This was no prickly pleasure skimming the surface of her skin. What she felt began deep inside and radiated outward, spinning, sparking, turning what was a warm glow into heat and light of an intensity she had never known before, one she had not suspected existed.
Watching her, feeling her shudder, knowing he had finally given her the fullness of pleasure she had been denied last night, Griffin delayed his own satisfaction in favor of enjoying hers. Her eyelids dropped to half-mast, her kiss-swollen lips parted, a flush rose from the neckline of her gown to steal over her complexion. She stared at him, though the look was more vague than pointed, her dark eyes not quite focused on any particular feature. He smiled, bringing her attention to his mouth, then he lowered his head slowly and kissed her at his leisure.
When he drew back, their lips parted with a damp little sucking sound that made him chuckle but discomfited Olivia. He saw her distress and tempered his amusement, moving more to one side as her fingers worked somewhat nervously on rearranging the hem of her nightgown.
“I find you are unexpectedly modest,” he said. “No matter. It is rather charming.”
“It is not an affectation.”
“I didn’t think it was. The affectation is when you pretend otherwise.” He tapped her lips with his forefinger when she would have objected. “It was not long ago that I asked you if you were a whore. You didn’t blink or blush then. In fact, I recall precisely what you said. You—”
Olivia talked around the finger that was still lightly pressed to her lips. “I said I had given you enough reason to think it. Really, can I depend on you to echo our every conversation?”
“When it’s pertinent, yes.” He removed his forefinger to tap the tip of her nose.
She brushed his hand aside. “It is annoying, you know, to have to reflect upon one’s words at a moment of your choosing.”
“Quite possibly true, but there you have it. So why is it so important to you to pretend one thing when you are altogether something else?”
“Why does anyone?”
“I am not asking about anyone. I want to know why you do it.”
She shrugged, looked away. “Fear, I imagine.”
He considered that. “What are you afraid of?”
“You cannot expect I will answer that.”
“I can, but I won’t insist.”
“You wouldn’t answer it.”
“I might.”
Olivia took the bait he dangled and dared to ask the same question he’d put to her. “What are you afraid of?”
“Why you, of course, but I mean to overcome it.”
What he did, Olivia realized when she could breathe evenly again, was overcome her.
The faro table was crowded with punters, and for the first time, Olivia was truly at her ease facing them. She hadn’t realized how much anxiety she’d felt on every other occasion until she experienced the absence of it. Griffin, too, was less often at her side, though not by any means less attentive. He did not pass through her gaming room without taking surreptitious measure of the gentlemen surrounding her table and judging their potential threat to her.
The arrival of a half dozen students not long after midnight caused her some concern, but when their manner toward her hovered between respect and reverence she comprehended that Griffin had taken them in hand before they ever reached her table. She hardly knew whether to be offended or grateful for his interference and concluded that she was a bit of both.
“I would have dealt with them, you know,” she told him after Mason had been sent in to spell her at the table.
Griffin slipped his arm in hers and led her toward the unoccupied stairs leading up to their private rooms. It was quieter here, just off the hallway where patrons mingled, drank, and laughed until they settled on another game of chance. At a halfway point, he drew her down on the step so they were neatly tucked between the wall and the banister.
“I prefer you only deal with the cards,” he said, releasing her so that he might rest his elbows on the stair behind him. He stretched his legs casually at an incline and glanced sideways at her, giving her benefit of a charmingly sheepish grin. “If you’ll forgive the wordplay.”
“I suppose it is your experience to be forgiven all manner of things. It is your smile that puts others at a disadvantage.”
“Really? And I’d so hoped it was my wit and the soundness of my arguments.”
“Let us say you are not altogether foolish.”
His grin actually deepened. “Pray, you must stop thinking so highly of me, else I am bound to disappoint you.”
