She didn’t like the way these thoughts felt, because they threatened to reorder an existence that was already in a state of upheaval.
Her head suddenly ached.
He read something in her expression.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered. But gently. “And turn your hand palm up.”
“Speaking of ordering people about,” she muttered. But she obeyed.
Her breath hitched when his fingertip touched her palm.
He delicately, slowly, traced a simple shape across her palm with his fingertip.
Her breathing went shallow.
Ohhhh, this devastating bastard. It was so subtle, so clever.
Sorevelatory.
Shivery tributaries of sensation fanned out from where he touched her; in their path, cells stirred awake to participate in this little pleasure. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted. The ones on her arms prickled to attention. Her nipples were practically stinging.Here, here, and here, her body seemed to say.This is where you want to be touched by him, in case you didn’t yet know.
And just as all rivers reach the sea, apparently this sensation, which was in truth hardly a touch at all, was destined to convene right between her legs in a hot, heavy pulse of longing.
He’d touched her for all of five seconds.
And in those five seconds, like those seconds during which she’d been airborne when he’d lifted her into the carriage, she’d felt an extraordinary, elemental freedom from... herself. Or rather, she’d felt more purely herself than she had in years.
Imagine what he could do with his fingers over the span of a night, a wicked little voice that sounded remarkably like Marchand’s whispered inside her head.
One night of pleasure, and at least a few of your problems would be solved.
Finally, reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
“I didn’t feel a thing.” Her voice was a traitor: It creaked.
He smiled at her, thoroughly, almost sympathetically, amused.
“You know, I honestly expected seduction to be a little fancier. Perhaps with... nets?” she hazarded.
“Nets?”
“I’m only guessing. I didn’t mean to shock you, Marchand. My goodness, look at you, clutching your pearls in alarm.”
“If Iwantedto actually seduce you, I wouldn’t have totry. You’d just fall into my hand like a ripe plum before you even knew what’s happening to you.” He sounded bored. He cupped his hand, illustrating, presumably, the plum.
She made a soft little scoffing noise. “I’m certain you kiss the way a little boy kisses his grandmother.”
A speculative, knowing, almost pitying little smile curved his lips. As if he knew a thousand things about her that she had yet to discover.
She felt that smile in her nether regions as surely as if he’d traced a shape there, too.
“Are you off to negotiate prices for wax candles at Lucifer’s Fall or some such today?”
She looked up at him, surprised, when he didn’t reply.
Finally he said, “I usually visit my son on his birthday. And his birthday is today.”
He’d looked away from her. His voice had gone gruff.