house?”
Hastings had just taken off his shirt when the door of his dressing room opened. He turned around to find Helena, a green ribbon in her still quite short hair, leaning against the doorjamb, her fingers casually playing with the sash of her dressing robe. They sometimes opened the connecting door when they needed to speak at bedtime, so it was not an unusual sight to see her dressed so—except tonight there was no nightgown beneath. In fact, the thin green silk did nothing to disguise the shapes of her erect nipples, which pointed directly at his eyes.
His mouth went dry. “I will not further sample your”—she shifted slightly, and now the dressing robe clung slavishly to the outline of her hip and thigh—“admittedly considerable charms until you first remember everything.”
She smiled. “I have no intention of letting you touch my”—she glanced down at her person—“indeed considerable charms. I only need your help moving something.”
He was not assured. She looked far too…wolfish. “Not my person to your bed, is it?”
“Not in the least.”
Her words were uttered without hesitation, but something in her tone made his blood rush south in arousal. “So what then is this something you need moved?”
“My music stand.” She walked back toward her room and beckoned him to follow.
She never had told him the purpose for which she needed the music stand: She played no instruments and, as far as he knew, had never learned to read stave notation.
The music stand was in her bedroom, only a little distance from the connecting door, a delicate-looking specimen that was much heavier than it appeared, having been crafted from solid rosewood.
She returned to his bedroom and indicated a spot by the foot of his bed, a monstrous piece of furniture that had served as inspiration for the master of Larkspur’s marital bed. “Here, please.”
He hefted the music stand across the distance and set it down where she wanted, right by the bedpost, in his mind at least, to which the bride of Larkspur had been tied in the opening scene of his erotic story. “What devilry are you scheming, Helena?”
She did not answer him, but only gave orders. “Stand with your back to the bedpost.”
And when he had done so, she considered the stand—which had last been used by a much shorter person, possibly a child—and raised the music rest as high as it would go.
He still wasn’t quite sure what use she could wrest from the music stand, but he was beginning to grasp what she had planned for him. The question was, did he want to acquiesce to her wishes?
He must, because as she pulled out the sash from her dressing gown, causing the latter to fall apart and reveal her from sternum to mons pubis, he only stared, his breath coming in gulps. She took his wrists and tied them together behind his back and to the far side of the bedpost. He did nothing to impede her, but only continued to stare, the size of his lust doubling with every glimpse of her pretty, pretty nipples.
“If you will excuse me for a second,” she said with excessive politeness, her eyes gleaming.
She disappeared into her room and did not come back with the dressing robe. He’d seen her naked in bed, but to see her in motion, her pert breasts bobbing ever so slightly—he panted.
“Read this aloud for me, darling.”
He hadn’t even noticed that she’d put two sheets of paper on the music stand—two pages from his manuscript. “Read that?”
“Yes, that. Or I’m going to put my clothes back on.”
He knew that must not happen, but it was nearly impossible to tear his eyes away from her legs and the juncture of her thighs.
She came closer, took his chin, and turned his face toward the music stand. “Read.”
He cleared his throat and tried to concentrate on the words before him. “‘Now I am the one tied to the bedpost. She inspects me from all angles, smiling as if she has been let in on a marvelous secret.’”
He looked toward Helena; she, too, was smiling, one hand on the bedpost, the other reaching out to trail down his arm. “Keep reading.”
Her touch burned. His voice turned unsteady. “‘She pulls out her hairpins and shakes her head. Her hair falls free, a glorious cascade, strands of it brushing her taut nipples.’”
“Hmm,” said Helena. “Alas, I can’t reenact the hair. But at least I still have taut nipples, do I not?”
She touched one nipple, lightly squeezing it between two