, Lord Scarsdale,” she drawled, gesturing to his prone form with her gloves before tossing the articles upon his bed.
“I don’t think I’ll ever rest easy again,” he said hoarsely. Not after this. From this moment forward, any time he entered his townhouse, and these rooms, he’d see her here. See her as she was now, looking ripe for seduction.
Emma laughed, the sound low. Throaty. Charles swallowed hard, or he tried to. Alas, who could have known the simple sound of a woman’s laughter could cause Charles’s shaft to rise and throb as it did now.
“No need for modesty.” Lowering her hands to her knees, she bent over him, leaving her cloak gaping, and revealing the low-necked crimson gown she wore behind that garment, the daring neckline which forced his eyes to those gently rounded breasts on perfect display. His mouth went dry, and he cursed the fire that had dimmed for failing to illuminate her body as it should, for denying him the true shade of that flesh. “It is not anything I’ve not seen before,” she drawled.
His gaze fixed on an intriguing crescent mark on the top of her right breast, it took a moment to register the words the young lady had spoken.
Nay, not the young lady. His betrothed. His former one anyway. But still.
Emma straightened and started away from him. Charles stared after her retreating frame, watching her as she took a small tour of his room.
It is not anything I’ve not seen before . . .
Which implied she’d seen . . . men. As he was now. Naked. Fury edged out the desire that had been coursing through his veins, a red-hot anger fueled by jealousy.
She thought she could simply deposit that revelation, and not speak any further on it?
Charles shoved himself up onto his elbows. “Which . . . men have you been seeing?” he asked with all the calm he could muster at the thought of Emma with . . . anyone. He’d choke the life out of the bastard. And then he’d revive him so he could kill him all over again. That nameless-for-now man his former betrothed had seen.
Or men?
Emma stopped her perusal of his room and glanced over her shoulder. Her lips pulled up at the right corner, in the hint of a smile. “You, Charles,” she drawled. “I’ve seen you.”
He opened and closed his mouth. Before . . . now?
Her crimson lips tipped up at the other side, forming a complete smile, bewitching him completely and freezing his breath in his lungs.
“Before now,” she said, following his silent questions with an unerring and unnerving accuracy.
“I don’t . . . recall that.”
“You should pay greater attention to your surroundings, then.” With that matter-of-fact set-down, she loosened the large crystal clasp at her throat. It gave with a faint click, and the garment slid in a noisy, shimmering heap to her feet.
Charles stilled for the second time since she’d stormed his chambers.
The daring red gown clung to her form, a figure he’d once taken as coltish, too foolish to see . . . and appreciate . . . her lithe frame, which conjured a warrior woman who, with her regality, grace, and strength, transcended time. Her legs that went on forever. The understated curve of her hips served only to accentuate lusciously curved buttocks. She was the very reason sailors dashed themselves against those jagged rocks.
“When?” From where he still lay sprawled on the floor, he asked that question quietly. “When did you . . . see me?” When really, the question that needed to be asked and answered was how in blazes had he been so much a fool to have been naked before Emma Gately, and been so oblivious to her nearness?
She caught one of the posters of his bed, and wrapped her arms about the mahogany pillar, studying Charles from around that carved wood. “The better question is how many times.”
He’d still argue his previously unasked question was the better one.
“You made something of a habit of swimming nude at your parents’ house parties, did you not?” Emma didn’t give him a