“You are serious,” she said, eyeing the humming mechanism with absurd poise.
“Deadly,” Jasper replied, as he set the device beside her on the bed and began unbuttoning his cuffs. “And professionally committed. This is a very delicate treatment, Miss Tolliver.”
Her mouth opened and closed before she flung herself back upon his bed. It was his forfeit after all. A wager was a wager, and Charlotte Tolliver was not the sort of coward who shrank from the consequences of her own recklessness.
That, at least, was what she told herself. It was vastly more dignified than admitting she was curious enough to burn and beginning to feel very warm beneath her stays.
“You shall need to remove anything that may obstruct… access to the afflicted area.”
Her cheeks went hot. “That isnothow real physicians speak.”
“Perhaps not,” he murmured, reaching for the hem of her skirts, “but then, I am not a real physician.”
When Jasper began to raise the fabric, she lifted her hips. His mouth curved, but he said nothing as he drew her skirts higher, slowly and with such infuriating care that her heart seemed to beat in every inch of newly bared skin. Cool air touched the warm hollow behind her knee, then the pale length of her thigh,until she lay before him in a state that was not, by any civilised definition, medical.
He turned the small brass gear with his thumb, and the device answered with a low, steady hum.
Lottie jumped.
“Do not be nervous,” he said, kneeling beside her thighs on the bed. His voice had dropped into something soft and wickedly calm. “It is entirely medicinal. I am merely here to ensure proper application.”
She opened her mouth to deliver a cutting reply, but the words deserted her as he settled in closer.
He paused. “Are you still raging?”
“Yes,” she said, though it emerged rather less convincingly than she had intended.
“Excellent.” His thumb moved lightly over her skin. “Then we have not begun too late.”
He touched her with the gentlest pressure—the faintest brush of vibration against where she was hot and already slick—and her hips jerked violently.
“Oh,” she gasped.
“Responsive to treatment,” he observed, his voice all mock-professional as he held the device steady. “Noted.”
The sensation was not at all what she had expected. Not that she had expected anything. How could one expect such a thing? It was all too much, and not enough at all.
He circled slowly, letting the vibrations build, until her hands fisted in the coverlet and her knees began to tremble. All the while he murmured terrible, wicked things under the guise of medical commentary.
She made a sound that was part moan, part curse. The sensation was outrageous. It was miraculous. And Jasper Deverell could see every inch of what it did to her. Lottie’s fingers dug into the bedclothes.
He gave the slightest tilt of his wrist, and a sharper pleasure shot through her, sudden and white-hot.
Lottie’s head fell back against the pillow. “Oh—“
“You are terribly inflamed, Miss Tolliver,” he said, with unbearable gravity. “Entirely overstimulated. A grave case of hysteria. I shall have to continue until the pressure is relieved.”
Her response was a strangled sound—half indignation, half something breathless and utterly unrecognisable to her own ears.
The little machine moved with wicked patience, retreating whenever she thought she might bear it, then returning with just enough pressure to steal the next breath from her lungs. Her thighs trembled. Her back arched. She was burning from the inside out, lit by sensation she could neither predict nor command.
Jasper watched her with an expression of scholarly attention so false it deserved prosecution. “Remarkable,” he murmured. “The patient presents with agitation, flushed skin, irregular breathing—“
“Stop talking,” she gasped, before letting out a choked moan, her hips twitching upward.
He only smiled and circled again, before adjusting the angle by the smallest degree.
Her hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes widened, wild now, shining with disbelief and something very close to desperation. “Jasper—“
