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As he slid the small piece into Freya’s mouth, Rory paused, letting his middle finger graze her lower lip. A tingling sensation was followed by an actual shiver in her shoulders that she could no sooner stop than she’d been able to stay his hand. With a small push, the cheese was inside her mouth.

His fingers, gone.

She chewed but did not taste anything. Freya’s shoulders rose and fell, her chest heavy and unable to do its job properly.

Breathe, Freya. He is just a man.

“Aye,” he said finally as she finished. His voice low, seductive. Promising. “I am offering, Freya.”

She found her voice. “I am neither a servant born nor a widow. Women such as I do not dally with men who are not their husbands.”

“That is, in fact, untrue.”

She swallowed. “You know because you’ve had many dalliances with noblewomen?”

“Shall I lie to you or speak the truth?”

That he should even ask. “You once offered only the truth to me.”

“There is truth, and there is truth. Feed me, and I will give you the second.”

“Feed . . .” She looked over his shoulder. “Rory,” she began, but he stopped her.

“They have their own things to hide, Freya. They are in this room not to be seen.”

Though it was true, the oddity of being so unwatched although they were in a room filled with people had begun to dissipate. Until now. She glanced down at the tray in time to see Rory pick up a small piece of cheese. When he put it into her fingers, she kept it there.

“Dalliance,” he said, his French accent surprisingly good, “était autrefois une conversation édifiante.”

“But no longer,” she said, her hand unmoving. “As you well know, the word means much more than a simple conversation.”

“I said edifying, not simple.” He grabbed her hand and moved it toward his mouth. “In the truest sense of the word, I’ve had but one.”

“With Alys, I assume?”

“Aye,” he said, “though I regret every revelation I made of myself to her.” Rory let go of her hand just as they were about to touch his lips, which now parted.

Freya willed her hand to remain steady. She slipped the piece of cheese past his lips, but just as she did, his tongue flicked against her fingertip. Rory’s eyes, slightly hooded, watched Freya as she struggled to regain any semblance of composure.

“You speak of words and their origins when you know precisely”—her voice trembled but she could not steady it—“what I meant.”

She attempted to pull back her hand, but Rory grasped her wrist. His fingers circled it easily, his grip firm. Holding her steady, he allowed her fingers to retreat as he quickly chewed the cheese. “There is a crumble still on the tip of your finger.”

Once again, he placed her forefinger into his mouth, and his tongue circled it. Rory’s lips then closed around it. Freya’s core clenched, but he did not relent. He took her finger in, sucking it. Watching her as the candlelight flickered in the whites of his eyes. The ale, the music, the sensation of his tongue against her.

Again, she clenched unwittingly. When Rory opened his mouth wide but continued to hold her hand and her finger in place, it happened again. She attempted to slow her racing heartbeat, to make sense of what was happening to her.

What Freya did not do was move her hand. Indeed, she watched him once again close his mouth around her, still teasing with his tongue and now moving her finger in and out. The clenching came again. Her cheeks were warm, her breath erratic.

And then he bit her. Gently, but still, ’twas a bite. Following by another suckling and, this time, a clenching so powerful that Freya nearly cried out. Rory did not relent but instead pulled her finger from him.

“La petite mort, mon amour.”

She knew the words but certainly had never experienced them before. And then, he suckled her, in and out, his eyes watching her expectantly. Suddenly the very core of her screamed out what she’d been attempting to hide from him. Her treacherous body told him very clearly that she was anything but unaffected by him. It clenched again and again, robbing her of breath. Of any semblance of thought. Even of an awareness of anything around them. Slowly, she regained the ability to breathe normally again.

“I knew precisely what you meant, my lovely Freya. But that fact is hardly as revealing as the one I shared.” Rory leaned forward, his head now nearly buried in her hair as he whispered into her ear. “I’ve made love to many women, aye. If you wish to hear it. But I’ve never wished for one to come apart for me in the way you did just now.” He pulled back. “That is the truth I give to you. As appalling as it might be.”

“Appalling?” She could not reconcile the word with what had just happened.