“Why not?” She heard the smile in his voice, and she leaned closer to that latticed barrier.
“It is… it is not the thing one shares with a stranger,” She whispered through the partition.
“And yet I have shared the passage with you.” He leaned a fraction closer to his side of the divide. “We have come this far together, my lady. Will you indulge me just a bit further?”
“How so?” she countered.
“Tell me what the passage made you feel,” he urged.
She hesitated. “I do not…I cannot…I am not sure I know what you mean.” Anxiously, Phoebe flexed her fingertips. “When you were reading, my palms started sweating.” She did not like the stammer she had developed and fought to edge it out of her voice as she continued. “Is that what you mean?”
Another low chuckle came through the screen. “That is a good start. But I wish to know how you felt when the hero took the lady into his arms. When his lips brushed over her ample bosom, what happened to you then?”
Phoebe gulped. “I am not sure I can describe the way my body reacted.” She twisted her gloved fingers together, focusing on the sensation to regain a sense of stability. “What should I have felt?”
When Phoebe looked up, she could see a hint of a smile gracing the gentleman’s face. He slowly lifted his hand and ran his fingertips through the soft auburn tresses that tipped over his forehead.
“I imagine a young lady like you felt something building low in your stomach.” He removed his hand from his hair and pressed it to his abdomen. “Here. The sensation that overcame you created a burning curl right there. Did you feel it?”
Phoebe’s instinct told her to shake her head, to protest no, but she could not deny that she did.
So, in an exhale, she admitted, “I…I do. Err…I did.”
“The feeling lingers still?” the stranger murmured. “Good.”
He leaned so far forward then that Phoebe imagined reaching out and brushing her fingers over the wispy locks of hair covering his forehead.
She yearned to know if the tresses were as silky as they looked, but she resisted the urge and merely prodded herself to listen more closely to his words.
“That heat will travel upward first. You may feel a pleasant warmth flood your chest, your neck, making your skin flush a delicious shade of pink.” His tongue flicked out as he licked his lower lip. “Tell me, do you feel flush with anticipation?”
“Yes,” Phoebe murmured. “Suddenly, I feel almost overheated.”
“Wonderful,” the man purred.
Phoebe scooted forward further on the bench, then lifted one hand and used it to fan her face. “But…the heat in my cheeks. That’s not all I feel.”
“Naturally.” He looped one finger through the lattice, then rubbed the pad down the length of the wood. “While some heat rushed upward and flooded your face, something else, something electric and…enigmatic spilled downward. I imagine right now, there is a pool of desire resting…between your legs.”His words were careful, calculated, and Phoebe felt seduced by just those alone.
She took notice of the sensation between her legs and inhaled sharply. “I… I feel it.”
“Tell me more?” he invited, and that curling heat only burned brighter. “I have led you far enough. Now I want to hear the words come from your own lips.”
She opened her mouth to comply at once but then stopped herself. “I do not know what to make of you, sir. Why do you speak thusly to a lady you do not know? Do you mean to seduce me?”
A low laugh returned. “I am interested in you, my lady. Need I have another motivation?”
“Even though you do not know me?”
“One does not need to know the other to value the pleasures of the flesh.”
“Oh,” Phoebe whispered, wondering if that was somehow true.
She had read enough of such things, certainly, but was that not only fiction? Surely real life could not grant her the same thing, that she might cross a bridge to such things without knowing the stranger with whom she spoke.
“Indeed.” Again, she heard the smile in his voice, and it made her smile in return, even if he could not see it. “So, will you tell me more?”
“I cannot begin to tell you how I feel, but if you will consent to lead me there once more, I will not conceal my feelings.”
