The tension was well-nigh unendurable.
Her hand, still hovering over the pile of sticks, began to tremble.
His voice lowered to a confiding murmur. “Thisis all just to say that I can see your nipples through the fabric of your gown, Daphne.”
A tsunami of arousal and horror roared through her, obliterating thought.
The universe narrowed to her nipples.
The brush of her gown over them caused her to bite the inside of her lip.
Now. Now was when he would move in for the kill, surely.
But he said nothing else.
He’d gone, in fact, quiet. Perhaps, at last, taking pity. Perhaps he did possess a conscience. And this, too, embarrassed her: perhaps he’d come to realize he could only push a spinster so far before she combusted before his eyes.
Perhaps he’d exhausted inspiration.
She risked a glance at him; his face was inscrutable. But his eyes were soft.
She took advantage of this apparent moment of weakness to commit to closing two fingers over a stick. With the delicacy of a surgeon splinting a dragonfly’s wing, she commenced freeing it.
“I think when nipples go erect...” Lorcan mused, like Descartes pondering his famous theorem.
She stopped breathing.
“...they’re like arrows directing a man to where he ought to apply his tongue.”
Her body jerked as if he’d done exactly that.
And the stack of Spillikins avalanched.
Daphne stared at it, cleaved into equal parts horror and exaltation.
In absolute silence they regarded the aftermath.
Through the roaring that had started up in her ears, two wicked, remorseless words emerged, in his low, silky, thoroughly satisfied voice: “Oh, dear.”
Chapter Sixteen
She levered her head up to stare at Lorcan.
Whose eyelids were lowered like a wolf contemplating a meal.
She said nothing.
With leisurely, casual grace, he swept the sticks into his hand, stacked them, and installed them in their tin.
With equally unhurried efficiency, he lifted and slid the little game table aside so that the two of them could easily lunge at each other.
He did all of this as though he had all the time in the world.
While she waited, suspended in silent torment and unbearable excitement.
But then when he turned to her, she understood he was merely heightening anticipation.
Perhaps, improbably, he was nervous, too.
