“You’ve finished drinking and smoking and cursing and . . . the other mysterious things you do in the smoking room . . . for the evening?”
Daphne had never watched a doorknob turning with as much breathless anticipation as she had a moment ago.
She’d excused herself after dinner, quietly demurred regarding gathering in the sitting room, as the rules allowed a few times a week, and gone up to the suite just a few minutes ago.
And not more than ten minutes later Lorcan had appeared.
“A bit crowded in the smoking room, what with the size of Lord Vaughn’s head.
“But I’ll gladly endure his company if you’d like to be alone,” he offered, after a moment.
“No,” she said quickly. “That is, you don’t have to leave.”
He stood at the end of the room, restlessly shifting from foot to foot, watching her knitting needles flash in and out of the coverlet she was knitting.
“I could read to you,” she offered. “Or you could hold my yarn while I knit.”
This particular menu of entertainments made him snort, which made her laugh.
“I could draw a target on a piece of foolscap and practice knife throwing while you read to me,” he countered.
“Is your knife arm growing rusty while we’re cooped up, then?”
His smile started crooked, then spread and became a soft laugh. “It’s just that I’m not a lazy man, Daphne. I’m not meant to be confined. I’m always after besting myself at . . . everything I do.”
Well.
And those words throbbed with unmistakable meaning in the room.
“We can play Spillikins,” she suggested shyly.
The suggestion took him almost comically aback.
And then he went very still.
She watched another inspiration dawn across his face, and one of his eyebrows crept upward. “Very well. Spillikins . . . but with stakes.”
“Stakes?”
“Yes,” he said as if this went without saying. “Indulge me in one of my favorite things, if you would: a good wager.”
“I haven’t any pennies to spare. My most valuable pair of stockings went up in smoke. You can’t have my astrolabe back. I like it.”
“A kiss if I win.”
Her hands stilled on her yarn. She stared at her fingers as if she’d never seen them before.
What a talent he had for erasing all of her thoughts and replacing them with nothing but sensation.
She contemplated saying, “But what if that’s what I want, too?” For the pleasure of watching his expression change.
She didn’t know if it was what she wanted.
Or rather: she wanted to kiss him again. He likely knew it.
She didn’t want consequences.
She could not have it both ways.
And then she understood his strategy: he wanted it. And very much.
This was his way of allowing her to choose it.
“Done,” she said.
She had the pleasure of watching the most carnal of satisfactions darken his eyes.
“And when I win . . .” She gathered the nerve to say it. And inspiration was upon her. “I want your earring.”
He went absolutely still, his face, for an instant went almost cold and speculative.
And then his expression evolved into one of rank respect.
That earring was worth hundreds of pounds. And it would change her life.
And for an instant Daphne was afraid that she had overshot her mark. That he might not want to kiss her several hundred pounds’ worth.
“Well played,” he finally conceded, quietly. “We’ll make a sporting woman of you yet. I agree to your terms.”
Her breath hitched.
“Though, of course, you can’t win.” He held his hand out flat over the floor. “Do you see this? No board was ever steadier. I can slice the gizzard of a pirate with the tip of my rapier in the dark of night on the deck of a ship listing in a storm. I can shoot the eye out of a mosquito at fifty paces.”
“Impressive. No wonder the South Sea is populated by little mosquitos wearing eye patches.”
His little shout of delighted laughter lit her clear through like a sunburst.
“Have you seen my embroidery, Lorcan? Absolutely flawless. I can patiently render the most tedious of inspirational phrases on any pillow as smoothly as the finest calligraphy. My mending? Every stitch exquisitely straight and tiny. My knitting? Tell me whether you can see any light through these rows.”
She held up the beginnings of the coverlet she was knitting and he peered at it. “I see a hole big enough for a mosquito wearing an eyepatch to fit through.”
“Lies,” she said indignantly.
He laughed softly.
Surprisingly, she thoroughly enjoyed the mutual bragging. In his presence, unanticipated corners of her character seemed to be unfolding like a secret letter written long ago.
“And furthermore, I had the extraordinary nerve to leap from a crate into the dark right into the arms of a man I couldn’t even clearly see.”
“Seldom have I such a worthy opponent,” humored the man who dove into the water to save a child and fought pirates, somberly.
He pulled the little table in front of the settee.
And sat down next to her.
“Let the slaughter begin.”
She hesitated, but only because the moment she set her knitting aside the clock would start ticking on when her next kiss could very well occur. Or when a fortune that could restore her choices and save her family would be hers.
The moment she did set it aside, her heart leaped, then began a sort of skittering, rabbit-kick rhythm.
He lifted the Spillikins from their tin.
“You see, Daphne,” he began, as if continuing a conversation already in progress, “I think you have come to think of me as something like a large pet.”
She stared at him, astonished. “What on—I most definitely do not think of you as a pet.”
“Hairy, a little unpredictable, occasionally barks but mostly manageable.”
“Ah. I see your point.”
“This is all just to remind you that I am absolutely ruthless. And I know that rules make you feel safe. To you, they’re like the rungs in a ladder, aye? Or like a net below you that will catch you. Whereas I look at the rules, and like a mosquito wearing an eye patch, I see how I can maneuver through them.”
“Mmm. Are you going to natter and bluff your way through this, or are we going to play?”
“In a hurry to be kissed, are you?”
She clapped her mouth closed.
“Do you want to do the honors?” he asked.
She gathered the sticks into her fist and let them fall with a satisfying clatter.
She stared at the complicated little heap.
She hadn’t been lying: she had a precise and critical eye, honed from years of poking thread through needles and finding the flaw or the missing penny in a household budget or the dust in a corner.
With exquisite care she chose and withdrew a stick. Not a single other stick so much as moved a hair.
She showed her prize to him, eyebrows arched, and gently laid it down.
He immediately ducked his head and squinted, making a rather entertaining show of examining the pile.
“Do you know why I love these kinds of searches, Daphne?” His voice was abstracted, almost a murmur, so apparently seriously did he take his stick inspection. “. . . it’s because that feeling when you find just the right stick . . . the one you can slide with ease from the pile without disturbing any of the others . . .” His hand reached, hovered, then retracted, as he shook his head, changing his mind. “. . . it’s a bit like discovering those secret places on a woman’s body. The ones that will . . . no, not that one, either . . .” He rejected another stick. “. . . the ones that will make her sob and cry out with pleasure.”
Daphne went rigid.
Her mouth dropped open.
She closed it quickly.
He wasn’t looking at her. He tipped his head to inspect the pile from another angle. “I like to start by trailing my fingers along the curve of her calf . . .” and suddenly his was a mesmerist’s voice as he tipped his head to investigate yet another angle “. . . just my fingertips, you see, like feathers, lightly, so softly, drawn over her skin . . .”
His voice trailed like feathers over her senses.
All the tiny hairs on the back of her neck went erect.
Followed by her nipples.
“. . . until I reach the hollow behind her knee. And then I linger there with my lips, and my tongue and my fingers . . . oops, not that one . . .” He retracted his outstretched hand from a choice.
He hadn’t so much as glanced up at her through this entire little soliloquy.
Daphne realized her lips had dropped open a little. She was now breathing in swift little gusts.
“And then with my lips I continue on their leisurely way . . . up . . . and up and up . . . until I reach that tender place inside her thigh. And oh, that place, it’s like satin, so sweet, so hidden, so secret . . .” he paused and squinted at the stack “. . . and by the time my tongue and my lips and my fingers have reached that destination her quim is so wet . . . and so hot . . . that I can just slide my finger right into—ah, here’s the one.”
And as he slowly, triumphantly, flawlessly withdrew his chosen stick, Daphne all but went up in flames.
Heat engulfed her, head to ankle. And from her ankle to her . . . her . . . word that began with “Q” . . . a trail of skin tingled as surely as though she’d been sprinkled with cinders.
She had never considered her leg as a sort of sensual road leading to one particular destination.
Of course, that only implied her entire body was a sensual road.
With words only he’d done this.
Imagine what actual fingers . . . and lips . . . and tongues would do.
She stared at Lorcan, dumbstruck. Absolutely livid.
Shockingly aroused.
Thoroughly impressed.
He stared back.
“Your turn,” he reminded her politely.
He wasn’t blinking.
All of her blood seemed pooled between her legs. Which meant there was none left available to her brain with which to formulate thoughts, let alone words, let alone to surgically choose a stick from an increasingly precarious Spillikins pile.
He gazed back at her sympathetically. “Perhaps it will help if you remember how precisely you knit.”
Which made her imagine driving a sharpened Spillikins javelin-style right through his forehead.
She ducked her head. She blindly regarded the Spillikins.
Inhaling deeply, in the hopes it would clear her head like a good breeze clears cobwebs, she reached for the stick.
The blood simmering in her veins made her hand visibly tremble. It was all but useless.
Short of taking a moment to put her head out the window, there wasn’t much she could do about it. She reached for a stick. Closed two fingers over it. And as she lifted it brushed the one next to it and suddenly all was chaos.
They stared at the little collapsed pile.
“Oh, what a pity,” he said kindly.
She was torn like a wishbone between regret that the word “bastard” had sprung to mind so swiftly, since surely this was emblematic of her plummet into iniquity, and a new appreciation of its power.
“Hallelujah” was another word that came to mind, and it was equally troubling, given the circumstances.
Surely, he could see her heart pounding in her throat.
It wasn’t fair. But she of course couldn’t say that aloud. She would sound like a petulant child. She was naive, and she hadn’t anything equivalent in her arsenal with which to combat him, and he likely knew it.
Just as he’d somehow known precisely how she would respond.
Well, he’d warned her.
“Two out of three.” Her voice was an embarrassing near croak.
They stared at each other across the table.
Firelight had turned his skin to copper, and his eyes to gold.
He appeared to be considering this.
“If the price is too high, I’ll release you from the bargain, Daphne. And I shall not bear a grudge.”
His voice was calm and nearly uninflected. The voice of a man who had gambled and won countless times. A tone that could mask a million emotions.
She could see herself reflected in his pupils. She could read nothing of his thoughts. But there was something watchful, perhaps even braced, about him. As if so very much hinged on her answer.
And exultation slowly bloomed in her. He powerfully wanted to kiss her again.
All of this was a way to arrange it so that she could if she wanted to.
She could blame a wager and a sense of honor for kissing him, rather than her own clearly lustful, newly discovered animal nature.
“It’s not too high,” she almost whispered. “It’s a fair wager.”
His pupils flared hot and black.
There was an outrageous answering throb between her legs.
She did not think she’d ever before factored into a man’s appetites.
She’d never dreamed she possessed appetites.
Both of these things were like discovering powers she did not fully understand and was uncertain yet how to control, like fire-breathing, or flight.
She had never wanted and feared something in such desperate and equal measure, something that was reckless and mad, purely hedonistic.
If she kissed him once, she could call it an experience.
Twice and she suspected there would be no return to the person she was supposed to be. Twice and she was a person who wanted to kiss rogues.
There he sat, clearly brimming like a pirate’s treasure chest with sensual knowledge.
“I very much want the earring.” This was also true.
He studied her for a long, silent moment with his formidable brows drawn together.
“Very well.” He paused. “I’ll agree to your change of the rules. But the forfeit is now two kisses.”
A tiny indignant sound escaped her.
“You will be offered a choice of locations for the second kiss, neither of which will be the lips.”
Now she was shocked silent.
“Those are my terms. You can pay now. Or you can pay twice in a few minutes, when I win again.”
His expression was implacable.
She knew she could refuse. It would be easy enough to open her mouth, form the words, “No, thank you.” Part of her wanted to do it to watch how his expression changed, if it would.
Panic and lust and good sense warred in her.
Panic that she would never again have this opportunity.
“Do you want to do the honors?” she said. Her voice was a thread.
Wholly masculine satisfaction blazed fleetingly in his eyes before he re-donned his game face.
He seized the sticks in his fist and let them haphazardly clatter to the table.
“Why don’t you draw first, Daphne? Just to get a head start on your losing.”
She tried for some of his composure by fixing him with a steady look of absolute indifference.
Then pulled in a long, steadying breath.
Her palms were damp.
She eyed the stack of sticks, identified three likely, easy prospects, and then, despite the fact that her hand wasn’t yet entirely steady, delicately freed one of them from the stack.
She held it aloft like Joan of Arc with a torch. Then laid it down in front of her.
Unperturbed, Lorcan assumed his peering position. He scanned the pile and took up his mesmerist’s tone. “Now, Lady Worth, you might want to . . . take this opportunity to begin thinking about where you’d like me to ki—what are you doing?”
The change in tone was almost comical. Swift, sharp, wary. His head jerked up.
“It’s a bit warm in here. I thought I’d loosen my laces a little.”
And she’d done exactly that. It was the most wanton thing she’d ever done in her life, that one little deft reach behind her back. The tug.
He narrowed his eyes speculatively.
“Carry on,” he said silkily, finally. Calling her bluff.
He resumed his search.
She ever-so-slightly tugged her bodice. He flicked his eyes up and he briefly froze to see what might happen next.
She didn’t think her nerve extended to anything beyond what she’d already done.
“. . . and forgive me if this is information you already possess, Lady Worth, but when a woman is . . .” He adroitly tweezed his stick flawlessly up and laid it on the table before him “. . . ah, your turn . . .”
Daphne surreptitiously pulled in a few, long shuddering breaths.
She was startled when the exhale made her bodice list a little. Not for the first time did she feel as though she were an aghast onlooker on her life. What on earth was she doing?
She fanned and wriggled her tense fingers as if she were about to attack a particularly aggressive Beethoven passage, then let them hover over the pile for a time. As if her hand was a creature that could sniff out just the right stick.
“. . . as I was saying,” Lorcan continued idly, into the prolonged silence “. . . when a woman is aroused, her nipples go erect . . .”
Every part of her seized. Her lungs, her heart. Her muscles. Her hand froze midair.
“. . . in fact, sometimes you can even see them through the fabric of her gown.”
How had her life led to sitting across from an . . . incorrigible—she was suddenly furious she’d never learned more pungent adjectives—man who possessed no pedigree whatsoever, who was the filthiest, cleverest of all competitors.
This must be how her stocking felt after having been dropped into the fire.
She longed for the protective camouflage of experience or indifference. Surely the jaded did not turn magenta. She was certain she had, judging by her temperature.
She craved this indifference nearly as much as she craved another kiss.
The tension was well-nigh unendurable.
Her hand, still hovering over the pile of sticks, began to tremble.
His voice lowered to a confiding murmur. “This is all just to say that I can see your nipples through the fabric of your gown, Daphne.”
A tsunami of arousal and horror roared through her, obliterating thought.
The universe narrowed to her nipples.
The brush of her gown over them caused her to bite the inside of her lip.
Now. Now was when he would move in for the kill, surely.
But he said nothing else.
He’d gone, in fact, quiet. Perhaps, at last, taking pity. Perhaps he did possess a conscience. And this, too, embarrassed her: perhaps he’d come to realize he could only push a spinster so far before she combusted before his eyes.
Perhaps he’d exhausted inspiration.
She risked a glance at him; his face was inscrutable. But his eyes were soft.
She took advantage of this apparent moment of weakness to commit to closing two fingers over a stick. With the delicacy of a surgeon splinting a dragonfly’s wing, she commenced freeing it.
“I think when nipples go erect . . .” Lorcan mused, like Descartes pondering his famous theorem.
She stopped breathing.
“. . . they’re like arrows directing a man to where he ought to apply his tongue.”
Her body jerked as if he’d done exactly that.
And the stack of Spillikins avalanched.
Daphne stared at it, cleaved into equal parts horror and exaltation.
In absolute silence they regarded the aftermath.
Through the roaring that had started up in her ears, two wicked, remorseless words emerged, in his low, silky, thoroughly satisfied voice: “Oh, dear.”
