“Can you blame them for being fascinated?” He leaned back and indolently stretched out his legs.
She snorted.
In the silence that followed, he could all but feel her next question forming. He was pretty certain he knew what it would be.
“Dopeople do things with ropes?”
“For God’s sake, Miss Woodville,” he said, pained. “You have really got to stop talking to Lady Tomelty.”
“Then why would she say it?”
He sighed and gave this some thought. “Do you like blancmange?”
“Yes. Is blancmange somehow involved, too?”
It certainly could be, if you want it to be, he could have said. A vision of the no doubt creamy contours of Miss Woodville’s thighs flared into his mind’s eye, and honestly, who could blame him? Men were capable of such dualities: hovering protectively near a female who was quaking in his coat while reflecting on the velvety insides of her thighs. He was fully in control of his impulses, if not necessarily the way his groin tightened.
“Blancmange is delicious on its own, right? Rich and satisfying and decadent. You don’t necessarily need to add chocolate sauce to enjoy it. Or clutter it up with fruit. Would you agree?”
“Blancmangeisnice, yes, Mr. Marchand.” She humored him.
“But if you had blancmange every single night, and it was the only dessert you were allowed to have, you might want to try variations.”
She took this in.
She cleared her throat. “Ropes are a variation on...”
“Yes.”
When she fell quiet, he would have given nearly anything to hear the contents of her thoughts, while at the same time realizing he was better off not knowing.
“Spanking, too?” she asked after a moment.
“Yes.”
“I see,” she said politely.
He stretched his arms out across the back of the bench. “But no such frills are needed when two people simply want each other very, very badly.”
He said this idly, almost drowsily, as if it were a comment on the weather.
After a long moment, her shoulders rose and fell as she pulled in a long, long shuddery breath.
If she asked him what he meant by that, he decided he would tell her.
Explicitly.
She was testing her power over him by again and again inching over the usual boundaries of propriety that constrained a girl like her.
He found her bold innocence erotic. And she knew it.
If he was a better man, he wouldn’t encourage it.
If he was a stronger man, he would not take the bait.
Or up the ante.
As it was, he felt as though he was leaving a sensual little breadcrumb trail leading right to his bed and this seemed both inadvisable and impossible to stop.
