and spice. Like fine-milled soap.”
His silvery eyes were suddenly pins, and she was a butterfly.
She could not possibly have spoken if she tried. She merely stared. Her breath lost.
He did not release her gaze. “I thought about it a good deal last night, when I was stretched out on my comfortable blue counterpane.” He delivered that like a spy offering a password to a sentry.
She said nothing.
He turned away.
She watched the slow insertion of the last candle.
And when he was done he went still and turned to her.
The silence now was as alive as the night and hummed a good deal of unspoken things. Are you flirting with me, Lady Derring?
“Do you snore, Captain Hardy?” she said softly.
She saw the breath leave him. His gray eyes flared to black.
It was the most thrilling, vixenish thing she’d ever done, that subtle question, which was born of real curiosity. But she knew immediately that she was quite in over her head.
She pivoted to leave, and swiftly.
She’d taken two steps when he said, his voice raised only a little, “Lady Derring . . . something puzzles me.”
She halted.
Closed her eyes.
Took a shuddering breath for courage.
Turned back to him. From the relatively safe distance of three feet, she said, “Surely not. We’ve established you know everything.”
His smile was small and patient. “You seem to excel at so very much here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. Yet you can’t seem to disguise how much you want me.”
One of the things Tristan excelled at was ambush.
Her eyes grew enormous as his words sank in.
She looked both stricken and resigned, like a thief nabbed in the act.
Finally she drew in a breath and resettled her shoulders, as though she’d been ruffled by a stiff wind.
“Well, Captain Hardy, I must take issue with your assessment, on the grounds that I’m not trying to disguise it at all.”
Holy—!
His breath left him in a gust.
And as she turned again to walk away his hand shot out.
It was a primal reflex, but not the about-to-fall-off-a-cliff sort. It was somewhere in between a cat with prey or a miser with gold.
He got hold of her forearm.
He held her like that long enough to feel brutish. Three seconds all told, though something had gone wrong with time—it seemed to have stopped—so it was difficult to know.
She ought to slap him.
He ought to let go.
Unless one counted lungs moving in and out, color flooding into cheeks, pupils flaring to shilling size, neither of them moved.
And then he slid his hand down, down, down along her arm to bracelet her wrist.
He felt her heart drumming against his fingertips. At least as hard as his was beating.
It was what he needed to know.
He tugged her up against his body.
It was nearly as much a collision as a kiss, at first, fierce and hard, as if they were both intent on punishing themselves and each other for wanting this.
This was a mistake. He’d known it was, and he could not stop himself from making it.
He fanned one hand against the small of her back; with the other he cradled her head, threaded his fingers up through her hair. And tugged her head back to take that kiss mercilessly, greedily, carnally, deeper.
She moaned softly. And opened to him with a sweetness and hunger that stunned him, then made him nearly savage. Her hands rose to grip his shirt and she pulled him hard up against her. He slid his hands down beneath the curve of her arse and scooped her up hard against the swell of his cock and he felt her ribcage jump against him as her breath snagged.
And then she shifted to fit him more snugly between her legs and pulled him closer and lust threatened to tear the top from his head.
It was already out of hand.
The hallway spun, as if he’d staggered from an opium den.
Her finger remained curled into his shirt. Her body was still crushed to his, and he could feel her heart beating against his body, in counterpoint to his.
He could rest his cheek on the top of her head if he wanted to. It was as seductive as those pillows in his room, a moment of infinite weakness.
God, how he wanted to.
Which was why he didn’t.
“I’m not a gentleman,” he said gruffly. Finally.
He didn’t know why these should be the first words he said after he surfaced from the kiss. A warning, perhaps. Or an explanation. Not an apology.
He would never apologize for something that could not be