“That is, I don’t like the way you’ve touched me here, in this bed. I loved it at Denby House during the ball, and every time we’ve kissed, including yesterday in the alley.”
“What? Wild and unchecked?”
“Yes,”she said resoundingly. “Wild and unchecked. That is what I like. Haveyouenjoyed this... other?” She pecked a curled finger at the bed, pointing at it like it was infested. “This tickle-touch... chaste... slowness? Because I cannot believe that you do. Not when you are so masterful at the other.”
“I love any opportunity to touch you,” he said cautiously.
“Right. And I enjoy the closeness of you and the weight of your body... but that is quite all I enjoy. The other is not bad so much as... boring.”
“Boring?”His voice cracked.
“And unsatisfying,” she said, looking away. “If I’m being honest.”
“Unsatisfying?”
She swung back. “Surely, you have noticed.”
“I am working so very hard to not manhandle you.”
“But Iwantto be manhandled, don’t you see?”
“You cannot.”
“I can and I do, and you are capable of thrilling me so thoroughly. When you do not, all I can think of is... that I wish you would.”
“Sabine, I could damage you. I could—”
“Youwon’t.”
He made a scoffing noise, “You have no idea.”
“Would you believe that this very statement—you have no idea—is exciting to me. Doesn’t the promise of... whatever ideas I don’t yet knowexciteyou?”
He stared at her a long moment and then turned to the wall. He pulled his nightshirt over his head, revealing his muscled back and half of the serpent tattoo. Sabine almost sighed out loud. She wanted to launch herself at him. But this would only confuse matters; she’d only just rebuffed him. He was clearly in no mood. Besides, her passion was not in question; this must come from him.
“I am not prepared to discuss this with you,” he said. His morning jacket was draped over a chair, and he shrugged into it.
“No one is wearier of talking about sex than I am, Stoker. But it seems unfair to both of us not to force out some... preference. It would be one thing if I felt you were incapable of satisfying me in a wilder,less refinedway. But we both know that you are so very up to the task. In fact, I think we are of the same mind on the topic.”
He walked to the window and moved the curtain, looking out on the autumn color tingeing Belgrave Square. It would rain today; she could smell it in the air. An otherwise perfect day to pass the morning in bed. Was she a madwoman to criticize him? Too demanding? She sighed, wishing her friends were closer so she could ask them.
Sabine bit her lip and ventured, “I’m going to the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Regent Street today. Would you come with me?”
“No,” he said shortly, biting the word. Sabine was not accustomed to terseness from him, and she felt her stomach drop.
“I’ve business with my brig,” he said. “It should arrive today or tomorrow.”
And it will take you away from me,she thought, fighting back tears. She could not accuse him of this. She could notorder himto love her.
She was so very weary of giving orders. She just wanted to be swept up and carried away.
She backed from the room and trudged upstairs.
Dr. Jarius Birdall of Regent Street’s new Royal Polytechnic Institution told Sabine that he could offer ten minutes, and ten minutes only, of his valuable time, as he was expected in an important meeting. (And, by the by, female tourists generally kept to the shop and tea rooms and were not known to approach faculty.)
She smiled sweetly and thanked him, lucky even for ten minutes. Her question for him—How might her father blast the limestone outcropping from an otherwise fertile field inDorset?—had been rather weak. She’d invented it on the spot when she’d come upon him outside his office. He, in turn, showed weak interest. It wasn’t every day that a pretty girl with a strange dog asked a stupid question of a man of little authority. Ten minutes was likely more than most people of any gender received.
“Limestone detonation is not an undertaking that one man, alone, with no training, can accomplish,” he told her in his cramped, acrid-smelling office. “Your father should seek out any of several mining companies with offices right here in London and negotiate a price for the explosives and a crew to manage it.”
