“Is it unladylike? In these things, I am not a lady.”
She saw that he was hunting for evasion, for polite lies. She had no way to convince him with words, so she simply waited, lewdly disheveled, on the floor.
“What else do you like, then?” The unvarnished hunger in his voice made her want to smile, but she was afraid a smile might be misunderstood.
“A bed for a start. I’m too old for carpets all night.” She put in the reminder of her age deliberately. She wanted this, but honestly.
She stretched out a hand to be helped up, but he went to his haunches, put his arms under her, and rose to his feet. His rawstrength started the thunder of excitement again. Oh, she was a wicked woman to like this so, but she did.
He staggered slightly as he carried her to the bed, but it was drink not weakness.
Was she taking advantage of a drunken man?
He wasn’t that drunk, and he was getting as much from this as she.
He placed her on the bed carefully enough. “Will you undress for me?” he asked. “As I watch?”
It stirred a little qualm. “If you’ll remember that I’m gone thirty, and can’t rival a sweet young thing of eighteen.”
“Does it matter?” He leaned against a bedpost, prepared to watch.
His comment could be taken many ways. She chose to ignore it. Even this was exciting her—the demand that she do something a little difficult and daring.
Did he understand her all too well?
Eyes on him, she loosened the drawstrings of her gown and pulled it off over her head. He was still watching. She had nothing on now but her shift and corset. Heart seeming to beat in her throat, she undid the front hooks of her corset, one by one.
He suddenly moved to brush her fingers away, to undo the last hooks and peel it open, almost reverently. She didn’t want reverence. She pulled his shirt out of his unfastened pantaloons. “Strip.”
With a laugh, he obeyed. She thought she moaned at the sheer beauty of his body. An anatomist could study muscles from him without dissection, but they were all sweetly smoothed by flesh—ands scars. Dozens of slashes, some puckered from rough healing.
For every one, she suspected, there was an internal scar. Scars, once formed, were permanent, though time did soften them. What of the scars that marked his heart and his soul?
She saw the dark stain of a tattoo on his chest, and remembered the duchess’s comment.
“Rumor says that’s a demon,” she said.
“Rumor tells the truth, for once.”
He came toward her and she saw that it was a demon, pitchfork in hand, amid red flames.
What was she doing here in a bed with a mad young demon?
He stripped off her corset and tossed it aside, then pushed her down on the bed in her shift. With a sudden grin, he ripped the garment open down the front.
Mad. Demon. And he understood her. It frightened her that, but thrilled her at the same time.
While her heart still raced, he spread the garment wide so she lay on it and leaned down to suckle her left breast, deep and firm.
“I love that,” she breathed, even though her body’s surge must have told him. “I love it. Teeth too, if you don’t draw blood.”
He looked up, bright-eyed. Whatever else, he was alive now, alive in this moment. Every inch of him. “And what if I do draw blood?” he asked, sending another mad shiver through her.
“You’ll spoil this.” Deep in her mind, however, an imp stirred with curiosity. No. She couldn’t want that.
He kissed her breast softly—both a tease and a promise. “You’re a remarkable woman, Maria.”
“I’m a hungry one, too.”
