He snorted. She would.
All the while her feet moved, her eyes never stopped either. She was searching for someone.Rothesbury.
The duke’s oily, leering smile shouldn’t be too difficult to locate. Except her gaze landed on the man, rested for the flicker of a second, and moved on. She was searching for someone, yes, but not Rothesbury.
And Jamie knew.
She was searching forhim.
Unable to resist, he circled around, so he was directly behind her. Slowly, he approached, closing the distance between them with care. He wasn’t sure what precisely he was about. He would let the moment take them where it led.
Close enough for his breath to disturb the fine hairs of her nape, he angled his head and murmured low in her ear. “Forgive me, my lady, for being so forward, but have we met?”
She inhaled a quick sip of air and went still. Instantaneous heat pulsed through him, firing up his blood, causing his heart to perform a neat, little flip.
Oh, they had met.
She met his gaze over her shoulder. Beneath her domino, her eyes were lined with kohl, imbuing them with an otherworldly blue. “I think not, my lord,” she said, engaging in the game he’d only thought to start the instant he asked the question. “I think I would rememberyou.”
Her gaze roved over him. He couldn’t miss the appreciation therein.
“’Tis you who is the memorable one,” he said, feeling a suggestive smile curl about his mouth. “No lady in this room is more bewitching.”
“Surely, you flatter me.” Within the protest, did he detect breathlessness?
“I never flatter.”
Surrounded by a profusion of frivolity and falsity, here they two stood, speaking truths to one another they never dared speak outside these walls, even as they played strangers to one another. Here, he was experiencing a freedom with her he’d never thought to have. He could be both stranger and…lover.
“May I be so bold as to ask your name?” he asked, following the possibility that lay down this road.
“Boldness does seem to be the order of the evening.” She tapped her mouth, as if considering his worthiness. “You may call me Madame Coquette. And you are?”
“Lord X will suffice.”
Her smile told him she rather liked that. “A man of mystery.”
Possibility, indeed.
The opening notes of another waltz struck up, and he extended his hand. “Would you do me the honor of this dance?”
She foisted her empty champagne coupe into the nearest stranger’s hand and placed her fingers in his. All he could think as she followed him onto the dancing floor was that these fingers had been wrapped around his cock, and he wanted them so again. That might be too much truth to speak aloud.
They entered the flow of the dance, their bodies at one with the rhythm, at one with each other, as they stepped to theone-two-threeof the dance. He pressed at the base of her spine until her lithe body strained against the length of his. His mouth found her ear, raising goose bumps along the column of her neck. “Why is a confection like you wandering about a party alone?”
She angled her face up to meet his eye. “I was trying to locate my husband.”
He lifted his brow in mock disbelief. “You are wed?”
“Very much so.”
Very much so.
Were theyvery muchwed?
“You should hope he doesn’t see us,” she continued. “I wouldn’t put it past him to punch you directly in the nose.”
“A violent man?”
