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 factthat 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.