There was a little pause. “Would it be such a trial to remove my clothes again?”
He said it softly, conversationally. He sounded deadly serious.
She tried a laugh. It emerged somewhere between a wheeze and a sigh.
Her senses were engulfed by him. The heat of his body sank into her skin. She felt as though she echoed with longing, like struck crystal.
They stood like that in absolutely absorbed silence, their bodies silently communicating.
She heard him inhale. Slowly, at length. As if he were breathing her in.
As he went out the door, she knew it was not a question of if he kissed her again.
It was a question of when.
Chapter Fifteen
“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.”