He pulled the little table in front of the settee.
And sat down next to her.
“Let the slaughter begin.”
She hesitated, but only because the moment she set her knitting aside the clock would start ticking on when her next kiss could very well occur.Or when a fortune that could restore her choices and save her family would be hers.
The moment she did set it aside, her heart leaped, then began a sort of skittering, rabbit-kick rhythm.
He lifted the Spillikins from their tin.
“You see, Daphne,” he began, as if continuing a conversation already in progress, “I think you have come to think of me as something like a large pet.”
She stared at him, astonished. “What on—I mostdefinitelydo not think of you as a pet.”
“Hairy, a little unpredictable, occasionally barks but mostly manageable.”
“Ah. I see your point.”
“This is all just to remind you that I am absolutely ruthless. And I know that rules make you feel safe. To you, they’re like the rungs in a ladder, aye? Or like a net below you that will catch you. Whereas I look at the rules, and like a mosquito wearing an eye patch, I see how I can maneuver through them.”
“Mmm. Are you going to natter and bluff your way through this, or are we going to play?”
“In a hurry to be kissed, are you?”
She clapped her mouth closed.
“Do you want to do the honors?” he asked.
She gathered the sticks into her fist and let them fall with a satisfying clatter.
She stared at the complicated little heap.
She hadn’t been lying: she had a precise and critical eye, honed from years of poking thread through needles and finding the flaw or the missing penny in a household budget or the dust in a corner.
With exquisite care she chose and withdrew a stick. Not a single other stick so much as moved a hair.
She showed her prize to him, eyebrows arched, and gently laid it down.
He immediately ducked his head and squinted, making a rather entertaining show of examining the pile.
“Do you know why I love these kinds of searches, Daphne?” His voice was abstracted, almost a murmur, so apparently seriously did he take his stick inspection. “...it’s because that feeling when you find just the right stick... the one you can slide with ease from the pile without disturbing any of the others...” His hand reached, hovered, then retracted, as he shook his head, changing his mind. “...it’s a bit like discovering those secret places on a woman’s body. The ones that will... no, not that one, either...” He rejected another stick. “...the ones that will make her sob and cry out with pleasure.”
Daphne went rigid.
Her mouth dropped open.
She closed it quickly.
He wasn’t looking at her. He tipped his head to inspect the pile from another angle. “I like to start by trailing my fingers along the curve of her calf...” and suddenly his was a mesmerist’s voice as he tipped his head to investigate yet another angle “...just my fingertips, you see, like feathers, lightly, so softly, drawn over her skin...”
His voice trailed like feathers over her senses.
All the tiny hairs on the back of her neck went erect.
Followed by her nipples.
“...until I reach the hollow behind her knee. And then I linger there with my lips, and my tongue and my fingers... oops, not that one...” He retracted his outstretched hand from a choice.
