He sat back on his heels and watched her with something dangerously close to awe.
She blinked at the ceiling. “Is that... typical medical procedure?”
“Textbook,” he murmured with a grin.
Chapter 27
Charlotte Tolliver was not entirely sure she remained upon the earth. There had been, surely, some displacement. Some divine rupture in the ordinary arrangement of the universe. One could not possibly endure such a thing twice in succession and then be expected to remember one’s own name or address, or the existence of anything else at all.
Good God. Good God.
Lottie stared at the ceiling, chest rising and falling, and then—hazily, lazily—flicked her eyes towards Jasper Deverell, who had reduced her to such a state.
He sat back on his heels beside her, one hand braced upon the bed, his shirt open at the throat, his hair disordered, his breath coming rather harder than his smug expression deserved. His gaze was fixed upon her with an intensity that made something low in her belly give a dangerous little flutter, despite the fact that she had only just survived what felt like the collapse of an empire.
Then her eyes drifted lower, to the very prominent strain against the front of his breeches. Oh.
“Do you,” she asked softly, still half-dazed, “need relief too?”
Jasper’s jaw flexed. “That is not part of the forfeit.”
“No?” She arched one brow, propping herself up on one shaky elbow. “But I am here, am I not?”
His eyes darkened.
Lottie, who had discovered within the last several minutes that she enjoyed pleasure exceedingly, allowed her lips to curve. Teasing and velvet-soft, she whispered, “Please... let me.”
For once, Jasper Deverell appeared to have misplaced his tongue.
When he finally rose to his feet and reached for the falls of his breeches, Lottie watched him with bold, flushed defiance… right up until he freed himself.
She gasped audibly, and her hand flew to her mouth.
Jasper froze. “Charlotte.”
“What?” she squeaked.
“Have you…” He looked at her face, then down, then back again with dawning astonishment. “Have you never seen a cock before?”
Lottie bristled at once. “I have four sisters, I shall have you know.”
He blinked, his cock still in his hand. “That does not answer the question in the slightest.”
“I am saying that, having four sisters, my opportunities for viewing gentlemen’s privates have been limited. Benedict is years older than I am. We were not exactly bathing together.”
Jasper stared at her, his expression hovering somewhere between horrified amusement and a man only now realising he ought, perhaps, to have asked several questions before removing his breeches. “I thought,” he said carefully, “that you were not exactly innocent.”
“I am not,” she snapped, though her cheeks had turned scarlet.
“No,” he said slowly. “Plainly not. And yet you have never seen one? What, precisely, is your working definition of innocence, Miss Tolliver?”
She groaned and dropped her face into her hands. “Oh God.”
He stepped closer, voice softer now. “Lottie… am I the first man to touch you like that?”
“No!” she said quickly, before wincing. “Well. Yes. By some measure. But that is not—”
His mouth parted. “You mean to tell me you are a virgin—”
