Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,62
I find that erotic. And the top of your head comes to my collarbone. Which I like.”
She gave him one of her slow, slow, crooked smiles, as if the sheer mirth, were it to burst forth, would send tables toppling and objects flying about the room. “There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose, Captain Hardy.”
He smiled at her.
Her cheeks went pinker, which he didn’t mind a bit.
But his smile faded as he realized there was a reason he’d only skirted around her question.
His answers would reveal as much, or more, about himself as they did about her.
Because I kissed you for all of fifteen seconds and even now I think I can feel the imprint of your body against mine, as if you’d stamped me like a coin.
Because suddenly I am nearly as afraid of having you as I am of the prospect of never having you.
That was ridiculous.
Afraid couldn’t possibly be the word.
He’d run out of things to fear. He was never afraid anymore.
Unless it was of musicales.
He lowered his voice to reasonable, conversational tones. “Because it’s fundamental, the desire between a man and a woman. It’s an intangible thing, not something one can or ought to measure or dissect. It needn’t be anything more than desire and one need not feel guilty about satisfying it. And I think you are curious enough to let me do all the wicked things to you that I want to do.”
Her swift, sharp, secret intake of breath was perhaps the most erotic thing to happen to him to date.
It conjured an image of her, eyes half-closed, head thrown back, hair spilled across a pillow. He curled one hand into a tight fist, as if could contain all his lust there.
“CHECK. And MATE.”
“You bastard!” Mr. Farraday breathed in good-humored amazement.
Mr. Delacorte was celebrating with little gleeful hops in his chair, hands thrust upward in triumph.
But all the feminine heads had whipped toward them, uniformly reproachful.
“Begging your pardon, mesdames, sorry. The heat of competition, you see.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Delacorte, on your win. But I’m afraid you’ll need to put a pence in the jar, Mr. Farraday,” Angelique said.
“A pence, not a bean, as you did the other day,” Delilah added. “Don’t think we aren’t paying attention.”
He glared at her incredulously.
He slowly swiveled that glare about the room, as if, once again, he was wondering how he’d gotten there at The Grand Palace on the Thames in the first place, or perhaps searching for someone to take his side.
He just met limpid-eyed reproach from the women.
And a “what can you do, mate?” one-shouldered shrug from Tristan, who followed rules, and didn’t mind at all seeing the handsome squire called to task by two women.
He sighed heavily, pushed himself away from the table. Everyone watched Mr. Farraday trudge across the room. His pence clinked into the jar.
He returned to his chair.
They all smiled warmly at him.
And after what was clearly a valiant struggle not to smile, he smiled, too.
And all at once Tristan felt an errant little knife twist of resentment that her attention should be fixed elsewhere.
“Lady Derring . . .”
She turned back to him, her smile still in place.
“Why do you want me?”
She went still. She studied him, lamplight turning her eyes into enigmatic pools.
And then she just curved her lips in a little smile.
And then she pushed back her chair and stood to leave.
As she passed him, she bent slightly and whispered in his ear, “Because you want me.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was a negotiation now. Of that, Tristan was certain.
“Should not” happen again, she’d said. “Ought not” was also true.
“Will not” had not been said by either of them, and this was the lever he would use.
She would not “behave heedlessly.” She was a grown woman, and hardly a virgin. And it wasn’t heedless, if one deliberately made a choice to take a lover.
He suspected she knew that well.
She wasn’t to know that he was a ruthlessly subtle negotiator and he knew how to identify an opportunity and take the advantage.
Which was what he did the very next morning. He’d just turned the key in the lock of his room and was about to run downstairs to meet Massey when he saw her.
Arms full of folded linens.
She’d paused in a rectangle of wan light thrown in from the windows in the alcove on his floor. She was staring down at the street wearing a complicated expression. Wry, wistful. Pale shadows beneath her eyes.