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He laughed outright. “If you’re going to kick, you need something other than slippers to be effective. And since they’re doing you no good anyway…” He hooked his foot behind her heel and slid her slipper off. Then he dragged the flimsy satin confection back to where she couldn’t reach it.

At least now she couldn’t jump up and storm off without doing it in stocking feet. After all, that wouldn’t be proper.

Judging from her look of outrage, she knew it, too. “Give me back my slipper,” she hissed under her breath.

“Not yet.”

She moved her bishop onto the playing field, then smiled with suspicious sweetness. Sliding her little foot up his own calf, she caressed the back of his leg. “Come now, Sebastian, play nicely.”

“My wits aren’t that dulled by your beauty, my lady. I know when I’m being manipulated.” He moved out his other knight. Glancing at the next table of players a few feet away, he whispered, “I’ll return your slipper when I’m good and ready.”

With a sniff, she dropped her foot from his leg and took his first knight with her bishop. “And when might that be?”

He leaned over the table to murmur, “After I’ve made you burn.” Then he slid his toe right up her calf and under her skirts.

Her eyes went wide. She tried to thrust her knees together, but it was too late. His foot had already reached the bare skin above her garters, which he stroked shamefully, moving higher with each stroke. She clamped her thighs together around his foot.

Making a pretense of examining the board, he said quite clearly, “I do so like trying to extricate myself from a tight spot.”

Then he wriggled his stocking foot high enough to reach the promised land, to which he applied a light pressure. Her mouth formed a startled O. He rubbed her gently, and with a strangled squeak, she stuck her hand under the table to move his foot aside. But she rapidly discovered it was impossible to dislodge a foot planted against one’s privates when it lay beneath one’s skirts and the man attached to it refused to remove it.

“You wicked, wicked man,” she whispered, but her whisper turned to a barely stifled moan when he caressed her again.

Even with the layers of stocking and drawers between them, he could feel her quiver beneath his assault. While his pawn leisurely took her bishop, his foot leisurely stroked her tender parts. His reward was the crimson blush that started at the too visible swells of her tempting breasts and crawled rapidly up her neck to her face.

“I do play a mean game of chess, don’t I, Lady Juliet?” he said with a grin. “Though you’re not so bad yourself. It’s just a pity that your defensive maneuvers are a little shaky.” He curled his toe into a certain spot, eliciting a gasp from her.

“Then perhaps I need…offensive maneuvers instead,” she choked out. She took another of his pawns with her knight, encroaching far into his territory. And while that distracted him, she sent her own stocking foot encroaching far into his other territory, right between his thighs. She began to poke her toe at the fullness in his breeches.

If her legs hadn’t been so much shorter than his, he’d be doubled in pain by now, since she clearly wanted to do him an injury. But she couldn’t progress far enough forward to do more than stroke his already rigid John Thomas with the tip of her toe.

It made him insane. “I like your offensive maneuvers,” he growled and moved his bishop. Then before she could jerk her foot away, he thrust his hand under the table to capture it. He tugged just enough to make her slip down in her chair so that the sole of her foot could rest squarely on his swelling cock. “I like them a lot,” he added.

This wasn’t exactly what he’d intended, but by thunder, if it didn’t feel incredible. His own foot slipped from between her legs so he could widen his thighs and slump down in his chair to give her better access. God help them both if anybody noticed what was going on behind the low wall of the alcove.

She stared at him a long moment, as if debating what to do about her foot, when he held it captive against his John Thomas. Then a decidedly suspicious smile spread over her luscious lips. She moved one of her pawns above the table. And she moved her foot below the table, in a slow, sensual stroke up the bulge in his breeches.

He gaped at her. What was she up to now? Then her foot rubbed again, eliciting an involuntary moan from him that made her eyes glitter with clear mischief.

“Something wrong, Lord Templemore?” she said, loud enough to carry. “I take it that my chess-playing skills have you worried.”

He scarcely knew. He scarcely knew anything except that he wanted that cursed foot of hers to keep moving. And it did, achingly slow, sweeping up and down his erection with alarming expertise.

“It’s your move, you know,” she added with a sly look. “Or perhaps my offensive maneuvers have taken you by surprise.”

Damned right they had. He was supposed to be making her burn, not the reverse. He tried to concentrate on the chess game, but his mind couldn’t wrap itself around anything as complicated as chess strategy, not with her talented foot bringing him rapidly toward the point of no return.

He took her pawn with his knight…or at least he thought it was his knight. Rational thought was becoming impossible. Juliet moved out her queen. Under normal circumstances, that move would have set off alarm bells. Instead, a different set of bells went off when she began using her dainty heel to knead his ballocks.

God help him. His ability to breathe was now seriously in question, yet he couldn’t bring himself to move her foot away, not just yet. It felt so damned good. Whoever would have thought it?

“She’s trouncing you, eh, Templemore?” came a voice from the nearest table, making him wonder if his excitement showed in his face. It must—he could feel hot blood creeping into his cheeks.

“Trouncing him soundly,” Juliet put in, her smile now overly bright. “I’m afraid his lordship is no match for a wily woman.”

“We’ll see about that,” he muttered. Determinedly, he focused on the game. Seeing trouble impending in more ways than one, he moved his knight defensively, then grabbed her foot to stay it. Enough was enough. If she did any more, he’d erupt.

With an impish grin, she captured the adjacent pawn with her queen and wriggled her foot against him. Quickly, he shifted her foot onto his knee and manacled her ankle, but he should have put it on the other knee, for now her other foot came up to caress him.