Devilish Page 0,63

suddenly stronger, and her lips trembled under the butterfly assault.

"But they are trying to kill you!"

"I'm safer now, I think," he said, still teasing her lips, her chin, her cheeks, with petals. "In Ferry Bridge it should have been an unfortunate duel. Today, a mysterious shooting. Now it's scandal and mayhem, with four corpses attached, three of them probably French. My suspicious death in the near future would raise altogether too many questions."

She gripped his wrist to still the flower. "Your unsuspicious death?"

"What could that be?" Unresisting, he said, "I'm a healthy man, and I intend to avoid obviously risky activities for the next little while."

Still, he could not guard against every possible "accident." She put both hands around his, and carried it to her cheek. "Today," she said, "in the middle of chaos. I thought..."

She wanted to retreat then, but she had already gone too far. Looking down at their hands, at a flower, she finished. "I thought what a waste our restraint might have been."

He did not pull away. Instead, after a moment, he drew their clasped hands toward himself. At the brush of lips against her knuckles, she looked up.

"And yet," he said, "the dangers have not changed."

"Isn't there a time for danger?" she whispered. "For risk? For casting caution on the flames?"

Mouth still brushing over her fingers, he let the flower fall. "Toss caution on the flames of passion? A common folly. Burns are remarkably painful, you know." But his lips still played fire against her skin. "You are speaking under the effect of danger and death, Diana."

"And you are not... Bey?" It felt so strange, so wonderfully strange, to use his name.

"Why are you still here? Why am I touching you?"

"Touch me more."

He pressed the palm of her hand to his open mouth, so her skin felt the hot moisture there. As he had done, so briefly, so naughtily, at the ball last year.

If you ever change your mind...

"More," she whispered.

Against her skin he asked, "How much more?"

She longed to cry, Everything! But the cost, the cost was still too high. "I want... I want to touch you, and kiss you. Is that possible?"

"Of course." He moved their linked hands toward her lips, and she kissed his hand. The first time her lips had tasted his skin.

It wasn't enough.

"I want to lie with you. Skin," she breathed, scarcely daring to speak the words, "to skin."

His eyes were steady and unshocked on hers. "That too you can have."

"I mean... I mean without... more."

He smiled, creases deepening. "You can have anything you want as you want it, my dear. I am not a callow youth."

"But you?"

"Will feast on skin, touch, and kiss."

She tightened her twined fingers with his and rested her head on them. "Why does it feel like starvation then?"

He gently drew their hands back to his mouth. "Perhaps we can feast. When did you last have your courses?"

Idiotically, her color flared at that subject. "Weeks ago. They are almost due again. Why? Oh." She stared at him, remembering Elf's pamphlet. "There's always risk."

"Did you not want to cast caution on the flames?"

Air became scarce. She had come here hungry for this, yet feeling safe behind the fact that it was impossible. That it posed too great a risk to her carefully planned life, and his.

"There is no need," he said against her knuckles. "You can have just what you want. You wanted to see me, I believe?"

He let go of her hand and stood to begin unfastening the cuffs of his shirt.

Diana gaped. He was going to take her literally, and strip? She hadn't meant that. She hadn't really thought how they would get from current state to nakedness. As he pulled his shirt out of his breeches, however, she couldn't bear to stop him.

But it was the first step.

To where? To what?

Could she finally satisfy all her burning curiosity?

Here.

With him?

If it were only curiosity, however, she would not feel this breathless sense of peril. They really shouldn't. They were playing with truly perilous flames.

Her heart raced so unsteadily she feared she would faint, so she picked up the glass and took a deep drink. Too deep, so she choked. When she had her breath back, he was laughing, the sort of gentle, warm laughter that friends share. It melted her, turning her soft as the fat tears of wax sliding down the side of the uneven candle.

Honesty and friendship. Honest embarrassment. Friendly humor. With this man she could permit herself to be exactly what