Wickedness flashed in his silvery eyes. “Allof you.”
Through the blinding haze of lust entered confusion. “What are you on about?” she asked, her frustration with the man very genuine.
He let his actions answer for him as he fell to his knees before her. He grabbed her foot and lifted. “What is this?”
He’d noticed the dagger strapped above her ankle. “One never knows how a night will go.”
“Truer words…” His gaze returned to her sex as he placed her satin slipper on his shoulder. Clutching her hips, he pulled her forward.
“Why—”
His mouth found her quim, and she lost all capacity for speech. His tongue stroked along her slit, slick and hot and utterly, utterly devastating. With one hand, she grabbed the curtains, and with the other, clutched his hair, hanging on for dear life as pleasure unlike any other swept through her.
She’d had a great many experiences in her life, but neverthis. She’d never once conceived that a man would dothisto her…forher.
His cunning tongue stroked, caressed, laved, by turns firm and soft, butterfly flickers and kisses driving her beyond pleasure to the point of madness.
“Oh, you clever man,” she cried, her hips angling for more of what he had to offer. In the grip of this wildness, she entirely abandoned herself as climax bore down on her, taunting, teasing, hovering, so, so, so near… Until, of a sudden, it closed in and pulsed through her quim, shooting pleasure through her veins, delivering it to every last nerve ending, until she was naught more than a quivering bundle of satiety.
He gave her one last kiss before settling back on his haunches and tugging her skirts down. Fortuitous that he had a care for her modesty, for she hadn’t. She would become the most immodest hoyden in all of London to have him do that again. She might not ever get over it. Jamie, and his tongue, had turned her to jelly and rendered her speechless.
He’d made a habit of both.
“Clever man?” he asked with the lift of a single eyebrow.
There had been a time when she’d wanted nothing more than to wipe that arrogant smile off his mouth. Not now. He’d earned the right to that smile. “Very,” she said, her voice near unrecognizable to her own ears.
He stood and held out one arm. “Shall we return to the dance?”
“But aren’t we going to—” She pressed her mouth shut. She sounded petulant and spoilt. But, truly, weren’t they going to finish what they’d started? She ached for it.
“That was for you. We wouldn’t want to muss you up too much.”
“I believe I’d let you muss me up anytime.”
So much truth spoken tonight.
They didn’t speak again until they were halfway down the corridor, passing this and that paired off couple seeking a discreet encounter. Slowly, by increments, she returned to herself. She suspected, however, she would never make a full recovery. These last three nights—what he’d done to her body—well, it might have imprinted on her soul.
“What are you thinking, Hortense?”
She detected a note beyond curiosity in the question.Concern.
“It’s Madame Coquette, remember?” She couldn’t address his concern. She might turn to jelly, again, and that wouldn’t do.
“Hortense,” he insisted, low and definite. “Or do you prefer Lady Clare?”
“In name only,” she said, because she had to. The moment required it.
A dry laugh was his response. “Oh, I think we put paid to that notion.”
What could he possibly mean? Was he implying their marriage was now real?
Before she could ask, a voice that made her skin crawl sounded behind them, “Tsk, tsk, you know the rules of the night.”
Her stomach plummeted with dread.
Rothesbury.
