“Do you yield?” she asked, though she was smiling.
“Not when I am so handsomely entertained.”
“Pity. I rather wanted to see what you look like when surrendering.”
“Would you like me on my knees again, Miss Tolliver?”
“I shall let you choose the manner of your defeat.”
He met her eye squarely. “Then I must disappoint you, Miss Tolliver.”
She struck again, quicker this time, aiming for his guard rather than his person. It was a mistake.
Jasper caught the stroke, then twisted his wrist sharply. Her grip held for a moment—she was admirably strong and stubborn—then his blade slid against hers, lifted, and wrenched the sabre from her hand.
It struck the boards and skated away in a bright, ringing arc. Miss Tolliver froze.
Jasper brought the point of his blade to hover an inch beneath her chin. His other hand caught her wrist lightly. “Do you yield?” he asked.
She inhaled sharply. Colour burnt high in her cheeks. Her lips, painted the colour of pomegranate sin, were parted. She was not frightened. Good God, no. She looked furious, breathless, and alive with the humiliation of being beaten.
Jasper’s grip tightened by the smallest degree. “You wished to know what I looked like surrendering,” he said softly. “But I confess, Miss Tolliver, I am rather more curious to see what you look like defeated.”
For a moment, he thought she might kick him.
Then she lifted her chin, carefully, because his blade was still there. “I yield.”
God help him. He had won, and by every rule of their absurd, reckless, magnificent little engagement, he might now ask for anything. Anything at all.
The image arrived with such force that Jasper nearly forgot the blade in his hand. He could command her to her knees and ask her to take him in her mouth, there in the gallery, with sunlight spilling across the floor and her fallen sabre lying useless at their feet. He could lay her back against the shrouded piano, order herto unfasten those ridiculous trousers, and bury himself inside her until the only sounds in the room were the creak of polished wood, the ragged pull of his own breath, and Charlotte Tolliver’s moans against his throat.
The thought was enough to make every rational notion in his head stagger like a drunkard in a lane.
“I am not unaware of my rights,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I have won, and by the terms we agreed, I am entitled to name my forfeit.”
Her lips parted, and it was enough to send a surge of heat rushing through his veins. He lowered the sabre at last, though he did not step away. “I wonder what you think I shall ask for.”
Her eyes flared, and that, too, made his pulse surge. It was not fear, but anticipation. Miss Tolliver had not the good sense to be frightened of him, which was one of the many reasons he was doomed. “Perhaps you are remembering your own conduct when victory was yours.”
Her colour deepened.
Jasper’s mouth curved. “You were not, as I recall, a model of restraint. So you see,” he said softly, “I cannot in good conscience allow you to pretend innocence now. Your forfeit was not chaste, Miss Tolliver. It was a wicked little exercise in making a man obey and please you.”
He let his gaze wander, slowly enough to be unforgivable: from her mouth to the high line of her throat, to the rise and fall of her breath beneath the open edge of her riding jacket, to those borrowed breeches clinging to her hips and thighs. “I might ask you to kneel,” he said, very softly. “Here. Now. With your hands behind your back and that proud mouth of yours put to a purpose altogether less argumentative.”
God help him, she did not move, but blinked up at him beneath dark lashes. “I might ask you to unfasten every button,” he continued, his voice roughening. “Your jacket. Your shirt.Those damned trousers. I might have you stand before me in this gallery, in this merciless light, and have you touch yourself. Only your hands, Miss Tolliver, and my instructions.”
Jasper leant closer, until his mouth hovered near hers. “And when you could no longer bear it, I might come to you. I might press you against that wall and take you as thoroughly as you have been tempting me to do since the moment you walked into this room with murder in your eyes.”
Her eyes were dark now, furious and wanting and fixed upon his.
Jasper stepped back before he became the sort of man he had always despised. “Yes,” he said softly. “I could ask for all that. But I shall not.”
Chapter 17
He would not?
It was not the duel (though the outcome of that encounter rankled deeply enough to keep her awake for a week) that angered Lottie so.
