“Clearly,” he drawled, each syllable dipped in disdain and delicious threat.
He loomed above her like judgment in human form, his eyes blazing. The kind of look that could pin a girl to the wall and peel her sanity off with a single raised brow.
Wanton’s breath hitched. He wasn’t just angry. He wasinterested.
She cleared her throat. “Is this… prolonged eye contact really necessary?”
He didn’t blink.
“Because,” she continued, flailing for composure, “overly long gazing has been known to trigger unexpected… emotional phenomena. Particularly in small rooms. With partial nudity.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “Too late.”
She could breathe—technically—but only in shallow, untrustworthy gasps that felt more like punctuation than respiration.
Her body was staging some sort of coup. Every nerve rebelled. Her robe had betrayed her completely, slipping down just enough to make diplomacy impossible. His thigh—bare, taut, alarmingly specific—pressed against her hip like it had opinions.
And then she felt something unmistakable. Something insistent. Something that clearly hadn’t read the spa’s code of conduct.
Her pulse didn’t just race. It threw on a wig and fled the country.
Hypothesis: The Duke is currently hosting a personal uprising beneath his robe. Further research required. Possibly with diagrams. Note to self: Did she bring her watercolors?
“Do you keep a life-sized statue in your robe, Your Grace?” she whispered weakly.
His lips brushed her ear. “At this point, Miss Wallflower, I hope your investigation leads nowhere. Just so I have an excuse to discipline you.”
She whimpered involuntarily, pressing closer.
“Thoroughly,” he continued softly, “and repeatedly, until you learn to behave.”
Her body didn’t tremble. Itvibrated. Not delicately, but with the kinetic hum of a woman whose moral compass had just thrown itself into the sea and yelled“Do me next!”
He rose slowly, arranging his robe with deliberate calm. “Shall we move to the next room?”
She lay breathless on the satin sheets, nerves frayed, heart pounding. “Yes,” she managed. “Clearly, there’s nothing useful here.”
Nothing except the burning knowledge that she wanted nothing more than to push him until he made good on the threat he'd issued with that glacial voice and scandalously mobile eyebrow.
All in the name of academic rigor, of course.
She was a woman of science.
And someone had to test the limits of ducal restraint.
Chapter six
In Which Wanton Say “Glutes” Aloud, Is Pinned for It, and Begins to Rethink Her Views on Poetry
Milton Avery’s chamber looked like a love affair between a library and a lingerie drawer.
Papers littered every surface—scrawled sonnets, scratched-out rhymes, and ink blots that might have been metaphors. Silk scarves were draped over lamps. A harp leaned drunkenly against a chaise. And in the center of it all, the poet’s towel hung from the chandelier.
Wanton Wallflower entered cautiously, adjusting the knot on her robe and ignoring the feather boa trying to seduce her ankle.
“Welcome to Milton’s lair,” she chirped. “Where even the metaphors forget their underthings.”
The Duke, by contrast, looked as though he’d rather be elbow-deep in military reports. He picked up a scroll, scanned the verse, and muttered, “This entire stanza is about… cleavage.”
