“I shall, and I don’t require your approval to do so,” she said tartly.
Unbidden, a memory rose of how she had felt in his arms, lush form pressed against him, the wet heat of her on his thigh, the taut bud of her very responsive nipple. Oh, to surrender to needs he’d thought long dead, like the man he’d once been. Her coldness made him yearn to prove just how affected she truly was beneath the frigid pretense of her impassive exterior. He admired her tenacity. Her sharp-wittedness. The way she carried herself, as boldly as any princess.
These were all stupid, fruitless thoughts. Theo chased them from his mind, weariness suddenly weighing upon him and reminding him that he hadn’t slept in over a day.
He inclined his head, intending to leave and sever this damned unwanted connection between them. Fate could go to the devil to dance as far as he was concerned.
“I will leave you to your solitude, my lady. I beg your pardon for the interruption.” He sketched a half bow.
“You may as well sit,” she shocked him by saying.
Theo straightened, wondering if he had misheard her. “Sit?”
“The act of folding one’s body and gently lowering it into an accommodating piece of furniture,” she said, raising a wheat-colored brow. “Although I’ve yet to witness you doing so indoors, I trust you are familiar with the practice.”
By Deus. She was making a joke. Or making a joke of him. Theo wasn’t quite certain which it was, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. Lady Deering had invited him to sit with her, and it was well after two o’clock in the morning, and she was wearing only an ethereal dressing gown. His gaze slipped to her bare, pretty toes and he swallowed hard. He should politely refuse and find his bed for a few hours of much-needed slumber.
“I am indeed familiar with the process,” he said instead, playing her little game, uncertain what it meant. Loving every moment.
“Then do so, Mr. Beast.” Airily, she waved a hand toward a nearby armchair. “Seat yourself, if you please. I’m in need of a subject, and since everyone else is abed, I suppose you shall have to do.”
Theo frowned at her. “Not Mr. Beast. Just Beast.”
“Is Beast your Christian name, or your surname?” she asked, tilting her head in the manner of a curious bird.
She was stubborn, Lady Deering. He had been living in the shadows for years, and no one had ever questioned him the way she did. No one had ever looked at him as if she were seeing inside him, straight to the ugliness he kept hidden from the world.
“Both,” he said, because no one had called him Theo in years, and he didn’t think he could bear to hear it on the marchioness’s delectable lips.
She huffed a sigh of displeasure and gestured to the chair. “Keep your secrets if you must, but do take a seat. I cannot draw you if you are hovering over me.”
Draw him? Ah, yes. She had said she was in need of a subject. His overly stimulated mind hadn’t understood the full implications of that. The very thought of remaining seated in her presence for any length of time while she studied him made his cravat and his trousers feel suddenly tight. It was an absurd request, and one he should absolutely ignore. He was already exhausted, likely to the point that he preferred, where he could fall into a bed and sleep the rest of the dreamless dead for the span of a few precious hours.
But his feet were moving, taking him across the carpet, skirting her so narrowly that jasmine and hyacinth filled his head with fire. He stopped before the chair she had requested him to occupy and turned back to find her watching him. She was still standing, and he wondered if she hadn’t believed he would obey her edict.
Hell, he hadn’t intended to. But here he was.
A small smile curved her full lips, and something deep inside him clenched at the sight. “Just as I said, a man of many surprises.” With that pronouncement, she gracefully resumed her seat on the chaise longue, this time with rather less abandon than when he had initially come upon her, carefully tucking her bare feet to the side and making certain they were fully hidden by the hem of her dressing gown.
Even seated as she was, she still looked regal. But somehow less cold and aloof. There was a softness about her he had never seen before, and it struck him that he was seeing her without her shield and coat of armor. That this was how she must look when no one else was about.
“Do sit, Beast.”
Feeling stunned, he did as she commanded, resting stiffly on the edge of the cushion, spine straight as a ramrod. He hadn’t been seated in an intimate setting with a woman in what felt like a lifetime, and he was suddenly, horribly aware of that fact. Of just how uncivilized he’d become, just how far he had fallen from the prince who had flirted and seduced with an innate ease that was forever lost to him now.
“You look positively ferocious,” Lady Deering observed, her brow furrowed.
He felt ferocious. And he felt other things, too. Too many things. Unwanted things.
Forbidden things.
“I am only sitting here at your demand, madam,” he reminded her.
She opened her folio, holding the porte-crayon in her slender fingers. “Try to relax, if you please.”
Indolence was for men who didn’t fear for their lives. It was for the weak and vulnerable. For the man he’d once been.
He placed his forearms on the stuffed rests in an effort to comply with her request. For some reason, the notion of pleasing her filled him with warmth. He wanted to, he realized, the thought itself astonishing.
