He hadn’t meant to incite this inquiry.In fact, he thought that Beatrice understood his hesitancy.He did not think it would be very difficult for her to divine.
And yet she seemed to be confused.
“You were only wearing your nightshirt last night,” she said, her voice distinct despite the rattle of the wheels over the cobblestones.“It was not particularly good at disguising your form.I did not see any horrors lurking underneath your white lawn.And, in fact, I saw a few things that I admired very much indeed.”
She gave him a saucy smile with that, letting him glimpse that gap he had come to, he feared, adore.It sent a dangerous thread of longing wending through his chest.She was completely ravishing—and for now, she was his.
She had been worried about calling himmy love.That he would think she was getting overset in her feelings.That he would see her as the type of cloying mistress that powerful, aristocratic men dreaded.Who wanted more emotion than their protectors felt.
The idea that he could feellessfor Beatrice than she did for him was, unfortunately, laughable.The kind of joke that, if she could see it from his angle, he would no doubt appreciate.
“There is no particular horror to my form.I just do not take myself as a pleasing sight for a woman.”
“But don’t you want to feel me against you?When you’re bare yourself?”
He clenched his jaw.Of course, he did want that.
“I do.But—” He broke off.
“It would be difficult for you to understand.”
“Please.Enlighten me,” she said, echoing him.
“You are so beautiful.You have no reason to worry about showing yourself to anyone.”
She laughed.“Come now, Thomas.When you first saw me, you did not think quite so highly of my beauty as you do now.”
He shifted in his seat.It was true.He had at first found her too rustic.
“I know what I am.As all women do.There isn’t a woman alive who cannot list out her imperfections.My hair is too wild.I have a gap between my teeth.And my breasts are too large.”
He rolled his eyes at the last.
“Large breasts are to no one a serious defect.”
She laughed.“Fine.Perhaps.But my hair and teeth are very real.Furthermore, I have a certain wild, untamed air about me that sets a certain kind of refined gentleman’s teeth on edge.”
He laughed.“And makes his cock hard.”
“To that, I cannot attest.”
“Yes, you can.”He glowered.
She knew she was tempting.He was sure of it.
“Perhaps in one instance.And I forgot to add that I orgasm with indecent ease.Lord Gilchrist even called it unladylike.”
“Bastard,” he spat out.It was lucky for Lord Gilchrist that he was already dead.Or else Leith couldn’t be trusted not to visit some harm on the man.
“But tell me.What stops you?”
He thought of how to explain it to her in a way that was not humiliating.The truth was that it was a very complicated matter—his feelings were all tangled up in his past, in who he had been once and who he had come to be now because of who he had been then.And the way in which he had chosen to be with women because he was young and self-conscious and spoiled and had more money than sense.He could see some of that now.
But he couldn’t explain all of that at this moment.
And this question, about the nightshirt, it was relatively simple, really.
“I don’t like women to see my cock.Or touch it.”
